CHRIS AIKEN Another crucial factor in improv is the performers’ familiarity with each other. Aiken, a Minneapolitan appearing as part of the Midwest Exchange at Link’s, brought with him two very good friends: performance artist Patrick Scully, with whom he regularly improvises, and dancer Cathy Young, Aiken’s wife. In fact Aiken and Scully’s ease with each other formed the bedrock of the first piece, Common Denominator (or Improvisation No. 81) Part I....
Heard superficially, the music of Liof Munimula sounds like a lot of chaotic clatter–it did to me, at least, until my ears learned to accept Don Meckley’s shortwave-radio dial twiddling as music. This band illustrates well how the most adventurous contemporary music can force us to stop expecting to hear rhythm and melody as distinct elements and to confront the idea of music as a sonic landscape with endlessly surprising morphology....
BLUE WINDOW Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One by one the characters are introduced. It’s a Sunday evening in Manhattan, an hour or two before they are all about to gather at a party. Libby, the hostess, is an inexplicably nervous young woman, and as she hustles around preparing punch and so forth, the other characters crowd the stage, invisible to one another, since they’re still at home getting ready, creating an initial impression of an artificial but extremely significant space that crops up between people....
Lead Story A hospital in Birmingham, England, came under fire in August for its attempts to defray the cost of an expensive sophisticated scanner by renting it out during downtime to local farmers, who used it to scan pigs’ bodies to assure that only the meatiest ones were allowed to breed. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In September warrant officer Gregory S. Crandall was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery over the protests of his family....
THE CITY MUSICK There is a certain appropriateness to hearing Mozart’s early opera–concerning a Greek king’s vow to Neptune–surrounded by the classical white columns of the aquarium lobby, with a tank of sea creatures situated directly behind the stage action casting its glowing green hues across the ceiling. Many of the audience members were claiming to have seen the various creatures literally move in rhythm to the music. (That same week, researchers had revealed that dolphins responded ecstatically to baroque and classical music and swam away from rock....
Brandon Neese was the first to notice it. An aide to Alderman David Orr, Neese was opening the office mail when he came across the announcement that a last-minute addition had been made to the annual Commission on Human Relations awards presentation. The late Alderman George Hagopian, who had led the fight against gay rights with remarkable vitriol, was now slated to receive one of the commission’s awards–awards that are to be given “to individuals making an outstanding contribution to the improvement of human relations in Chicago....
One day in the summer of 1987 Curt Mangel was jogging past the clock tower along the lake at Waveland Avenue and noticed that the clock wasn’t working. He thought that was a shame. “It was an embarrassment to the city that we had such a wonderful Gothic structure with this gorgeous clock right there in a lovely stretch of Lincoln Park–but the clock didn’t work. “I thought to myself, ‘You ought to do something about that....
Patsy Younghouse’s grandmother has a recipe for everything–including grizzly bear. Younghouse is a Louisiana native, former farmer, mother of six, ex-deputy township clerk for Oak Park, and proprietor of a distinctly idiosyncratic restaurant called Memere’s, the Cajun word for grandmother. That’s appropriate, since it is her own memere’s Cajun and Creole recipes that set Younghouse’s eatery apart–that and things like her willingness to serve alligator and rattlesnake. Since the passing of Cafe Bohemia, few restaurants have offered such exotic cuisine....
How does one score the music for a play based on the life of the most notorious woman in modern China? A thorough knowledge of Eastern and Western musical idioms is essential. It also helps to be familiar with the contorted politics of the Chinese Communist Party. But for emotional realism, having lived through the turmoil instigated partly by the protagonist of Madame Mao’s Memories is a big plus. “I remember the excitement and paranoia of the time,” says 33-year-old Shanghai-born Evan Chen, the composer for Bailiwick Repertory’s new production and a survivor of one of our century’s most tumultuous and least explicable uprisings....
In one of my more obsessive moments I once dragged my reluctant friend John to a Sun Ra performance. I say “obsessive” because I knew John wasn’t particularly musically inclined, much less interested in outside jazz. Ra’s show that night was typical; he conducted some 15 musicians dressed like extras from an old Flash Gordon serial through a set in which he presented his own highly personal take on the history of jazz, ranging from old numbers by Fletcher Henderson (Ra’s mentor) to peerless examples of “free” collective improvisation, finally spiraling down to pianist Ra banging out hard and funky blues against a sparse three-chord bass/drums pulse with the rest of the Arkestra grooving it up on scrapers and rattles....
Truth or Mayor: To prove he’s sincere, big-city mayor hires video crew to shoot documentary of a typical year in office. Movie is at once candid and poignant as camera follows mayor through the excruciatingly painful process he uses to make his unpopular decisions. It begins with a long stint in a sweat lodge, followed by a dip in an icy lake, followed by a walk over hot coals. Then back to the sweat lodge, lake, coals, ad infinitum until a decision is reached....
“If in summer, you feel a need for a new, exciting experience,” writes Yvonne Henze in Natural Area Notes (June 1988), “let me suggest what I have enjoyed for years. Spend an early morning in a marsh–a crane marsh if you can find one–watching the sun come up and spread over the marsh. It is essential to be there before the first light of dawn. Marvelous! Inspiring! Breathtaking! If you are lucky enough to hear the early morning unison call of a pair of sandhill cranes, add another 100 points to the quality of your experience....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In “The Hanania-Santos Affair” [Hot Type, November 8], Michael Miner detailed the events leading up to the dismissal of city hall reporter Ray Hanania from the Chicago Sun-Times. Specifically, Miner charged that the Sun-Times’s chief editor, Dennis Britton, axed Hanania because, in Britton’s eyes anyway, Hanania had grown too friendly with City Treasurer Miriam Santos. Given Santos’ recent high-profile dispute with the mayoral administration of Richard M....
Here’s a deep one for you. How do they get the Ms on M&Ms? My wife says they have a machine that stamps them one at a time, but I say that’s too time-consuming. Can you give us the straight dope? –G. Glenn Mahoney, Atlanta My question is, what happens at 8:06? –Barry M., Chicago Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » You’re onto something here, boys, although with luck and a little baking soda maybe you’ll still pass the urine test....
BASTARDS! Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Scripted by Hoffman and Michael Monterastelli, with help from the cast, Bastards! tries desperately to be offensive. It showcases a whole collection of blind jokes, and features both its women characters getting beaten up. It wants very much to imitate Metraform’s 78 RPM formula of the surreal and the mundane, but unlike Cannibal Cheerleaders on Crack, Manson the Musical, and other tasteless but hilarious productions by Metraform, Bastards!...
Friday 20 A guided bird walk at 8 AM starts off today’s Earth Day activities at the North Park Village Nature Center. Joining the center’s staff in a daylong hands-on nature celebration will be members of the American Indian Business Association. From 10 to 4 today, they’ll share stories, lead games, and supervise craft projects. It’s all free at 5801 N. Pulaski. Call 583-8970. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
Not only is Jane Birkin at her best in this low-key, realistic drama; she’s also the element that ties everything else together. Directed by Bertrand Tavernier from a script by his ex-wife, Colo Tavernier O’Hagan (he wrote some of the dialogue), this is basically a chamber piece for three voices about a Parisian screenwriter (Birkin) separated from her husband who visits her ailing English father (Dirk Bogarde) and her French mother (Odette Laure) in a small villa on the Cote d’Azur, trying to create a closeness with her father that she has never felt....
Flamenco dancer Manolo Rivera rivets your attention to his feet. He’s a marvel of clarity and, whether he slows the speed to the soft pat of a toe or heel and the merest whisper of a sound or speeds it up to a bullet-fast ricochet of steps, each flicker of movement clearly makes an individual sound. You actually see him making music with his feet. Rivera doing a farruca live, a treat I have witnessed a number of times when he’s appeared with the Ensemble Espanol’s annual American Spanish Dance Festival, Is a tour de force of crisp, precise footwork....
The Swiss pianist and composer George Gruntz started this project in 1972 as a “band of friends,” and with friends like this, who needs phonographs? This edition of the GGCJB features some of the European and American soloists from the 1987 tour that landed them in Chicago, a solid primer of modern jazz technique and emotion: try saxmaster Joe Henderson, trumpeters Manfred Schoof (from Germany) and Marvin Stamm, trombone sensation Ray Anderson, and for this tour, the idiosyncratic singer/actor Mark Murphy (among others) all on one stage....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I read about Warner Garden [“Lot of Trouble,” November 30] with delight. I grew up in that neighborhood and the only place for a child to play was in the middle of the street. We were chased constantly by the police for playing baseball; mostly we sat on somebody’s stairs and gabbed and if we felt ambitious we went to Chase Park 1 mile away or to the beach close on to two miles....
