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Few trumpeters in the past few years have knocked me out like Norway’s Thomas Johansson. Fiery and technically muscular, with a refreshingly holistic approach to improvised music, he can swing like mad or take it way out. A few months ago he finally dropped his first recording as a leader, which is also the inaugural title on his own label, Tammtz. Revolution Before Lunch is a lean trio session that consists of three extended improvisations with bassist Øyvind Storesund and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love (Johansson is a key member of Nilssen-Love’s powerful big band Large Unit)....

Update Thu 2/7: The starting point of the “Hear Below” soundwalk has changed. Meet near the Wow Bao in the Michigan Plaza of the Illinois Center, near the northeast corner of Michigan and Lake. “We’re trying to raise awareness of the interrelationships of sound and listening and environment,” says Leonardson, who serves as cochair of the MSAE. “The best way to do that is through a soundwalk, where you’re not talking about listening but you’re actually doing it....

Elements of vintage soul have long been part of Nashville veteran Jim Lauderdale’s portfolio, dating back to his stunning 1994 album Pretty Close to the Truth (Atlantic)—a knockout hybrid of American music that’s also distinguished by the melodic sensibility that’s made him one of the most successful songwriters in modern country history. They appear once again on his latest record, London Southern (Sky Crunch), which was cut four years ago while Lauderdale was on a UK tour backed by the like-minded working band of roots maverick Nick Lowe....

IN EARLY DECEMBER, Ben Joravsky interviewed mayoral candidate Toni Preckwinkle. Now chair of the Cook County Democratic Party, and president of the Cook County Board since 2010, she withstood the overturn of her soda tax to win reelection in 2014. Prior to her election to the board she was the longtime alderman of the Fourth Ward, and prior to that a CPS history teacher. This interview has been edited for length and clarity....

From the Heathers to the Plastics, teenage girls and their cliques have proved to be a sturdy source of pop culture anthropology. And beauty pageants have also been fertile ground for satirical treatment, from Michael Ritchie‘s 1975 film Smile to Little Miss Sunshine. (And let’s not forget Annoyance Theatre’s long-running 1990s hit, The Miss Vagina Pageant, created by Faith and Joey Soloway.) Ericka’s kinder to the other girls than Paulina (admittedly a low bar to clear)....

It’s not uncommon for newbies to leave Trap Door wondering what just hit them. Since founding the 45-seat Bucktown company over 25 years ago, Beata Pilch has specialized in “obscure” works by eastern European playwrights, many of them raucously absurdist and—at least initially, sometimes—emotionally and intellectually confounding. Whether it’s David Lovejoy in Mark Brownell’s fabulously queer Monsieur D’Eon Is a Woman or the repurposed Greek mythology of Elizabeth Egloff’s The Swan, Trap Door productions tend to leave audiences thinking and, perhaps, slightly stunned....

It’s a little crazy to think that Steve Malkmus has been fronting the Jicks for half again as long as he served as the face of indie-rock paragons Pavement—maybe it just seems like a shorter span to me because his solo work has never resonated the same way his old band did. A couple weeks ago, Malkmus dropped his seventh solo album, Sparkle Hard (Matador), and though I don’t see it restoring him to his 90s relevance, it’s far more direct and less fussy than most Jicks records—it’s my favorite thing he’s done since Pavement called it quits in 1999....

This year local punk cover choir the Blue Ribbon Glee Club turns ten years old! If it were an actual child, it’d be starting fifth grade, which makes a weird kind of sense—Gossip Wolf remembers keeping track of the group’s upcoming gigs by checking its MySpace page! On Saturday, October 7, the BRGC throws a birthday party and reunion at Cafe Mustache, a good occasion for glee clubbers (and fans) to catch up; joining the choir on the lineup are a slew of bands featuring current and former members, including Wet Wallet, Dust Bunnies, and Hex Kittens....

Large family gatherings may still be fraught as we sort out who’s vaccinated and who’s not. But being a fly on the wall for the generations of WASPs in A.R. Gurney‘s 1981 play The Dining Room might make you take a fresh look at family dynamics. When the stay-at-home order went into effect, DeRogatis, like a lot of theater practitioners, found her plans tossed and gutted. But when some back pay from unemployment hit her bank account, DeRogatis says, “I was like, OK, I’m going to buy myself one nice thing....

“I’m sure you’ve heard the words to describe Englewood are ‘Black, dangerous, poor, gun violence,’” says Tonika Johnson in one of the opening lines of her short film, The Folded Map Project. Englewood is where Johnson was born and it’s where she still lives. Englewood is home. Crossing one bridge can propel you into a new circle of people and culture. Intersections and cross streets are linchpins for communities. Bus stops, train stations, and bike routes connect us and divide us....

When I’m watching a film by Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven, I’m Not There), I’m usually too caught up in the director’s formal decisions to think about the emotions of the characters. The deeper engagement comes later, after the movie has sunk in and I can separate the aesthetic from the themes. So it goes with Haynes’s latest, Wonderstruck, which opened in Chicago last Friday. Like his debut feature, Poison, Wonderstruck alternates between separate narrative lines set in different eras, with each given its own visual style....

A couple of years ago, Brian Hieggelke, the editor and publisher of Newcity, traveled to Brazil with his friend Ted Fishman, who was speaking at a summit on globalization. While he was there, Hieggelke realized a few things: The more he thought about it, the less far-fetched it seemed. “As Newcity became more virtual,” he explains, “I realized we’ve become less tethered to space. You can do your work from anywhere in the world....

In December 2016, as I whittled down my annual “best overlooked Chicago hip-hop” list for the year, local rapper Lin-Z released her debut, Awetumn—an EP so good that I wished it’d come out earlier, if only so I could’ve done more than mention it in passing in that post. In the spring Lin-Z will drop its follow-up, the EP Sprung, and last Friday she released its first single, “Grown.” Even if the rest of the EP isn’t as strong, “Grown” is extraordinary enough all by itself for me to call Lin-Z one of the best emerging rappers in the city....

Earlier this year there was an outpouring of stories from female comics both local and national about the sexism, harassment, and abuse they’d faced in the comedy scene. Through social media, personal blogs, and word of mouth, women united to shed light on experiences that took place everywhere from small open mikes to the largest comedy theaters in the country. But such accounts shouldn’t overshadow the real reason we need to be paying attention to these women: they’re great comedians who should be noticed for their talent and drive rather than because of scandal....

After becoming an Oscar nominee at age 14 for her remarkable film debut in the Coen brothers’ True Grit (2010), Hailee Steinfeld posed a conundrum to Hollywood—she was difficult to categorize. What to do with this intense young teen, who wasn’t a blonde or ethereal Dakota Fanning-type, nor an easy fit into one of the three standard film roles offered to young women: Ingenue, bombshell, or Manic Pixie Dream Girl?...

Have you ever been to San Diego?! It’s not remotely macabre, not a lick. Yet somehow America’s Finest City birthed the Black Heart Procession, an eclectic, mutating orchestra of woe whose solemn, gently writhing indie rock (complete with rapt saw playing) has led to a modestly successful decade-plus career. Forged by Pall Jenkins and Tobias Nathaniel in 1997, the Black Heart Procession eventually blossomed with 2002’s Amore Del Tropico and 2006’s The Spell, both of which feel and sound theatrical and thematic in their sinister yarns, but their stark early records—including their 1998 debut, 1, 1999’s 2, and 2000’s Three—still carry weight....

If you spent any time at Chicago indie shows last year, chances are you became familiar with the band Beach Bunny, even if you never actually saw them. The group’s name appeared on so many of the gig posters and concert calendars plastered on the walls of local clubs that you could easily imagine they had weekly residencies at half of them. On top of that, they played a set at Riot Fest, and they were selected as one of the openers for a string of Alkaline Trio hometown shows at the Metro during first week of January....

Some of my most treasured personal objects are punk and new wave 45s I bought at the old Wax Trax! Records in the early 80s, so reviewing Industrial Accident—The Story of Wax Trax! Records, which screens Wednesday in two sold-out shows at the 25th Chicago Underground Film Festival, may tax my powers of objectivity. Located next to the Biograph Theater in Lincoln Park, Wax Trax! was one of the first places I went in the city when I could venture in from the suburbs on my own, and along with a few other things I encountered (the elevated system, the art house cinemas, this newspaper), it suggested that adult life might have more to offer than Reaganomics and the Moral Majority....

Would you trust the culinary judgment of a restaurateur who has gone on record admitting he won’t perform oral sex on his partner? What about one who thinks it’s a good idea to batter and deep-fry lobster, a shellfish as delicate and unforgiving as an orchid? With its deep-fried-dominant menu, the Licking, which is described as “Miami-style” soul food, tilts in that direction, though pretty much anything you can order fried you can also order grilled—just not the conch, which they were out of anyway on the afternoon I visited with Reader interns Aaron Allen and Andrea Michelson....

Italian drummer and composer Tommaso Moretti settled here in 2013 after playing with Chicagoans such as Ernest Dawkins in his homeland, but he didn’t come across my radar until last year, when he appeared on the eponymous debut album of Bottle Tree—a smart, progressive R&B trio with multi-instrumentalist Ben Lamar Gay and singer A.M. Frison. He shows a different but equally satisfying side of his musicianship with his new album SemoComeSemo (Amalgam Music), a dynamic jazz-quartet recording of original compositions that deftly infuse sleek postbop with Italian folk traditions....