The finale of 2026 Chicago Blues Festival featured a master musician I have become incredibly familiar with: Taj Mahal. The first time I ever saw him was in 1973 on […]
Day three of the 2026 Chicago Blues Festival featured beautiful sunny, hot weather. Musicians performing included Billy Branch with Sons of the Blues, Ronnie Baker Brooks, and Kenny Neal, and […]
The Joffrey Ballet is concluding its 70th season with a superb production of Eugene Onegin, based on Alexander Pushkin’s 1833 novel of the same name. This is a premiere in […]
The skies threatened on the second day of the Chicago Blues Festival at Millennium Park. I recalled last year’s rain blip that caused a delay, and C.J. Chenier & The […]
Nova Linea Musica completed their season on Wednesday with Blooming Under Blue Skies, a journey beyond the standard chromatic scales to pastoral tunes from the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and South […]
Blues Festival 2026 is here! The festival has opened at the Ramova Theater with a lineup of Chicago blues legends who are alumni of Theresa’s Lounge on Chicago’s South Side, […]
The Chicago Repertory Ballet has been presenting fresh takes on Shakespearean stories and classical music masterpieces, such as Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, since its founding in 2011. Founder and artistic director […]
The Pope of Trash. The Sultan of Sleaze. The Baron of Bad Taste. These are just some of the sobriquets people have bestowed on filmmaker John Waters, and he proudly […]
By now, the four women of The Golden Girls have become woven into the fabric of American culture. Dorothy (David Cerda), Blanche (Grant Drager), Sophia (Kelly Bolton), and Rose (Ed […]
I took a sentimental journey back to the ’80s recently when.Lynda Barry was featured at the Chicago Humanities Festival in a conversation with journalist and Radiolab founder Jad Abumrad. Barry is an […]
Chicago native York Walker’s play Covenant is filled with stories of superstition, religious fanaticism, and secrets. It is skillfully directed by Malkia Stampley, who keeps the audience guessing and on the […]
In a moving and joyous concert at the acoustically perfect Guarneri Hall, Nova Linea Musica presented its first vocal program, L’dor V’dor, which is Hebrew for “from generation to generation.” […]