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Last month’s 2019 Star Wars Celebration at McCormick Place was an interesting introduction to major nerd conventions. I’d gone to small comics events here and there, but despite my status as a lifelong nerd and Star Wars fan, I’d repeatedly missed out on major events, even the ones close to home such as C2E2 and Wizard World. And while all such gatherings live or die by fan devotion, the Star Wars event was, in the words of its website, “Lucasfilm’s love letter to fans....

Tara Aisha Willis and Olivia Lilley both moved into prominent positions at Chicago institutions within the past two years, but the budgets and physical scale of those institutions could not be more different. Willis is a Hyde Park native whose career in dance and academia took her to New York for a time, before she returned in early 2017 as the associate curator of performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art....

Peter Gannushkin Dave Rempis Over the past couple of years, Logan Square late-night spot the Owl has been booking an eclectic and exciting program of music in its back room. Talent buyer Aaron Dexter has kept the acts constant and diverse, ranging from local punk and garage to hugely influential noise acts like Wolf Eyes and Pharmakon to legends like Silver Apples, so it only makes sense that he’s now entering the jazz realm....

As I prepare my list of favorite Chicago releases of 2017, I’ve been looking at lists that other critics have started posting online. I’ve yet to find one that mentions Azazel Jacobs’s The Lovers, which was one of the highlights of my moviegoing year. (If you missed the film in theaters, it’s now available on DVD.) The Lovers exudes generosity and a delight in filmmaking in every scene—watching it just makes me feel good....

UPDATE: as of Thursday, March 12, 2020 at 2 PM this concert has been postponed, with the new date to be determined in the future. Refunds available at point of purchase. Dev Hynes, who makes pop and R&B as Blood Orange, has a gift for synthesis that’s made him a favorite collaborator of many cross-genre stars in the past decade, including Mac Miller, Solange, and FKA Twigs. The London-born, New York-based auteur has visited Chicago multiple times in recent years, notably appearing at the Pitchfork festival in 2018 and opening for Florence & the Machine at Northerly Island the following summer, but while Hynes and his ensemble sound great in sunlit venues, a theater might suit the intimacy of his music better....

Two members of local band Clearance, guitarist Kevin Fairbairn and bassist Greg Obis, launched Born Yesterday Records in 2018, but it wasn’t till 2020 that the label really established a strong foothold. Born Yesterday works with artists from Chicago, of course, but also looks for talent further from home: this past fall, it released a hypnotic EP from Los Angeles rockers Dummy and an anxious LP by Massachusetts punks Landowner. Where the label really showed its colors, though, was with a terrific streak of local rock releases that began in April with Change Is Bad, a rangy, weather-beaten postpunk LP from Obis’s new band Stuck....

The University of Chicago’s concert series has distinguished itself with a season-long celebration of Hungarian composer György Ligeti, one of the most formidable voices of 20th-century music. That series concludes this weekend with a solo recital by French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard—one of the greatest exponents of Ligeti’s music—performing all three books of his Etudes for Piano. Ligeti wrote these pieces late in his career, reviving a form that had largely been banished by modernists when he published his first group of them in 1985....

Welcome to the Reader‘s weekday news briefing. Afghan war veteran Miguel Perez Jr. could be deported this week Miguel Perez Jr., a U.S. Army veteran of the Afghan war and a green card holder, is in danger of being deported as soon as this week, according to the Tribune. A federal court denied Perez’s appeal to stay in the U.S. after he finished a prison term for a drug conviction. Perez, who came to the U....

I had listened to Hotel Grief (Intakt) several times before I noticed that leader and drummer Tom Rainey, guitarist Mary Halvorson, and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock were credited for improvising all five pieces when the recording was made live at New York’s Cornelia Street Café in April 2014. I’m still shaking my head in disbelief that it was all created on the spot. Although the performances ripple with an attractive looseness and sense of space, the musicians shape melodies with such empathy and cooperative grace that the music feels composed and rehearsed....

Sanchez had suffered from insomnia since his mother’s death from cancer a year ago, according to Osoria’s sister Maria Cartage. She says that early in the morning on Sunday, February 21, Sanchez strolled a mile west of his home to his regular tavern to have a beer or two. “He was trying to do the responsible thing by walking instead of driving to the bar and, ironically, that’s what got him killed,” she says....

Update: City officials have announced a 25-cent fare hike on CTA train rides and bus fares beginning January 7, 2018. We’ll soon learn what’s in the cards—the CTA is slated to announce its final 2018 budget this week. Thus far no one’s said how big a fare hike might be needed, but it should be noted that even a 25-cent increase to the current fares of $2.25 per train trip and $2 per bus ride could tip the scales for some customers, who might turn to other affordable options like Uber Pool, Lyft Line, or Divvy as an alternative, which could be counterproductive for increasing revenue....

Finding a new tattoo artist is a lot like dating. You don’t want to hop in the chair with just anyone, and a lot of social media stalking is involved to see past relationships—or clients. Potentially, with a little bit of luck and some research, you could find a staple tattooer who matches your style and consistently executes clean tattoos. Ah, relationship goals. Another major shift for GLT is pivoting from accepting walk-ins to operating as appointment only through the shop’s website....

After the woman had finished her lecsó sandwich, cherry turnover, and choco-spice latte, she asked if she could take a nap on the couch. Lecsó, a paprika-stained Hungarian stew of lard-sauteed peppers and tomatoes, doesn’t typically appear on a sandwich. But it is typically consumed with bread, as it is with Finom’s slightly more traditional expression of it, served in a mini Le Creuset crock, crowned with a sel gris-sprinkled sunny-side up egg....

No matter how cynical and anti-consumer culture you may be, Valentine’s Day is often a bitch when you’re not coupled up—especially so if you’re going through a breakup. A couple of years ago investigative reporter (and sometimes Reader collaborator) Yana Kunichoff found herself at the end of a nine-year relationship. The breakup was an apocalypse in the way only ones that mean the end of a whole life and way of being can be....

Being single kind of rules. You get to jump to the front of the line when there’s only one empty seat on a roller coaster. Eating brunch by yourself means not having to share your bacon with a person who was “not hungry enough” for their own order. And being successful and not having to credit a “partner” is just about the best in the world. Then this time of year rolls around and all those coupled-up types with their shiny white smiles and chocolate-covered displays of affection come along to crap all over our independence—and simultaneously make being in a relationship seem not so bad....

OK, so things didn’t work out that well in October, when the city and Redmoon Theater got together to produce the Great Chicago Fire Festival. The flawed embodiment of a queasy concept, the spectacle fizzled spectacularly. Still, you’ve got to give Rahm and company credit for backing inventive performing art, win or lose. And they’re not done yet. The Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events is presenting OnEdge, an “experimental theater, dance, and performance series” offering seven free shows at five venues....

What if, on a daily basis, you had to choose between taking a shower or doing laundry? Making dinner or taking out the trash? Reading a book or catching up on e-mail? I say “our” because this is now my life, too. With a relatively mild case, I can walk and talk—except for those times I can’t. But recent research coming out of Chicago could help explain one of ME’s most destructive symptoms: the cognitive impairments that leave patients lost in a “brain fog” of slowed comprehension and short-term memory loss....

Drag has become so much more than queens lip-synching covers of diva classics. The more original your act is, the better, and in 2020 the possibilities are endless. The art form has permeated pop culture’s language, fashion, and notions of beauty, and it’s crossed over into other creative disciplines as well, including comedy, television, and film. It’s long been a symbol of liberation, and drag queens have increasingly become leaders within the LGBTQ community and beyond, using their platforms to elevate conversations around oppressive policies and aim deserved outrage at issues such as anti-trans legislation, sexual violence, and homelessness among queer youth....

Drummer Chris Corsano has plenty of steady partnerships, whether it’s in his various groupings with the fire-breathing western Massachusetts saxophonist Paul Flaherty, the Arabic-infused free-rock trio Rangda, or Vampire Belt, his splattery noise project with guitarist Bill Nace. But in a broader sense I think of him as a free agent, an improviser who ignores all boundaries and limitations and seems game for any challenge—playing and touring with Bjork or going head-to-head with the legendary British saxophonist Evan Parker....

Back in April, a north-side resident named Nick Burt filed a public records request with Chicago Public Schools, seeking internal e-mails and other information regarding the firing of Troy LaRaviere. It might as well have just given him the middle finger. And let me tell you, Mayor Rahm and his school appointees are masters of this game. CPS sent Dapier a batch of heavily redacted e-mails that were virtually impossible to read....