Marc Chagall’s work has long been subject to the charge that it is too much like illustration. Art connoisseurs rarely like illustrative art. It makes interpretation too easy for them, limiting their role as cultural gatekeepers. It was a charge made against Chagall by the great Russian revolutionary artist Kazimer Malevich in 1919, and it’s […]
Tag: Vol. 22 No. 27
Issue of Apr. 15 – 21, 1993
Posted inNews & Politics
Chicago Chamber Musicians go to school
If he keeps at it, practicing every day, sometime in the next few years 16-year-old Norman Mason may make it to the Auditorium stage. His dream is to be a first-class jazz pianist. If he gets there, and his teachers say he has a chance, the Sullivan High School junior will owe some thanks to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Cyrano de Bergerac
CYRANO DE BERGERAC Apple Tree Theatre Company Edmond Rostand’s deservedly popular portrait of silent passion Cyrano de Bergerac celebrates the gallant 17th-century swordsman and wordsmith, his vaunting bravado and his selfless devotion. “One of those rare animals who have opted to be free,” as his noble enemy De Guiche describes him, Cyrano is ferociously independent, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Last Days of Chez Nous
Even if you decide at times that the story telling and the visual style aren’t as compelling as the characters, this woman-oriented feature by Australian filmmaker Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career, High Tide), working here with novelist and screenwriter Helen Garner, is so alive with felt and observed experience and subtle familial interaction that you […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Poncho Sanchez
The distinction between jazzy Latin bands and Latin jazz bands is less subtle than you’d think. In any case, percussionist Poncho Sanchez exploits it for all it’s worth in his terrific conjunto, wherein the repetitive rhythms and exhortatory vocals never subsume such fundamental jazz virtues of swing and improvisation. Like most Latin jazz leaders, Sanchez […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Come
Come’s first release begins with the heroin lullaby “Submerge”: “Now we sink so softly / Now we sink so deeply,” croons singer Thalia Zedek. It’s the beginning of a descent into a somewhat unpleasant but for the most part compelling netherworld of druggy and unrelenting blues rock. Zedek’s the singer who leavened some of Live […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rackham String Quartet
One sign that chamber music still thrives–albeit modestly–is the popular series at the North Park College that has been drawing residents in the city’s northwestern neighborhoods. Another sign is the number of young conservatory graduates still willing to collaborate in string quartets. The Rackham was formed only a year and a half ago at the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Field & Street
Declaring that we need to avoid the “train wrecks” that have resulted from previous battles between economic interests and the Endangered Species Act, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt has announced his intention to change the focus of enforcement of the ESA from individual species to entire ecosystems. My first reaction to this announcement was […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rx for Poor Arts Reporting?/Remains and Court Bring on New Hires
Can Medill dean Michael Janeway put down his New York newspapers long enough to improve the state of American arts journalism?
Posted inArts & Culture
Red Rodney Quintet
These days, when trumpeter Red Rodney spins one of his lively, puckish solos, he offers not a snapshot of the moment but a panoramic photograph of his whole life. Thus you hear his roots in bebop, nurtured during his time as a Charlie Parker sideman–but now they flourish in the more contemporary structures gleaned from […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Margie Gillis
If you’re going to be onstage by yourself for an entire evening, you’d better be ready to be a lot of people. Margie Gillis is. With her flowing hair, strong limbs, and delicate but lively torso, she’s both rooted and airy, a plastic creature. In Bloom she’s the famous Molly, dancing the world’s most famous […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dirty Hands
DIRTY HANDS Mary-Arrchie Theatre Playwrights who’d like to dramatize philosophical principles would do well to look at Jean-Paul Sartre’s Dirty Hands and the Mary-Arrchie Theatre’s staging of it. In a small European country called Illyria an angry young man, Hugo, has rebelled against his privileged upbringing and self-perceived wimpiness by joining the quasi-Marxist Revolutionary Party. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Role Play
ROLE PLAY Organic Theater Company Greenhouse Lab Theater Let’s start with the good news. In its never-ending quest for bold new voices and wonderful imaginations, Organic Theater seems to have stumbled upon a real find. Playwright Eric Berg displays a brilliant creativity and well-trained ear for dialogue in Organic’s excellent production of his latest effort, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Readings
Consultations With Jorianne, Channeler, Adviser, Psychic Coffee Reader