AP Photo/The State Journal-Register, David Spencer Protesters have already told state representatives what they don’t want cut from the budget. If you’re in the mood for talk that isn’t as tough as it wants to be, turn to the op-ed page of Tuesday’s Sun-Times and read the essay there by Madeleine Doubek, chief operating officer of Reboot Illinois. Illinois needs to trim the state budget to something it can afford, she says, so let’s get to it!...

Trumpeter Marquis Hill left his native Chicago for New York two years ago, right around the time he won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. Countless local musicians have made that move over the decades, relocating their bases of operations to the center of the jazz business, where there’s more competition but greater potential for success. Hill has maintained such a strong presence in Chicago since then, however, that you could be forgiven for not even noticing that he’d left....

The weekend of July 25, 2020, was supposed to be a coronation for Taylor Swift. That’s when her intercontinental touring music festival, Lover Fest, scheduled to begin in April, would’ve arrived at the brand-new Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles, where she would’ve become the first woman to perform the inaugural event at an NFL venue. Instead, the COVID-19 pandemic wiped those plans clean, and Swift largely retreated from the public eye, making only an occasional political tweet supporting BLM protesters after George Floyd’s murder or taking Donald Trump to task for stoking white supremacism among his supporters....

Courtesy the artist Nature Ganganbaigal of Tengger Cavalry So many great Maryland Deathfest spillover tours pass through Chicago this week that the Reader couldn’t preview them all. (It’s the music section, not the metal section.) I wrote about Ufomammut and Anaal Nathrakh, but I didn’t manage to cover what I’m pretty sure is the first Chicago show by Czech grinders Lycanthropy or the bonkers avant-black-metal bill of Thantifaxath and Imperial Triumphant....

ARTIST: Josh Davis SHOW: Ethers, Gentle Leader XIV, and Torture Love at the Empty Bottle on Mon 4/23 MORE INFO: deadmeatdesign.com

Sue Kwong This winter, the Reader has set a humble goal for itself: to determine the Greatest Chicago Book Ever Written. We chose 16 books that reflected the wide range of books that have come out of Chicago and the wide range of people who live here and assembled them into an NCAA-style bracket. Then we recruited a crack team of writers, editors, booksellers, and scholars as well as a few Reader staffers to judge each bout....

Within an hour of first seeing the music video for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs single “Maps” on MTV (on MTV, I said!), I stood up, walked to my car, and drove to a record store to buy their 2003 full-length debut, Fever to Tell. I can’t remember ever having done that before or since. On the album the trio captured the zeitgeist of supra-hyped New York City everything—when excess cool seemed particularly en vogue in rock ’n’ roll—but harnessed the energy of that white-hot scene to become something so much greater than just another local club act happily pinballing around a then-flourishing incubator....

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....

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....

Tomorrow night at 8 PM, Logan Square’s multipurpose arts space Comfort Station will host a free program of short, queer-themed films that were made over the past several years. The program is titled “I’m Not Sure What You Mean?,” a witty summation of the themes reflected in the works. The six shorts consider not only queer identity, but also, per guest curators Rebecca Ladida and Jess Lee, “the feeling of being lost in translation and the necessity to make new languages, with all the hesitations, uncertainties, and ellipses this entails....

On Do Hollywood, the 2016 debut full-length from Long Island duo Lemon Twigs, the barely-of-drinking-age brothers Brian and Michael D’Addario show off their impressive chops and unending appreciation of Todd Rundgren. The album made a splash, exciting old rockers while introducing a whole new generation to the lush prog-glam underbelly of the 1970s. On the follow-up, August’s Go to School (4AD), the D’Addario brothers get even more ambitious—they’ve written and recorded a bizarre rock opera that tells the story of a chimpanzee who is raised by humans and tormented by his peers at the neighborhood school....

The three one-acts that make up the 32nd annual Chicago Young Playwrights Festival don’t shy away from big issues, but they struggle to convey those issues in a personal way. While it’s no surprise that high schoolers might have trouble dramatizing large topics such as sexual identity, domestic abuse, and immigrants grappling with gentrification in unique ways, there’s no questioning the earnest effort evident in each of these short plays, produced and performed by theater professionals at Pegasus Theatre....

A play about an Irish family rarely breaks the mold of being too long, too sad, and too predictable. Usually someone important dies halfway through and we’re stuck with the remaining characters who have to deal with it. But Shannon O’Neill’s May the Road Rise Up, directed by Spenser Davis at the Factory Theater, is a stellar example of why we shouldn’t always judge a play by its marketing. The people who die are already dead when the play begins, and it’s their absence that causes much grief and propels the plot....

This summer, local jazz saxophonist and clarinetist Hunter Diamond spent three weeks studying composition with flutist Nicole Mitchell at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida—and now that he’s back in town, he has a bounty of new jams to share! Diamond is playing a free weekly Tuesday residency at the Whistler in September to debut that material: on September 10, he’ll lead a trio “conducted” by movement artist B’Rael Ali Thunder; on September 17, he’ll set poems by his father to music with a septet that includes reedist Cameron Pfiffner and bassist Katie Ernst; and on September 24, he’ll play with a quintet that includes saxophonist Nick Mazzarella and drummer Dana Hall....

UPDATE: this event is scheduled for 3 PM until 7 PM. Sun 7/11, 3 PM, Odyssey East, 9942 S. Torrence, free, 21+

Sue Kwong This winter, the Reader has set a humble goal for itself: to determine the Greatest Chicago Book Ever Written. We chose 16 books that reflected the wide range of books that have come out of Chicago and the wide range of people who live here and assembled them into an NCAA-style bracket. Then we recruited a crack team of writers, editors, booksellers, and scholars as well as a few Reader staffers to judge each bout....

This month the Gene Siskel Film Center is screening The Owl’s Legacy (1989), a 13-part documentary series directed by the late Chris Marker (Sans Soleil, A Grin Without a Cat), one of the pioneers of the essay film. The Film Center is dividing the series into four programs over the course of four weeks, with each program playing on Sunday afternoon and Monday evening. I recommend checking out the whole thing, but don’t worry if you miss one of the parts....

ARTIST: Ryan Duggan SHOW: Brian Costello’s Songs With Friends II on Fri 2/12 MORE INFO: ryanduggan.com

The communal traditions of folk music encourage musicians to play together in the most casual settings—a common repertoire can erase the issues of learning a song so that singers and players can instantly focus on melding their talents. Such gatherings can lead to more sustained partnerships, which is certainly the case with I’m With Her, a dazzling trio featuring three of the most distinctive and thoughtful figures in contemporary folk and sophisticated pop: Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek....