The CSO maestro answers his critics, evaluates his players, and expounds his philosphy of music making.
Tag: Vol. 23 No. 51
Issue of Sep. 29 – Oct. 5, 1994
Posted inMusic
Whispered Messages
MESSAGES Rebecca Wolfram at Kozuch Gallery, through October 14 Many painters start with an idea and plan their paintings in detail in advance. Everything is decided upon, down to color composition and the scale of each element. For some of these painters, the finished work is disappointing, diminished beside the original concept. But for others, […]
Posted inMusic
A Jazz Singer?
CASSANDRA WILSON PARK WEST, SEPTEMBER 23 Cassandra Wilson, who performed last Friday at Park West and is currently riding a wave of acclaim in the wake of last year’s Blue Note recording, Blue Light ’til Dawn, presents slippery questions of classification. Is she fundamentally a jazz singer who, like such revered figures as Billie Holiday, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Visible Religion
Shadow puppetry is a venerable and popular way of retelling myths and other folk legends on the islands of Bali and Java, and gamelan music has always been a part of the tradition. In the multimedia show Visible Religion, director Kent Devereaux has assembled a group of American and Indonesian artists for a cross-cultural treatment […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Carol Bobrow, Bob Eisen, and Charlie Vernon
Eleven years ago, Charlie Vernon sold me my house. One year later, he made his last dance—until now. The monthlong Link’s Hall Homecoming Series opens with a weekend of new works by Link’s Hall founders; Vernon was one of them, and his Exit Plans covers all the bases of his past life: his experiences as […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Conference Calls: the year of the midwife
Before my children were born I thought I had a pretty good concept of normal birth. I’d seen it on TV plenty of times. I’d be chain-smoking Camels in a waiting room while a team of doctors were flinging instruments around an operating room. They’d see the head, and about five seconds later the baby […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bailiwick Directors Festival ’94
Bailiwick Repertory’s sixth annual Directors Festival showcases the aspirations of generally unknown, mostly young pro, semipro, and student directors whose projects range from established classical and contemporary selections to brand-new material. The fest runs October 2 through 27, with a different program of three one-acts each scheduled to begin every night at 7:30 PM. Tickets […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story In June the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., featured a show on minimalism, including such ordinary objects as a package wrapped in brown paper and string, entitled Package, by Christo. According to the Washington Post, when gallery technician Glenn Perry was installing some of the exhibits with the aid of his […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Brief but Exemplary Life of the Living Goddess
THE BRIEF BUT EXEMPLARY LIFE OF THE LIVING GODDESS, Halcyone Productions, at the Organic Theater Company Greenhouse, South Hall. When the exalted office of Living Goddess is vacated, a small-town girl is selected from hundreds of candidates to become the next icon of virginity. At first the healthy, headstrong child struggles to conform to the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Art People: Darrel Morris embroiders his past
Darrel Morris heard about the horrible fate of three-legged chicks–pecked to death by their own mothers–long before he turned it into embroidery. It was back when he was a kid, growing up on the hardscrabble remains of a family farm in rural Kentucky, trying desperately to fit in well enough to survive. His father was […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
If AM stands for ante meridiem, PM stands for post meridiem, and AD stands for anno Domini, why is BC English rather than Latin? It seems curious to me that the inventor of our present year-numbering system, Dionysius Exiguus, living in Rome in the sixth century AD, would coin the term “before Christ” in English. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Missing Passions
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE Steppenwolf Theatre Company Steppenwolf Theatre’s A Clockwork Orange runs like–well, like clockwork. In this American-premiere production of Anthony Burgess’s 1987 play, set pieces fly in and out with crack precision; a rainstorm falls right on cue; and carefully coached actors roll with their crisply choreographed punches while heavily amplified percussion perfectly underlines […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Looking for a miracle in West Humboldt Park
It’s the ultimate long shot–three women and one priest trying to revive interest in a church in a high-crime, gang-riddled neighborhood that was written off long ago, a church whose dead haunt its living. The interest in their mission is so weak that they haven’t been able to sell enough raffle tickets to break even […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
Nonexistent Vatican documents we wish we’d dreamed up first, “translated” by Maurice F.X. McNulty in the Chicago-based Critic (Summer): “Catholic tradition has constantly taught that only the right hand may properly engage in manual activities. The left hand must remain curbed and passive or, at most, ancillary and subservient to the right hand, analogous to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Woman Without a Country
IN A CORNER THE SKY SURRENDERS . . . Robyn Orlin at Mussetter-Struble Theatre of Northwestern University, September 23 South African expatriate choreographer/performance artist Robyn Orlin is seemingly incapable of a false move. Every piece she’s done since her arrival in Chicago three years ago has featured a fearless emotional honesty, spare yet clear execution, […]