Posted inMusic

Alfred Brendel

At age 62 Alfred Brendel is arguably the most respected and beloved pianist in the generation of performers whose careers took off in the 60s. He gained this distinction, however, partly by default. There were more brilliant technicians and more soulful interpreters than he at the starting gate, but some of them, like Leonard Shure, […]

Posted inNews & Politics

The Man Who Replaced Siskel and Ebert/What ABout Bob?/Silent Reporting

The Man Who Replaced Siskel and Ebert Since 1986–and this might astonish Sisbert fans around the country–Dave Kehr’s been the principal film critic of the Chicago Tribune. We have bad news; he’s leaving for New York. His reasons are personal, but it isn’t fame that beckons. Fame–or shall we say stature?–he already enjoys. He’s chaired […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Camelot

CAMELOT Shubert Theatre “You must be crazy,” composer Frederick Loewe said when lyricist Alan Jay Lerner suggested they write a musical about King Arthur. “That king was a cuckold. Who the hell cares about a cuckold?” Lerner knew better, of course. He knew that the story of Arthur is much more than just royal soap […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Human Rhythm Project

Syncopated rhythmic line dances, intricate tangles of footwork, high-flash leaps and turns, swoops and slides, dapper elegance: tap dancers know how to grab your attention. A few years ago downtown commuters would sometimes find a tap dancer in tails–complete with top hat and cane–on the subway platform, his dress and energetic dancing contrasting with the […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Calendar Photo Caption

This painting by Peter LoCascio, Object Relations, is one of 49 pieces in the Hyde Park Art Center’s current exhibition. “Party Mix,” on view through June 12, features the work of seven artists who, according to curator Dennis Adrian, represent “important artistic points of view outside the most familiar popular conventions of contemporary art.” The […]

Posted inNews & Politics

The Straight Dope

What exactly is a “merkin”? Ever since the word was thrust into my consciousness it’s been tormenting me. My Oxford English Dictionary defines it as the “female pudendum,” which seems a trifle sedate, given the listed quote of 1714, “This put a strange Whim in his Head; which was, to get the hairy circle of […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Leon Morin, Priest

Aiming successfully for a wider audience in 1961, the neglected French independent Jean-Pierre Melville (Les enfants terribles, Le samourai) adapted Beatrix Beck’s autobiographical novel, set in a French village during World War II, about a young woman falling in love with a handsome, radical young priest who’s fully aware of his power over her. For […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Chick Willis

Atlanta-based bluesman Chick Willis’s career dates back to the 50s when he toured with Chuck Willis, the flamboyant, turban-clad “King of the Stroll.” Chick carries on his cousin’s show-stopping ways, peppering his act with outrageous double entendres and ribald tales of infidelity and hilarious romantic misadventure (“I don’t love my baby / I tell you […]

Posted inNews & Politics

No Pain, Who Gains?

To the editors: I wish to compliment you on a fine article regarding RSD by Robert McClory which appeared in your April 30 issue [“An Incredible Pain”]. Mr. McClory did a fine job of taking a complex medical issue and making it accessible to the layperson. I must however express alarm at the extensive copy […]

Posted inNews & Politics

The City File

“We’ve got one doctor who still tells mothers that if they nurse for more than five minutes their nipples will fall off,” lactation consultant Nicki Ward of Prentice Women’s Hospital (a division of Northwestern Memorial) tells the Chicago Reporter’s Clara Jeffery (April). Such medical mythology is one of several reasons why relatively few poor and […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Really Gone

To the editors: Anyone who regards Ornette Coleman as the sole living exponent of “free jazz” (as Michael Solot tells us in “It’s Really Gone, Man,” May 7) thereby reveals himself to be so ignorant of the current state of the jazz art that he really has no business writing about it. John Mason Rogers […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Clark Terry

If you plan a concert built on the original arrangements of Duke Ellington, you could do worse than hiring someone who played them the first time around. If you hire Clark Terry–who sparked the Ellington trumpet section throughout the 1950s–you can’t do much better. Terry helped modernize that unit; his style in fact straddled swing […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Free Jazz

To the editors: Moldy figgery forever!, it seems. Michael Solot is entitled to his opinions about free jazz, but he shouldn’t let them let him indulge in falsehoods and misrepresentation [“Reading: It’s Really Gone, Man,” May 7]. The political consciousness that Solot says made free jazz a vehicle for hating the white man was–according to […]