Sandy Guttman can hazard a few guesses as to why Chicago’s disability arts and culture scene is the envy of other major cities. We’re home to the consortium Bodies of Work, which funds artists and programming exploring the disability experience; the Cultural Access Collaborative, an artist-run group advocating for more accessible art spaces; Unfolding Disability […]
Author Archives: Hannah Edgar
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Julia Holter and Spektral Quartet’s Behind the Wallpaper promises that better worlds are possible
One of my favorite moments in music comes in the fourth movement of Arnold Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 2. In that piece, the quartet is joined by a soprano, who floats a verse by poet Stefan George over the soft glow of strings: “Ich fühle Luft von anderem Planeten.” (“I feel air from another planet.”) […]
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Saxophonist Greg Ward and his band Rogue Parade release the scintillating sophomore album Dion’s Quest
Chicago jazzheads would know the sound of Greg Ward’s Rogue Parade anywhere, and not just because the band’s instrumentation is distinctive: drums, electric guitar, bass, and alto saxophone. There’s also the baroque compositional style that the bandleader and alto saxophonist applies to this galvanic combination, which his collaborators—drummer Quin Kirchner, bassist Matt Ulery, and guitarists […]
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The art of war
When he met Tereska Adwentowska in 1948, David “Chim” Seymour was photographing ghosts. Born Dawid Szymin in what would become Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto, the 36-year-old cofounder of the legendary Magnum Photos collective returned to find the streets of his youth reduced to rubble. His parents were gone, too, executed by the Nazis in a wooded […]
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Percussionist Daniel Villarreal plays songs from the intersection of his many musical lives
Panama-born, Chicago-based drummer Daniel Villarreal is involved with myriad musical projects. He coleads the groups Dos Santos, Valebol, the Los Sundowns, and Ida y Vuelta; he’s collaborated extensively with grab-bag marching band Mucca Pazza, sibling duo Wild Belle, and soulful psych-pop singer Rudy De Anda; and he’s a familiar face on Pilsen’s DJ circuit. At […]
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Natural Information Society and the Separatist Party usher in a brave new year at Constellation
Constellation hasn’t hosted a New Year’s Eve bash since the Sun Ra Arkestra’s legendary fete in 2017. This year, the intimate venue ushers in 2023 with homegrown talents who could be considered Constellation all-stars. The evening is headlined by Natural Information Society, led by multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams; the five-piece ensemble realizes his teeming compositions (often […]
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Kikù Hibino, Steven Hess, and Haruhi reprise their sonic salute to late artist Gregory Bae
When Chicago multimedia artist Gregory Bae died suddenly in 2021, he left behind a shattered artistic community. Among the grieving was his friend Kikù Hibino, a sound artist whose work has been heard in venues such as the Chicago Cultural Center, Lincoln Park Conservatory, Elastic Arts, Hairpin Arts Center, Hyde Park Art Center, and Experimental […]
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What Paul Moses Taught
Mike Moses never knew his father, Paul Bell Moses. For the most part, he was afraid to ask about him. He knew about his father’s remarkable life in broad strokes. For example, he knew Moses—the first African American student admitted to Haverford College, a protege of the eminent art collector Albert Barnes, and later a […]
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For the first time in nearly 60 years, Instrument for La Monte Young sings again
David Skidmore couldn’t even begin to count the number of instruments he’s played. As a member of Grammy Award favorites Third Coast Percussion (most recently nominated for Perspectives, released earlier this year), Skidmore could plausibly play instruments from all six habitable continents for any given performance—plus the odd metal scrap, surgical tube, or squeaky toy. […]
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Ben LaMar Gay’s Certain Reveries is a pandemic dream worth remembering
In November 2020, Chicago multi-instrumentalist Ben LaMar Gay debuted his long-form composition Certain Reveries at a London Jazz Festival livestream show. The performance was no mere park-and-play: wearing a black hooded shawl that recalled the grim reaper, Gay played electronics, synths, and of course his cornet, and in collaboration with brilliant percussionist Tommaso Moretti, he […]
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With Please Have a Seat, Nnamdï discovers the unexpected delights and anxieties of staying still
Nnamdï’s sixth and latest album, Please Have a Seat (Secretly Canadian/Sooper), begins and ends with versions of the same refrain: “Some days I wake up ready to run.” Sure enough, since moving to Chicago from the suburbs a decade ago, the inexhaustible artist has essentially operated at a dead sprint. He records prolifically. He co-owns […]
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With Natural Brown Prom Queen, experimental pop fiddler Sudan Archives looks inward
When she filmed the music video for “OMG BRITT,” a trap anthem off of her new record, Natural Brown Prom Queen, Brittney Parks was determined to smash a violin on camera. Not just any violin, either: She wanted to destroy her very first instrument, the one on which she’d taught herself to play by ear […]
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The Reader’s guide to World Music Festival Chicago 2022
The term “world music” has never been adequate to the task we’ve set it—even in its most benign reading, it implies a division between the listener and the rest of the world. And if that listener is in the United States, our country’s global hegemony in popular music colors the term’s meaning too. Americans don’t […]
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Nicole Mitchell and Fabio Paolizzo’s Medusae brokers a truce between man and machine
Flutist Nicole Mitchell and composer Fabio Paolizzo first performed together live in 2018, in a concert at the University of California, Irvine. More accurately, Mitchell played a duo set with VIVO (Video Interaction VST Orchestra), a machine-learning program engineered by Paolizzo, which recorded her flute and voice improvisations and generated real-time accompaniment through loops and […]
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The Reader’s Jazz Festival jukebox
Like any music fest, the Chicago Jazz Festival is basically a Choose Your Own Adventure that you listen to. It’s even more multifarious than most—not only does it take over Millennium Park for four days, it also books events at the Cultural Center and Maxwell Street Market and a series of neighborhood concerts (copresented with […]