Jacqueline Burnett, statuesque, iconic. She stands, as if chiseled into the air, with a stoic determination, perched on a hollow cylinder, the expression on her face no different than if she were rooted in the ground. In a dark room in an old house—midwestern, modernist—Andrew Murdock makes conversation with a shadow. He speaks with his mouth and his hands. He speaks as if he sees the others, but he does not see the others....
Equity, an expertly crafted financial thriller, is being billed as the first movie ever made about women on Wall Street. Press materials explain that it was “directed, written, produced, and financed by women, a collaboration among women in entertainment and business leaders in finance—the real-life women of Wall Street—who chose to invest in this film because they wanted to see their story told.” Writer-producer-stars Alysia Reiner and Sarah Megan Thomas deliver on that promise, weaving into their suspense story many potent observations about the challenges faced by women in high finance....
If Americans are going to pass laws that require people to do things they’d rather not, let me suggest a law that requires opinion makers in big cities to spend a couple of years in small towns. We’re all one country, but the differences between our boonies and our metropolises go far beyond scale. But damn it, it isn’t a perfect world. Some of those shopkeepers have minds as broad as cowpaths....
Update 3/19: After the publication of this story, the Chicago Board of Elections reported that, upon a final vote count, Sixth Ward alderman Roderick Sawyer was three votes short of the 50 percent plus one vote needed to win reelection. Sawyer is in a runoff against Deborah Foster-Bonner. In the southwest-side 13th Ward, incumbent Marty Quinn trounced 19-year-old challenger David Krupa with nearly 86 percent of the vote. This is about what happened in 1991, the last time a candidate dared challenge an incumbent backed by Michael Madigan, the Illinois state house speaker and 13th Ward Democratic committeeman of 50 years’ standing....
Memphis-based vocalist Karen Wolfe got her start in the mid-90s singing backup for her sister-in-law, the late Denise LaSalle. Encouraged by LaSalle to go out on her own, she released her debut album, First Time Out (B&J), in 2006; it pairs her sweet, supple vocals with the usual synth-heavy southern soul-blues backing—the same sound, more or less, that’s characterized her studio output ever since. But from the beginning Wolfe has made it a point to recruit the finest sidemen available for her live performances, allowing her to spark her shows with an energy and sensual grace that her recordings didn’t always reflect....
Courtesy of Bleach Party’s Facebook page Bleach Party want to believe. On their new single “Secret Ships,” the Chicago-based garage-rock band vanish into the stars during a mysterious alien abduction set in the late 90s. Lead vocalist Meghan MacDuff sings about joining dozens of astronauts on a journey across the cosmos, only to be jettisoned back down to Earth once they realize she’s human. Unlike the most famous songs about starmen and space voyages, “Secret Ships” doesn’t worry too much about paving the future with its sound....
At first it was not clear where the ritual hex would be performed. Then three women strode purposefully across Kedzie Avenue, black capes blowing in the wind. They stopped at the corner of Kedzie and Milwaukee and proceeded to unload a large bundle of black pens, a lighter, several sticks of incense, comment cards, stickers, and a packet of neatly printed half-sheets detailing the hex and the protective spell of the day, in both English and Spanish....
Marcello Cancelli Area Wine Director, Boka Restaurant Group One of the veteran sommeliers in the Chicago scene, Marcello Cancelli was first introduced to fine wines in an incredibly romantic way. Cancelli recalls finishing up his shift each night at Jean Claude Bistro in the late 90s, to gather around a table with fellow servers and the late legendary chef Jean-Claude Poilevey smoking cigarettes, sipping wine and talking life, politics, and whatever came to mind....
Kevin Warwick, Reader associate editor The Counts, Funk Pump This 1974 funk record sits right in the sweet spot of the decade, when a band could be cosmic enough to levitate but not shoot off into outer space with George Clinton and company—and prior to the late-70s disco deluge, when every album had at minimum two tracks of glitzy symphonic decadence. The Counts relocated from Detroit to Atlanta (and Aware Records) after hometown label Westbound, which released their debut, went all-in on Funkadelic and the Ohio Players....
Mike Krol makes the kind of distorted pop-rock that’s so sunny it’s liable to burn you till your skin peels. He’s a devoted student of the decades-old magic that allows punk fury and pop sweetness to coexist, which is why the songs on his fourth album, January’s Power Chords (Merge), feel familiar at first listen. And though the relatively languid, beachside tune “Blue and Pink” tips its hat to the long-standing fascination that Beach Boys-style has with the sand and ocean, when Krol sings wanting to feel palm trees fall and flatten his body it’s clear he knows that even paradise can fail to cure what ails him....
Q: It’s taken a lot to do this, but here goes. I am a 38-year-old gay male. I have been dating this guy for one year and ten months. It’s been a lot of work. He cheated on me numerous times and he lives with me and doesn’t work and I’ve been taking care of him for seven months now. He always accuses me of cheating or finds something to blame me for....
Listening to The Big Freeze (Don Giovanni), the fifth album from New York singer-songwriter Laura Stevenson, feels a little like eavesdropping on her innermost thoughts—an impression that owes as much to the raw, stripped-down acoustic arrangements as it does to Stevenson’s songwriting. “A lot of my songs, I write for myself to deal with something that I am not ready to share with anybody,” she told Noisey in March. But while she expresses her vulnerability through music, she’s not always totally forthcoming....
Olivia Junell, 33, has been codirector of Experimental Sound Studio since 2015 and managing director of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival since 2014. In 2015 she joined the board of Afro-feminist troupe Honey Pot Performance, whose research and outreach efforts include the Chicago Black Social Culture Map. On March 21 she helped launch the Quarantine Concerts livestream series with ESS codirectors Adam Vida and Alex Inglizian, drummer Ben Billington (who books the Resonance series), and guitarist Daniel Wyche (who curates the Elastro series at Elastic Arts)....
Chicago metal/experimental polymath Bruce Lamont (Yakuza, Bloodiest, Corrections House, Brain Tentacles) has just released his second solo album, Broken Limbs Excite No Pity (War Crime Recordings), and will be celebrating its release tonight. Lamont is such a tireless collaborator—along with his many bands, he frequently appears on albums by others—that his solo output has been somewhat sublimated, but when he stretches out in his own zone he brings a sophistication borne of years among diverse perspectives to his sonic layerings....
Chicago is in the midst of a surge in high-ticket tasting menus in restaurants operated by husband-and-wife teams. Chef Noah Sandoval and wife Cara Sandoval opened Oriole earlier this summer. Elske, from Blackbird vets David and Anna Posey, is on its way. And from chef John Shields and pastry chef Karen Urie Shields there’s Smyth. The Shieldses met while working at Charlie Trotter’s. She came from Tru. He moved on to Alinea....
When Bernie Sanders brought his political revolution pep fest to Illinois last week, he took it to those esteemed bastions of higher education, the University of Chicago (his own alma mater) and Chicago State University. Well, that, and the fact that Kanye West was once a student there. On January 13, as a bill to restore MAP grants, a form of low-income student funding, was filed in the state senate, the governor’s office released a memo to legislators arguing that public universities need to make major financial reforms before the state gives them any more money....
Broken Nose Theatre presents the midwest premiere of Stephen Spotswood’s drama about a young woman who confronts her demons by climbing into the steel cage of an MMA ring. The metaphor of the hero literally punching out her problems couldn’t be more, er, on the nose, but in the hands of this capable cast and with just enough real-life detail, this production manages to transcend cliche and end up with an affecting, often-powerful story of perseverance....
Staged in various rooms throughout Oak Park’s Cheney Mansion, David Rice’s clever and moving promenade-style show (directed by Skyler Schrempp), interweaves long passages from Edgar Allan Poe’s better-known writings (“The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Tell-Tale Heart”) with original biographical material to create a portrait of a desperate, half-mad writer inspired by and deeply obsessed with his child bride and her tragic early death. (Virginia Clemm was only 13 when she married Poe, and only 24 when she died of TB....
Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot, now being produced by Lyric Opera through January 27, is one of the most popular operas in the classical repertoire. Lyric has staged it five times in its 60-plus-year history, roughly once a decade; both the San Francisco Opera and the Met are also putting on runs this season; and “Nessun Dorma,” Calaf’s sung promise to win over the princess, is arguably the most famous tenor aria in opera (and the stuff of many a Pavarotti compilation)....
Barney the Elf As a non-Christian, I have no brief for Christmas. But Other Theatre brings a whole chorusful of gold lamé briefs to this oddly compelling holiday tribute. I say “oddly” because the 90-minute show sure as hell doesn’t follow the usual path to Yuletide cheer. Santa Claus has died, to start, leaving behind a widow and one grown son, Junior, who’s expected to follow in dad’s footsteps. But Junior is a jerk, bent on introducing efficiencies at the expense of joy....
