On their latest album, Juxtaposition (Thrill Jockey), the Viennese trio Radian continue to transform raw static, hums, and hisses into clinical funk that’s strikingly dynamic and accessible. Before recording in Chicago with John McEntire, the group laid down bits of guitar, vibes, bass, and drums, then fed the sounds through various computer patches to render […]
Tag: Vol. 34 No. 25
Issue of Mar. 17 – 23, 2005
Posted inNews & Politics
Our Incurable Disease
Chicago loves a team with the potential to self-destruct. Like–god forbid–the Illini.
Posted inNews & Politics
You Don’t Have to Be Austrian to Love Mozart
How a Chinese guy came to be Chicago’s Balkan folklore maven.
Posted inArts & Culture
Dollhouses of Death
A photo exhibit in her childhood home gives a glimpse of Frances Glessner Lee’s remarkably precise models of crime scenes.
Posted inArts & Culture
Jason Moran & the Bandwagon
Part of a lineage that goes back to Don Pullen and McCoy Tyner, Jason Moran plays the piano with a heavy touch, especially in the lower registers, pounding out fulminant bass lines and dense, clustered chords. It can sound as if a ton of bricks had fallen on the keyboard–but one at a time, in […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Saint Peter’s Umbrella
Denise Wright and Dave Hudson’s musical fable has three toe tappers (the title song, “No Dancing,” and “I Do, Do I?”), one tug-at-the-heartstrings duet (“I Believe in You”), lots of good Latin-rhythm dances choreographed by Brenda Didier, and irresistible performances by Karl Sean Hamilton and Jim Sherman. It also has a plot cluttered with prophecies, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Landslide
Grief twists through this new dark, sparkling gem of a play written and directed by Ronan Marra for Signal Ensemble Theatre. Twentysomething Diane has fractured a hand and a foot in a motorcycle accident, so her alcoholic brother comes to stay with her, partly to escape his crumbling marriage to the competent Sarah. Playing Diane, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Leaving Iowa
Halfway through the journey of getting his father’s cremains buried at a designated spot in Iowa, the journalist protagonist of Tim Clue and Spike Manton’s comedy says, “I’m not sure how, and I’m not sure when, but we’re going to see this done.” An hour and four or five endings later, in the middle of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
So Long, Second City
Why did Dan Bakkedahl throw away what every improviser in Chicago would kill for?
Posted inNews & Politics
She Just Wants to Wide
The inaugural voyage of Illinois’ first registered Twike.
Posted inNews & Politics
Suck It Up, People
To the editor: [Re: Ben Joravsky’s “Arrogance on Wheels,” March 11] The ways in which the city goes about implementing these projects are certainly not always scrupulous or fair (witness Mayor Daley’s midnight assault on Meigs Field). Citizens should, and must, challenge any project that impacts on their lives. However, many of the same residents […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Joffrey Ballet
The works on this program are “American” in the sense that they’re based on American folk dances. George Balanchine’s Square Dance is annoyingly faux-naif–a caller exhorts ballerinas to “Promenade, pretty girl!”–but intriguingly adds ballet moves and chamber music to a square-dance template. The corps was sharp, though the lead couple made every maneuver look effortful. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Don’t Play That Pundit’s Game
Christopher Hayes’s cover piece on conservative pundit-in-training Guy Benson [“Birth of a Pundit,” March 4] unwittingly contributes to the very problem it seeks to diagnose: namely the rise of a self-assured cabal of young journalists, primed and poised to make the world safe for today’s particular brand of deceptive right-wing-speak. We mustn’t delude ourselves any […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Walk on Water
Israeli director Eytan Fox follows up his art-house hit Yossi & Jagger (2002) with this nervy generational drama that urges Jews to let go of the Holocaust. A young Mossad agent (Lior Ashkenazi) assassinates a Hamas leader in Istanbul, then returns to Tel Aviv to find his wife has committed suicide. Swallowing his grief, he […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Chef Gaffe
In the March 11 Restaurants story we implied that Charlie McKenna was in charge of the menu at Avenues before Graham Elliot Bowles’s tenure. McKenna actually worked under David Hayden, who planned the menu at Avenues. We apologize for the error.