It’s probably not possible to give a brief overview of Kahil El’Zabar’s resumé—the Chicago jazz percussionist has been a crucial part of the city’s musical heritage since he joined the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians at age 18 in the early 1970s. (He also served the AACM as its chairman for a few […]
Tag: Vol. 51 No. 8
Issue of January 20, 2022
Winter Arts Preview
It’s become a different world
Conversations with Chicago stage managers and house staff about life and work during the pandemic
by Mark Larson
On the cover: Illustration by Mike
Centeno. For more of Centeno’s work, go to
mikecenteno.com.
Find a print copy of the Reader.
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Posted inArts & Culture
Open canvas
Painter Ayanah Moor is careful not to reveal spoilers about her work. The Chicago artist incorporates highly focused intentions into her paintings in the “I Wish I Could Be You More Often” exhibition, on display at the Cleve Carney Museum of Art from February 10 through April 10, but she wants patrons to be able […]
Posted inArts & Culture
On winter and the built environment
Winter is inevitable, but it still feels like an unwelcome surprise each year. To architecture journalist Anjulie Rao, it’s a season of reevaluation, reflection, and transformation. Fascinated by what winter represents, Rao has started a small publication on the topic—a “grand experiment” whose biweekly publishing schedule will follow the length of the season, December 21, […]
Posted inMusic
Earthless return to form on the psychedelic Night Parade of One Hundred Demons
Earthless started releasing anachronistic 40-minute jams steeped in 70s hard-rock riffing at a time in the early 2000s when spindly postpunk seemed to dominate the underground rock landscape. A new wave of psychedelic metal was also beginning to take shape, though, and the Southern California trio’s studio debut, 2005’s Sonic Prayer, opens with a track […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Winter Arts Preview
When we first started planning this special winter arts issue, there was reason for cautious optimism about live performances. But as December turned to January and the Omicron surge hit, several companies did what they’ve been doing for almost two years: they made new plans. Bridgette M. Redman profiles playwright Cat McKay, whose show Plaid […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Building 63rd House
On August 5, 1966, near Marquette Park, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was attacked while leading a protest to demand housing desegregation. Several blocks away from this spot stands 3055 W. 63rd, a formerly abandoned post office that turned 100 years old in 2020. This is the location where Blue Tin Production (a […]
Posted inMusic
Chicago Americana outfit Dogs at Large flirt with the comforts of lo-fi sounds
Since the mid-2010s, Chicago multi-instrumentalist Sam Pirruccello (aided by a shifting group of collaborators) has been releasing languid, Americana-inflected indie rock as Dogs at Large. In 1975, Pirruccello’s father, Bo, and Bo’s brother Frank (Pirruccello’s uncle) cofounded the delightful country-rock band Ouray, and the music of Dogs at Large has a noticeable twang too. Dogs […]
Posted inCity Life
Come winter, come market
The cold outside might make you think that farmers’ market season is over, but there are plenty of ways to purchase locally grown and regionally-created food year round. Here are a few upcoming possibilities. Plant Chicago in Back of the Yards offers year-round indoor markets, usually scheduled biweekly, with a limited number of vendors inside […]
Posted inPerforming Arts Feature
Putting on the plaid
It’s not unusual to pick up labels in life; some you’re born with, some you achieve, some are thrust upon you. Cat McKay’s labels have come to her by all three methods as she wends her way through a theater career taking her from Ohio to London to Chicago. Some labels she’s collected are fighter, […]
Posted inPerforming Arts Feature
Welcome to Venus
Back in December, there was a shining sliver of time when it looked like we—as individuals, as artists, as arts institutions—were forging a clear, or at least clear-ish, path forward. Hundreds of people were back at work on live, in-person shows. A Christmas Carol burned bright at the Goodman. The Snow Queen got a shiny […]
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Growing for Good with Green Thumb: NDICA
NDICA is a social equity and social justice national nonprofit organization whose mission is to create an ethical and equitable industry to reduce barriers contributing to the lack of representation of those most impacted by the war on drugs.
Posted inDance
Kia Smith is a south-side diplomat of dance
At Chicago Dancers United’s Dance for Life festival last August, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion stage reverberated with layers of rhythm. Each row of dancers formed a different section of intertwining phrases—movements playful and powerful that recalled the musicality of jazz. The piece, South Chicago Dance Theatre’s Architect of a Dream, was the work of Kia […]
Posted inPerforming Arts Feature
It’s become a different world
We see a show and later learn that it had to close abruptly. We can empathize with the actors’ disappointment and distress because we can visualize their faces and recall their voices. But how has the pandemic impacted those we see only briefly in the lobby as we enter or don’t see at all? How […]
Posted inTheater Review
Talking democracy to death
If you think Congress is inept in a crisis now, just wait till you see what 2465 has in store! In Brendan Pelsue’s dystopian dramedy, Wellesley Girl, the U.S. has been reduced to three (or maybe four, if you count abandoned Wellesley) towns in Massachusetts—the only places on the eastern seaboard where, thanks to MIT […]