You rarely find a jazz conga player at the helm of his own group: Poncho Sanchez and Mongo Santamaria are the only well-known modern examples, and a historical search turns up only a couple more, like the pioneering Chano Pozo, who occasionally fronted a band during the bebop era. Not that this scarcity should be […]
Tag: Vol. 31 No. 21
Issue of Feb. 21 – 27, 2002
Posted inMusic
Local H
Talk about working a record: since Local H released Pack Up the Cats in September 1998 they’ve played 21 shows around town and God knows how many elsewhere. Like a shark, singer-guitarist Scott Lucas has had to keep moving to stay alive. Just as the album was released, Island Records’ parent company was eaten by […]
Posted inNews & Politics
City File
Downtown is growing but fragile, according to Eugenie Ladner Birch in the Journal of the American Planning Association (Winter). “Only seven cities (Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Norfolk, San Francisco, and Seattle) had downtown growth rates that exceeded those of their MSAs [Metropolitan Statistical Areas] in the 30-year period” from 1970 to 2000. She […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
CRUELEST APRILS 2/22, EMPTY BOTTLE Singer and violist Nissa Holtkamp and singer and guitarist Daniel Schneider (who does double time in Pedal Steel Transmission) modestly refer to their duo debut, Novella, as an EP, but its eight tracks run a generous half hour, and in that time they hit only a couple sour notes (the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Baritones
The inventive Noble Fools make even the most inane audience suggestions into rich comic fodder in this “fully improvised crime-family drama.” When someone offered “flautist” as an occupation, that became the handle of a flamboyant new hit man. The suggestion of “church” had obvious possibilities, but the ensemble ingeniously pushed the idea further by having […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Maria Arndt
Some lost plays are better off that way–whatever made them noteworthy in their own era just doesn’t resonate in a later time. But Tina Landau and Curt Columbus, who jointly translated Elsa Bernstein’s 1908 drama for this English-language world premiere by Steppenwolf, handily make the case that Maria Arndt deserves resurrection. It’s not quite a […]
Posted inMusic
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho has had some powerfully idiosyncratic mentors; after learning the austere Nordic style at the Sibelius Academy in the late 70s, she studied with British composer Brian Ferneyhough, an advocate of intricate, even brutal complexity, then in the early 80s began a meticulous exploration of tonal colors and textural patterns at IRCAM, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Memorandum
It may seem odd to say that the ultra-high-tech Japanese performance collective Dumb Type is advancing the ideals of the decidedly low-tech Dada movement. The dadaists were passionately antiart, issuing absurdly insupportable manifestos, reciting gibberish from makeshift cabaret stages, pasting garbage to canvases, and generally spitting on the artistic establishment. Dumb Type, by contrast, appear […]
Posted inFilm
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Chantal Akerman’s greatest film—made in 1975 and running 198 minutes—is one of those lucid puzzlers that may drive you up the wall but will keep you thinking for days or weeks. Delphine Seyrig, in one of her greatest performances, plays Jeanne Dielman, a Belgian woman obsessed with performing daily rounds of housework and other routines […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Graphic Art
Mark Luce’s poster collection mirrors a bloody corner of the world.
Posted inFilm
All Is Forgiven
Monster’s Ball ** (Worth seeing) Directed by Marc Forster Written by Milo Addica and Will Rokos With Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Peter Boyle, Heath Ledger, Sean Combs, Mos Def, and Coronji Calhoun. Monster’s Ball is a Hollywood art movie; even the fancy color graphics imposed on the seedy milieu behind the opening credits tell […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Is it true that Egyptians use mummies for fuel to heat their food? –Barking Spider, via the Straight Dope Message Board No. What you heard was a mangled version of a classic joke told by one of the masters of the art. But don’t feel bad–people have been falling for this one for more than […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Bix From Beyond the Grave
Beiderbecke fiend Phil Pospychala is still trying to raise the dead jazz giant.
Posted inArts & Culture
Head Trips
“I am a Greek born in the Xiao-Xiang region,” Chinese author and painter Sun Pu likes to say. “I came to the United States because I was taking a walk and, unawares, went too far.” The 75-year-old artist has used ten pen names since 1941; now known as Mu Xin, he writes in Mandarin in […]