Posted inMusic

Ali Ahmed Hussain Khan & Monilal Nag

ALI AHMED HUSSAIN KHAN & MONILAL NAG This concert offers a rare treat, a pairing of the sitar–the best-known Indian instrument in the West, thanks to Ravi Shankar and the Beatles–with the sheh’nai, a hard-to-find, oboelike double reed that produces a piercing, fluttering drone. Sitarist Monilal Nag is a master of Hindustani music (the austere […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Royal Screwup

gaspich.qxd In her review of The Queen’s Project [Section Two, April 17], Carol Burbank describes Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots as “sisters (who) never met.” Actually, those two queens were cousins. Elizabeth I did, however, have an older half sister, Queen Mary I, with whom she was tragically well-acquainted. Their relationship was […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Glancing Blows

Cindy Sherman: Retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, through May 31 By Fred Camper Celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz was once assigned to photograph Cindy Sherman. Sherman–who’d become famous by photographing herself in various elaborate disguises–greeted her at the door of her loft wearing plain black pants and a white blouse, which gave Leibovitz the […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Math Curse

Math Curse, Runamuck Productions, at A Red Orchid Theatre. Much of the humor I enjoyed in grade school I still find funny today. And as an ardent fan of Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book and the Bugs Bunny cartoon What’s Opera, Doc? I feel qualified to recommend Runamuck’s Math Curse as loopy, energetic entertainment for the […]

Posted inMusic

Tim Berne’s Paraphrase

TIM BERNE’S PARAPHRASE Lots of jazz musicians lose their artistic drive as they get older, refining their earlier achievements in pursuit of a living wage. But over the last two decades Tim Berne’s music has grown increasingly thorny and challenging. Berne’s compositions are densely packed with labyrinthine melodies and elaborate counterpoint, and over the years […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Telling It Like We See It

Headline Dear Ms. True: We are both disappointed and angered that the Reader utilized the article about Mike North, entitled “Money Where His Mouth Is” (March 20, 1998), to promulgate ethnic slurs. Other publications have passed through the stage wherein they found it amusing to use infantile humor. We refer with particularity to the paragraphs […]

Posted inFilm

Breaks in the Action

Sonatine Rating *** A must see Directed and written by Takeshi Kitano With Kitano, Ren Ohsugi, Tetsu Watanabe, Aya Kokumai, Masanobu Katsumura, Susumu Terashima, Tonbo Zushi, Kenichi Yajima, and Eiji Minakata. By Patrick Z. McGavin For an art form that’s barely a century old, film has a lot of tradition behind it. Despite extraordinary technological […]

Posted inNews & Politics

News of the Weird

Lead Stories In March two Missouri legislators proposed a law to have the state give $1,000 to any married couple over age 21 who do not have sexually transmitted diseases, who have had no children prior to the marriage, who have not terminated a pregnancy by abortion, and who have not been previously married. The […]

Posted inArts & Culture

I Got the Blues

I Got the Blues Here’s a blast from the past. Peter Hobert, a recent DePaul graduate, was persistent–and lucky–enough to find Clifford Odets’s handwritten original draft of what became Awake and Sing!, the 1935 classic, in the New York Public Library. Written in 1932, I Got the Blues proved too depressing to produce even in […]

Posted inNews & Politics

A Radical’s Lament

oetting.qxd Dear Reader: I hope Studs Terkel’s Hot Type fantasy (April 17) about being appointed publisher of the Sun-Times comes true. In addition to upgrading Garry Wills and downgrading George Will, he should kick out Dennis Byrne, Tom Roeser, Robert Novak, Arianna Huffington, and especially that reactionary Uncle Thomas (as in Clarence) Sowell, who replaced […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Summit Conference

Summit Conference, TimeLine Theatre Company, at Performance Loft, Second Unitarian Church of Chicago. In Robert David MacDonald’s play, the mistresses of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini acknowledge their places on the sidelines as they beguile the time with tea and pastries. But when these are set aside in favor of brandy and cigarettes, the sisterly […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Petty Crime

March 13, 11 AM, 3400 block of North Seminary. Burglary. Man broke into apartment. Victim came home and surprised him. Burglar fled, leaving behind bag full of items he’d intended to steal. He also forgot his jacket and two scarves. March 26, 2 PM, 47th and Lake Shore Drive. Robbery. Man pushed rider off bicycle […]

Posted inNews & Politics

Big Budget Bullies

perazzo.qxd Dear editor, Jonathan Rosenbaum’s “In Defense of Non-Masterpieces” [April 17] fails to mention an important factor relevant to the lack of foreign influence in film and society’s trend of preevaluation: the absolute glut of studio films in recent years. Each year, more and more films come out of Hollywood backed by the dollars to […]

Posted inArts & Culture

Whe Men Collide

In her latest work, Getalong Little Doggie, performance artist and director Dolores Wilber uses the Rolling Stones, songs of the Civil War, a gunfight scene lifted from the film Dead Man, and chest-bashing duels to examine the creation of male identity through conflict and one-upmanship. “There are a lot of duels,” she says, both what […]