Coming of the Hurricane Organic Touchstone Company By Albert Williams “A world turned upside down”–that’s how one of the characters in Coming of the Hurricane describes the circumstances of both blacks and whites in the years following the Civil War. In Keith Glover’s exciting, boldly etched portrait of southern prizefighters, onetime slaves are now free–but […]
Tag: Vol. 27 No. 35
Issue of Jun. 4 – 10, 1998
Posted inArts & Culture
The Yeoman of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard, Light Opera Works, at Northwestern University, Cahn Auditorium. Strangely dark and emotionally ambivalent, this 1888 operetta by William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan veers far from the comic formulas of the same team’s H.M.S. Pinafore and The Mikado. Set in the time of Henry VIII, it concerns a condemned prisoner […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Jimmy All the Hits
JIMMY ALL THE HITS, Needles Theatre Company, at Stage Left Theatre. You’ve heard the story a thousand times before: a talented kid with a new sound is drawn into the music industry, then resists the efforts of his managers to make him more commercial. Whether our hero or the great devil capitalism triumphs depends on […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Big Apple Circus
Big Apple Circus Founded 20 years ago by a pair of former street jugglers, the Big Apple Circus combines the artiness of Cirque du Soleil with the good old Barnum & Bailey-ness of more traditional American circuses yet never stumbles into Cirque du Soleil’s Eurotrashiness or Ringling Brothers’ elephantine love of bigness for its own […]
Posted inMusic
Kieran Kane
KIERAN KANE Fed up with the stifling demands of the Nashville machine, three years ago Kieran Kane and fellow artists Kevin Welch, Tammy Rogers, Mike Henderson, and Harry Stinson founded the label Dead Reckoning, which quickly became the town’s finest artist-run imprint. But Kane’s paid dearly for messing with the divine order: before the switch […]
Posted inNews & Politics
City File
Attention shoppers: apocalypse in aisle 14. An information-systems executive concerned about computers that will have problems with the switch to the year 2000 told this story to the Food Marketing Institute’s annual gathering at McCormick Place on May 4: “An executive from one major chain…set the clocks in a store ahead to the year 2000 […]
Posted inArts & Culture
White Oak Dance Project
White Oak Dance Project Chicagoans, treat yourselves. Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project hasn’t performed here since 1994, and there just isn’t another modern-dance repertory group with such distinguished dancers and high-class choreography. Consider Neil Greenberg’s Tchaikovsky Dance, an octet with three diverse strands: chamber music cut into bits, punctuating a piece performed mostly in […]
Posted inMusic
Kraftwork
KRAFTWERK I don’t know why Kraftwerk has decided to tour the U.S. in 1998, 12 years after releasing its last original album, Electric Cafe, but it’s a safe bet easy cash has something to do with it. Generally I think this sort of nostalgia exploitation is tacky; however, if anyone’s earned the right to do […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Why does a nuclear explosion form a mushroom-shaped cloud? If you would tell me why frantic and furious fusion and fission have a fondness for the fungus form, I would certainly appreciate it. –Paul Smith, Tampa, Florida Shame on you, Paul. You know I cringe at F-words. You don’t need an atom bomb to make […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Shocking Truth
An academic’s account of Billy Tipton’s secret life tries to take the high road, but it can’t avoid the nitty-gritty–which is why it’s such a great read.
Posted inFilm
Kurt & Courtney
Kurt & Courtney Two freaky conspiracy theories rear their heads in Nick Broomfield’s gripping investigative narrative, which tries to get to the bottom of the relationship between Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and his wife, Courtney Love. Examining Cobain’s life up to his apparent suicide in 1994, Broomfield paints a horrifying picture of how devastating fame can […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Days of the Week
Friday 6/5 – Thursday 6/11 JUNE By Cara Jepsen 5 FRIDAY There might not be much “on the edge” in Wicker Park anymore besides design schemes. But if you do happen to be in the market for some pricey furniture or artwork, this weekend’s third annual walking tour of shops and showcases for designer decor, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Music Notes: beauty behind barbed wire
Rhoda Levine first learned about The Emperor of Atlantis, an opera written in the Nazi concentration camp of Theresienstadt, in the summer of 1973 while on a directing gig in France. A friend put her in touch with a young British choral conductor named Kerry Woodward, who had recently been given a manuscript of the […]
Posted inMusic
William Ferris Chorale
WILLIAM FERRIS CHORALE Local composer and church musician William Ferris carries a currently unfashionable torch for English anthems and French organ music–his stylistic sympathies lie with John McCabe, William Mathias, and Charles-Marie Widor, to name a few of the more or less neglected fellow tonalists he and his 40-voice choir have championed over and over […]