Live Bait Theater presents its ninth annual showcase of one-person performances. The event features work by an array of well-known fringe artists–among them David Kodeski, Stephanie Shaw, Susan Karp, and Edward Thomas-Herrera–as well as a crop of emerging talents, including real-life police officers involved in Live Bait’s Police-Teen Link program. The Fillet of Solo Festival […]
Tag: Vol. 33 No. 46
Issue of Aug. 12 – 18, 2004
Posted inMusic
Soul Survives
Ricky Fante Rewind (Virgin) Van Hunt Van Hunt (Capitol) The nomenclature of pop music has never been an exact science, but neo-soul has to be one of the most useless terms ever coined. Any genre that can accommodate Stevie Wonder pretenders, Afrocentric fusion, European quasi-jazz grooves, and hippies isn’t really a genre, especially when much […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Cold Comforts
Chocolate (and Vanilla and Black Walnut and Saffron Honey) City: A guide to local ice cream, gelato, and more
Posted inArts & Culture
Fun While It Lasted
FUN WHILE IT LASTED, Fillet of Solo Festival, Live Bait Theater. Death, according to monologuist Edward Thomas-Herrera, always trumps irony. It certainly has in his new show. Known for his sardonic, fantastical tours of an imaginary gin-soaked demimonde, Thomas-Herrera here spends an hour talking about his mother’s death from cancer and his own fumbling attempts […]
Posted inArts & Culture
About Face Youth Theatre: On the Record
A lot of ground gets covered here: 13 young actors tell 14 true tales in 75 minutes, offering an invigoratingly detailed, richly energetic cross section of the gay and lesbian community. This oral-history crazy quilt is derived from more than 100 interviews with Chicagoans of all ages, races, and gender identities, and About Face’s enterprising […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Significance of Sunday
A Family Farm Album: The Photographs of Frank Sadorus at the Illinois State Museum, through August 27 Seurat and the Making of La Grande Jatte at the Art Institute of Chicago, through September 19 Work and leisure coexist in the benevolent, fertile landscape captured by Frank Sadorus, an amateur photographer who documented his life on […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Don’t Mess With Success
Rubbed Raw: Recent Investigations in Butoh at the Spareroom, August 5-7 Chicago Human Rhythm Project: Rhythm Asia at the Museum of Contemporary Art, July 30-August 1 Chicago Human Rhythm Project: Juba! Masters of Tap and Percussive Dance at Northwestern University, Josephine Louis Theatre, August 6-8 Two examples of Japanese dance showed up recently on Chicago […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Gideon’s Day
With its eccentric mix of realism and mannerism, London locations and stylish sets, John Ford’s 1958 adaptation of a John Creasey novel is decidedly un-Hollywood. Chronicling a packed day in the life of a Scotland Yard inspector (Jack Hawkins), it seems almost plotless at first, which may explain why the U.S. release, titled Gideon of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Amp Fiddler
After two decades of serious session work with the likes of George Clinton, Prince, Carl Craig, Maxwell, Lucy Pearl, and Jamiroquai, Joseph “Amp” Fiddler of Detroit has finally stepped out on his own; unsurprisingly, his first album, Waltz of a Ghetto Fly (PIAS America/Genuine), is steeped in the deep funk and soul that dominates his […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Fatty Arbuckle’s Spectacular Musical Revue
This show offers giddy fun but not a thorough biography of silent-screen comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, whose career was ruined when a chorus girl died in his hotel room. That scandal is fodder for many songs in the latter part of this 80-minute revue, but you’ll leave with little information about Arbuckle’s journey to stardom […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Active Cultures: preserving the silent sound
Organist Dennis Wolkowicz’s first outing as an accompanist for a full-length silent film was a near disaster. Fifteen minutes into the 1923 classic Hunchback of Notre Dame, the former church organist ran out of material. “It was the loneliest feeling in the world,” says Wolkowicz, who performs under the name Jay Warren. He ended up […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Grant Park Orchestra
Scottish composer James MacMillan finds inspiration in the early Christian church, creating works of great spiritual power that never sermonize or lapse into mystical solipsism. His 1992 percussion concerto Veni, Veni, Emmanuel is rooted in an Advent chant, but MacMillan opens up that theme to spin out a glittering constellation of sounds. Near the end […]
Posted inNews & Politics
From Their Closet to Your Wall
Among the 80 works on display in “Engaging With the Present: The Contribution of the American Jewish Artists Club to Modern Art in Chicago, 1928-2004,” which just came down at the Spertus Museum, were two by Louise Dunn Yochim: a stained-glass window design she did in 1980 and a 1948 oil, Mother and Child. In […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Thee Fine Lines
This trio from Springfield, Missouri, owes a lot to Billy Childish–the insanely prolific, stubbornly primitive, hilariously misanthropic British rocker who’s been bashing away in varying degrees of obscurity for almost three decades. Thee Fine Lines deliver the same kind of catchy, dirt-simple tunes, stomping 60s garage beats, snarly guitar, distorted vocals, and shitty sound quality […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Solid Citizen
SOLID CITIZEN, at the Neo-Futurarium. “I’m numb to this,” a grand jury member says in response to the testimony of a young sexual abuse victim. But Lisa Buscani’s character really isn’t–and neither are we, thanks to the power of this writer-performer’s storytelling. Her five monologues, linked by each character’s desire to help others, are so […]