Tag: Vol. 31 No. 23

It’s hard to imagine a marriage between this company–a classic purveyor of modern dance started in 1947 by Jose Limon (who died in 1972)–and Evanston-based Billy Siegenfeld, whose Jump Rhythm Jazz Project performs his unique brand of syncopated movement to classic jazz and musical-theater songs. Yet the Limon troupe’s current artistic director, Carla Maxwell, commissioned […]

The chamber-music collective CUBE has always had a sense of mission: it focuses on neglected contemporary classics and new pieces commissioned both from its local colleagues (Gustavo Leone, Ilya Levinson) and from its own members (Patricia Morehead, Janice Misurell-Mitchell). But Levinson’s adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” which CUBE debuts tonight, is the […]

By the time most jazz singers hit their 70s, they’re forced to cope with a diminished range and failing lung power. But in the last few years Bob Dorough, now 78, has been singing as well as ever–maybe because he didn’t have much of an instrument to begin with. His small voice seems to crack […]

This dazzling Chicago premiere of an award-winning play raises fascinating questions about the use of African-American music by white people–and doesn’t attempt to answer them, leaving that task to the audience. Perhaps playwrights Patty Lynch and Kent Stephens knew they already had a full plate with their dense, compact, thoughtful drama about a high school […]

Over the last few years, artists from Timbaland to the Anti-Pop Consortium have proved that hip-hop has plenty of room left to grow without becoming something else entirely, but there’s still a significant faction of the underground that believes two turntables and a microphone are all any true head will ever need. Among these folks, […]