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Producer Sampha morphs from collaborator to full-on pop quantity with the...
What do Solange’s A Seat at the Table, Frank Ocean’s Endless, and Kanye’s The Life of Pablo have in common? Well, besides being some of the most talked-about releases of 2016, they all feature golden...
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Toni Erdmann proves you can make a long movie and still get laughs
German writer-director Maren Ade goes the distance with this comic epic about a feuding father and daughter. Comedies have never had much of a place in the Romanian new wave. Cristian Mungiu's...
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With their love of horror, hard rock, and monster costumes, Finland’s Lordi...
Plenty of metal bands use horror to sharpen their fangs, but few are as transparent about their interest in courting pop music with goblins and ghouls as Finland’s Lordi. And few have been as...
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Singer and Zero Fatigue member Ravyn Lenae balances R&B aspirations with high...
In 2013 LA collective cum indie label Soulection launched a digital white-label series, dropping an EP by local beat maker Monte Booker in October 2015. For that EP’s closer “Baby” Booker recruited...
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With this production of Carmen, Lyric Opera aims to recapture the energy of...
In a press release for Carmen, Lyric general director, president, and CEO Anthony Freud says the company’s intention is to present this most popular of all operas with “the energy the piece had when...
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James Baldwin: Voice of a preacher, heart of a nomad
Raoul Peck’s documentary I Am Not Your Negro looks at the writer who brought his own religious issues to the civil rights movement. Raoul Peck's galvanizing documentary I Am Not Your Negro reacquaints...
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Block Museum kicks off a season of urgent art with Kader Attia’s ‘Reflecting...
The French-Algerian artist explores loss through repair. What does it mean to "fix" something? If a bond—physical, social, psychological—is broken, can it ever truly be reconnected?…
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French black-metal band Svart Crown bring their powers to bear on occult and...
Formed in Nice in 2004 this French blackened-death-metal band has been slowly and surely paving a path through the global metal world, upping the dose of menacing noise with each subsequent record....
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On Love & Desire Myzica aren’t afraid of a cheesy hook—or a retro Cars cover
For years I’ve been low-key obsessed with the Bridges’ 2008 album Limits of the Sky (Verve Forecast), what with its infectious melodies, close harmonies, and the irresistible, sweetly hoarse vocals of...
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Easy Not Easy enlists a diverse cast of composers to offer pieces that...
Chicago musician Matt Mehlan (Skeletons) has occasionally organized a project he calls Easy Not Easy, which is his response to an endeavor by experimental composer and musician David Behrman that...
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The Fred Hersch Trio transcends jazz tradition while nestling snugly within it
Mainstream jazz is very often an art of refinement: it’s a well-defined tradition with set parameters within which the most skilled players balance chops, improvisational elegance, and subtle boundary...
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Adventurous trumpeter Dave Douglas refuses to ease off the gas
Throughout his career omnivorous trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas has deployed his innate curiosity as a calling card. While he’s had certain bedrock bands, like the excellent quintet he brings to...
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Trumpeter Darren Johnston’s affinity for the Chicago improvised music scene...
Superb Bay Area trumpeter Darren Johnston has been a regular visitor to Chicago for nearly a decade, and over that time he’s fortified his connection to the local improvised music scene. Last year he...
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‘Kjell Theøry’ brings together Alan Turing, the prophet Tiresias, and 40,049...
Local collective ATOM-R host one more performance at the Graham Foundation in conjunction with an interactive exhibit at the International Museum of Surgical Science. Developed during the past two and...
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D.C. punk band Priests let their discontent with the American dream be known...
Early on, as with their 2012 seven-inch “Radiation” b/w “Personal Planes,” D.C.’s Priests were propelled by the sheer will to be a raging mass of hell and punk protest. Vocalist Katie Alice Greer...
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Gorée Cuisine serves up a return to Senegal
A family's Kenwood spot is a sibling to their restaurant in Africa. There are a lot of secrets in the kitchen at Gorée Cuisine, a new Senegalese restaurant in Kenwood. There are secrets in the soupe...
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Whiner Beer’s taproom inside the Plant serves beer that’s wild, sour—and not...
The Back of the Yards brewery is making very approachable beer. The most obvious indication that there's a taproom inside the Plant is that the P on the Peer sign atop the former Peer Foods...
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Police violence haunts Chicago’s west side in Ike Holter’s The Wolf at the...
Razor-sharp dramatics and an air-tight production from Teatro Vista bring a complicated, slippery world to life. With his consuming 85-minute drama The Wolf at the End of the Block, given a compelling...
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Norwegian sound artist Lasse Marhaug transcends his noise roots
Though he’s often tagged a noise musician, Norwegian sound artist Lasse Marhaug has proven to be much more than that over a career that spans two decades plus. He’s clearly enamored by abstraction and...
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New Mexico trio Lone Piñon celebrate the folk sounds of northern Mexico and...
The members of this Santa Fe trio have channeled a relatively broad array of musical interests into the traditional folk of northern Mexico and the American southwest. Only Noah Martinez—who doubles...
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