When avant-garde jazz drummer Frank Rosaly moved from Chicago to Amsterdam in 2016, he did it for love, not to further his musical career. But on the professional front, Europe has always treated him well. He entered Chicago’s improvised-music scene in 2001 and watched the rise and growth of new concert series here, but it wasn’t until he started touring Europe in 2003 that he began performing for larger audiences....
Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. “You will never catch me in an all-black outfit, let’s be honest,” says CouponCabin.com writer Heather Thorgaard, 31, who was sporting a vivid mix of pastel and neon hues that included a striped faux-fur coat that she says reminds her of cotton candy. “I believe that rainbows and sparkles are a neutral,” she says....
Caught Christopher Chen’s tantalizing hoax begins with a “preshow” exhibit of works by Chinese dissident artist Lin Bo (Ben Chang). He says a few words about his recent imprisonment, then is suddenly a character in a scene set in the offices of the New Yorker after an American academic has questioned the veracity of an interview he gave the magazine about his imprisonment. When “the play” ends, a real cast member conducts a “talkback” with ersatz playwright Wang Min (Helen Young), who spouts ingenious and impenetrable theories about cultural appropriation....
Here are some of the events we recommend this week: Tue 10/17: In this Australian journalist’s new book The Phoenix Years: Art, Resistance, and the Making of Modern China, Madeleine O’Dea profiles Chinese artists who fought for expression despite the country’s hostility toward free speech. O’Dea reads from her book at the Columbia College Library (624 S. Michigan). 5:30 PM, free
If you’ve been banging around the Chicago theatrosphere longer than 25 seconds, you know the myth of True West and how Sam Shepard’s bro-ly, brawly mano a mano tale helped the ragtag off-off-Loop Steppenwolf Theatre burst into public consciousness with its 1982 production starring Gary Sinise, John Malkovich, and Francis Guinan. It’s not that True West isn’t without significant problems. Shepard’s one female character behaves in a way so unlikely it feels like she must be overmedicated....
Len Amato spent most of his childhood in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood. After graduating from Triton College in River Grove and then Columbia College, he knocked around the city working freelance film-production gigs. He never made it as a musician, composer, actor, director, fiction writer, or screenwriter, and he never went to business school. So how did he end up as president of mighty HBO Films, whose roster of socially conscious, award-winning titles includes movies like Game Change (2012) and The Normal Heart (2014) as well as the recent and controversial Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill true-life drama Confirmation?...
He pointed to a sign across the lot warning against unauthorized vehicles; I pointed out that it wasn’t visible in the dark and I was parked in front of a different sign, which said the lot was for Pizza Hut customers only (and, I added, the fast-food joint was gone). We went back and forth for quite a while, until he finally said he’d give me a break and take the boot off my car without charging me....
There isn’t much about the drab interior of the Ravenswood Venezuelan restaurant Bienmesabe that commits itself to memory. At least that’s true until you make your way toward the restrooms at the rear of the dining room, where you’ll be confronted by a wall of fame bearing the signatures of 18 Venezuelan-born Major League baseball players (and 2013 Miss Venezuela Migbelis Castellanos). Bienmesabe, 1637 W. Montrose, 773-549-5538
If you’re looking for an album to give you courage as you peer out at the apocalypse from behind your living-room blinds, you could do worse than Sampa the Great’s The Return (Ninja Tune). The Zambia-born, Australia-based artist released this sprawling, languid record last September, and it’s full of 90s beats, heart-on-the-dashiki rapping, and such a crowd of guest stars—Brooklyn MC Whosane, Australian singer-songwriter Thando, Melbourne artists collective Mandarin Dreams—that it feels as much like a family affair as a solo effort....
In January 2020, I was the owner of a highly respected catering company, FIG Catering. I loved food and was most happy developing menus, testing recipes, and being in the chaotic excitement of live, in-person events. First quarter is always difficult for caterers—we lose money and rely on client deposits/borrowing to get through until the busy season. We were in debt, but confident we’d get out of the hole, as in past years, as events kicked off....
The sharp wit and stinging analysis of the Back Room Deal podcast got us through the interminable election run-up. Now hosts Maya Dukmasova and Ben Joravsky are ready to take us to the finish line—well, this first one anyway—on election night. Call Ben and Maya at 312-488-9265 starting at 5 PM. They can’t promise to take every call, but they’re eager to hear from you! Keep the conversation going on Twitter using #BackRoomDealLive....
Joe Mande seems to have done everything he can to become famous. He’s billed himself as the “Drake of comedy.” He attempted to raise $1 million on Kickstarter for a celebrity podcast (he raised $30,000). He tried to become the face of LaCroix, but La Croix asked Mande to “please immediately stop misrepresenting yourself as an official spokesperson for LaCroix.” And he dropped a mixtape—his first comedy album, 2014’s Bitchface....
“My designs are unapologetically bold,” says Kelley D. Moseley, 42, about K-FLEYE, her accessory line. Pronounced “kay fly,” Moseley’s label offers handcrafted jewelry, reclaimed leather bags, hats, and other kinds of adornments. Her designs feel organic and earthy, yet very festive, exuding a sense of joy and adventure in each item. “I like to have fun when it comes to creating and designing,” Moseley says. “I don’t like looking like everyone else, and that is why I create unique pieces....
Experimental jazz is not a stadium-packing pop genre. But you wouldn’t know that from the enthusiasm of the shoulder-to-shoulder capacity crowd stuffed into the narrow space along the bar at Dorian’s on a Sunday earlier this month. Programming director Joe Bryl spun a set of classic spiritual jazz from the likes of Brother Ah and Infinite Spirit Music, and then the crowd cheered as Jeff Parker‘s New Breed Band took the stage....
Shortly after 5 AM on Monday as many Chicagoans were just waking up and turning on their televisions, CBS2 was broadcasting footage of a mostly desolate Loop shot from one of its roving vehicles. Police lights flashed across the horizon of the grainy footage. The video was combined with the crackly voice of a reporter phoning in. She told viewers that the Chicago River bridges had been raised. The screen flashed text: “Chicago police respond to multiple smash & grab break-ins all morning,” and “Looting & unrest overnight across downtown Chicago....
When guitar wunderkind Ryley Walker releases his first album of proper songs in a couple of years, this new glimpse at where he’s headed in his music is cause to rejoice. The Rockford native shredded in a noisy fashion as a youth, playing in free-jazzin’ bands Heat Death and Tiger Hatchery, but about a decade ago Walker seemed to undergo a seismic shift: he traded in dissonance a la jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock for the mellow sound of troubled singer-songwriters such as the Tims Hardin and Buckley....
With more than 350 sites to choose from during the Chicago Architecture Center’s free Open House Chicago event this weekend, it can be a challenge to decide which to visit. Here’s a suggestion: Bronzeville’s Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church, at 45th Street and Vincennes Avenue. It has a unique place in the architectural and musical history of the city, but the most compelling reason to get there may be the one that stands just under two miles away, on the southeast corner of Indiana Avenue and 33rd Street....
After this year’s stylish spring edition, the Chicago Humanities Festival is rushing toward its main fall event, literally. This year’s theme, announced yesterday afternoon, is “speed.” “The theme was chosen because we all have the feeling that we live in a world with one setting: faster,” says Alison Cuddy, the festival’s associate artistic director. “What does that mean? What does it look like? The other side of it is slowing down: the interest in door-stopper novels, the way serial television has become something we can consume over a long period of time or binge-watch all at once, the DIY and Slow Food movements....
Montreal synth-pop trio Le Couleur delve into some disturbing history on their new album, Concorde, named for the supersonic airliner that in the 1970s made it possible for elite jet-setters to leave their European estates and arrive at Manhattan nightclubs after as little as three hours in the air. Midway through the record’s title track, the group deliver a gut-punching reminder of the great stain on the Concorde’s legacy: a fuel-tank explosion on a 2000 Air France flight that left no survivors....
Our thoughts are with France, and by a lucky coincidence, this week its thoughts are with us. Launched in 2011, the Music Box Theatre’s Chicago French Film Festival provides a valuable snapshot of what’s happening in French cinema, still the liveliest national cinema in Europe. Following are reviews of eight features screening this week, six of them making their local premieres; all are in French with subtitles. —J.R. Jones Down by Love In this drama by writer-director Pierre Godeau, a prison director (Guillaume Gallienne) falls in love with an inmate (Adèle Exarchopoulos of Blue Is the Warmest Color), though his passion feels more like taboo-specific lust (and mannered lust at that)....
