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courtesy of the artist Joëlle Léandre The Bridge, an ongoing partnership between improvisers from Chicago and throughout France, is in the midst of another local run with one of its strongest lineups yet. Making its first appearance in Chicago is the first iteration of the project, which toured France in the fall of 2013: from across the pond come trumpeter Jean-Luc Cappozzo, bassist Joëlle Léandre, and bassist Bernard Santacruz; they join local percussionist Michael Zerang and reedist Douglas Ewart....

For more than a century, Chicago has played an outsize role in shaping music trends worldwide. Much of the credit is due (and often long overdue) to Chicago’s Black artists, who formed the city’s epicenters of jazz, blues, and gospel, laying the groundwork for rock ‘n’ roll. Black artists in Chicago also made the music that would become known as house, sparking a global dance movement. In a staunchly segregated city where neighborhood boundaries hem in people and possibilities, Black artists have repeatedly created music that crosses national borders to move bodies, change minds, and touch hearts—and in doing so they’ve established the foundations for the success of so many artists who followed them....

This Saturday at noon, the Music Box Theatre kicks off Music Box of Horrors, its annual 24-hour, horror-movie marathon. The event is commendable for being one of the most cost-effective shows around. Tickets are $30 in advance and $35 on the day of the event—which means if you see all 12 movies in the marathon, you spend less than three dollars per film. Several of the titles would be worth seeing at full price, however; adding to the enticement, almost everything in the marathon will be screening from celluloid....

Our poster this week is for a drive-in concert and anniversary party. Artist Jay Ryan created it for a celebration by longtime Chicago punk band Pegboy, who are commemorating 30 years of music. They’ll be joined by three opening acts—Local H, Stiff Little Fingers front man Jake Burns, and the Bollweevils—for an outdoor drive-up show in the parking lot of SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview. There’s sure to be a tribute to former Pegboy member Pierre Kezdy, who lost his fight against cancer earlier this month....

Founded in 1989, the Polish Film Festival in America drew its commercial strength from the city’s giant Polish-American population, but more than a generation later, the fest has found a more comfortable home at the suburban Rosemont 18 multiplex, where most of its big programs take place. This year the festival has even foregone its usual shows at Facets Cinematheque, leaving the Society for Arts in Jefferson Park as its sole remaining Chicago venue....

It feels like I just licked a toad.” That was the observation of a friend a few minutes after he sat down at Bar Biscay. He didn’t mean the food. He was referring to the oscillating lysergic energy of the room, in which different colored LED strips and floating tubes imperceptibly pulse from the ceiling and walls, and then somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly. A girl with kaleidoscope eyes....

Raised in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., scott b. davis first became interested in photography in the early 90s when he was compelled to document the wilderness. Looking for places that led him off of the map and into spaces unexplored, he began to dive deep into history. By the mid-90s, davis was working with 19th-century photographic processes and formulas like platinum and palladium printing with large format cameras. The artist, looking for ways to be more physically involved in photography, decided to pick up this practice in order to fail more and try new things with his practice....

Violinist Jennifer Koh, who was born and raised in the Chicago area, is that rare rising classical music star with fluency in both standard repertoire and new music. Her most recent album, Tchaikovsky: Complete Works for Violin and Orchestra (Cedille), follows on the heels of her eclectically curated recordings with bracing readings of work by living composers such as Kaija Saariaho, Anna Clyne, and John Zorn. She’s an artist with an abiding sense of community and has worked diligently to break down the barriers that often separate composers from performers by designing programs and commissioning music with a heightened awareness of those roles....

Toward the end of her rambunctious and profound one-woman show, Ida Cuttler spins back to a recurring theme in the 80-minute production: the power of storytelling to keep women safe. As Cuttler notes, stories kept Scheherazade from being murdered by a rapist king who decreed he’d wed a different woman each night, killing each new bride the morning after the nuptials. Scheherazade is hardly the only woman to use stories to justify her existence and as a means to create boundaries where men believe none exist....

Local multi-instrumentalist and composer Ben Miranda, who died in November, was a beloved jack-of-all-trades. Not only did he play bass for electro-­pop weirdos Detholz!, he was also a Web developer, armchair scientist, motorcycle nut, and pantomime magician with a talent for making people laugh. As a tribute to Miranda’s annual Groundhog Day parties, his pals are throwing a show at the Hideout on Sunday, January 31, that includes a reunited Detholz!...

Samantha Muljat Goatsnake Los Angeles stoner-metal band Goatsnake have shared the first single from their upcoming LP Black Age Blues, their first full-length release in 15 years. Formed in 1996 and headed up by guitarist Greg Anderson, one half of ultraheavy experimental drone-doom duo SunnO))), and vocalist Pete Stahl, formerly the vocalist of hardcore band Scream (which featured a very young Dave Grohl on drums), Goatsnake joined the Southwest stoner-rock scene and blasted out groovy, ten-ton slabs of Sabbath worship....

The 70s might have been the last time the media treated jazz music as part of the mainstream: Sun Ra appeared on Saturday Night Live, John McLaughlin arguably received as much coverage in rock magazines as David Bowie, and major labels A&M and Arista had entire rosters of jazz artists. In the midst of all of this was the jazz-funk subgenre. Though it was much maligned by jazz purists in its heyday, it’s become revered by rare-groove DJs too young to have experienced it firsthand....

UPDATE Saturday, March 14, 7:30 PM: this event canceled performances for Saturday, March 14 and Sunday, March 15. Contact box office to confirm performances past this weekend and for information about refunds/exchanges. I guess a bad play could be written about the hostile overthrow of a Cleveland Heights karaoke bar at the hands of a hard-cider magnate named Ethan, whose business card says, “purveyor of fine spirits and sophisticated settings.” I don’t see how, though....

The story of Mdou Moctar’s early years reads like show-business boilerplate. Growing up in a conservative rural town in central Niger, he had neither money nor parental permission to buy a guitar, so he scavenged items such as bits of wood and bicycle brake cables until he had enough parts to build his own. Moctar had to leave town to make his debut recording, and though it didn’t even get a proper release, the Auto-tune-soaked song “Tahoultine” became a regional hit as people across the Sahel swapped it from cell phone to cell phone....

Shasta Matthews and Tierney Reed, aka Klevah Knox and T.R.U.T.H. of Chicago hip-hop duo Mother Nature, look like they’ve walked right out of a music video, even though they’re just hanging out on the two enormous black couches in the corner of their Bronzeville living room. Reed is wearing red pants, a black tee, and an unbuttoned short-sleeve shirt in blocks of red, white, and blue. Matthews, who’s scrolling through menus in NBA 2K, idly trying to duplicate herself in the game’s character creator, has on sea-green snow pants with a black crop top—and even though this particular Sunday in February is just after the worst of the polar vortex, she says the snow pants are “purely for steez purposes....

When word spread last week that actor, director, and playwright Michael Martin had died unexpectedly on April 26 at age 63, several of the posts on his Facebook wall expressed the same sentiment. In fact, the number of strangers mourning the onetime Chicagoan’s death appeared to outnumber those of us who actually knew him (full disclosure: Martin and I had been friends for almost 25 years). Martin went on to found his own storefront theater company, Great Beast, as well as writing, producing, and acting in multiple productions during his time in Chicago....

Maya Angelou once said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Michael McCarthy was the kind of person that could make you feel seen. A quiet and humble legend in the Chicago comedy community, many met Michael at the Second City, starting as an intern then moving on to become a cast member on the e....

Some people found new hobbies during the pandemic, like making bread or crafting. Some took the time to work on themselves, and are now sporting new clothes, piercings, tattoos, or identities. Some did some spring, winter, fall, and summer cleaning. And some made the leap into the exploding world of online sex work. The COVID-19 pandemic and its disastrous economic impacts for many also created a perfect storm of sorts for fan sites, giving people a way to make some money amid record-high rates of unemployment....

In the first days of the COVID-19 shutdown, many theaters scrambled to find archival production videos of high enough quality to warrant public streaming—either for free or for a (relatively) low suggested donation. As the months have dragged on with stages remaining dark, more companies are creating brand-new content for the online stage. Some of it speaks directly to the weird-and-scary-as-hell moment in which we’re living. And some of it provides a little respite from that hell—or at least gives us a theatrical handbag to enjoy on the ride down....

Arts educator, singer, actress, and entrepreneur Sulie Harand passed away peacefully in her sleep on Saturday, August 6, four days after her 97th birthday. Sulie, born August 2, 1919, was cofounder of Harand Camp of the Theatre Arts, a summer camp devoted to offering youngsters experience in musical theatre, grounded in the traditional summer-camp experience of sports, arts and crafts, and social activities—”fun in the sun,” but also behind the footlights....