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The new Scale is billed to composer and improvising harpist Zeena Parkins and Chicago sound artist and radio producer Jeff Kolar, but its story involves a larger group of collaborators. In 2017, University of Illinois professor Jennifer Monson (who’s also a choreographer and dancer) commissioned Parkins and Kolar to work with her, dancer Mauriah Kraker, and lighting designer Elliott Cennetoglu on a dance work titled Bend the Even. Initial development took place during predawn outdoor rehearsals in the fields around Urbana, but the group moved their work to Florida beaches after they landed a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts....

Empty Bottle floor manager Bob Johnson may look surly, but that’s never fooled Gossip Wolf—though he’s never had to toss us out for acting a fool, either! As longtime patrons and local musicians know, Bob’s back-cracking hugs have been the highlight of any night at the club since he started working door in June 2003. Johnson’s last shift is Sunday, July 17, and he tells Gossip Wolf that he’s moving to Minneapolis soon thereafter: “It’s time to make a change....

There’s plenty to do this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Through 7/10: The funky, florid SpongeBob Musical is running through July 10. Reader reviewer Dan Jakes writes that “even the most generic show tunes are well-executed toe tappers. The real heart of the show, though, is its spectacular design—the Rube Goldberg “volcano debris” machines are a hoot.” Wed 2 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Tue 7:30 PM...

This week’s featured gig poster was made for Wyoming pop-punk band Teenage Bottlerocket, whose annual Birthday Bash will be livestreamed this year with the help of the people at Riot Fest. Teenage Bottlerocket play this yearly concert in honor of drummer and band cofounder Brandon Carlisle, who passed away in 2015. This year’s show will be the sixth celebration of Brandon’s life and his birthday (and the birthday of founding bassist Ray Carlisle, his twin)....

W Iñiguez and his business partner, 30-year-old Mayra Hernandez, opened the cafe last May, intending it to be part of the marketing strategy for the Back of the Yards Coffee Co., their coffee-roasting business, which launched in November 2016. The cafe serves as the public face of their larger vision: a socially and environmentally responsible coffee company that creates local jobs while promoting the arts and culture of the neighborhood where they grew up....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. As he walked into a luxurious room at the W Chicago filled with models, stylist Charles Harris, 29, still managed to turn heads. “It’s important to dress well because it brings a certain level of confidence—you walk into a room and you don’t even need to say anything before you get noticed,” he says....

Cassie Sakai Goat Group Wine Director Beginning her journey with the restaurant as a server, Sakai realized that becoming a sommelier seemed like the most logical and sustainable next step in her career within the service industry. Even at the age of 22, Sakai knew that working with wine is something she could do for the rest of her life. Utilizing the building blocks in place from her serving experience alongside her passion for hospitality, Sakai worked her way up the ranks to becoming the Wine Director for the Goat Group....

In the two years since she left Chicago, Megan Gailey has boosted her recognition with shows across the country, a spot on Conan, and a starring role in MTV’s prank show Ladylike. Now she’s returning to the city where she cut her teeth to headline the Comedy Exposition. We talked with the stand-up about her first time onstage, drunk Chicago comics, and reading YouTube comments. Oh my god, I wore a vest, which I look back on like, “What was I doing?...

When the Reader‘s music staff launched the Listener almost a year ago, we hoped that you, the great reading public, might come to see it as a weekly way to hear from your imaginary friends who always have a new band or record they’re excited to tell you about. To explain why I’m excited about this week’s record, I have to confess to a long-standing bias against electronic dance music—perhaps an unseemly attitude for a music editor to hold....

Versatility has long been drummer Charles Rumback’s calling card, but his empathic, elastic range—which has included feverish free jazz, elegant pop-rock, and exploratory groove music—and commitment to ensemble play have sometimes hampered his name recognition. In spite of that, Rumback’s rumbling, post-Paul Motian sound is easily recognizable, and I’m glad he seems to have found a working band that lets it resonate more clearly. His recent Tag Book (Ears & Eyes), the second album he’s released in 2017 with his ruminative trio with pianist Jim Baker and New York bassist John Tate, reinforces his complementary development as composer and leader....

The ten albums Darius Jones has made as a leader or coleader since 2009 reveal an artist who can’t be pinned down. As part of the collective Little Women, the New York-based alto saxophonist combined extended instrumental techniques, postpunk rhythms, and a ritual demeanor reminiscent of martial arts practice to create devastating concert experiences. The compositions he’s played on his trio and quartet albums for the Aum Fidelity label steer closer to postbop jazz forms, with mercurial changes in mood and structures anchored by bluff and bluesy horn playing....

It’s been eight years since bass clarinetist Jason Stein dropped Three Kinds of Happiness (Not Two), the best and most agile recording thus far by Locksmith Isidore, his trio with bassist Jason Roebke and drummer Mike Pride, but the group has hardly been inactive. When Stein’s half sister, comedian Amy Schumer, enlisted him as an opening act for her international appearances throughout 2015-2017, he brought along the trio—which emphasized its ability to swing more than its knack for skronk....

Since 1999, British producer Bonobo (aka Simon Green) has been perfecting a serene downtempo electronic sound with porous borders. His most recent album, 2017’s Migration (Ninja Tune), features contributions from precious R&B band Rhye, Nicole Miglis of moody art-rockers Hundred Waters, and New York-based group Innov Gnawa, Moroccan natives whose hypnotic music is rooted in centuries-old Gnawa traditions. Migration features a track titled “Outlier,” and Bonobo has also adopted that name for his occasional program on Internet radio station NTS, for his Spotify playlist, and for his concert series....

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Does this look like chick lit to you? The war between Jennifer Weiner and Jonathan Franzen has been going on for nearly four and a half years, since the fall of 2010 when Franzen’s most recent novel, Freedom, was published, and hostilities show no sign of abating, largely because of Weiner’s immense capacity for taking offense and Franzen’s equally large capacity for giving it. (This is, remember, the man who became famous by asking Oprah if he had to take part in her book club....

Even after a weeklong intubation in an ICU unit and months of recovery, Maria Cabrera still didn’t know how she became infected with COVID-19. But here in Indiana’s biggest COVID-19 hotspot, Latinos make up just 17 percent of the population, but accounted for up to half of positive cases in the early months of the pandemic, according to Goshen Health Hospital. When Indiana reopened in early May, thousands of Latino immigrants like Cabrera, many of them undocumented, returned to physically demanding work—building RV frames, wiring units, manufacturing parts, and sewing furniture—in packed factories where social distancing can be difficult....

Robert Mora/Getty Images True gray I just spotted an essay that brought back memories—memories of a moment in my long-lost youth that I hadn’t thought about in roughly two days. Mr. President! For God’s sake, and America’s sake, quit so often calling crimes that involve a black person “racist”! As the president who came to office, a black man promising to bring people together, a man ideally suited for that job since you were born both black and white, you had a God-given chance to actually proclaim and demonstrate that racial divides and prejudice had greatly diminished and that our society was truly becoming colorblind....

Outstanding Chicago psych-pop group Roommate have made barely a peep since playing a June 2015 residency at the Hideout and releasing the album Make Like that month. But main dude Kent Lambert has resuscitated the project, dropping the single “Kepler-452B” on Bandcamp last week—and in a departure from the full-band sessions for Make Like, he recorded it alone (with some mixing by Nick Broste). “I’ve been playing guitar for the last couple of years for the first time since high school, and I went a little crazy with pedals and overdubs,” he says....

UPDATE Monday, March 16: this event has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. Ruby (Brooke Reams) and Wilson (Kevin Tre’Von Patterson) seem to have a picture-book marriage. While their daughter is away at summer camp, they plan on trying for another baby. But when Ruby’s best friend, Claire (Deveon Bromby), comes to stay a few weeks while recovering from the loss of a husband shot by a white cop, the couple’s seemingly blissful existence is shattered....

Experimental electronic music has always enjoyed an alliance with gloom; that is, dark clothes, darker beats, and the darkest venues. The more decrepit the warehouse, the better. But Baton Rouge-based James Richard Prudhomme, known as Suicideyear, eschews those types of blues in favor of—if you believe it—a refreshing ray of sunlight. Following a series of mixtapes and two EPs, his first full volume of original solo material, Color the Weather (out July 6 on LuckyMe), is a swirling distillation of zydeco’s fast-paced, tinny percussion with the Xanax-soaked hip-hop of his peers....

Ricardo Lago Couce For the past few weeks, we’ve all been looking back on the glories of the past year (or getting Facebook to do it for us) and making lists. Lots and lots of lists. But now 2014 is officially past, we’re a full day into 2015, and it’s time for looking ahead, for making elaborate plans for diet and exercise and cleanliness and all other forms of self-improvement to banish the general sloth—aside from overeating—of the holiday season....