April is turning out to be a terrific month for piano music. At DePaul, a concert series that runs into May is celebrating keyboard works by American composers–Wednesday’s program features solos and duos from the likes of Ives, Gershwin, Copland, Charles Griffes, and Edward MacDowell played by locals such as Eteri Andjaparidze, Dmitry Rachmanov, and […]
Tag: Vol. 32 No. 29
Issue of Apr. 17 – 23, 2003
Posted inArts & Culture
Jorrit Dijkstra
In the 1990s alto saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra apprenticed in some of Amsterdam’s better genre-bending groups–pianist Guus Janssen’s game-playing septet, violist Maurice Horsthuis’s tuneful chamber orchestra, Joost Buis’s Sun Ra cover band the Astronotes. Soloing beside heavyweights like tenorist Tobias Delius, Dijkstra could sound a bit green, as he struggled to digest the dual influences of […]
Posted inFood & Drink
A Move, an Expansion, and Two New Chefs
When husband and wife Daniel Kelch and Laura Van Dorf launched LULU’S DIM SUM & THEN SOME in 1992 they were ahead of their time, serving an Americanized version of Asian cuisine–bigger flavors, bigger portions–that’s since become ubiquitous. A decade later they’re picking up steam rather than losing it, as evidenced by their move a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
What’s the Straight Dope on handwriting analysis? I know that handwriting experts’ testimony can be accepted in court, so there must be something to it. But I have a hard time believing that a smart criminal wouldn’t be able to change his writing to avoid detection. On a related issue, can an “expert” really tell […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Full House
Age: 59 Occupation: Retired contractor Size: 7 rooms and a basement. Taxes: $308 a month Location: Homewood Prized Possessions: Tropical fish (three 180-gallon aquariums, one 150-gallon aquarium) Tools: 7 chain saws, 5 circular saws, 10 hand drills, 6 routers, 12 hammers, “a couple hundred screwdrivers” Entertainment: 8 TVs, 3 VCRs, 3 DVD players, 100 DVDs, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
EKG, Fred Lonberg-Holm
Dawson Prater, the proprietor of Locust Music, devised the clever concept behind “Object,” his label’s series of free-improv records: the musicians are shown a picture of some inanimate objects and asked to “interpret” them. So far the releases have been superb, and the question of how the music relates to the items pictured on the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Romance Cycle
The Romance Cycle, Court Theatre. This two-part adaptation of Shakespeare’s late romances Cymbeline and Pericles achieves an engaging informality and intimacy thanks to the warmhearted energy of the fine cast and to director Charles Newell’s concept, executed by set designer John Culbert, of eliminating the fourth wall between actors and audience. The auditorium and stage […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Calendar
Friday 4/18 – Thursday 4/24 APRIL 18 FRIDAY The movie musical West Side Story beat out Fanny, The Hustler, The Guns of Navarone, and Judgment at Nuremburg to win the 1961 Academy Award for best picture–one of ten Oscars it took. Now it’s the latest film to be flogged on a sing-along tour that coincides […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Clearing the Air
To the editor: Although my profile, “Higher Learning,” in the Reader [April 11] was in largest part a commendable effort to portray myself and what I am about in an accurate fashion, I wish to inform your readers of two errors contained in the piece. First, I do not promote pot. I simply enlarge the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
We Mean Business
Dear editor: Regarding the cover story “Give Us a Break” in last week’s Reader [April 11] on state economic development, I would like to point out a few things the author neglected to mention. Since Governor Blagojevich was elected, his administration has made corporate accountability one of the state’s top priorities. Despite the lax policies […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Short Shakespeare! “Romeo & Juliet”
Short Shakespeare! “Romeo & Juliet,” Chicago Shakespeare Theater. I bet Shakespeare never had a problem attracting kids to his shows. I bet they lined up around the block for a lurid little melodrama like Romeo & Juliet, with its sex, violence, insubordination, and overall sense of hormones gone wild. (Scholars honor Hamlet as literature’s first […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Estrogen Fest 2003: Female Identity–It’s Not Just About the Hair
Previously produced by the Aardvark theater company, this festival of women’s theater has been taken over by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs in conjunction with Prop Thtr. Running through May 10, the festival features artists in the fields of theater, performance, poetry, dance, and music. Two programs remain, both at the Storefront Theater in […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lee Morris
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Lee Morris, the Mississippi-born, Chicago-honed vocalist who cooked up a remarkable fusion of R & B and hip-hop with soul and blues on Morris Code 337 in 1995 and Whip It on U in 2000 (both on the local Da-Man label). Morris spans generations and genres: in […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Bias by Omission?
Hello there, In your recent cover story on the Chicago protest on LSD [April 4] you fell into the ranks of the media majority. Pages and pages of what happened at the protest (organization, police, etc), but no information on why so many protested–except for stating that they were “antiwar” and, ironically, needed to get […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: reveling in the city’s fabulous 40s
Born in 1943, Neal Samors enjoyed an idyllic Rogers Park youth, playing ball in the alley behind his apartment building and seeing movies at the Granada Theatre. When he married in 1969, he and his wife settled on Farwell Avenue, just blocks from his childhood home. But after their daughter was born in 1975, they […]