THIS WEEK
FRONT
04 Editor’s Note In a strange land
CITY LIFE
05 Street View Million-dollar thri er
FOOD & DRINK
06 Reader Bites The guajolota torta tamal at Santa Masa Tamaleria
NEWS & POLITICS
08 Interview Former chief of policy Umi Grigsby talks leaving the fi h floor.
10 Immigration Organizations serving Chicago’s immigrant communities prepare for a second Trump presidency.
ARTS & CULTURE
12 Feature Isabelle Frances McGuire’s playfully provocative works
13 Cardoza | Cover story A Gertrude Abercrombie retrospective opens at Carnegie Museum of Art.
THEATER
14 Feature A Cultural Center exhibit celebrates Chicago as a center of puppet arts.
FILM
16 Feature Get your local laurels at Windy City Shorts.
17 Moviegoer Hard truths
17 Movies of Note A Complete Unknown falls to biopic genre tropes; Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is a mature manifestation of the “dudes rock” genre.
MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE
18 Feature A Chicago DJ from Ghana invents an e-bike for the people.
20 Chicagoans of Note Ibrahim Maali, cofounder of Solidarity Studios
22 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Maps & Atlases, Half Waif, Novatore, and the Headhunters
26 Gossip Wolf Farewell to a larger-than-life architect of Chicago’s concert ecosystem
27 Jobs
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The Church (detail) by artist Gertrude Abercrombie (1938)
Original is oil on canvas; 18 inches by 24 inches. Photo of work by Edward C. Robison III, courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2021.27. This work is included in the exhibition “Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery” at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, on view until June 1, 2025.
(Top) Gertrude Abercrombie with her work There on the Table (1935) ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION (Bottom) Split Personality (1954) by Gertrude Abercrombie, Collection of the DePaul Art Museum, Art Acquisition Endowment Fund
EDITOR’S NOTE
Chicago is riddled with impressionable visual curiosities in any weather, but there’s something about winter that encourages the eye to narrow in on our shared city poem with a hungry spirit: a three-legged lawn chair in an empty parking spot, a raccoon on a rooftop, and lost gloves laced through a fence. At night, the landscape changes to light-flooded tableaus of urban domesticity as buildings and their inhabitants are spotlit: glowing TVs sharkishly float on wall spaces, tropical gardens shiver on their drafty windowsills, and the occasional cat sulkily floats on a plush pedestal. Winter can often be a surreal landscape that brings objects and feelings into sharp relief, sometimes in jarringly unfamiliar ways.
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Painter Gertrude Abercrombie, the artist at the center of our cover story this week (p. 13), captured similarly intimate city-life curiosities and haunting imagery in her work. Culture editor Kerry Cardoza describes the once Hyde Park–based artist as cerebral and somewhat aligned with surrealism but focused predominantly on the visual landscapes that she was familiar with, both real and dream-inspired. Art director James Hosking adds that he was inspired to pick Abercrombie for the cover because there’s a “sense of solitude and mystery” in her work, “and cats, lots of cats.” But perhaps it’s also that Abercrombie’s work captures a sense of the nocturnal psyche that this time of year illuminates.
Surviving winter often entails embracing its unexpected darkness, both real and imagined; it involves tracking brief moments of warmth and connectedness and finding poetry in its isolation, its delicate dormancy, and its crushing deaths. These long dark nights tend to bring up all manner of emotions and longforgotten instincts. But long dark nights also allow for more time to dream. And in those dreams, there is a fertile forest of ideas and preoccupations and signs of life just waiting to return. v
—Sheba White, managing editor m swhite@chicagoreader.com
Gertrude Abercrombie’s A Picture in a Picture in a Picture, 1955 COURTESY SULLIVAN GOSS GALLERY
Dollar store treasure
This thri y shopper looks like a million bucks.
By ISA GIALLORENZO
The dollar store always has surprising finds, including really stylish shoppers. It’s a fertile place for the thrifty and creative, a combination that often produces intriguing sartorial choices.
Shelly Parks, 65, perfectly embodies this mix; sporting a colorful patchwork outfit that matched her cheerful personality, Parks was rocking the accessory aisle.
“I’m pretty much a retro type of person. I’m a big thrift-store shopper, and I love colors, stripes, geometric shapes, and contrast. I like to put them together and match them up,” she says. “I think right now my outfit is probably about $20,” Parks reveals, while sharing her favorite thrifting spots: Brown Elephant in Andersonville and Village Discount Outlet in Uptown.
Besides having a good eye for thrifting, Parks also uses basic sewing skills to help compose her looks. Easy projects like covering her hoops with a different piece of fabric or removing the sleeves of her overcoat added an extra flair to her outfit. “I love layers and freedom of movement. Whatever you are wearing, just be comfortable,” she says.
After she became an empty nester, Parks explains she got a “second wind” and stopped “dressing like a mommy.”
“I’m free as a bird,” she says. “Fashion means confidence to me. Just feel good about what you’re wearing. Some people might make little comments and whatnot, but it doesn’t matter what they say. Fashion is about oddity. I like odd.” v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
CITY LIFE
FOOD & DRINK
There’s no turkey in this monumental sandwich at Jhoana Ruiz and Danny Espinoza’s pandemic-born house of masa, now reborn in a former Dunning diner. But the native Mexico City carb attack takes the shape of one, and thus derives its name from the Nahuatl word for turkey.
with two fried eggs, salsa verde, crema, shredded romaine, queso cotija, pickled red onions, pico de gallo, shaved radish, and cilantro.
I’m not sure why anyone would fiddle with this harmonic convergence of bright flavors and contrasting textures and temperatures, but if you ask nicely, you can sub in a different variety of tamal. Espinoza says he’s seen regulars take it down with optional five- or ten-ounce carne asada add-ons.
The couple’s guajolota is considerably chef-kissed up from the street originals young Ruiz used to eat with her grandpa while tooling around CDMX. It starts with a pair of their rajas tamales, descended from Espinoza’s abuelita’s own “fluffy and buttery” recipe, stuffed with chihuahua cheese, roasted poblanos, and onions. They’re unhusked and seared o on the plancha, then bedded on a buttered, toasted telera, its base schmeared with black bean mash. From there, the turkey’s breast swells
But Ruiz’s original guajolota is stu ed with more than enough fuel to charge your engine through a double shift of whatever grueling indignities the bosses push you through on any given workday. —MIKE SULA SANTA MASA TAMALERIA 7544 W. Addison, 312-982-9306, $13, santamasa.com v
Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at fooddrink@ chicagoreader.com.
MONDAY NIGHT
FOODBALL
The Reader’s weekly chef popup series, now at Frank and Mary’s Tavern, 2905 N. Elston, Avondale
Follow the chefs, @chicago_reader, and @mikesula on Instagram for weekly menu drops, ordering info, updates, and the stories behind Chicago’s most exciting foodlums.
Jan. 6 Little hands make the best Tacos las Manitas @tacos_lasmanitas
Jan. 13 The revenge of Pizza Dom and Death by Dough @deathbydough
Jan. 20 Islands collide with Filipino-Hawaiian Panlasa @_panlasa
Jan. 27 Greet the magic hour with Twilight Kitchen @twilightkitchenrp
Feb. 3 Master the sandwich arts with Quicky Nicky’s @quickynickys
Feb. 10 A heartfelt valentine from Deep Cut Pierogi @deep_cut_pierogi
Feb. 17 Xicágo Cevichería rises @xicagocevicheria
Feb. 24 Get hot and wet with A Beef with Berger @pat.kaisertiger
Mar. 3 The return of Johnny’s Table, feat. Eat Ghosts @johnnys_table @eat.ghosts
Mar. 10 The fine Boricubexican filigree of Mother Prepper @mother_prepper
Head to chicagoreader.com/foodball for weekly menus and ordering info!
The guajolota torta tamal at Santa Masa Tamaleria
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NEWS & POLITICS
A seat at a set table
Former chief of policy Umi Grigsby talks candidly about what’s been accomplished and what’s still ahead.
By MAUREEN KELLEHER
In early January, S. Mayumi “Umi” Grigsby stepped down as chief of policy for the City of Chicago. In this exclusive interview with the Reader, Grigsby reflects on her time in the mayor’s o ce and shares her thoughts on the challenges the city faces with the incoming Trump administration.
Born in Liberia, Grigsby and her family fled the country’s first civil war and eventually resettled in Houston, Texas. She graduated from Georgetown University and explored a number of career paths, including acting and diplomacy, before graduating from Northwestern law school in 2015.
Her career in Chicago government started as an assistant state’s attorney under Kim Foxx. From there she joined City Clerk Anna Valencia’s o ce as chief of policy and advocacy. After a stint as chief of sta for the Chicago Foundation for Women, she joined Jesús “Chuy” García’s mayoral campaign as policy director and was then hired as chief of policy for the incoming Johnson administration.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Maureen Kelleher: Tell me about your decision to leave the Johnson administration.
S. Mayumi “Umi” Grigsby: Someone said to me that these are jobs of a lifetime, not jobs for a lifetime. We’ve done a lot of really good work. It felt like it was a good time for me to take a break for myself as a personal decision. For the administration, we’ve gotten two budgets, and it’s time for them to decide the direction they want to go.
I am leaving behind a really good team, a
really good legacy for the administration. It was a good time for me to take a step back and think about balance. It’s interesting because I don’t think we allow ourselves as immigrants, as women, as women of color, as Black women, to just say, “OK, I’ve done a lot of work. Let me take a step back and see how I want to live a life of balance and continue to have an impact.”
What accomplishments are you most proud of?
There were a lot of expectations coming in. I’m really proud that we were able to—just in a very short period of time—lay the groundwork or deliver on a lot of that, right? And all of it was community-driven. Paid leave. We have the most expansive paid leave [city ordinance] in the country. I’m really proud of One Fair Wage, raising the tipped wage. This really had an impact on young people and on women, particularly Black women and women of color, in tipped-wage careers [like restaurants and
hotels]. Now we have some of the highest wages for youth in the country.
In the very beginning, we also passed the working groups for both the sidewalks [Plow the Sidewalks Pilot Program] and the mental health systems expansion, which obviously came out of the Treatment Not Trauma working group. The fact that it started from a working group and we’ve been able to expand, layer, and reopen services in Roseland, at Legler [Library, in West Garfield Park], and in Pilsen speaks to our collaboration. The fact that we’ve been able to move the funding completely over into [the Chicago Department of Public Health] shows there’s a different dynamic in how we look at mental health. That sends a message that mental health crises should be responded to by public health professionals. It frees up the police to focus on violent crime.
What was it like getting these wins?
Let’s focus on One Fair Wage as an example.
Early on in the administration, working with alders, we really wanted to focus on that. We did work with the Illinois Restaurant Association [which initially opposed it] and all the di erent stakeholders. In the [city] departments, the BACP [Department of Business A airs and Consumer Protection] was really leading and spearheading on that, making sure we were able to lift the subminimum wage. The legislation started in July, and over the next five years [the tipped wage] will be increased incrementally to get to the same level as the minimum wage. Inside government, it required the mayor’s office, BACP, Business and Economic Development, Budget, Law—Law has to be at the table for everything. As you update the municipal code, you just have to make sure you’re not causing more problems. It’s like the bible. As you tweak it, you want to make sure you’re not changing the bible.
Externally, it required working with the alders, working with the community groups and the coalitions.
Umi Grigsby OSCAR SANCHEZ
Accomplishments as Chief of Policy
One Fair Wage
Phases out the subminimum wage for tipped workers by 2028
Paid leave for all Chicago employees
Any employee who works at least 80 hours in a 120-day period for a Chicago employer is able to accrue up to five days of paid leave per year.
Treatment Not Trauma
City-sponsored mental health services are now available in West Garfield Park, Pilsen, and Roseland. Through the cityʼs CARE program, Chicago Department of Mental Health employees respond to low-risk 911 calls related to mental health in select Chicago neighborhoods.
Gender-Based Violence Emergency Fund
Boosted by $2 million thanks to an allocation of federal pandemic-relief funds
Reducing the racial wealth gap Watch for a blueprint with strategies to be released in April. Efforts are underway to “bring a private bank into a public location” to increase unbanked and underbanked folksʼ access to a full-service financial institution. The proposal will eventually go to a City Council vote.
Talk a bit more about this inside/outside coalition and also working with folks like the Illinois Restaurant Association. What was that like? How did you move the legislation?
Honestly, we really leaned on our intergovernmental a airs director at the time, Beth Beatty, who was just such a great ally and had done this work for a long time. Initially, it was led by [alders] Carlos Ramirez-Rosa and Jessie Fuentes and grew in the workforce committee: Mike Rodriguez and Jeylu Gutierrez. And the One Fair Wage coalition is led by Saru [Jayaraman] and Nataki Rhodes. Allies like Women Employed and Arise Chicago [joined]. It was a multiracial coalition of people coming together to move the legislation. I definitely want to say this is work that was not started within the administration. This is work that community advocates have been working on for a long time. Our role in policy is to move the goals of the administration forward collaboratively. It is to work across all of these departments and then bring the community to the table to make sure we’re coming up with something that everyone can agree with.
And did everyone agree?
No, but enough people agreed to make it happen.
Did the paid leave work go hand-inhand with One Fair Wage, or were there other challenges in making that happen?
There was a similar coalition of people working on paid leave. What made it a little more complicated is that the table expanded: the [Chicagoland] Chamber of Commerce, the [Chicago Retail] Merchants Association. The BACP O ce of Labor Standards still required a heavy lift from our intergovernmental a airs director at the time, [Beatty], and we had a busy legislative calendar. Paid leave had to be done by the end of the year, and we wanted to make sure we were in alignment with the state [paid leave] legislation, but also to make sure that what we were putting out was good and unique for Chicago. It just required a lot of attention and conversations.
What’s exciting with the paid leave legislation, there are two studies required to be built in. There will be quantitative and qualitative data over time to make sure there are no unintended consequences. There will also be a monitoring study on the cure period for small businesses: a period of time that smaller businesses have to acclimate to paid leave.
What about in year two?
The first year was very legislative. The second year, we wanted to build out our public options platform. The first part of that was going to be our guaranteed basic income relaunch, focusing on systems-impacted youth and low-income families with small children. [Though Mayor Johnson committed to restoring the pilot last spring, it was not funded in his initial 2025 budget.] I really do hope that work continues, either in philanthropy or in the civic sector. The second part was our publicly owned grocery store. In our mind, it was not about having city workers working the cash register; it was really about how a city can remove barriers and partner with different sectors to provide increased food access. [After this interview was conducted, the Chicago Tribune reported that the city did not apply for state funding to launch a grocery store, despite promising to do so.]
The third part I’m really excited about—be-
cause I know it’s moving in 2025—[is] the public banking initiative. We are working overall on a blueprint for how we close the racial wealth gap. The public banking initiative was one of these ideas. We had already introduced an ordinance around public banking, really a colocation idea. We would bring a private bank into a public location and, through our community engagement process, make sure that we increase access to full-service financial institutions for people who lack that. We want you to be able to access your money and grow your money, not go to an extractive place like a check cashing, having to pay 12 percent of your paycheck. [The policy team will] continue doing those briefings. The blueprint should be out in April.
Let’s talk about your experience over your two years inside City Hall. What was it like when you got there, and how have things changed?
You know, I feel like I thrive in these highimpact, very intense roles. Previously I was at the Office of the City Clerk, moving on
municipal finance reform, moving into the pandemic, and working on the racial equity rapid-response team. So, for me to go in at that time with a progressive mayor, a lot of progressive City Council members, a multiracial coalition—it was really exciting.
That pace, it’s fast. You know, it’s two years later and people are still surprised by all the work we did in 2023 and what that has yielded. To get a little bit personal, I told somebody that this was the only job I would take. It sounds crazy, [but] it felt very much like divine intervention that I was a Black immigrant woman, refugee, focused on health equity and racial health disparities, and that I would have the opportunity to be chief of policy for the City of Chicago. There are racial health disparities, there are pharmacy deserts, there are food deserts. We have new arrivals. We have this ongoing issue with homelessness; we have an exodus, almost, of Black Chicagoans. I felt very much like it was the time. And it doesn’t always happen that someone who’s a policy director for another candidate [Jesús “Chuy” García] is asked to interview for a role like this. So I just felt like it was ordained.
generating $874 million for the Illinois Common School Fund.
NEWS & POLITICS
continued from p. 9
I’ve always been mission-driven, and I’ve always driven myself really hard. When things are getting super intense, maybe I need to be kinder to myself and slow down. And maybe also, the team is running really hard, and they need to take a break.
A lot of times, when you look like me, the expectation is that you’re always going to be positive, you’re always going to be maternal, you’re always going to be taking care of people. A lot of times, people just forget that you might not be able to do that or you might also need that support yourself, because, you know, the work doesn’t stop.
It’s totally that image of the strong Black woman. It’s like a female version of John Henry syndrome, right?
Yes, yes. No one is going to have a reason to say I’m an imposter and I don’t deserve to be here. My way of dealing is to: one, work hard; two, focus on mission; and three, always [say], “I’m fine.”
But then eventually, it’s important to stop and say, “What has the impact been on me as a person? And then what do I want in terms of balance moving forward?” And like I said, over the last two years, we’ve done a lot of really great work. We’ve moved a lot, we’ve laid the groundwork to continue doing great work, and I think it was just time for me to explore a di erent kind of life and a di erent pace.
How has dealing with City Council evolved over the last two years? People are not all in the same place about things that are going on. The budget fight was really hard. So tell me a little bit about how you experienced the things that came up that didn’t make it as easy as it might have looked at first.
I feel like I’m a little bit more shielded from it because I had a great relationship with Beth Beatty and with Sydney Holman. My goal was always to lean on them to do the tussling. When I came to the table, it really was like, this is the policy. And we can tussle on policy. It’s di erent because I don’t do the trading. I don’t do the back-and-forth, [the] what if you did this and what if you did that?
I was around, so I knew there was a lot of tussling happening, but my role was always: Let’s have a conversation. I am an open book; I will show you what we’re working on. I almost felt like a substitute teacher. I
came in just like, “Hey, let me talk to you about the things I want to talk about.” And then they had a couple of questions. And then I got to leave, and then [Intergovernmental A airs] and those guys got to tussle.
We’ve been working on the Anjanette Young Ordinance with Anjanette. [Alderperson] Maria Hadden has just been amazing. Internally, that has required a lot of cooperation with COPA [Civilian Office of Police Accountability], with CPD [Chicago Police Department].
So how does that work? What has been your experience of coordinating with other departments?
There is an executive team of four people, you know, senior advisor [Jason Lee], COO [John Roberson], chief of sta [Cristina Pacione-Zayas], and chief of external a airs [Kennedy Bartley]. I reported up through the chief of sta , like the rest of the senior team. We had our senior team meetings, and whenever I needed to speak to the mayor, I would speak directly to the mayor.
I’ve been on senior teams before. It always works when you have the ability to talk directly to the principal, and I think also making sure that the person who is your direct supervisor is able to provide you that support is really important.
So did you have much interaction with Jason Lee?
Not as much, no, because I wasn’t in his portfolio.
So, as you say, it has been an incredible amount of work. I think we forget now that what we hear in the news is so much about the tussle. It’s easy to forget how much has been accomplished in the last two years.
Yes, and that’s really why I wanted to have this conversation. That’s huge. In this current budget, people are focusing a lot on the tussle, but I do think there has been a lot of really good work.
We have one of the most progressive paid leave policies in the country. We have eliminat-
and raised in Humboldt Park also carries his passport with him at all times. Is that the life we want? You have to carry your passport around at all times? The idea of living in that world is very concerning.
Another area is public health. When I start thinking about projected cuts to public health, it is very concerning, not only from a public health perspective but also from a reproductive health perspective. There are lots of reasons people need abortions, and they should be able to make those decisions with their doctors. Their doctors should not be afraid to give them that care.
But beyond that, it’s also the maternal mortality issue that we have with Black women and making sure that people who want to have children through IVF have the opportunity to do that. It’s also thinking about gender-affirming care and not taking that away. These are all decisions that should be made with people’s doctors and not having those doctors worried about whether or not they’re going to be reimbursed, whether or not insurance will cover it.
In what ways is the city best prepared to handle Trump?
ed the subminimum wage for tipped workers. So Chicago is a better place to work, right? With the municipal snow removal, at least we’ll be able to try that out. With Treatment Not Trauma, there’s three places on the south and west sides that people have to go to get mental and behavioral health help, and I think we’ve just begun. The investments in gender-based violence services, people aren’t talking about the fact there’s an additional $2 million.
Let’s look ahead now. Are there particular aspects of what we’ve heard the Trump administration might do that you fi nd particularly concerning for Chicago?
What has been signaled around being ground zero for deportations is obviously concerning. It’s concerning for several di erent reasons. Who really knows what a new arrival looks like, right? A lot of people become at risk, and it doesn’t have anything to do with their immigration status.
I am an immigrant. I became a U.S. citizen in 2017. I carry my passport with me at all times. Another friend of mine who was born
I think we’re best prepared because we’ve been planning. And we’ve gone through it before, right? You know, it was another administration, but we went through it before.
The second thing is that the county is aligned, the state is aligned. We have strong leadership in City Council. We have strong leadership on the fifth floor. All of those people linking arms is really important for Chicago to be ready.
I know that the governor, I know that the Cook County board president [Toni Preckwinkle], everybody, has signaled publicly that they’ve already started planning. I know that tables are already set in philanthropy, the civic sector as a whole, nonprofits, grassroots advocates, everybody is sort of mobilized and already thinking about what is coming.
Tables are being set at the state, county, and city—are you aware of direct coordination among folks at this point?
I know that meetings have happened, planning has commenced, and people are prepared. v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
“Everybody is sort of mobilized and already thinking about what is coming.” OSCAR SANCHEZ
NEWS & POLITICS
Bracing for a second Trump presidency
Organizers and advocates build community in the face of mass deportations and “grave times” ahead.
By TARA MOBASHER AND MALAVIKA RAMAKRISHNAN
Donald Trump will become president once again on January 20—and he’s promised one of his first acts in o ce will be targeting sanctuary cities. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, vowed during a visit to Chicago in December that, on January 21, Chicago is going to see “a lot of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents.” “Count on it. It will happen,” he said. Despite no clear outline of Trump’s plans for mass deportation, migrant organizations in Chicago have been preparing. Trump’s second presidency brings fears of federal scrutiny as the city could face funding cuts due to its sanctuary status and a new federal bill could criminalize organizations serving Chicago’s immigrant communities.
In the face of it all, organizations serving Chicago’s immigrant communities and officials remain steadfast in their commitment to protect migrants. Since August 2022, Chicago has received more than 51,000 new arrivals from the southern border, city data shows.
Antonio Gutierrez understands the impact community organizing has on supporting migrants. As strategic development coordinator of Organized Communities Against Deportation (OCAD), Gutierrez has been a part of several campaigns to empower undocumented people directly impacted by deportations. This includes fighting deportations in collaboration with attorneys, organizing rallies and press conferences, and working toward strengthening Chicago’s sanctuary status. They estimate hundreds, if not thousands, of people since the 2024 election have participated in OCAD’s workshops on applying for asylum, temporary protected status, and U visas.
Gutierrez says OCAD has been holding meetings with community members to help process the results of the election and deal with general feelings of dread among immigrant communities. “It’s important to address the anxiety and
fear people are experiencing, but, ultimately, [the meetings were] about helping people not let those emotions control them and everything they do,” they tell the Reader Gutierrez says the Supreme Court and federal courts might not be good allies during Trump’s second term because he appointed many judges. “We anticipate [Trump] is going to have the executive power to eliminate temporary protected status, but we really don’t know what’s coming. It’s more about preparing and focusing on what we know has already worked in the past and what didn’t so we can employ more creative and better strategies,” Gutierrez says. “Even though Chicago and Illinois are sanctuary city and state, it doesn’t mean ICE cannot carry on their operations.”
Organizations like OCAD and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) have in recent months hosted knowyour-rights workshops for new arrivals.
Brandon Lee, communications director at ICIRR, has been with the coalition since 2019 and has worked on policies limiting law enforcement agencies from cooperating with ICE.
“There are federal rights that everybody in the country has,” Lee says. “There are state rights, separate from local police and immigration enforcement, and people have a right to know what those are.”
Lee is not sure what to expect under a second Trump administration but is preparing for major changes across the state. “This is a moment for all communities to come together—immigrant and nonimmigrant—to say that we are fighting for one another and to push back against everything that the Trump administration is going to throw at us.”
The Chicago Refugee Coalition (CRC) has focused on sharing immigrant stories with the public. A partnership with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, launched in early 2024 in response to the migrant and refugee crisis in Chicago, gives migrants the opportunity
to celebrate their cultural identities through music. Alisa Bhachu, CRC’s executive director, called the partnership a “beautiful and broad representation” of the diversity of communities in the city. A second installment of the collaboration is scheduled for February, but Bhachu worries nonprofits like CRC could be threatened by a new bill.
In November 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would give the Department of Treasury wide latitude to target nonprofits that it determines are “terrorist supporting organizations.” The American Civil Liberties Union expressed concern in a letter to the House speaker, Mike Johnson, that the measure could be weaponized to attack political opponents of the Trump administration. “If that’s the case,” says Bhachu, “then we would have to pivot whose stories we tell, and it would either be ceasing to do the work that we do with refugees or come under the threat of being shut down. These are really grave times for organizations like ours.”
These concerns are widespread. The Midwest Immigration Bond Fund (MIBF) helps pay bonds for individuals held in ICE detention centers. Board secretary Alejandra Oliva calls the legislation “troubling.”
“It’s a lot easier now to deem nonprofits enemies of the state,” she says.
MIBF provides services to people facing deportation proceedings in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Kentucky. Founded in 2020, the organization has paid out nearly 80 bonds totaling more than $300,000. According to Oliva, the average bond amount for Chicago’s immigration court is $3,000. She says it’s “a tremendous amount for families to gather.”
“They might be undocumented themselves [or] have precarious employment positions, and having a bond fund available can make it much more accessible for people to get out of detention centers when granted the bond.” It comes as Alderpeople Raymond Lopez and Silvana Tabares threaten to roll back Chicago’s status as a welcoming city, the latest in a line of attacks by conservative alders against the city’s sanctuary city ordinance.
“I feel like the community here in Chicago is standing together in solidarity,” says Monse, a 38-year-old immigrant who has worked with OCAD, “and I don’t feel like I’m untouchable, but I feel fearless. I feel empowered. We’re not going to give up. We’re not going to settle when we’re told we’re going to be deported. We still have due process and our human rights.”
Immigration attorney Guadalupe Perez says it’s difficult to predict exactly what Trump’s mass-deportation plan will entail, but “whatever he chooses is going to result in chaos, because the reality is there are simply not enough ICE or DHS [Department of Homeland Security] agents to detain, transport, and remove people from the U.S.”
But, she adds, “That doesn’t mean he’s not going to try.” v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
ARTS & CULTURE
FEATURE
All my works are haunted
Isabelle Frances McGuire takes over the Ren—and then some.
By ERIN TOALE
R“YEAR ZERO”
Through 2/9: Wed–Fri noon– 6 PM, Sat–Sun 10 AM– 6 PM, Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis, Cobb Hall, fourth floor, renaissancesociety.org/exhibitions/557/isabelle-frances-mcguire-year-zero
Isabelle Frances McGuire’s solo exhibition
“Year Zero” spills out of the fourth-floor gallery of the Renaissance Society—continuing in display cases, stairwells, and the basement of the University of Chicago’s Cobb Hall. Surreal, uncanny, and unrelenting in their interrogation of widely accepted historical canons, McGuire’s tableaus o er a blank canvas for consideration of how annals are created and amended. The Chicago-based artist uses cultural touchstones to emphasize play and critical consumption, exploring an expansive perspective on historicization and storytelling.
Imagine it is, as the title suggests, “Year Zero” and we are characters in a video game of McGuire’s making. The ruins (and the show is dystopian enough to suggest a social fracture) are loaded with vaguely familiar objects, and the artist asks us to examine the meaning in the “messy histories” they hold; for instance, she presents a life-size reproduction of a tiny reproduction of a reproduction—a fake that was presented as an original—of Lincoln’s birth cabin, Symbolic Birth Cabin Unit . Across the gallery, humanoid figures are dressed as Santa and Jesus. Lurking in what McGuire calls “the underworld” (vitrines and basements) are representations of vampires, zombies, and other nefarious characters. Time spent in this world reveals the juxtaposition of mythical “good men” (Lincoln, Santa, Jesus) with supernatural “monsters.” The silliness of these figureheads pokes fun at oversimplified binaries of morality: people are good or bad, pure or evil, and so on.
Both curator Karsten Lund and McGuire cite Thomas Hirschhorn’s playful provocation
“Energy: Yes! Quality: No!” as a prompt for this exploration; prioritizing the multistep, highly technical production process McGuire employs over a specific, neat, or “quality” outcome. Lund describes McGuire’s practice as one containing “feral energy,” with McGuire echoing that the goal is for that energy to be harnessed and “flung out as fast as possible.” To this end, the show will be activated by two forthcoming programs: an in-gallery performance by McGuire’s band, Suicide Moi, and an educational discussion with a Betsy Ross interpreter. Suicide Moi—which McGuire calls a “historical reenactment band”—is a collaborative art and music project with Julian Flavin and Liz Vitlin. The trio takes the (cabin) stage inside the gallery on Saturday, January 18 at 7 PM. Some of their songs are covers, others take their lyrics from films. “Everything is stolen, including our name,” the artist says.
The exhibition’s closing weekend will feature Philadelphian Carol Spacht, a renowned proxy for Betsy Ross, the sewist and designer of the first U.S. flag. The jingoistic legend of Ross is one of many contested histories in the exhibition, and will be further explored with a series of flag banners displayed only during special events.
I interviewed McGuire about her practice using Gabrielle Zevin’s wildly popular Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow as a framework for the conversation. The novel traces the emergence of video game culture from the late 1980s through the present.
Erin Toale: What are the rules of your game/exhibition?
tion of my worlds. My world is one of symbols decontextualized from their human origins.
Playfulness pervades the exhibition, and your band is playing inside the gallery. Do you consider your practice playful and/or informed by play?
Play is the foundation of my practice. It is important that my work is funny to me. That’s what I am looking for. When I finish a piece and say to myself, “Yeah, that’s stupid,” that’s how I know it’s good! I am an avid researcher so I already have all of my information organized before I start making a project. There has to be a point where all of that starts to fall apart. Because that humorous or stupid quality cracks things open into another realm. I’m able to have better conversations under the umbrella of play or games because those are safe spaces with low stakes.
Who are the players/viewers you anticipate, and who are the characters inside the game?
I think my “game” world is one without players and isn’t aware of viewers. That absence is important. The characters/sculptures are like NPCs [non-player characters]. Everything is familiar but hollowed out. It’s a field of symbols.
Gaming culture and discourse skew masculine—how did that inform the role gender plays in this exhibition?
I find it difficult to stop myself from making women dressed in men’s costumes.
What was it like world-building in threedimensional space (physical objects in a gallery) vs. two-dimensional virtual renderings (source-coded on a screen)?
My practice began with videos and photos but I was frustrated by how contained the final pieces were. I wanted to be affected by my own work in a different way. Sometimes I still have this feeling with my individual sculptures. I want to be in their world. I don’t want small glimpses. Then I start to feel like I should go back to working with digital media.
Does empathy play a role in your construction of these worlds?
Empathy does not play a role in the construc-
Video game characters are, in some ways, immortal. There are immortal beings (vampires) represented in “Year Zero.” Can you talk about your interest in immortality?
This is an interesting question because I would say that I am interested in the limits of time. I haven’t thought about this in terms of immortality and have been more inclined to think about how I work using sculpture to model the limits of time, space, representation, and understanding. But yeah, as a byproduct of that, immortality is present in the same way a ghost is immortal.
What video games informed this show, and what social commentary do they provide?
The Call of Duty [COD] franchise. I model their strategies in my own work, like the repetition of American mythology, lazy historical reenactment that focuses more on power role-play than actual events, and realism that doesn’t fully hit the mark. The only thing I am missing is U.S. military funding. COD is effective military propaganda but that isn’t the only cultural purpose it serves.
This exhibition has many supernatural elements—is the show or any of the objects within haunted?
I work solely with haunted objects. v A longer version of this piece appears online at chicagoreader.com.
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Isabelle Frances McGuire, “Year Zero” installation view, the Renaissance Society BOB
Isabelle Frances McGuire: Rule 1: all in service of good art.
‘Her painting was her life and her life was painting.’
The Carnegie Museum of Art offers a fresh take on painter Gertrude Abercrombie.
By KERRY CARDOZA
Desolate trees, doors, shells, chaise longues, eggs, pyramids, cats and owls, the phases of the moon, and women— mostly lone women, haunting a landscape or posing in a mysterious interior scene. These are some of the myriad symbols that the late artist Gertrude Abercrombie used in her work again and again. For the cerebral painter, exploring one’s inner psyche, one’s desires and dreams, was an endless fount of inspiration.
Opening January 18 at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art, “Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery” serves as a timely opportunity to look anew at Abercrombie’s life and work.
“I’m just—in general—really interested in American artists who have otherwise been eclipsed from the standard art histories that we tell ourselves and that we learn,” says Eric Crosby, Henry J. Heinz II director at the Carnegie Museum of Art, who curated the show along with Lunder curator of American art Sarah Humphreville of the Colby College Museum of Art and Cynthia Stucki. “And I’m not so much interested in, say, taking an artist like Gertrude Abercrombie and inserting her into the canon, so much as just really exploring her own creativity, what propels the work forward, and what set her apart and made her such a special Chicago artist.”
Born in 1909 in Austin, Texas, to traveling opera singers, Abercrombie grew up mostly in Aledo, Illinois, and Hyde Park—the neighborhood where she would remain for the rest of her life. Abercrombie started her artistic career during the Depression, working first as a commercial artist and then for the New Deal’s Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration.
During her lifetime—she died in 1977—Abercrombie exhibited widely in Chicago, from outdoor art fairs to the avant-garde Katharine Kuh Gallery to the Art Institute. Her first
by 2018 solo exhibitions at Karma in New York and the Elmhurst Art Museum. Though her cool, still paintings share touchstones with the unusual juxtapositions of surrealism, Abercrombie’s work largely drew from life—from the urban renewal of Hyde Park in the 50s and 60s to the landscape of Aledo to herself.
She didn’t just work against the grain when it came to her artwork, she also lived an unconventional life for the time. Married and divorced twice, she was known for throwing convivial happenings in her Hyde Park home, where she often hosted the biggest jazz musi-
ARTS & CULTURE
painting,” Crosby says. “We want to reveal the practice of that work as it stands on its own.” For those interested in delving deeper into Abercrombie’s life and work, the exhibition’s catalog affords ample opportunity, including a brilliant, Chicago-centric essay from John Corbett. And, if you can’t make it to the east coast, fear not; the show will be on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum in the spring of 2026.
Something tells me Abercrombie’s star will be shining even brighter by then. “She’s the kind of American artist I want to understand . . . because she can’t be easily pinned down
major retrospective was held just months before her death at the Hyde Park Art Center.
“Should anybody misunderstand her as some overlooked figure who’s never been exhibited before, like no—read the catalog, understand that this is an artist who was widely admired within her city and region and showed regularly,” Crosby says.
Still, Abercrombie’s work has only recently begun to get its proper due—helped, in part,
cians of the day, from Dizzy Gillespie to Sonny Rollins. The artist was deeply enmeshed in a multiracial, queer community of creative thinkers that included fellow artist Karl Priebe, the novelist James Purdy, trans illustrator Samantha H. Woolf, and Billie Holiday. Though visitors to the Carnegie (or Colby, where the show travels next) shouldn’t expect any archival materials. “Sarah and I felt it was really, really important to focus on the
to any specific story of American art history or any specific community or any specific identity category,” Crosby says. Her insistence on living in community with other creative folks living outside of the mainstream and her serious attention to her work feels utterly contemporary. As Crosby put it: “Her painting was her life and her life was painting.” v
m kcardoza@chicagoreader.com
THEATER
‘An
object animated to create the illusion of life’
A Cultural Center exhibit celebrates Chicago as a center of puppet arts.
By IRENE HSIAO
Alooming rhinoceros arrests you with a melancholy eye. A T. rex a mere touch more miniature than the Field Museum’s Sue stands poised for attack. A lord and a lady in fine array gaze longingly into the distance. Humans, animals, and objects devised from a plastic jug, a piece of cardboard, paper, yarn, scraps of fabric, chicken wire, PVC. From aluminum to zip ties, no material is too humble to tell a story.
An expansion of the 2023 exhibition at Co-Prosperity in Bridgeport, “Potential Energy: Chicago Puppets Up Close”—curated by Grace Needlman and Will Bishop, coordinated by Ashwaty Chennat, copresented by the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, and produced by Elise Butterfield—shares a survey of contemporary puppetry on the ground floor of the Chicago Cultural Center through April 6. Shadow puppets and marionettes, pop-up books and augmented reality, Muppet-y monsters, and more, these objects are for the most part motionless within the gallery. Yet bound within each one are stories ready to come alive with movement.
Taking place during, before, and beyond the 2025 Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, which presents over 100 performances at venues across the city January 15-26, “Potential Energy” o ers a thrilling glimpse into Chicago’s vibrant puppet scene—as well as a chance to peruse o -duty puppets at your
own pace as art objects in their own right. “In a show, often a puppet will pass in front of you for three seconds, it will be 80 feet away from you, and then go away,” notes Bishop. “We make these objects to tell a story, so makers often think about their work more as tools to do a show as opposed to work in themselves. But there are so many people in Chicago making such beautiful objects, so we wanted to weave a web of connection between visual and theatrical communities in a deliberate way.”
The 50+ puppets exhibited come from a range of styles, skill levels, and contexts, from a piece of Manual Cinema’s Ada/Ava , which has toured internationally, to shadow puppets created by Los Logancitos, the highschool-age youth ensemble of Palenque LSNA (facilitated by Chio Cabrera-Coz of Opera-Matic, who also has a puppet in the show), to a giant cardboard figure that Chicago-Based Protest Puppeteers paraded at the Democratic National Convention in 2024. From monumental figures animated by multiple bodies, such as KT Shivak’s Rhynoceron , Jabberwocky Marionettes’ papier-mache dinosaur, and playful foam Fidget Hands by Jacky Kelsey and August Boyne, the exhibition also shares the delicate and the small, such as Jaerin Son’s The Waves: Shattering Blue Nights (an augmented reality pop-up book viewers animate via an app on their phones), Jerrell Henderson and Caitlin McLeod’s Diamond’s Dream (a shoebox-sized CTA train), and a set piece from Myra Su’s film Goodnight Shadow
R“POTENTIAL ENERGY: CHICAGO PUPPETS UP CLOSE” Through 4/6 : daily 10 AM– 4:45 PM, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/puppets.html, free
advertised, but you may stumble across an artist in the space working with their objects.”
The curator also urges viewers to explore puppet performances in Chicago year-round with companies and venues such as Rough House, Puppetqueers, Agitator Gallery, Links Hall, and more. “I hope the exhibition is an inroad for people into Chicago puppetry. The
thing really inspiring about this community in Chicago—it’s so gigantic and diverse. Puppetry in Chicago is having this huge explosive moment. It is an extremely fertile and diverse community. This is just a tiny slice of it, and I hope that people walk out of it inspired to discover more.”
“People say a puppet is an object animated to create the illusion of life,” muses Needlman. “I think that it’s also an object animated in a way that brings living people together in an imaginative experience. The ways the objects in this show function are various: some are like moving images, some are live, some are sequential like comics or movies, some are lumps of material that require storytelling and a lot of imagination, some are beautiful objects, some move in intentional, magical ways—but the consistent thing is, there’s an object, and there are people who are having an experience around the object in motion. In a traditional piece of theater, people look at each other, but in puppetry, there’s an object between the people, yet it’s still about people connecting. I think puppets allow us to see beyond the things that we can see when we’re just looking at another human.”
On December 21, puppeteers Tom Lee, Lindsey Ball of Puppetqueers, Kelsey, Boyne, and Su gave pop-up performances to celebrate the exhibition opening. Additional programs, including demonstrations, touch tours, and a closing slam—as well as a few surprises—are planned for the coming months.
“Some of the objects need to be rehearsed with,” notes Needlman. “Those might not be
community of puppetry in Chicago is not a set or defined thing. It is being made right now,” says Needlman.
“For every artist in ‘Potential Energy,’ there is an equally amazing and beautiful Chicago-based puppet artist who is not included,” adds Bishop. “I hope people connect with the artists who are represented, but also please look for the artists who are not represented. There’s so much more puppetry happening in Chicago than this show includes. That’s some-
While many puppets in “Potential Energy” come from shows created for the stage, “more prevalent in this version of the show is this sense of puppetry made by quote, unquote nonprofessionals or made for spaces that aren’t theater spaces,” says Needlman. “There’s much more puppetry as communal expression. A lot is DIY, a lot is made out of cardboard—it is not archival. It’s not the kind of thing that would ever end up in a museum because it is going to go away. I hope that when people see these puppets, they begin to ask themselves, ‘What if I am a puppeteer? What is the potential that I see in myself, in material, and in the world around me?’” v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Top: Rhynoceron by KT Shivak; Diamond's Dream by Jerrell Henderson and Caitlin McLeod IRENE HSIAO
Photo by Sandro Miller
FILM
WINDY CITY SHORTS
Quarterly; Wed 1/22 , the Lincoln Lodge, 2040 N. Milwaukee, $12 windycityshorts.com
Get your local laurels at Windy City Shorts
Damian Wiseman is inspiring and connecting the local film community with this short film open mike event.
By JONAH NINK
Windy City Shorts isn’t your typical open mike night.
There are no anxious firsttime comedians flipping through jokefilled Moleskine notebooks or acoustic guitar dudes who liked Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) enough to take a swing at a Bob Dylan cover. There isn’t even a microphone.
Instead, the new quarterly Lincoln Lodge showcase has a projector, a pulldown screen, and a room full of local filmmakers of all levels eager to show o their latest projects.
Mastermind Damian Wiseman aims to create a space for the film scene to connect and collaborate. Wiseman moved to Chicago in 2014 and works full-time as a freelance audio engineer. He says Windy City Shorts is a spiritual successor to the popular Chiquita Maquinita (“Little Arcade”) showcase in Bridgeport, which also served as an “open mike” for short films. Wiseman was a regular attendee, and he was in the process of creating a submission for the showcase when it was shuttered right before the pandemic.
Despite the setback, Wiseman continued writing and directing comedy short films to pass the time during the pandemic, and it quickly became a passion. “I knew [filmmaking] was going to be part of my life going forward,” he says.
An avid fan of the city’s comedy and music scenes, Wiseman understands the power of small rooms with stadium-sized energy.
“I’ve put my shorts up on YouTube, and no one watches them, or you get a couple hundred [views], but that feels pretty small when you [see] it,” Wiseman says. “An audience of 50 people, which is the room capacity [at the Lincoln Lodge], just feels amazing. It’s such a qualitative experience, whereas sometimes putting stuff online feels
like shouting into the void.”
Windy City Shorts operates on standard open mike rules but with a filmic twist. Only Chicago filmmakers are allowed, but every submission ten minutes and under is accepted (with no hate speech or other shittiness, of course, and priority is given to filmmakers who arrive in person). Filmmakers who attend are offered the opportunity to say a few words before the showing, with Wiseman playing host. Submissions are accepted up to a week before.
“We’re going to accept [your project],” says Wiseman; it’s often a consolation to weary filmmakers used to a judging and acceptance process.
Comedy shows in particular were a big inspiration for the culture of Windy City Shorts, as Wiseman observed comedians exchange feedback and contact info before and after performances. One of the goals of the showcase is to create a home for easier skill swaps between film professionals. Aspiring directors can meet the camera operators, editors, and other journeymen required for their projects, and inprogress projects are more than welcome for screening.
Indie directors are well aware of the craziness of the festival circuit, which, while rewarding, can often be inconsistent. Any opportunity to screen is a blessing, but Wiseman recounts one experience where he and a friend
had their short screened in an empty rented storefront with no audience.
“Ideally you’re making more than one short film per year. . . . [Filmmakers] run into this problem with yearly film festivals where it’s like, ‘I made this short film, and I can’t wait to show it to you in nine months.’”
The pilot run of Windy City Shorts, held in January of last year, was a smash hit, easily packing the Lincoln Lodge. The two showcases since have continued to perform well, and the next is scheduled for Wednesday, January 22. Along with Wiseman, the Windy City Shorts team includes social media manager Meghan Shannon and Roshan Murthy, who assists with show operations.
Wiseman says that what floors him the most is the variety of submitters, who range from comedy sketch creators to local indie animators and even TV commercial teams.
“We’ve had kids from DePaul submit to us, first-time filmmakers submit to us. We had some weirdo animation reminiscent of early late-night Adult Swim. There’s been a few people who make spec ads and brand films. There was a spec ad someone made for Uber Eats, which was really cool.”
There were fears initially that the event would only attract film bros in their 30s, but Wiseman has been happy to see a diverse group of regulars. He says that the animation projects in particular are most exciting, enough for him to start learning how to animate himself.
“There have been a few people who have been to every one. We had a few people show up to one, and then bring a project to the next one, which has been really cool. That’s really what it’s for.”
For logistical reasons, Wiseman says that Windy City Shorts will stick to its roughly quarterly schedule. Wiseman says that if interest grows, the event may expand into a second night, with each night having multiple screening blocks.
“We’re considering a spin-o dedicated to 20-minute pieces. We might call it Windy City Not-So-Shorts,” Wiseman says.
An early Windy City Shorts submitter once asked if Windy City Shorts had its own set of laurels, which are commonly given out by festivals to films selected for showings. The question caught Wiseman off guard, but he remembers giving a fitting response.
“We don’t give out laurels, but you can make your own!” v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Get showtimes and see reviews of everything playing this week at chicagoreader.com/movies
As of this writing, I have seen 11 of the 12 films I’d need to have seen in theaters to be up-to-date with my New Year’s resolution. Not bad, I think. But also not particularly hard to do when there’s so much great stu showing around town.
On Wednesday, I saw a double feature of Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) and The Color of Pomegranates (1969) at the Gene Siskel Film Center. The latter is a phantasmagoria of tableaux vivant that “in both style and content . . . gives us the impression, somehow, of predating the invention of the cinema,” to quote film critic Gilbert Adair. A similar impression struck me as I watched, often coming out of my reverie to remind myself when it was made. It feels at once specific to a certain time—presumably that of its subject, 18thcentury Armenian poet Sayat-Nova—but still timeless, either of all time or none with which we’d be familiar.
Mike Leigh is one of my favorite filmmakers, so naturally, I was among the first in Chicago to see his latest, Hard Truths, when it opened at the AMC River East last Thursday. I’d qualify this as minor Leigh but with major performances; as the antagonistic protagonist Pansy, Marianne Jean-Baptiste (previously acclaimed for her role in Leigh’s 1996 film Secrets & Lies) is hilarious and heartbreaking. Maybe trite but nevertheless true, it’s a piece of what I jokingly call “Eleanor Rigby” cinema, showing us all the lonely people and where they do come from.
The rest of my weekend was all about the Coppolas. On Saturday, my husband and I watched all three Godfather movies at the Film Center. The trilogy runs about nine hours in total, but the time just flew by. There’s nothing new to say about these institutions of American cinema, except that they remain eminently watchable. The third one, which the Film Center presented in the director’s 2020 recut The Godfather Coda:
NOW PLAYING
A Complete Unknown
A still from The Godfather (1972)
The Death of Michael Corleone , reminded me of Megalopolis (2024). People might think of Coda as an outlier, but it’s the most Coppola-esque of any of them. Case in point: there’s an insane subplot involving Corleone’s daughter, Mary (played by the director’s real-life daughter, Sofia), and her torrid romance with her first cousin, Vincent (Andy Garcia). And all three films, shot by Gordon Willis, are just so beautiful. He thrives in darkness as well as light, deftly playing them against one another to reflect the considerations of good and evil that underlie the trilogy.
Notice I said “Coppolas,” as I also saw Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl (2024) with some of my girlfriends. Is it possible to love a film you don’t really like? That’s how I feel about The Last Showgirl. Great story, amazing cast (hopefully the Pamela Anderson renaissance has only just begun), but lackluster direction. Derivative of both Coppola’s aunt and Terrence Malick, it’s all over the place with no consistent visual language. But the general concept—the closing of a long-standing showgirl revue, the last of its kind in Las Vegas—and the performances are thankfully not so heavily burdened by the direction. Its message resonated with me. To age as a woman is to become a contradiction: When you should be embraced for the knowledge and experience you’ve amassed, you suddenly become less valuable simply for being less young. Cinema, unfortunately, is one of the biggest perpetrators of this “hard truth,” one with which I myself must grapple. But the faces of Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays a fellow veteran showgirl, are fresh in their glorious weatheredness, just as vulnerable and even more valuable for their perspicacity. —KAT SACHS v
The Moviegoer is the diary of a local film bu , collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground film scene has to o er.
In its best moments, A Complete Unknown—the cinematic account of Bob Dylan’s rise to fame and controversial pivot to electric music—features impressive musical performances by actors portraying fictionalized versions of Dylan (Timothée Chalamet), Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), and Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook). But the film suffers when its characters deviate from the works of songwriting greats and rely on an uninspired script full of genre cliches.
A Complete Unknown offers solid renditions of iconic music, but it ultimately plays it too safe in its depiction of a daring artist. —EMMA OXNEVAD R, 141 min. Wide release in theaters
R Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
Chalamet’s take on Dylan works well in understated moments that showcase his intensity and arrogance, but it’s less effective when Dylan bluntly laments the restrictions of fame or waxes poetic about how all great performers are freaks, don’t you think? Chalamet’s movie-star status and shaky handle of Dylan’s iconic speaking voice are distracting, at times coming across as an impression rather than a fully realized character.
The film’s portrayal of women also relies on standard biopic tropes of the long-suffering girlfriend and tumultuous creative partner. The love triangle between Dylan, Baez, and Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) sees both women primarily alternate between enchantment with Dylan’s genius and frustration with his remoteness and selfishness. The film references each woman’s interiority, with mentions of Russo’s artistic aspirations and depictions of Baez as an established folk music star, but they ultimately exist as functions of Dylan’s story.
A pivotal moment in which Dylan and Baez flirtatiously perform “It Ain’t Me Babe” while Russo knowingly observes their chemistry is nearly identical to a scene from director-screenwriter James Mangold’s 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, further suggesting a film on autopilot.
“Dudes rock” is more than a fist-pumping himbo mantra; it’s an attitude, a lifestyle, a way of being, and nobody is more qualified to be its ambassador than Gerard Butler. Butler has made a career out of macho action movies that teeter on the edge of self-aware camp, chief among them Den of Thieves (2018), a movie that can best be understood as Michael Mann’s heist masterpiece Heat (1995) if it was made by and for dumbasses—and that’s an endorsement. This is a movie that, along with Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr., costars 50 Cent and three UFC fighters as bank robbers looking to rip off the Los Angeles Federal Reserve. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera isn’t a shi from the first film so much as it is a refinement. This is a more elegant, mature manifestation of “dudes rock,” like a Solo cup of limoncello instead of a roomtemp bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red.
Detective “Big Nick” O’Brien (Butler) and criminal mastermind Donnie Wilson (Jackson), once rivals on opposite sides of the law, have now joined forces with a jewel thief squad known as the Panthers (that’s right— the “Pantera” in the title is not a reference to the groove metal band, it’s just Italian) to steal a diamond from the World Diamond Centre in Antwerp. Gone is the gritty cops-and-robbers machismo of the original movie, and in its place is something like an Ocean’s Eleven-style hangout movie that builds to a tense, extended heist sequence, one that’s much more impressive and intricate than you would expect from a movie so committed to rippling muscles and shotgunned beers.
The gang has gone European, but rest assured, Big Nick–heads, nothing has changed much. In an early scene, a cop cracks open a lemon LaCroix and says with a gentle smile, “Oh, zero grams sugar,” to which Big Nick responds by scowling and opening a can of Pepsi—a carbonated beverage for men, not boys. Later, Nick will smoke something crazy in the club and start a chant of “Fuck NATO” that ruffles some Belgian feathers. Not everyone was built to handle the bacchanalian pleasures of the “dudes rock” mentality. —JOEY SHAPIRO R, 144 min. Wide release in theaters v
Den of Thieves 2: Pantera LIONSGATE
MUSIC
It’s December 5, and Chicago is already immersed in holiday spirit. Companies are slowing down to reflect and throwing yearend parties, and start-up incubator mHUB is celebrating with partner organization Portal Innovations. Located across the street from Cobra Lounge, just steps from Union Park, mHUB specializes in supporting “hard tech,” meaning physical rather than digital technologies. Engineers and CEOs mingle over old-fashioneds made by an automated robot “bartender,” and a DJ spins tunes to set a carefully calibrated vibe.
The DJ, who goes by Churchdontstop when he’s behind the decks, isn’t an outsider hired to play music for the night. He’s Nana Arkorful, and he’s a familiar face at mHUB: the CEO of one of the incubator’s member companies, transportation start-up Arke Inc. He incorporated Arke in 2022 in hopes of using innovation and creativity to revolutionize how humans move through the world.
“Honestly, that’s been my entire life, just trying to build things to make them better. At ten years old, I tried to build a motor-powered bike using my mom’s lawnmower,” Arkorful says. “I am a gun violence survivor. I had to teach myself how to walk again by walking up and down the hills of my college . . . and all of that has kind of shaped my perspective on mobility and opportunity. Just overcoming challenges has kind of built my determination.”
Arkorful was born in Ghana in 1991, and he credits his dad—who worked on cars for more than 50 years and DJed for a Ghanaian radio station—with introducing him to engineering and music. He says he practically crawled straight from his mother’s womb to his father’s garage, where he would hand his dad tools. He also got familiar with the practice of breaking something apart to understand how it works, then rebuilding it into a better version of itself—if not something new entirely.
When Arkorful was eight or nine, his father bought him a DJ set consisting of two turntables, a microphone, and one of the compilation albums that Violator put out with Def Jam, featuring the likes of Busta Rhymes, Noreaga, and a young Roc Marciano. “That’s real rap history,” Arkorful says with
A Chicago DJ from Ghana invents an e-bike for the people
Nana Arkorful, aka DJ Churchdontstop, has developed a low-cost kit called eVenture that electrifies an ordinary bicycle.
By ALEJANDRO HERNANDEZ
pride. “I’ve been influenced by my father in a lot of aspects. He also owned his own record label in Ghana with a lot of artists, like Shatta Wale, who was on the ‘Already’ song with Beyoncé. My dad represents a lot of history. The things that I’ve done, he kind of paved the way without me honestly knowing.”
Morehouse College. Six months before stepping foot on campus, though, he was out with friends to celebrate their high school graduation when things turned left.
So I created Churchdontstop as a way to take me out of the funk. You know, because every Sunday there’s going to be church, even if the preacher dies.”
“We had the option to build new e-bikes, but we’d rather leverage the billions of bicycles that are already on the planet.” —Nana Arkorful
“I got shot in my femoral artery,” Arkorful says. “I was grazed in my neck. It’s a long story, but I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He did eventually make it to Morehouse, starting classes in 2019. But his convalescence was long and grueling, and he frequently had to fight through despair.
After recovering from this life-changing trauma, Arkorful began to DJ parties hosted by Chicago streetwear brand Fat Tiger Workshop on his visits home from school. His cousin, Fat Tiger cofounder Des “Money” Owusu, had connected him with the other founders—Joe “Freshgoods” Robinson, Vic Lloyd, and Terrell “Rello” Jones—and he became a fixture on the lineups of the Sundays With the Tigers parties that the brand threw at East Room.
When Arkorful turned seven, his parents sent him to Chicago under the supervision of a trusted guardian. He excelled as a student here, and he got accepted to Atlanta’s historic
“The name Churchdontstop was actually an alias that I had created whenever I was depressed,” Arkorful says. “I would talk to myself and my roommate and become this guy with charismatic energy, and I’d be like, ‘Man, church don’t stop, we gotta keep going.’
Arkorful proudly showcased his West African heritage through music. “I would say, in the rooms that I was DJing in, I was the only one playing Afrobeats and dancehall,” he says. “There are spaces for that, like Wild Hare, but I’ve never DJed at Wild Hare. I DJed at East Room, which was like a rock club before we
Nana Arkorful rides a mountain bike equipped with an eVenture. ARKE INC.
“That’s been my entire life, just trying to build things to make them better. At ten years old, I tried to build a motorpowered bike using my mom’s lawnmower.”
—Nana Arkorful, CEO of Arke Inc.
started turning it up, and I kind of brought that fresh perspective. ‘I’m gonna give y’all five to ten minutes to go get a drink, go to the bathroom. When y’all get back, we sweating and we dancing the whole night.’ So that was my energy.”
During those years, the public may have known Arkorful mostly as a DJ, but privately he continued to focus on his engineering career. With a creative mind and a knack for making things from scratch, he tinkered with electronics and worked as an audio technician. He built a portable phone charger using a solar panel, he learned to repair circuit boards, he worked in live sound, and he produced and mixed his own beats. In 2017, his father sent him a video of an electric car he was working on in Ghana. He’d converted a vehicle that had originally been gas powered, and it inspired Arkorful to return to his native country for the first time in nearly 18 years.
After helping his father convert vehicles in Africa, he initially thought he would go straight into starting an electric-car company and convert cars. Then he did more market research and learned that the barrier to entry was far higher than he realized. He also learned that people were buying many more electric bikes than electric cars. Arkorful committed himself to pursuing electric bicycles in 2019, when he worked with his dad and his brother to first conceptualize what would later become Arke Inc.
Arkorful’s most recent visit to Ghana, in July 2024, validated this decision in a concrete way. He and his dad were driving in the capital city of Accra when they got stuck in an eight-hour tra c jam that ended up disrupting the local supply chain and a ecting the area’s economy. Yet Arkorful saw that people riding gas bikes could still slip between cars, even picking up passengers from taxis or cargo on the way.
The small gas motors used to convert bikes are often two-stroke models, which can run extremely dirty. So e-bikes had always been the natural choice for Arke Inc. “Africa is becoming like the new frontier [for] electric vehicles,” Arkorful says. “Only 3 percent of the world’s emissions come from Africa. Less than 10 percent of the actual land mass is inhabited by people. In the next 15 to 20 years, half the population will be under 21, and people are ready to take off.”
“I honestly see Arke excelling in Africa in a major way,” he continues. “I think having the dual perspective of being Ghanaian and being a Chicagoan, it gives me that resilience, but it also gives me that global perspective of where potential is and where I can maximize that potential.”
and convert it into an e-bike. Arke Inc. completed a prototype in 2022 and launched the eVenture to the public last year.
“Micromobility is my middle name, so I used to skateboard, bike, whatever I needed to do. I’ve walked hundreds of miles cumulatively getting from the south side to downtown,” he says. That tra c jam in Ghana only slowed him down because he was in a car. “Where we were going was only 18 miles, and the eVenture has a range of 20 miles. So on a larger scale, if more people had access to the eVenture, we probably wouldn’t have had that issue at all. The demand in Africa is probably 1,000 times what it is here. . . . We had the option to build new e-bikes, but we’d rather leverage the billions of bicycles that are already on the planet and convert them to electric. It’s cost-e ective. It’s more eco-friendly. It’s a more sustainable solution, because even when you take an e-bike to a bike shop, they kind of shun it, like, ‘I don’t know where these parts came from.’”
to fully recharge. Arkorful estimates that you can ride for 5,000 miles before the hardware requires maintenance.
Individual eVenture units are currently available on the Arke Inc. website for $449.99, considerably more affordable than most e-bikes, and Arkorful says Arke plans to drop the price to $350. He also plans to work on collaborative opportunities, including providing entire fleets to organizations via business-tobusiness or business-to-government deals— similar to how Divvy is owned by the Chicago Department of Transportation.
“We are the lowest-cost solution to owning an e-bike,” Arkorful says. A yearlong Divvy membership costs $143.90, and using an e-bike adds 18 cents per minute to that rate— meaning you’ll exceed the current price of an eVenture once you’ve ridden 29 hours, which a regular commuter will probably do in less than three months.
“We’re really tryna pinpoint the lower-
Since 2019, e-bikes have been normalized in Chicago through the Divvy program. The cost to actually own such a bike is typically north of a thousand dollars, though, making accessibility a problem. Inspired by his experience navigating Chicago without a car as a kid, Arkorful knew he wanted to create something that anyone could use to get from point A to point B. He invented the eVenture, an electric motor that can be attached to a traditional pedal bicycle
Arkorful has already presented public demos of the eVenture in Chicago and in Ghana. The system consists of four components: The display and the throttle both attach to the handlebar, the power unit attaches to the frame, and the electric motor attaches to the front wheel. A bike equipped with an eVenture can reach a top speed of 20 miles per hour, and the battery takes four to six hours
income communities in Chicago and abroad,” Arkorful says. “We’re for the people. I’ve been looking to solve essential human problems my whole life, and when it comes to Arke, we’re doing that in a cool way. If you can do better, faster, cheaper, and cooler, then you’re hitting all the check marks.” v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Nana Arkorful with an eVenture power unit
MUSIC
CHICAGOANS OF NOTE
Ibrahim Maali, cofounder of Solidarity Studios
“There’s a lot to be upset about, but there’s a lot that we can do together to support each other and really keep the flame alive.”
As told to LEOR GALIL
Ibrahim Maali moved to Chicago after graduating from Duke University in 2012. He came here wanting to use music to bring communities together, and he’s found collaborators in every pocket of Chicago. A job at Groupon, for instance, brought him in touch with in-demand visual artist Emma McKee, aka StitchGawd, who’s well-connected in the hip-hop scene. Along with Kalonji Nzinga, who’d go on to found the RAP Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, in 2014 Maali launched Solidarity Studios, a justice-oriented nonprofit mobile studio that aims to build global relationships (especially in Palestine and South Africa) from its home base in Avondale. Solidarity Studios maintains active partnerships with international programs operating out of several countries; Chicago DJ Antonio Cesar helped set up its connections in Ghana, and the organization has run music-production workshops in Bethlehem refugee camp Aida in partnership with Palestinian organization Alrowwad Cultural & Arts Society.
Imoved to Chicago in 2012. Came up after graduating university and came to work at the big online coupon factory, as so many others did back in those days. I was really drawn to the city’s vibrant arts, music, and intercultural scene. I grew up in central Florida—the suburban sprawl outside of Disney World—in a big Palestinian American family, so [I] was excited to be in an urban environment. Music was always really near and dear to my heart, and I really wanted to find a way of contributing to that culture in some way. Music is a powerful thing to bring people together—a liberatory force—so how can we build on that?
I did the [typical] stint in bands when I was in middle school, high school, so I’ve always been around it. What drew me to hip-hop initially and going to shows was the ability to
be with di erent people in the same place and [have] such a special shared experience. Hiphop [was] one of the few times where I could hear the vocabulary, places, and people from my family’s culture mentioned in popular American culture, whether that was Five Percenter lingo in hip-hop with the “mashallah” or calling out the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] in Wu-Tang. That was really profound for me in central Florida.
End of my high school years, early college years, [I] was able to connect with a few friends who were on that wavelength: My buddy Niko Is, he’s a Brazilian American rapper out of central Florida, and this longtime producer pal and another close friend of mine, Thanks Joey, aka Joey Hamoui, [is] a Syrian American guy. We all went to school together. After school we would go to Joey’s house, and his mom would serve us Arabic coffee. We would vibe out to hip-hop beats, and Niko would freestyle. That was a great way of connecting.
When I first moved to the city, I was really lucky because Niko Is was on tour with Talib Kweli; they came to the city for a stop. He called me to join them for sound checks. Lo and behold, I got to meet some people who became instrumental in the journey of Solidarity Studios. That was my friend Ranadeb Choudhury and the crew from 247HH—24-7 hip-hop dot com.
With Niko and some of the other folks there, [I started] spitting the vision of what I wanted to do with Solidarity Studios and bring in this notion of mobile music studios that could unite different communities on a common basis of hip-hop production, techniques, and accessibility. That was one of the big factors of being able to be introduced to whole di erent community groups, whether that was Young Chicago Authors or Beats & Bars.
I was really interested in this notion of
music being an avenue into learning about different historical moments, different cultures. I was really fortunate to volunteer with and then go back and contribute research [to] a community group in Cape Town, South Africa, called the District Six Museum. District Six was a community obliterated by the apartheid regime. They had a very vibrant neighborhood, right on the edge of the city, abutting the mountain and the ocean. In 1948, apartheid is instituted. In 1966—you can see the parallels to the Palestinian situation—the community was declared a white Group Area, and they began to bulldoze the entire thing.
What stuck out to me when I was there in 2010 was [that] the community used the arts—principally theater and music—to retain their sense of District Six identity. Even though they were dispersed to multiple different townships on the periphery, they would use the arts to bring themselves back into the physical space of the former neighborhood, hold picnics and festivals, and educate young people who didn’t live in the neighborhood what it meant to be a District Sixer. Learning that legacy really stuck out to me as a Palestinian American. Growing up in the diaspora myself, we also used music and these
Ibrahim Maali COURTESY THE ARTIST
sort of gatherings to keep the notion of where we come from alive. Even in central Florida, we’d be doing dabkes and things like that all the time at the community functions.
When I got back to [the Duke] campus, I was able to take courses with 9th Wonder and the professor he taught with, Mark Anthony Neal, about the role of blues, jazz, and soul music in the American civil rights struggle. Through that course, I met some professors from Carolina and Duke who were working on a project to bring this mobile-music-studio concept into di erent locales. That begat the idea of Solidarity Studios. Like, how could we take that to a different level and begin threading these communities from Cape Town to Palestine to Chicago on this common music production and storytelling background?
It took four years of banging the drum and talking to anyone who would listen, whether that was Ranadeb and the 247HH crew or Emma and people at Groupon, and slowly building momentum along the way. I wish I could say I was a skilled musician or music producer—I am not. But I feel like I can help with logistics and things like that, so I tapped into some friends who I knew were music producers, like Joey from Orlando or Na’el Shehade, who I came to meet in my first couple years in Chicago. I met with community organizations in Chicago that were artistically inclined but didn’t have access to musicproduction equipment or expertise—like the Inner-City Muslim Action Network or Circles & Ciphers. The “solidarity” notion was to enhance the work they’re already doing—stand in solidarity with them and not reinvent the wheel or take them outside of their organizational mission. So working with an organization like IMAN to say, “Cool, you’ve got this Fresh Beats & Eats Farmer’s Market going, and you want to have original music for that. You’ve got people in the community that want to record music. Let’s work on a workshop idea together, and design what that can look like.” Then going to Emma and folks at Groupon and saying, “We need mikes, MIDI keyboards, all that stu .” And getting vendors from Groupon
to donate some of that stuff—like Shure in Niles or Ableton in Germany.
We got to the point where we could have our first production boot camp at IMAN in 2016, before their Takin’ It to the Streets festival. We wanted to produce four or five original songs with artists from across the Chicagoland area—including from the IMAN community—and we wanted those songs to be showcased for the first time at the festival.
There’s this notion of approaching everything with an open heart and letting that be the way that you leave your footsteps. We’re super lucky that right before our workshops at IMAN, the artistic director there introduced me to my cofounder on Solidarity Studios, Kalonji Nzinga. He was doing his PhD in hip-hop pedagogy at Northwestern at the time. That begat a nine-year friendship and collaboration. As we’ve been doing it and speaking our vision and our truth, it resonates with people such that we’ve been able to find phenomenal partners and supporters and people to open doors that we didn’t even know were possible.
“It was a really eye-opening thing for our team from Chicago to go out there, myself included, to make music in a refugee camp with sniper towers on three sides of us.”
Like, our partner in Palestine [Alrowwad], the first time we met was actually at an IMAN community cafe on the south side of Chicago. That was four years before we made it to work with [Alrowwad] in Bethlehem. They are keeping their heads up, amazingly.
The IDF raided their community center just recently—broke down the doors, took out a lot of the equipment, the library, and the music studio. But they are resilient. They’re doing their best to keep the lights on and keep some semblance of hope for the community there.
One of the things I love about our partners there—and Dr. Abdelfattah Abusrour, who runs the organization—is this notion of “beautiful resistance.” [It’s about] giving young people—and really the entire community there— something that can brighten their lives, and giving them an outlet in the midst of all this darkness. That mission is really an important one for them, and [it’s important] for us to do what we can to support, remotely, as much as
possible. I take so much inspiration from their ability to take blow after blow and still say to them, “We’re here and we’re gonna keep doing what we do in the service of the community.”
It’s definitely a special thing to have that connection with the artists and community back there. My family is just one generation removed from the West Bank. It’s super inspirational, I think, on everybody’s part, to draw strength from each other. There’s a lot to be upset about, but there’s a lot that we can do together to support each other and really keep the flame alive. It was a really eye-opening thing for our team from Chicago to go out there, myself included, to make music in a refugee camp with sniper towers on three sides of us and the IDF popping up at your door.
To see the musicians and various community members take that in stride and maintain their positivity, their optimism—that there are things that can be done to make life better—is phenomenal. It gives a lot of perspective. One of my favorite phrases that our partners there emphasize is, “We Palestinians do not have the luxury of despair.” I’ve never really thought about despair as a luxury before. But they say, “We must work every day to make it better than the last.” I really take that to heart, even in some of my darkest moments, personally.
It really helps broaden the imagination to say, “What can we do from where we sit, in Chicago, or with our partners in Colorado or Ghana or South Africa, to bring something new to the work, the discussion?” It forces us
to reflect on the fortunate things that we have access to, in Chicago especially—that’s the technology, the additional artists that we can work with. It puts greater onus on us to help get the story of our partners disseminated in di erent ways—to bring to them more artistic partnerships, institutional partnerships, that can support their work and get that message out there.
In July 2023, we were able to host the founder of our partners in Palestine, Dr. Abusrour. We did a big seminar at our space in Avondale, [addressing the question] of “What does it mean to bring youth and art together in the service of social justice work?” So we have partners and young people—from IMAN, Arab American Action Network, Beats & Bars, Circles & Ciphers—all coming together to have this discussion, trade stories, and see what they could take from each other to broaden their activities more e ectively.
I think doing more of that, and tapping into these di erent organizations that we’re lucky to work with in Chicago and beyond, is a big part of our goal. This kind of connective tissue, where IMAN or Alrowwad in Palestine or the RAP Lab in Colorado, they’re able to focus on the work that they do—the grassroots level—and we can be there to say, “Hey, y’all are doing something really cool over here. So are they. Can we bring these things together and take it to another level?” That’s something that I take a lot of hope in as well. v
m lgalil@chicagoreader.com
Ibrahim Maali (R) onstage with Steven Jarrett and Calid B. at a 2023 Juneteenth event that Solidarity Studios presented with AfroBang COURTESY IBRAHIM MAALI
Recommended
Maps & Atlases reunite with their original guitarist at Metro
MAPS & ATLASES, RETIREMENT PARTY
Part of the Tomorrow Never Knows festival, which runs from Wed 1/15 through Sun 1/19 at Lincoln Hall, Schubas, Sleeping Village, Metro, Gman Tavern, Judson & Moore, the Hideout, and Color Club. Sat 1/18, 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $25, $20 in advance. 18+
MATH ROCK CAN BE a spiky, foreboding genre for intense jazz nerds, but Chicago band Maps & Atlases steer it into more hook-driven woozy prog. They formed in 2004 and have spent the past couple decades exploring the terrain where weird time signatures turn into hum-along choruses and uplifting, folky harmonies. While Maps & Atlases began as a four-piece, they’ve been operating as a trio since 2012, when guitarist Erin Elders stepped away to pursue a career in filmmaking. Their latest album, 2018’s Lightlessness Is Nothing New, staggers and soars with the cheerful inventiveness of an ingenious tinkerer building elaborate pogo sticks for slightly stoned elves. The track “4/25” is anchored by Chris Hainey’s knotty start-stop drums and Dave Davison’s snarling, looping guitar. Meanwhile, Davison delivers his lyrics with a gentle wistfulness that recalls Cat Stevens: “There’s a couple that’s
kissing on the corner / And I’m thinking about you,” he sings, returning to that first line in each of a string of new couplets as though he’s stuck in an indie-rock anthem that’s skipping on the turntable. The album is partly about the death of Davison’s father, and the repetition of this line—sweetness caught in a painful loop—functions as an ambivalent elegy for the way grief replays fond memories as simultaneous misery and comfort. Even when they write about loss, though, the band can pull joyful melodies out of crazily intricate songwriting, and it’s consistently surprising and exhilarating. By carving out their own idiosyncratic path over the years, Maps & Atlases have earned their name. For this headlining show at Metro, Elders will join the band onstage for the first time in more than a decade, so come prepared for some deep catalog cuts. —NOAH BERLATSKY
THURSDAY16
Jorrit Dijkstra See also Sun 1/19. Dijkstra performs in a quintet with Jeb Bishop, Beth MacDonald, Ishmael Ali, and Michael Zerang; a trio of Emily Rach Beisel, Ro Lundberg, and Norman Long opens. 8:30 PM, Elastic Arts, 3429 W. Diversey, #208, $15, $10 students. b
Jazz has been Jorrit Dijkstra’s springboard since the 1980s, when he was a teenage saxophonist taking his first dive into Amsterdam’s multifaceted music community. He’s since plunged into a myriad of methodologies, including the rock-tinged jazz of Pillow Circles, the free improvisation of Bolt, the big-band compositions of Bathysphere, and the minimalist pulse of his solo music for analog electronics. Dijkstra, also an educator at the Berklee School of Music and the New England Conservatory, moved from the Netherlands to the Boston area in 2002, and he began working with musicians from Chicago shortly therea er. His most enduring connection here is with trombonist Jeb Bishop, who participated in Dijkstra’s first Chicago gig at the Candlestick Maker in 2003. Bishop was also part of Dijkstra’s first U.S. combo, the Flatlands Collective, and in the past decade (during which Bishop lived in Boston for a spell) he became Dijkstra’s partner in a host of other bands. The two musicians make a complementary duo. On their latest album together, a 2024 double-trio release called Porchbone (Driff ), they sound just as simpatico luxuriating in a sumptuous take of Duke Ellington’s “Warm Valley” as they do finding form in free fall, adroitly maneuvering within the tight spaces that each writes into his respective tunes. During Dijkstra’s first trip to the midwest since 2018, he will reconnect with Chicago veterans and get acquainted with a newer generation of local players, but Bishop is the only musician who will appear with him on every date. The two of them will perform together twice in Chicago: one set in a quintet with percussionist Michael Zerang, cellist Ishmael Ali, and tuba player Beth MacDonald at Elastic on Thursday, January 16, and two sets in a quintet with drummer Bill Harris, bassist Jason Roebke, and bass clarinetist Emily Rach Beisel at the Hungry Brain on Sunday, January 19. —BILL MEYER
Half Waif Part of the Tomorrow Never Knows festival, which runs from Wed 1/15 through Sun 1/19 at Lincoln Hall, Schubas, Sleeping Village, Metro, Gman Tavern, Judson & Moore, the Hideout, and Color Club. Noia opens. 8 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, $22.66. 21+
In October, Nandi Rose Plunkett, who makes music as Half Waif, released her sixth full-length album, See You at the Maypole, which chronicles her vulnerable and turbulent search for understanding through a moment of loss. Across its 17 tracks, the upstate New York singer and multi-instrumentalist uses sparkling electronics, resonant piano, and her magnetic, tremendous vocals to bravely open a door to her experiences of grief.
The icy ache from which these songs were born, including Plunkett’s miscarriage and a beloved family member’s cancer diagnosis, is unmistakably palpable, but so is her belief in her soon-to-come
COURTESY THE ARTIST
MUSIC
spring. I’ve long admired her ability to build worlds through her songwriting and make unflinching portraits of her most painful moments. She positions them, with every gesture, alongside a shockingly bright understanding of the earth’s innate and endless magic.
Plunkett’s deeply rooted reverence for the natural world echoes loudly throughout See You at the Maypole . A heron, a hawk, bent tree branches, a cold stream, snowflakes, moonlight, innumerable sunsets—they all keep her tethered to the beauty around her, even in her deepest heartache. Though the record tells a story of Plunkett’s physical and spiritual winter, it’s also about the euphoria of finally making it through those darkest, coldest nights and getting to share a dance in the warmth.
In a recent Instagram post, Plunkett invited anyone attending the shows on her current tour to bring a piece of natural ephemera—“a leaf, a milkweed pod, a rock, a feather”—to place at the edge of the stage, to make a kind of collective altar. At the end of the tour, she plans to incorporate these materials into a rangoli, a form of ritual artwork from India in which materials such as powders, stones,
and flowers are used to create a beautiful mandala. Grief is never the end point; instead it’s an opening toward a new way of understanding and an opportunity to come together while collecting brilliant new colors. —TASHA VIETS-VANLEAR
FRIDAY17
This Is Lorelei Part of the Tomorrow Never Knows festival, which runs Wed 1/15 through Sun 1/19 at Lincoln Hall, Schubas, Sleeping Village, Metro, Gman Tavern, Judson & Moore, the Hideout, and Color Club. Youbet and Options open. 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, advance tickets sold out. 18+
New York City multi-instrumentalist, producer, and songwriter Nate Amos released his debut studio album as This Is Lorelei, Box for Buddy, Box for Star (Double Double Whammy), this past June—more than a decade after he inconspicuously uploaded the first of the project’s dozens of EPs and splits to Bandcamp. When Amos launched This Is Lorelei, he still lived in Chicago, and he spent a mindboggling amount of time nurturing a thriving scene of rock-adjacent oddballs: he helped run an underground label called Grandpa Bay, he recorded other people’s bands, and he juggled his own musical projects, including gnarly art-rock group Opposites. This Is Lorelei began as a one-off project during a family visit in Vermont, but Amos went on to make it an umbrella for his creative whims that didn’t have a home elsewhere. Last year he told Rolling Stone that he’d made a Lorelei album that consisted of nearly an hour of noise, and it got him blacklisted by digital music distributor Distrokid. Amos has found major success with experimental indie-pop group Water From Your Eyes, but the out-there ideas he pursues there are just the tip of his weirdo iceberg.
On Box for Buddy, Box for Star , Amos focuses his songwriting, but in the album’s straightforward hooks, tender melodies, and half-whispered singing, you can still hear his plucky urge to branch out in every direction at once. On “Dancing in the
time to learn something new with music and dance classes at Old Town School! We offer flexible schedules for all skill levels both in-person and online.
Half Waif, aka Nandi Rose Plunkett LOGAN WHITE
Jorrit Dijkstra COURTESY THE ARTIST
Nate Amos of This Is Lorelei EVE ALPERT
MUSIC
continued from p. 23
Club” he makes ballsy creative choices—the connective tissue between its twinkling keyboard melody and forlorn, digitally altered vocals is an arpeggiated piano that sounds like one of the guitar parts in Blink-182’s “What’s My Age Again.” But his ideas jell so neatly that you’d swear the pieces were always meant to lock into place this way. Whatever magic Amos knows, I never want to learn its secrets—even though I’ve listened to Box for Buddy, Box for Star so o en that you might think I’m trying to puzzle it out, I want it to stay a compelling mystery for years to come. —LEOR GALIL
SATURDAY18
Julia’s War Label Showcase Part of the Tomorrow Never Knows festival, which runs Wed 1/15 through Sun 1/19 at Lincoln Hall, Schubas, Sleeping Village, Metro, Gman Tavern, Judson & Moore, the Hideout, and Color Club. This bill (headliner first) at this showcase by Julia’s War is Hooky, Her New Knife, Melaina Kol, Ruth in the Bardo, and Glaring Orchid. 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $25, $20 in advance, 18+
Douglas Dulgarian has become a leading figure in a youthful, experimental wave of shoegaze music thanks to his role as front man of Philadelphia band
They Are Gutting a Body of Water. He also runs a boutique label called Julia’s War, which offers another window into his tastes and vision—rather than try to stay within the borders of a specific style or scene, he just puts out whatever music he likes, usually made by his friends. In just a few years, the Julia’s War catalog has covered a lot of territory: it includes the debut full-length by arty Pittsburgh shoegaze act Feeble Little Horse, a reissue of a 2014 album by obscure lo-fi Philly rock group Forever Lesbians, a demo by Canadian hardcore band 100% Pure, and a split cassette by breakout Asheville indie darlings Wednesday and MJ Lenderman (who’s also in Wednesday).
By consistently working with acts that have gone on to impress the entire indierock world, Julia’s War has achieved a gilded reputation rare among small labels. Longrunning Chicago indie festival Tomorrow Never Knows hosts Julia’s War for a showcase at Schubas that leans into the breadth of the label’s roster. Aside from North Carolina bedroom-pop act Melaina Kol and lush, arty Brooklyn grunge band Glaring Orchid, everyone calls Philadelphia home. Ruth in the Bardo play syrupy shoegaze, while Her New Knife thread together harsh drones and sparse, straightforward indie rock into a serene but noisy sound. Headliners Hooky incorporate unpredictable lo-fi electronics into their already wobbly rock songs, which makes them feel like they’re constantly teetering toward a collapse or wild explosion— though they’re so good you’ll want to stay strapped in. —LEOR
GALIL
Maps & Atlases See Pick of the Week on page 22. Part of the Tomorrow Never Knows festival, which runs from Wed 1/15 through Sun 1/19 at Lincoln Hall, Schubas, Sleeping Village, Metro, Gman Tavern, Judson & Moore, the Hideout, and Color Club. Retirement Party open. 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $25, $20 in advance. 18+
Julia’s War label artists Hooky (top) and Her New Knife HOOKY BY JUSTIN MILLER, HER NEW KNIFE COURTESY THE ARTIST
Novatore TJ WALUS
Novatore Seven Oddities, AzMattic, Agreeable Future, and Moecyrus & Welles Maddingly open. Beats by Damo Do the Most, B4Lasers, and Frequently Flyer. 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake, $15. b
Chicago has an undying affinity for the darker side of rap. We’ve produced some of the most versatile MCs who can move among drill, conscious rap, and avant-garde hiphop, and many of them launched their careers in the heat of battle. Southside MC Novatore has been a fixture in Chicago’s hardcore rap scene for years, and he’s worked with legendary artists such as Brooklyn-bred rapper RJ Payne and German hiphop production team Snowgoons.
MUSIC
Novatore is one of many MCs keeping the boombap torch lit, and he demonstrates with two quality projects he released last year. The ten-track LP The 87 Arsonist includes “Pyromaniacs,” made with east-coast hip-hop veteran Celph Titled, which has become my personal favorite track from his catalog. And Novatore made the solid EP Brutality with fellow hardcore rapper Moecyrus under the name Azthmatix.
Collaboration is foundational for Novatore. “Blacksmith,” off his new album, Agoraphobia, features OG Philadelphia rapper King Magnetic, Dutch producer Brenx, and Ghanaian hip-hop MC Recognize Ali—and its tight record scratching is just chef’s kiss. Here’s hoping more hip-hop DJs bring back that technique in 2025!
Now that Agoraphobia is out, Novatore has plenty to celebrate. For this all-ages release show at Bottom Lounge, he’s curated a wild homegrown lineup that includes antipop underground rap group Seven Oddities (whose members operate the label of the same name), a joint set from Moecyrus and rap singer Welles Maddingly, jazz-forward hiphop artist AzMattic, Chicago collective Agreeable Future, and a “triple threat beat set” from producers Damo Do the Most, B4 Lasers, and Frequently Flyer. If you’re into no-holds-barred traditional hiphop with heavy local style, this is the show for you. —CRISTALLE BOWEN
SUNDAY19
Jorrit Dijkstra See Thu 1/16. Dijkstra performs in a quintet with Emily Rach Beisel, Jeb Bishop, Bill Harris, and Jason Roebke. 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $15. 21+
WEDNESDAY22
HEadhunters 7:30 PM, SPACE, 1245 Chicago, Evanston, $35–$45. b
On the landmark 1973 album Head Hunters , keyboardist Herbie Hancock led an ensemble consisting of woodwinds player Bennie Maupin, bassist Paul Jackson, drummer Harvey Mason, and percussionist Bill Summers to fuse the heady jazz-rock of Miles Davis’s electric period with the funk grooves of James Brown and Sly Stone. The instrumental record was a blockbuster: It became the first platinum-selling jazz album and spent 47 weeks on the Billboard pop charts. Since 2008, Head Hunters has been preserved in the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry, and more than half a century a er its release, it remains an incredible listen—a sweaty, soulful workout that culminates in the death march of “Vein Melter.”
The Head Hunters band, which became known as the Headhunters, recorded three more classic jazzfunk records with Hancock before breaking out on their own with 1975’s Survival of the Fittest. Despite several lineup changes, they’ve continued on and off ever since, and their music continues to influence new generations of musicians in different genres— you can hear its echoes in the neo-G-funk of Kendrick Lamar and the saxophone flames of Chicago jazz artist Isaiah Collier.
Summers—perhaps best known for his collage of handclaps, falsetto vocals, penny whistle, shekere, and beer bottles that intros the Head Hunters version of “Watermelon Man”—and longtime drummer Mike Clark lead the current incarnation of the Headhunters, a quintet with saxophonist Donald Harrison, bassist Chris Severin, and keyboardist Kyle Roussel. The only false note on the band’s latest album, October’s The Stunt Man (Ropeadope), is the addition of vocals on closing track “New Levels—New Devils,” a collaboration with Summers’s global fusion project Forward Back. The vocalists and rappers deliver passionate performances, but their generic lyrics can’t compete with the instrumental power on display. The rest of the album is a blend of originals and reinterpreted standards by the likes of George Gershwin (“Embracable You”) and the recently departed Wayne Shorter (“ESP”) that show the Headhunters have lost none of their dexterity or grit. As they’ve carried on through the decades, they’ve followed their namesake album like the North Star. Fellow travelers can join them for the next step of their musical journey at Evanston’s SPACE. —JACK RIEDY v
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JAN 31 & FEB 1
JAN 24 DISCO LINES . .
. . THE SHED WITH OMNOM
JAN 25 OF THE TREES .
. . . THE SHED WITH DETOX UNIT, OPIUO, DMVU AND SYLPH
FEB 6 NESSA BARRETT .
. THE SHED WITH ARI ABDUL
FEB 7 TORO Y MOI .
. . . . THE SHED & PANDA BEAR WITH NOURISHED BY TIME
FEB 8 070 SHAKE . . . . . . . . . . . . THE SHED WITH BRYANT BARNES AND JOHAN LENOX
FEB 12–14 CRYING AT THE SHED . . . . . THE SHED A FILM FESTIVAL ON SALE NOW
Mike Clark, Bill Summers, and Donald Harrison of the Headhunters
MICHAEL WEINTROB
GOSSIP WOLF
ON THURSDAY , January 2, “Crazy” Steve Szegho died at age 73. A rock promoter, Jam Productions security staffer, talent manager, and bon vivant, Szegho cut a colorful fi gure in Chicago music for more than half a century. He was the son of inventor Constantin Szegho , whose work on cathode-ray tubes led to the development of television. His signature look included a huge handlebar mustache, a prodigious beard, and frequently a piece of outlandish headgear, whether a cowboy hat, a yacht captain’s cap, or a sombrero.
For decades, Szegho worked on the production crew at the Aragon Ballroom, and he was also a regular (professionally or socially) at a multitude of other venues. He was a rare character, with a biography hard to untwine from the tall tales surrounding him. His birthday parties became important industry events. He hired blues legends such as Otis Rush and Buddy Guy to perform, and he printed invitations that made promises about who else would be there—the invite from 1987 mentions members of huge rock acts ( Styx , Canned Heat ) and first-wave Chicago punk bands (Tutu & the Pirates, B.B. Spin).
“He was a connector,” says former Jam security director Danny DiSilvestro . “If you wanted to know who was doing what project in the entertainment field—not necessarily just music—you could ask him.”
DiSilvestro met Szegho in 1970 at what was then called the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. Szegho was running for studentbody president at the time. “His platform was to bring music to the students,” DiSilvestro says. Szegho registered a student organization called Crazy Steve Productions so that he could tap into the university’s studentactivity funds to throw free concerts.
The concerts Szegho presented at UICC drew the interest of Billboard magazine, which published a story about his efforts
A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene
on November 6, 1971. Program department coordinator Stan Delaney , who was advising Szegho, said the school helped finance one concert in four—and even when Szegho didn’t need money, he needed the student employees the department paid to work with him. The article made clear, though, who the prime mover was: “Delaney admits that the whole thing wouldn’t work without Steve, who spends endless hours on telephones cajoling groups to appear without remuneration.”
Conrad Pomykala was among the many people Szegho recruited to help with his UICC shows. When they met, in 1973, Pomykala was editing the school’s yearbook, which had its student-center offices directly across from the the student government. “I could run some power cords out so the bands could plug in,” Pomykala says. “Just production stuff, but very minor level. ‘No, you can’t block this doorway’ kind of stuff.”
According to the 1976 Circle yearbook, Szegho served as student body president for two years. In order to keep presenting music at UICC, he stayed a student as long as he could, changing majors to avoid accumulating enough credits to graduate. He was enrolled for at least seven years, and lore has it that the university invented a major for him in order to declare his studies complete.
Crazy Steve Productions hosted shows indoors and outdoors. A Billboard follow-up on November 20, 1971, noted that they were being moved into UICC’s 1,500-capacity Illinois Room for the winter. (The first concert there featured Otis Rush.) DiSilvestro says the school tried to pull the plug on Crazy Steve Productions due to the expense of hiring support staff for shows in that space. Szegho sought help from prelaw students, who pored over the UICC charter. “They told Steve, ‘There’s nothing in this charter that says you can’t hire your own security, that you can’t hire your own stagehands,’” DiSilvestro says.
“Steve, he immediately went to me,” DiSilvestro continues, “and he said, ‘Do you think
you could get a bunch of kids together for a security crew?’” DiSilvestro offered free band shirts to anyone who agreed to pitch in, including gang members from the Taylor Street Dukes “From that crew, there developed stagehands, security, and promotional people,” he says.
Crazy Steve Productions had established a robust operation by the time Szegho heard from the fledgling Jam Productions (founded in 1972 by Jerry Mickelson and Arny Granat) about helping out with concerts at the Aragon. Mickelson and Granat began by handling security for shows thrown at that venue by promoter Jan Wynn, then started booking their own. Rocker Lee Michaels headlined the first Jam show at the Aragon on June 14, 1973, and the Crazy Steve team was there.
“Crazy Steve brought this crew to work at the Aragon,” DiSilvestro says, “and that crew at the Aragon was the foundation for all the crews that you see now. Some of them have died—it was a half a century ago—but we trained other crews. I myself have held classes two or three times a year to get certified in security training.” Pomykala says he started working security at the Aragon in the mid1970s, and he kept taking similar gigs on the side for decades. The last time he worked with Szegho, he says, was in the mid-1990s.
Szegho got steady work through Jam Productions, but he also picked up other jobs— DiSilvestro remembers him booking events for bluesman Buddy Guy and adult entertainer Seka. Both turned up at Szegho’s birthday bashes, which he began hosting in the early 1980s. On or off the clock, he was immersed in Chicago nightlife. “Rush Street was one of his favorite places,” DiSilvestro says. “New Town was a place he visited a lot. There wasn’t anyplace, in Chicago, that had entertainment that didn’t know him directly.”
Szegho played a key role in building and maintaining Chicago’s live production infrastructure, but DiSilvestro has an extra reason to appreciate him: He met his wife through Szegho. “I wouldn’t have my eight grandchildren,” DiSilvestro says, “if I didn’t have an association with Steve.” —LEOR GALIL
Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or email gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.
Steve Szegho onstage and on his 1987 birthday-party invite
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Chief Financial Officer sought by Raven Cargo, Inc. in Chicago, IL to prepare and present financial statements and related reports including but not limited to balance sheets, income statements, cashflow reports, budgets, and variance analysis. Reqs Bachelors in Accounting, Finance or rltd field and 2 yrs exp in rltd occupation. $102,274/year. Mst hv perm auth to wrk in US. Snd rsm & cvr lttr to 954 W Washington Blvd, Ste 200, Chicago, IL 60607.
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ANNA WAGNER FOR CHICAGO READER
The Department of Information & Decision Sciences, at the Univ of IL Chicago, located in a large metro area, is seeking a full-time Assistant Professor to assist the department with the following responsibilities: Under direction and supervision, teach both undergraduate and graduate students, mentor graduate students in Information and Decision Sciences and MBA programs, serve as a liaison between the business community and the university, and conduct research in the areas of business analytics, computing/ technology, and operations. Other duties and University service, as assigned. Travel for conferences and professional development may be required. This position minimally requires a PhD or its foreign equivalent in Information & Decision Sciences, Computer Science, Business Administration, or a related field of study. For fullest consideration, please submit resume, cover letter, and 3 professional references by 2/19/25 via email to uicbizhr@uic.edu. The salary range for this position is $172,000 - $228,565.
The pay offered to the selected candidate will be determined based on factors including (but not limited to) the experience and qualifications of the selected candidate including equivalent years in rank, training, and field or discipline; internal equity; and external market pay for comparable jobs. The University of Illinois offers a very competitive benefits portfolio. Click for a complete list of Employee Benefits: https://www.hr.uillinois. edu/benefits/. The University of Illinois System is an equal opportunity employer, including but not limited to disability and/or veteran status, and complies with all applicable state and federal employment mandates. Please visit Required Employment Notices and Posters to view our non-discrimination statement and find additional information about required background checks, sexual harassment/ misconduct disclosures, and employment eligibility review through E-Verify. The university provides accommodations to applicants and employees. Request an Accommodation: https://jobs.uic. edu/request-andaccomodation/
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MATCHES
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POETRY CORNER
ALTERNATE REALITY WITHOUT HUMANS
There is not one alarm ringing reminder. Our planet unnamed. Coffee beans ungrounded, without steam. The morning still rises. The heavy groundhog grieves a stump. A once-oak fallen from an unarmed storm, heard by everything with ears. A mossed log, another home
Nothing dances but the bees and their maybe-sweet honey. You can still find the wolves territorial and loyal to themselves, the lions territorial under eroded monarchy, the eagles parade a sky without a red solemn swear or pledge. What’s a music festival? How does an opening act earn the turn of your playlist?
Not a dagger but the adder. The rams are brainstorming. But there are no new ideas. Where is the turbulence, the opaque borders? Oh the law! The law is sawdust,
Fish grease, scrapheap. horse flies, and horses, The elephants will mourn their dead and the whales holding their breath, still teach the sea routes with family songs.
No roar of rifle to burst the sparrows from behind the leaves.
Where are the stories of renting wood or stone? Who wants the smoke? What have we done? Have we done?
And all this unremarked beauty of what was never ours touches the creator profoundly but leaves something on the tip of the tongue without a quick history without a question to answer Without a fire in the eyes
By Karl Michael Iglesias
Karl Michael Iglesias is a Puerto Rican actor, director and writer from Milwaukee, WI, who now resides in Brooklyn, NY. His poetry can be read in the Florida Review, RHINO, the Brooklyn Review, the Madison Review, the Hong Kong Review and the Academy of American Poets, to name a few. Karl is the author of the poetry chapbooks CATCH A GLOW and The Bounce—both available from Finishing Line Press.
Poem curated by Demetrius Amparan. Demetrius is a music artist and poet from the south side of Chicago. He is a nonprofit leader and father to daughters Ella and Addison. His latest work, Hold Me Down, released August 2024.
Fall Hours
Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM
Thursday: 11:00 AM–6:00 PM
More Light! Exhibition
Chicago design duo Luftwerk’s immersive interpretation of Aram Saroyan’s poem “lighght” transforms the Poetry Foundation gallery into a dynamic lightbox.
Open through February 15, 2025
Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org
A weekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.
CHARLES IVES’ AMERICA
150th Anniversary Special Partnership Concert
“The Father of American Music.”
A multi-media event scripted with narration, songs, letters, and writings by Ives.
PROPEL
2024-25 Season
2/22 | 6 PM
Mandel Hall, University of Chicago
LOVE LETTERS
Women’s History Month
Featuring the Chicago premiere of Valerie Coleman’s Opus Serena, with acclaimed bassoonist Monica Ellis.
3/13 | 6:30 PM
Wentz Concert Hall, Naperville
3/16 | 3 PM
The Auditorium, Chicago
TONAL TRANSFORMATION
Season Finale
Chicago premiere of Adolphus Hailstork’s Concerto for Alto Saxophone, composed for guest soloist Timothy McAllister.
5/9 | 7 PM
Wentz Concert Hall, Naperville
5/10 | 7 PM
The Auditorium, Chicago
