Chicago Reader: print issue of April 28, 2016 (Volume 45, Number 29) by Chicago Reader

C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY | K I C K I N G A S S S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | A P R I L 2 8 , 2 0 1 6

Politics CPS still won’t say exactly why it yanked beloved principal Troy LaRaviere. 10

Food & Drink Chef Noah Sandoval spreads his wings at the splurge-only Oriole. 37

The golden ticket

The CHA’s “supervouchers” were supposed to help public housing residents get out of bad neighborhoods and integrate a divided city. So why did the city kill the program before it had a chance to succeed? By MERIBAH KNIGHT AND MAYA DUKMASOVA 11

INBOW. THE RA ® CREATE BOW. HE RAIN TASTE T

2 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

THIS WEEK

C H I C AG O R E A D E R | A P R I L 2 8 , 2 01 6 | VO LU M E 4 5, N U M B E R 2 9

TO CONTACT ANY READER EMPLOYEE, E-MAIL: (FIRST INITIAL)(LAST NAME) @CHICAGOREADER.COM

EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR PAUL JOHN HIGGINS DEPUTY EDITOR, NEWS ROBIN AMER CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS KATE SCHMIDT, KEVIN WARWICK, BRIANNA WELLEN SENIOR WRITERS STEVE BOGIRA, MICHAEL MINER, MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI EDITORIAL ASSISTANT CASSIDY RYAN CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, DERRICK CLIFTON, MATT DE LA PEÑA, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, DMITRY SAMAROV, KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI, ZAC THOMPSON, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS CHRIS RIHA, SOPHIA TU, SUNSHINE TUCKER ----------------------------------------------------------------

IN THIS ISSUE 4 Agenda The play Feral, Juan Muñoz at the Art Institute, Zine Fest, and more recommendations

24 Movies In The Club, a sanctuary for disgraced Catholic priests becomes a metaphor for Chile after Pinochet. Plus: Asghar Farhadi’s Fireworks Wednesday

CITY LIFE

8 Street View A buyer for a secondhand store got a crash course in fashion and business.

MUSIC

ARTS & CULTURE

8 Chicagoans Skydiving instructor Tom Aussem talks about occupational hazards. 10 Joravsky | Politics CPS still won’t say exactly why it yanked beloved principal Troy LaRaviere.

19 Classical CSO gives Beyond the Score the final curtain. 20 Theater Ike Holter’s Sender is an astonishing new piece of work on the subject of escape. 20 Dance Choreographer Kyle Abraham grapples with civil rights in the time of Laquan McDonald 22 Chicago Humanities Festival A Q&A with fashion designer Maria Pinto and Chicago Manual of Style editor Carol Saller 23 Chicago Humanities Festival Journalist Alexander Solomon discusses Far and Away: Reporting From the Brink of Change.

30 Shows of note Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires, Into It. Over It., Besnard Lakes, and more 32 The Secret History of Chicago Music Percussionist Henry Gibson was a 20-feet-from-stardom soul warrior.

FOOD & DRINK

37 Restaurant review: Oriole Chef Noah Sandoval spreads his wings at the splurge-only West Loop spot. 40 Cocktail Challenge: Big League Chew A drink infused with shredded gum takes Oak + Char’s Michael Tsirtsis back to his childhood.

CLASSIFIEDS

41 Jobs 41 Apartments & Spaces 43 Marketplace 44 Straight Dope Are politicians dumber than the general population? 45 Savage Love A trans man with a twat wonders if he’ll ever have a love life. 46 Early Warnings Against Me!, Drake, Isley Brothers, Toby Keith, and more shows you should know about in the weeks to come 46 Gossip Wolf Che Arthur celebrates Prince—and his own birthday—onstage with Bob Mould.

FEATURES

VICE PRESIDENT OF NEW MEDIA GUADALUPE CARRANZA SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES FABIO CAVALIERI, BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD ----------------------------------------------------------------

CHICAGO READER 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654 312-222-6920, CHICAGOREADER.COM ---------------------------------------------------------------THE READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY SUN-TIMES MEDIA, LLC, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654. © 2016 SUN-TIMES MEDIA, LLC. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL. POSTMASTER: SEND CHANGE OF ADDRESS TO CHICAGO READER, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654.

ON THE COVER: DESIGN CONCEPT AND BUILDINGS BY SUE KWONG, PHOTOGRAPHY AND RETOUCHING BY DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS, ART DIRECTION BY PAUL JOHN HIGGINS

! JONATHAN GIBBY

! JONATHAN PETERSEN

DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com

NEWS

MUSIC

The golden ticket

Katie Ernst rises like the tide

Why did the city kill the Chicago Housing Authority’s “supervoucher” program before it had a chance to succeed?

The Chicago jazz bassist and vocalist isn’t just helping herself with her talent—she’s also lifting up her peers and students.

By MAYA DUKMASOVA AND MERIBAH KNIGHT 11

By PETER MARGASAK 27

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 3

!"#$%#&'"$#("& )("*+",("!"#$%&'# ()*+%&),( -)" !"#$%&'# .#).*# !"##$%&'()* +,,'%-'./* 0.1 2$034 5'%)6&)1 7896:$&:)%0#9 0.1 ;9#.$&:)%0#9 ,$% +1"3&8

AGENDA R

READER RECOMMENDED

! Send your events to agenda@chicagoreader.com

b ALL AGES

F coln, 773-404-7336, mpaact.org, $23-$25.

/$0 12 (3$.#45 *!(6 <$60&)1 '. 5$=.&$=. >(0.8&$.

789:799:;<8= .../,01%203(4/5+, ,01%203(4 60+7/5+, !"#$ %&'(( !"#$ )*+$", -&$.$&&$, -&'/+,$& %+012 -&$.$&&$, -&'/+,$&

Feral ! REGINALD LAWRENCE

4 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

THEATER

More at chicagoreader.com/ theater

potential. —MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 5/15: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 5/2, 7:30 PM, Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773-609-2336, thenewcolony.org, $20.

Bullets Over Broadway It’s a shame this touring show is non-Equity, because I’d love to be able to recommend it without reservation. The production values are far higher here than they were, for instance, in the egregious non-Equity 42nd Street that stopped in Chicago last month. The cast does a great job with Susan Stroman’s novel choreography. The score, consisting of classic popular tunes from the Roaring Twenties, is loads of fun. Woody Allen’s book, based on his 1994 movie, tells the tale of an earnest young playwright’s Broadway sojourn with a sly wit. And little touches—like the whistling-tea-kettle sound Michael Williams makes to express his utter desperation as the young playwright—are engaging. With so much going right, it’d be nice to know that the actors had all the protections and advantages afforded by a union contract. —TONY ADLER Through 5/1: Wed 2 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7:30 PM, and Tue 7:30 PM, PrivateBank Theatre, 18 W. Monroe, 312-902-1400, broadwayinchicago.com, $19-$85.

Evita Although nicely done under Alex Sanchez’s direction, this Marriott Theatre production is helpless in the face of one enormous obstacle: the material itself. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s 1978 pseudo-opera uses squishy politics and pop psychologizing to tell the story of Eva Perón’s rise from small-town temptress to Argentine saint. It’s bad enough that they contrive a silly opposition between Perón and her countryman Che Guevara—using Guevara as a sort of Marxist terrier—to point out easy ironies. Much worse is the way they boil her life down to the familiar theme of a poor girl’s search for true love. Even a cursory look at the real Evita reveals her complexity, drive, courage, and canniness in addressing issues of class and gender on a national scale. Rice and Webber’s rather sexist Dame-aux-Camelias take sells her far too short. —TONY ADLER Through 6/5: Wed 1 and 8 PM, Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 4:30 and 8 PM, Sun 1 and 5 PM, Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, 10 Marriott, Lincolnshire, 847-634-0200, marriotttheatre. com, $50-$55.

Even Longer and Farther Away Penned by Chelsea Marcantel and directed by Thrisa Hodits, the New Colony’s follow-up to its standout production of Byhalia, Mississipi turns to another, more storied part of the south— the Appalachian Trail. The story follows Elliot, an angsty 30-year-old hiking the trail with a motley crew carrying his late father’s ashes to honor the man’s dying wish. The setting, a town “no one finds accidentally and no one leaves before they’re ready,” is ripe for suspension of disbelief, dripping with a southern voodoo vibe. It’s filled with “mountain folk” who seem as old as the trees around them—like Trudy, played by Deanna Reed-Foster, whose earthy power sizzles beneath a patient and observant exterior. But despite an interesting big reveal about Elliot’s father, the show’s emotional depth and character development hardly measure up to the setting’s

Feral This timely new play by R Shepsu Aakhu addresses the Black Lives Matter movement, what a

task force recently dubbed the “systemic racism” of the Chicago Police Department, and how these things get depicted in the media. The action hinges on the shooting by police of a radicalized graffiti artist named Francis Xavier (FX for short); in nonlinear scenes we see the buildup and aftermath from the perspective of FX’s spirited teen sister and irascible father. Aakhu has political points to make, but the considerable power of the play stems from the anger and heartbreak of the characters. The same goes for Carla Stillwell’s absorbing production for MPAACT, which features a pair of wrenching performances from Victoria Allen and George C. Stalling as FX’s grieving family. —ZAC THOMPSON Through 5/29: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lin-

In the Heat of the Night In his 2010 stage adaptation of John Ball’s 1965 novel, California playwright Matt Pelfrey borrows plot elements from Stirling Silliphant’s screenplay for the Oscar-winning 1967 film version as well as from Ball’s original book—and also tacks on an extra twist ending different from both. Set in 1962, this noiresque murder mystery concerns an African-American homicide investigator from Pasadena reluctantly recruited to help the all-white police force of a small Alabama town track down a killer. As the detective does his duty he puts his own life at risk, incurring the rage of local racists already on edge about civil rights “agitators” disrupting their way of life. Shattered Globe Theatre’s production never quite captures the feeling of sultry tension the story demands, though Michael Stanfill’s imaginative lighting design fills the intimate space with a palpable sense of mystery. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 6/5: Thu-Sun 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, sgtheatre.org, $33. In the Time of the Butterflies Like a sadistic child pulling the wings off butterflies, a dictator destroys a happy family in this adaptation of Julia Alvarez’s 1994 novel. The plot is a fictionalized account of the four Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic. In the 1950s, they fought against the bloody regime of Rafael Trujillo, who had three of the women assassinated in 1960. Ricardo Guitierrez’s lyrical staging for Teatro Vista captures the contradictions of tyranny in a tropical paradise, thanks to impassioned performances and lush visuals, particularly Uriel Gomez’s colorful costumes and Liviu Pasare’s gorgeous video projections. All that’s missing from Caridad Svich’s script is historical context; we’re shown Trujillo’s lechery and horrible mistreatment of the Mirabal family, but we could use a clearer detailing of his crimes. —ZAC THOMPSON Through 5/22: Wed 10 AM, Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln, 773871-3000, teatrovista.org, $25-$30, $18 Wednesdays.

The Lion in Winter The zingers and venomous retorts in James Goldman’s costume drama may sound timeless out of the mouths of Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole in the Oscar-winning 1968 movie version, but on the contemporary stage this 1966 play centered on Henry II shows its age. It’s not for lack of capable performers that this Promethean Ensemble production, directed by Brian Pastor, lags and feels out of sync—Brian Parry and Elaine Carlson as King Henry and Eleanor of Aquitane (forerunners of Empire’s Lucious and Cookie Lyon, if you will) play up the comedy in their cat-anddog power-couple dynamic as much as Goldman’s sometimes forced dialogue allows. But this is well-trod territory, and the two hours-plus of royal conniving winds up stranded somewhere between sketch comedy wackiness and ineffectual Shakespearean sobriety. —DAN JAKES Through 5/21: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6860, prometheantheatre. org, $24, seniors $19, students $14. The Producers Director L. R Walter Stearns’s revival of Mel Brooks’s well-crafted showbiz musical

comedy (written with Broadway veteran Thomas Meehan) is remarkable for what it doesn’t do: attempt to mimic either the blockbuster 2005 Broadway version or the iconic 1968 movie (starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder). Instead, Stearns packs his cast with capable performers who have their own takes on Brooks’s characters. Most notably, Bill Larkin and Matt Crowle remake the show’s leads (a crooked producer and his timid accountant) in their own image, finding new laughs in the old material while making their partnership seem less contrived. Likewise, Allison Sill transforms the stereotypically sexist role of a curvy Swedish secretary into something real, believable, and not so very sexist at all.—JACK HELBIG Through 6/26: Wed 8 PM, Thu 3 and 8 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport, 773-325-1700, mercurytheaterchicago.com, $30-$65. A Splintered Soul Perhaps ARLA Productions’ decision to premiere Alan Lester Brooks’s Holocaust survivor play on

The Producers ! BRETT A. BEINER

Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of April 28

LIT Chicago Zine Fest An annual R fest celebrating small presses and independent publishers from all over

the city. For a full schedule of events, visit chicagozinefest.org. 4/29-4/30, various locations, chicagozinefest.org.

Freda Love Smith In celebration R of Independent Bookstore Day, musician, author, and baker Freda Love

Smith discusses and signs copies of her new memoir, Red Velvet Underground: A Rock Memoir With Recipes, and offers samples of her baked goods. Sat 4/30, 12:30 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299, womenandchildrenfirst.com.

Taste Surely people will critR icize Benjamin Brand’s 2014 play—based on the true story of two

German men who met so that one could kill, cook, and eat the other—for its prurience (and director Aaron Sawyer’s agonizing, exacting Red Theater production doesn’t spare the weak of stomach). But the brutality is nothing compared to, say, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. Better to criticize the thematic flimsiness; Brand turns an unaccountable encounter into an overworked, overfamiliar search for a “real” experience in a hypermediated, hyperisolative world. But dramatically Taste is delicious, and Sawyer expertly orchestrates 90 minutes of excruciating but often hilarious tension. His cast, Gage Wallace and Kevin V. Smith, bring dancerlike precision to nearly every moment. It’s harrowing, hysterical, horrifying, and singularly exhilarating. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 5/22: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Saturdays, Sundays, Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-728-7529, redtheater.org. F

Kay Cannon hosts Laughs for Limbs ! ALEX J. BERLINER/UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Faith Foundation, which provides help for amputees. Sat 4/30, 6:30 PM, iO Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov.com/ chicago, $25. Simmer Brown This comedy R showcase hosted by Prateek Srivastava, Sameena Mustafa, and Rishika

Murthy features three guest comedians: Kellye Howard, Brian Smith, and Taneshia Rice. Sat 4/30, 8 PM, North Bar, 1637 W. North, 773-123-5678, liveatnorthbar.com, $10.

DANCE

VISUAL ARTS

Miami City Ballet Miami City R Ballet presents two different programs over a two-night engagement. Fri

Art Institute of Chicago “Thirteen Laughing at Each Other,” an immersive exhibition by the late Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz (1953-2001). 4/28-10/8. “Foot Soldiers of Fashion,” an exhibit inspired by the Landsknechte, 16th-century German mercenaries as famous for their elaborate attire as for their formidable pikes and halberds. 5/4-11/4. Sun–Wed 10:30 AM–5 PM, Thu-Fri 10:30 AM–8 PM, Sat 10:30 AM–5 PM. 111 S. Michigan, 312443-3600, artinstituteofchicago.org, $25, $19 students, seniors ($5 discount for Chicago residents), free kids under 14; free for Illinois residents Thursdays 5-8 PM.

4/29-Sat 4/30: 7:30 PM, Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph, 312-334-7777, harristheaterchicago.org, $35-$130.

Versus An experimental dance R performance that stages different choreography to original music by Antibody Corporation each night. Thu 4/28-Sat 4/30: 7 PM, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, 312-744-6630, chicagoculturalcenter.org. F

COMEDY Laughs for Limbs Kay Cannon R (30 Rock, Pitch Perfect) hosts a night of improv to benefit Steps of

Chicago Artists Coalition “Today Is a New Day,” multimedia artist Iris Bernblum presents her latest solo exhibition. Opening reception Fri 4/29 at 6 PM. 4/29-5/19. Mon-Thu 9 AM-5 PM, Fri 9 AM-noon. 217 N. Carpenter, 312-491-8887, chicagoartistscoalition.org.

Freda Love Smith ! MARC HAUSER

MOVIES

More at chicagoreader.com/ movies NEW REVIEWS The Club Pablo Larraín (No) directed this story of a young Jesuit investigating a seaside residence used to hide disgraced priests. For J.R. Jones’s review, see page 24. Fri 4/29, 6 PM; Sat 4/30, 8:15 PM; Sun 5/1, 3 PM; Mon 5/2, 7:45 PM Tue 5/3, 8:15 PM; and Wed 5/4, 6 PM; and Thu 5/5, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

11 Minutes Fast-moving and formally adventurous, Jerzy Skolimowski’s Polish drama (2015) begins with a quintet of selfie videos, captured on phones, laptops, and closed-circuit TV, that introduce five different characters; after that a more omniscient perspective takes over, and the characters’ lives intersect as Skolimowski follows each through the same 11-minute time span. The best story line involves a sexy actress (Paulina Chapko) fending off the advances of an

American film director (Richard Dormer) in a plush hotel room while her violent boyfriend (Wojciech Mecwaldowski) searches every floor of the building for them. None of the other stories has been developed as fully as this one, but Skolimowski’s technique is impressive: the overlapping narratives are expertly handled, and the points of intersection can be dazzling. In English and subtitled Polish. —J.R. JONES 83 min. Fri 4/29, 6 PM; Sat 4/30, 3 and 6:30 PM; Sun 5/1, 5 PM; Mon 5/2, 6 PM; Wed 5/4, 6 PM; and Thu 5/5, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Fireworks Wednesday Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) directed this 2006 drama about a Tehran couple on the verge of divorce. For J.R. Jones’s review, see page 25. 102 min. Fri-Tue 4/29-5/3, 3 and 7:30 PM; Wed 5/4, 3 PM; and Thu 5/5, 3 and 7:30 PM. Music Box The Huntsman: Winter’s War Whoever came up with the idea of turning the Snow White legend into a PG-13 Game of Thrones is a stone-cold marketing genius. This sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) is digestible as big-budget fantasies go, with capable actors in front of the camera (Emily Blunt, Charlize Theron, Jessica Chastain, Chris Hemsworth) and a story permitting lots of cool special effects in which people and things freeze and erupt into riotous crystals. As in the earlier movie, British character actors (Nick Frost, Rob Brydon, Sheridan Smith, Alexandra Roach) go through the digital looking glass to become dwarves, whose comic scenes, full of romantic fussin’ and fightin’, are uniformly insufferable. Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, a visual effects artist, makes his feature directing debut. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 114 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Lake, New 400, Showplace ICON Keanu Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, of the Comedy Central sketch program Key & Peele, make their bigscreen debut with this weak gangster farce, which begins with a silly premise and follows it to its barely amusing conclusion. After a kitten gets loose from a violent drug lord, Peele finds and adopts it, naming it after his favorite underappreciated actor; bad guys break into his home and steal the cat, so he and Key set out to rescue the little thing. As a comedy team, the stars come off like Costello and Costello, each peddling his own brand of ironic weirdness (Key spends much of his screen time trying to indoctrinate hardened thugs into the music of George Michael). The incongruity between their white-bread delivery and the bad guys’ jive generates a few laughs, but not enough to salvage this thing. Peter Atencio directed a script by Peele and Alex Rubens; with Will Forte, Nia Long, Luis Guzmán, and Method Man. —J.R. JONES R, 98 min. !

*(%+&,'-#"

"+,-. /0 % !"# / "' ((+!

!"#$ #%&" #$'() !"# $ % & "' ()*$) +!

!"# $%"&'()*$ +,- +-.+,/* '(/0*'$1 .($(' '%*2"3+,'%*+'#*4/")

RSM

the second day of Passover accounted for the half-filled house opening night. Or perhaps even the nonobservant knew to stay away. Brooks has spectacular material at his fingertips. A handful of Polish Jews who survived Hitler’s camps cling together in 1947 San Francisco, watched over by former resistance fighter Rabbi Kroeller. Gradually they reveal the horrible acts they perpetrated in order to survive the Nazis; one built steel doors for the Treblinka gas chambers, where his own family was gassed. Selected moments are engrossing, but most of the time Brooks’s dramatics are clunky, his dialogue tin-eared, and his symbolism transparent. Keira Fromm’s mundane direction provides insufficient momentum to bring much to life. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 5/29: ThuFri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, stage773.com, $20-$36.

For more of the best things to do every day of the week, go to chicagoreader. com/agenda.

www.BrewView.com

3145 N. Sheffield at Belmont

Movie Theater & Full Bar $5.00 sion admis e for th s M o v ie

18 to enter 21 to drink Photo ID required

Friday, April 29 @ 7:00pm Sun, May 1 @ 4:00pm Mon-Thr, May 2-5 @ 7:00pm

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Friday, April 29 @ 9:00pm Sun, May 1 @ 6:00pm Mon-Thr, May 2-5 @ 9:00pm

10 Cloverfield Lane Friday, April 29 @ 11:00pm Sun, May 1 @ 8:00pm

Ride Along 2 y Onl ! Purple Rain $5 Starring PRINCE!

Fri 5/6, Sat 5/7 & Sun 5/8 at 7:00pm Tickets: http://purplerain1984.bpt.me

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 5

AGENDA To Sleep With Anger

!B Century 12 and CineArts 6, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Lake, New 400, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON The Meddler Lorene Scafaria, who made her debut as writer-director with the apocalyptic love story Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012), returns with a more conventional domestic comedy about a lonely widow (Susan Sarandon) driving her lonely daughter (Rose Byrne) around the bend. Mom just needs someone to care for, and it can’t be that divorcee with the big gut who keeps hitting on her (Michael McKean); it must be that virile ex-cop who gives her enough space and really appreciates her as a person (J.K. Simmons, wearing a Wilford Brimley mustache). In many respects this plays like a senior-citizen romance with Diane Keaton, but it goes down much easier, thanks to the players’ sincerity and the credible, unassuming dialogue. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 100 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre

CHICAGO FLAGSHIP STORES 56 E A S T WA LT O N S T R E E T 3 1 2 - 2 0 2 -7 9 0 0

6 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

Old Fashioned: The Story of the Wisconsin Supper Club Wisconsin native Holly L. De Ruyter traces the history of supper clubs, one of her state’s most beloved cultural institutions, and pays homage to the “supper club values” they instill. “We have that strong sense of community and fellowship around food,” one patron avows, and her sentiment is echoed throughout the documentary, especially in the customers’ credo of eschewing chains for local businesses. With a title referencing both the unofficial state cocktail and the time-honored ideals of most supper clubs, this is a love letter to midwestern life as much as the clubs themselves, and there’s the rub. Midwestern traditionalists and socially conscious foodies may appreciate the patrons’ reclamation of dining as a sacred, unhurried, and communal experience, but the specificity of

the subject and the homogeneity of the interviewees may prove off-putting to outsiders. —LEAH PICKETT 51 min. De Ruyter attends the screenings. Fri 4/29, 2 PM; Sat 4/30, 5:15 PM; Sun 5/1, 3 PM; Mon 5/2, 6 PM; and Wed 5/4, 7:45 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Rio, I Love You Producer Emmanuel Benbihy has taken it upon himself to bring love to the world one city at a time, and after Paris, Je T’Aime (2006) and New York, I Love You (2009) he hits Rio de Janeiro with the usual international assortment of directors, whose short segments are strung together into a single narrative (2014). The attractions here are Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty), whose typically wry story involves a rich old coot (Basil Hoffman) and his pretty young wife (Emily Mortimer); Im Sang-soo (The Housemaid) spinning a wild tale of vampires who have taken over a town and dance in the streets at night; and José Padilha (Elite Force), whose hero skydives past the giant Christ the Redeemer statue and tells Jesus off. Unfortunately these striking moments are overtaken by the fruit-juice mediocrity of everything else, particularly a connecting narrative about a cabdriver who insists on telling all his riders about the woman who got away. With luck the franchise should give out before we have to watch Boise, I Love You. In English and subtitled French, Spanish, and Portuguese. —J.R. JONES 110 min. Fri 4/29, 2 and 8 PM; Sat 4/30, 3 PM; Mon 5/2, 7:45 PM; Tue 5/3, 6 PM; Wed 5/4, 8 PM; and Thu 5/5, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

REVIVALS Get Crazy A sympathetic but disappointing 1983 follow-up to Rock ’n’ Roll High School by director Allan Arkush. Based on his experiences as a light rigger at the Fillmore East, Arkush’s loosely structured story takes place during a New Year’s concert at a

west-coast rock palace that brings together (and lampoons) a fantasy assortment of musical styles: a big city bluesman (Bill Henderson), an addled acid rocker (Howard Volman), a burned-out folkie (Lou Reed), an animalistic punk (Lee Ving), and a British superstud (Malcolm McDowell). Daniel Stern is the manager struggling to keep the show on the road, despite assaults from a motorcycle gang and a bomb planted by a business rival (Ed Begley Jr.). Arkush’s communal vision has a utopian charm, and no one would accuse him of a lack of energy and invention—it’s just that the gags are too numerous, too uneven, and too fuzzily executed to provide the rush the film is aiming for. —DAVE KEHR R, 92 min. Wed 5/4, 7:30 PM. Northeastern Illinois University Auditorium To Sleep With Anger It R seems scandalous that Charles Burnett, the most gifted

black American director offering purely realistic depictions of black urban life, was able to make this 1990 feature only because Danny Glover agreed to play a leading role. Harry Mention (Glover), an old friend from the rural south, arrives on the doorstep of a Los Angeles family, wreaking subtle and not-so-subtle havoc on their lives. The family is headed by a retired farmer (Paul Butler) and his midwife spouse (Mary Alice), whose two married sons (Carl Lumbly and Richard Brooks) are in constant conflict. Burnett’s acute and sensitive direction is free of hackneyed movie conventions; even something as simple as a hello is said differently from the way you’ve heard it in any other movie. All of Burnett’s features have the density of novels, rich with characters and their interplay, and this one is no exception. —JONATHAN ROSENBAUM PG, 102 min. University of Chicago professor Jacqueline Stewart introduces this free screening. Fri 4/29, 7 PM. Black Cinema House v

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE ! OUR MOST READ ARTICLES LAST WEEK ON CHICAGOREADER.COM IN ASCENDING ORDER:

Chicagoans

The skydiving instructor Tom Aussem

! ISA GIALLORENZO

Here’s what’s missing from the Police Accountability Task Force report —STEVE BOGIRA

Street View

Rahm’s Lucas/McPier plan is straight outta Daley’s playbook of south-loop boondoggles —BEN JORAVSKY Chicago is better poised to survive climate change than New York or LA —ROSS PATRICK ROBINSON

Jill of all trades IF YOU’VE SOLD clothes at a secondhand store, you’re familiar with the scene: a salesperson behind a counter sifting through heaps of apparel, meticulously inspecting each item, all while running the cash register, answering random questions, and greeting new customers. That’s the kind of multitasking Teresa Gugliotta-Kremer does at the buy-selltrade store she works for in Wicker Park. She describes the job as a crash course in fashion and business: “As a buyer, there’s a lot of work that goes into learning to select and price clothing appropriately. Constantly being aware of what’s in the store and what’s selling, looking up brands you encounter and don’t know about, researching trends, learning about clothing construction to distinguish a higher-end piece from a lower-end one.” That practice, she says, helps elevate her own thrifting skills. “I think you can buy everything secondhand,” she says, “except things you wear very close to your body.” —ISA GIALLORENZO

Getting rid of Troy LaRaviere is Rahm’s attempt to silence a vocal schools critic —BEN JORAVSKY

Prince used to obsessively watch the 90s Chicago Bulls—even while performing onstage —JAKE MALOOLEY Diameters of circles are proportional to the number of page views received.

I NEVER USE MY LAST NAME professionally in the sport. I just go by Tom. Because try living up to: “I’m Mr. Awesome, professional skydiver.” How did I get into skydiving? I just kind of fell into it. (Thank you, thank you.) Well, actually, I started flying airplanes at age eight. My parents lived across the street from the old Ottawa, Illinois, airport, and it had a pop machine and a candy machine, which are magnets for an eight-yearold with a bicycle. I was there one day and a guy said, “If you clean all the bugs off my plane’s wings, I’ll take you up for a little spin.” That was all it took. I was at that airport every day till I got out of high school. When I was 21, Skydive Chicago opened up at the Ottawa airport. I said “What the heck, let’s give it a whirl.” That was my first skydive: May 1, 1992. Since my parents lived across the street, I’d be up there practicing, looking down and seeing my aunt and uncle arrive at my parents’ house, and I’d think, “It’s almost dinnertime. I’ll just land in their backyard and eat dinner.” I currently work at Skydive Milwaukee, and most of my students do the tandem skydive. I wear a parachute on my back, and you’re attached to the front of me, belly to earth. Over the past 24 years, I’ve pretty much seen

“I have been pooped on, peed on, had people pass out,” says Tom Aussem about occupational hazards. ! CARLY RIES everything that somebody could do to me in free fall. I have been pooped on, peed on, had people pass out. It’s very lonely under the parachute when that happens. When we’re being videoed, I like to play it up a little bit, so I always open my mouth really big and give a great big “Yahoo!” Well, one time my mouth comes open for the “Yahoo!,” and a great big booger comes flying out of the other guy’s nose and into my mouth. I was jumping in Colorado for a while, in an area with lots of colleges. All these college girls would come, and in every group there were one or two who refused to get out of the plane. It was like trying to flush a cat down the toilet. Now, as the sport has progressed and liability has changed, if somebody doesn’t want to leave the airplane, you can try to reassure them, but there’s not nearly as much coaxing and pushing as there used to be. I will say that of all the times I have

ever coaxed someone out, they’ve never regretted it. Modern parachutes are designed so that you come to nearly a complete stop right at the moment you touch down. It’s akin to just stepping down a regular step in your house. And with tandems, we’ll have the student raise their feet up in the air as high as they can for the landing. I’m only five-footfive, so if they were to stand up, I’d be dangling off their back like a monkey. I don’t particularly get an adrenaline rush from jumping. I just get a feeling of: “I just did something cool that’ll probably change someone’s life forever.” It takes a lot for some people to get to the point where they can jump out of an airplane, and I understand that, and I’m very proud of them for doing it just once. It really is something I think everybody should do. If you make even one skydive, you put yourself into a vastly smaller pool of people. —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD

# Keep up to date on the go at chicagoreader.com/agenda.

SURE THINGS THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

" Arianna Huffington The media mogul discusses her book The Sleep Revolution as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival’s spring programming. See page TK for more on CHF. 6 PM, Francis W. Parker School, 2233 N. Clark, chicagohumanities. org, $15.

# The Na ked Ma gic Show Christoper Wayne and Mike Tyler prove that you don’t need clothes to be a skilled magician in this show that combines stripping with sleight of hand. 7:30 PM, Park West, 322 W. Armitage, parkwestchicago.com, $20-$75.

" American Wh iskey Festival Celebrate whiskey the American way with unlimited samples of more than 100 different kinds, barbecue from Haywood Tavern, a tasting glass, and specials on all whiskey cocktails. 1-4 PM, Crown Liquors, 2821 N. Milwaukee, $35.

$ Chicago Corrupti on Walking Tour Two options for exploring Chicago’s history of corruption on foot: the first spans about a mile and ends at State Street, while the second (the “Bleepin’ Golden Package”) goes on for another mile and ends at the Chicago Brown Line stop. 1 PM, 427 S. Clark, dabble.co, $15-$25.

% Chicago Improv Festival It’s no secret that Chicago is home to some of the world’s most talented improv actors. This fest celebrates them with a weeklong series of events, ranging from musical comedy to long-form and dramatic and experimental performances. 5/2-5/8, various locations, chicagoimprovfestival.org.

" Wine and Wildlife This edition of the lecture series features Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, discussing his book The Humane Economy: How Innovators and Enlightened Consumers Are Transforming the Lives of Animals. Tue 5/3, 6 PM, Lincoln Park Zoo, 2200 N. Cannon, lpzoo.org, $17.

♀ One - Mi nute Play Festival The sixth annual festival features a marathon of one-minute plays by women and women-identified playwrights and directors. 5/3-5/4: 8 PM, Den Theatre, 1333 N. Milwaukee, oneminuteplayfestival.com, $18.

8 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

SPRING: TIME FOR ANTS TO COME MARCHING IN! Ants can intrude through the tightest openings to search for water or food.

DIY treatments might just kill the ants you see and won’t eliminate the colony.

Where there’s one ant, there’s an entire army’s worth nearby.

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 9

CITY LIFE

Read Ben Joravsky’s columns throughout the week at chicagoreader.com.

Troy LaRaviere ! TRACY SENECA

POLITICS

Principal concerns CPS still won’t say exactly why it yanked Troy LaRaviere. By BEN JORAVSKY

fter Chicago Public Schools officials banished Blaine Elementary School principal Troy LaRaviere, putting him under their version of house arrest, folks all over town looked toward Monday, April 25, as the day of revelation. That’s when the central office promised to reveal what alleged crimes against humanity LaRaviere committed to warrant being unceremoniously yanked from his job in the middle of spring break. They could have waited to yank him till summer, when school’s out. Or they could have kept him where he was—what with him being an award-winning principal and everything. And so it was on Monday that a hush fell over the jam-packed Blaine auditorium as CPS official Janice Jackson announced that Troy Anthony LaRaviere was guilty of . . . Kicking over the lamp in Mrs. O’Leary’s barn!

10 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

Only joking—Troy’s too young to have started the Great Chicago Fire, though I’m sure Mayor Emanuel would blame it on him if he could. Alas, the rationale Jackson offered up Monday was as vague as the one given when CPS announced last week that it had “reassigned” LaRaviere “to home.” According to Jackson, LaRaviere faces 12 unspecified charges having to do with “dereliction of duty, ethics violations of CPS policy and insubordination.” Plus, he double-dipped in the guacamole at Blaine’s Christmas party. For what it’s worth, my explanation for why CPS officials did what they did is because Mayor Rahm told them to. The mayor’s got to be sick and tired of LaRaviere blasting the hell out of him for intimidating principals, force-feeding students standardized tests, wasting time with burden-

some teacher evaluations, stripping schools of funding and trying to privatize what’s left. LaRaviere has his own blog where he writes things like—just to pick one example—“unfortunately, our mayor and his appointed board of education have been so irresponsible and so reckless, that I find myself squarely in agreement with the CTU on several school issues.” A principal defending the Chicago Teachers Union? Now that’s revolutionary! And bound to stick in the mayor’s craw. Also, LaRaviere endorsed Jesus “Chuy” Garcia over Emanuel in last year’s mayoral election. Then the principal doubled down by doing a commercial for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in which he said, “The chief politician standing in the way of us getting good schools is our mayor.” Even I never said that. Though if you asked . . . After LaRaviere was reassigned, Sanders issued a statement ripping “Mayor Emanuel’s unhealthy obsession with taking revenge.” You know, it’s sad that you’ve got to go all the way to Vermont to find a Democratic elected official willing to tell it like it is about Rahm. Emanuel might have been willing to overlook all this if LaRaviere hadn’t pursued an even bigger bully pulpit by running for president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association. As someone I know recently said, having LaRaviere at the head of the principals’ group would be like having two Karen Lewises in town. Who was it again? Oh, wait, that was me. LaRaviere’s reassignment bars him from entering any public school, which will make it difficult for him to campaign for next month’s election. Still, Jackson said Monday that LaRaviere was free to run. Jackson also insisted that LaRaviere’s reassignment was not the result of his criticism of the mayor. “I can honestly say this was not a politically motivated decision,” she said. This was a follow-up to her remarks last week, when she said, “We did not consult with the mayor in making this decision.” Actually, the real question is whether Emanuel consulted with her before he made the decision. Or did he just bark out the command? For the record, Emanuel claims he had nothing to do with LaRaviere’s punishment, telling reporters, “I do not get involved in a personnel decision.” I think Chicagoans believe this about as much as they believe Rahm’s assertion that last year’s election played no role in his decision to bury the Laquan McDonald video.

Monday’s meeting was Jackson’s first opportunity as an official to face a hostile northside audience enraged by an ill-conceived CPS decision shoved down their throats. This is a rite of passage that previous CPS leaders (such as Paul Vallas and Arne Duncan) have had to endure.

Emanuel and Claypool live within walking distance of Blaine Elementary. But apparently they were busy doing something else on Monday—perhaps hiding under their desks. Unlike Duncan or Vallas, however, Jackson isn’t the highest-ranking CPS official—she’s the chief education officer. The chief executive officer (can they make this anymore confusing?) is Forrest Claypool, Emanuel’s old pal. Coincidentally, Emanuel and Claypool both live within walking distance of Blaine. But apparently they were busy doing something else on Monday—perhaps hiding under their desks—so they dispatched Jackson to face the crowd. Now this showdown moves to the principals’ association election—words I never imagined I would write. Traditionally, the association has been a moderate group that stays clear of confrontations with the mayor. The other candidate in the race is Kenneth Hunter, who took an admirable stand against Emanuel’s decision to stick a Noble Network charter school across the street from Prosser Career Academy, a public vocational high school. But in this race, Hunter’s clearly Rahm’s candidate—or at least the candidate Emanuel wants to win. When I called LaRaviere for an interview, he said he had no comment. But it looks as though he’ll be very busy over the next few weeks, simultaneously running for office while defending himself against CPS’s accusations—whatever they may be. v

! @joravben

The golden ticket

n the morning of July 8, 2015, Julian Castro, the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, stood before a group of reporters and television cameras on Chicago’s south side. Flanked by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Housing Authority’s acting CEO, Eugene Jones, Castro was in town to make an important announcement—a mea culpa of sorts on behalf of the American government. Nearly 50 years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, the nation had failed to reverse decades of segregation. “The truth is, for too long federal efforts have often fallen short,” Castro said, dressed in a navy blue suit and a black tie, his boyish face framed by a thinning hairline slicked into his signature side part. It was time, Castro said, for cities to step up and with help from the federal government do what the law requires and “affirmatively further” fair housing. But for cities and towns to receive federal funds, he added, they’d need to account for how the money would be used to reduce racial disparities. If they then failed to meet their objectives, there would be penalties. Chicago was a fitting backdrop for Castro’s announcement, with its decades of housing policies that kept poor blacks stacked atop one another in decrepit high-rises and discriminatory real estate practices that confined them to deprived neighborhoods. Arguably, no city illustrates the failure of this landmark legislation more acutely. “We have a long history as it relates to fair housing,” Emanuel said when it was his turn to take the mike, his remarks hinting both at Chicago’s legacy of segregation and efforts to redress it. He stood in the footprint of the old Stateway Gardens, one of the city’s most neglected public housing projects. Emanuel was there to unveil its redevelopment, renamed Park Boulevard. Housing a mix of home owners and renters of various income levels, Park Boulevard was ostensibly a prime example of what Castro was there to promote: a bold and meaningful step in the direction of integration, opportunity, and equality. J

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 11

But only a fraction of low-income Chicagoans end up living in such developments. The majority—nearly 46,000 people who have vouchers today—find their housing on the private market using government-issued housing choice vouchers, also known as Section 8. And just 11 months before Castro stood shoulder to shoulder with Emanuel telling the country we have to work proactively to integrate our cities, the CHA had slashed a small pilot voucher program aimed at doing just that. Chicago has rarely found itself in the vanguard of progressive housing policy. But the program the CHA had curtailed embodied a new idea, a targeted intervention to combat the pernicious segregation plaguing Chicago. Under the official title of Exception Payment Standards, the “supervoucher” program, as it came to be called, offered a fraction of qualifying low-income families—those who had good credit and a clean rental history—access to Section 8 vouchers that were much higher than normal amounts, up to 300 percent of the fair market rent set by the federal government. In Chicago, much to the dismay of housing experts, fair market rent is calculated by averaging rental prices for the whole city, the Gold Coast and Englewood alike. This means that standard vouchers are almost never enough to rent in wealthier neighborhoods, yet often wind up being worth more than the market rent in poor ones (which leads to landlords aggressively recruiting mostly very low-income, mostly African-American voucher holders into the poorest, most segregated parts of town to secure higher rents than they could otherwise). The supervoucher program worked to counteract this problem. If the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment was $1,139 a month with a traditional voucher, a household in t he super voucher progra m could get as much as $3,132 for a two-bedroom. What’s more, the supervouchers could be used only in neighborhoods with low poverty and a low concentration of subsidized housing, known in policy parlance as “opportunity areas.”

How to get a “golden ticket

38,509 voucher households in Chicago

12,500 households attended a moving orientation

1,000 voucher households interested in moving to an opportunity area

To qualify for a fancy building, you must meet the following criteria:

Credit score above 600*

Clean background check

*ONLY ABOUT 27% OF VOUCHER HOUSEHOLDS INTERESTED IN MOVING

No eviction record

Proof of income

Now jump over the following hurdles posed by landlord discrimination:

NO KIDS

NO MINORITIES

Unit passes CHA inspection

YOUR INCOME MUST BE 4X THE RENT

I DON’T TAKE VOUCHERS

Landlord must check these boxes to recieve payment from CHA: ONE-YEAR LEASE RENT IS COMPARABLE TO OTHER SIMILAR UNITS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

IT WAS REALLY HARD TO GET HERE!

! JONATHAN PETERSEN

continued from 11

12 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

“Supervoucher” is issued 291 TOTAL IN 2013

In 2013, just one person got the 300% “golden ticket” supervoucher

NUMBERS ARE FOR 2013

Critics of the supervouchers claimed the program—comprising less than 2 percent of Chicago’s total Section 8 voucher recipients—was wasting taxpayer funds by placing low-income families in luxury high-rises like Aqua Tower while tens of thousands of families languished on the CHA’s voucher waiting list. Chief among them was then-congressman Aaron Schock, a fresh-faced Republican from Peoria, who demanded that HUD conduct an audit of the program and introduced a bill in Congress to restrict it. Supporters, on the other hand, saw the expansion of exception rents as one of the housing authority’s most innovative programs to date, one that finally pushed the needle, if ever so slightly, toward integration. Larry Pusateri, an affordable housing developer and CEO of Chicago-based VeriGreen Residential Development, puts it this way: “If you are sincerely trying to integrate, why are people not in the Aqua Tower?” Still, in the wake of incessant media coverage—and preempting the results of a government audit— CHA scaled back the program, dramatically reducing aid for 244 families and forcing nearly as many to find new housing. Documents obtained by the Reader through an open records request reveal a plan to improve housing options for low-income Chicagoans, the concept of which was approved by the feds. But the Chicago Housing Authority bungled the program’s execution by failing to keep track of its impact on residents and on the agency’s bottom line. In the end, Chicago’s nascent pro-integration strategy was killed before it ever had the chance to succeed.

orena, 47, remembers the day she walked into 215 W. Washington. It was her son’s 16th birthday, November 18, 2013. Driving by she had assumed it was a hotel. Now, sitting in the grand lobby, outfitted with a doorman, crisp white furniture, and bowls overflowing with complimentary apples and oranges, she was shocked that her Section 8 voucher might allow her

to live there. The building had a pool, gym, and a game room. There were fitness classes for residents on the weekends. But Lorena (who asked to be identified by her middle name because of the stigma attached to subsidized housing), was one of the lucky few supervoucher holders. Lorena was able to transfer a housing voucher from her hometown of South Bend, Indiana, to Chicago after finding a job working for a property manager in Lombard. Thanks to her excellent credit and good track record with landlords, her Chicago voucher wound up covering $2,605 a month, allowing her to consider buildings as nice as this one. When the building rep took Lorena up to the 32nd floor and showed her a two-bedroom apartment, she was sold. “I was like, I don’t even need to see any more units, this is it,” she recalls. From the kitchen and living room windows she could look out on Washington Street and see Millennium Park. “I had never lived in a high-rise. It was just so nice,” she says. There was a master suite with a bathroom, and her 16-year-old son, Doane (also his middle name) would have his own room and bathroom as well. Lorena applied on the spot and was approved. Six weeks later, on a snowy January day in 2014, she and Doane moved in. Finding the apartment was a huge relief. Doane was a newly enrolled junior at Hyde Park Academy. Coming from Indiana, Lorena’s biggest fear had been moving to a dangerous part of Chicago and what it could mean for her son. “He’s truly 100 percent a momma’s boy,” she says, her face softening as she reads a text message he just sent. But she was well aware of how young black men like her son can be stereotyped by the police. Then there was the crime and gangs to consider. “I wasn’t worried about him joining no gang,” Lorena says. “That’s just not him. He has a mind of his own, he’s not easy to influence—his main concern is school.” But she’d heard plenty about gang violence in the city and knew a five-foot-five black teenager with dreadlocks could become a target

in some neighborhoods. Living at 215 W. Washington eased Lorena’s fears; she drove Doane to and from school, but she never worried about him getting around safely on his own in the Loop. Her commute to work in Lombard became more manageable. Soon, their life developed a comfortable rhythm.

nknowingly, Lorena had moved into her new apartment in the middle of a shifting debate around fair housing. She arrived in the city just as the CHA, faced with a drastic shortage of affordable units in more prosperous parts of town, was experimenting with a new approach to integration. For decades, housing policy experts and social scientists have debated both the impact of growing up in a neighborhood with a high concentration of poverty and how best to break up such pockets while helping those who live in them. A central question is whether state and federal money should go toward affordable housing and investment in high-poverty neighborhoods, or whether the money would be better spent offering low-income families the opportunity to move. The debate was born here in Chicago. In the late 1960s, public housing residents sued the CHA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development for racially segregating public housing tenants and constructing the buildings only in poor, black neighborhoods. The case against HUD, Hills v. Gautreaux, went all the way to the Supreme Court, and in 1976 the residents won. The court ordered the federal government to allow 7,100 lowincome families living in Chicago public housing to take vouchers and move to majority-white suburbs, where poverty was low and a select number of landlords had made a commitment to taking them. Studies of this mobility program in the 1980s showed positive outcomes: those who moved were more likely to find jobs, their kids more likely to finish school and go to college. And though it had been predicted that such gains would come at the expense of social isolation, researchers found

that families who moved integrated as successfully into their suburban neighborhoods as their counterparts who moved to south- and west-side neighborhoods in the city. The results in the Chicago area were so promising that in the early 1990s the federal government decided to try out mobility programs in cities around the country. Results from that experiment, released in 2011, were disappointing, showing little upward mobility for families with children who moved to less poor areas. In 2015, however, a longer-term study of the same program by Harvard economists found results more in keeping with the earlier Chicago findings: strong economic and educational gains, and significantly better odds for youths to escape poverty. It seemed that mobility had finally proved itself viable.

ut as Lorena settled into her new apartment, her son doing so well in school that he was ready to graduate a year early, no one was keeping track of the mobility program’s viability in present-day Chicago. From the time news of supervouchers broke in the summer of 2014, the CHA faced a media firestorm and was accused of misappropriating funds. Even Mayor Emanuel chastised the agency for going “awry.” Yet the CHA’s experiment was actually well within the purview of a previous agreement it had with the federal government. In 1999, Mayor Richard M. Daley was looking to remake the city’s public housing by launching the so-called Plan for Transformation. Billed as a ten-year undertaking, the plan involved demolishing tens of thousands of units of public housing and greatly expanding the Section 8 voucher program. To execute the unprecedented overhaul, the city needed $1.5 billion from HUD and more control over its finances—a possibility only if the CHA was included in a new laissez-faire HUD pilot program known as Moving to Work. Participating in the program meant reduced federal oversight so that local housing authorities could have “the flexibility to design and test various approaches” to housing

assistance, according to the agreement. The designation was initially awarded to 24 “high-performing” agencies with proven track records for budgetary efficiency and strong management. Despite being a poster child for corruption and financial mismanagement, in 2000 the CHA was among those selected by HUD for the program. This baffled observers throughout the country. Today the CHA remains the only one of 42 housing authorities to have gained initial acceptance to the program by a “direct selection.” In 2009, Daley bragged that it was his own diligent stumping in Washington—taking his case directly to President Clinton, then President George W. Bush—that helped get the housing authority into the program. Once it was, all CHA had to show was that its various initiatives were working towards achieving Moving to Work’s three core objectives: achieving greater cost effectiveness, increasing housing opportunities, and offering incentives to families whose heads of household were actively working or seeking work. This is why, in 2010, when CHA officials and housing advocates proposed the supervoucher program, the agency dove in. It seemed logical and innovative, experts figured, to see what more money could do for a small subset of voucher holders: those who could meet the rigorous credit- and background-check requirements of higher-end buildings when the vast majority of Section 8 families were still stuck in neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty and higher crime rates. At the supervoucher program’s peak, 766 voucher households received some form of exception payment, a third of them collecting amounts above 150 percent of fair market rent, according to HUD as well as CHA documents obtained through an open records request. Since the program started in 2010, only 22 households have received payments hitting the 300 percent cap. “These were folks that wanted to do better,” said Chris Klepper, the executive director of Housing Choice Partners, the agency that partnered with the CHA in offering guidance to

“If you are sincerely trying to integrate, why are people not in the Aqua Tower?” —Affordable housing developer Larry Pusateri

families interested in moving to opportunity areas where supervouchers were used. And housing experts across the board, from developers to lawyers to academics, agreed: These were top-tier voucher holders, so why shouldn’t they have access to premium housing options? The CHA knew Section 8 vouchers were falling short of offering lowincome families true mobility. In a February 2015 letter to Kelly Anderson, the HUD regional inspector auditing the supervoucher program, CHA’s then-CEO, Michael Merchant, wrote that one reason the CHA decided to raise exception rents to 300 percent of the market rent from 110 percent was to allow voucher holders “to rent apartments in community areas on the North Side of Chicago.” He went on to write that without the exception payments, voucher holders (the vast majority of whom are African-American) “have a difficult time” finding apartments in that part of the city, leaving the south and west sides as their only options. Plus, developments like Park Boulevard cost more than $150 million to build, so dishing out thousands of dollars more a month for higher rents was actually cheaper in the short term than building more public housing units, which the authority was woefully behind on anyway. What’s more, the cost of the program at its peak—$4.8 million in 2014— was a small slice of the CHA’s $1 billion budget, nearly half of which is allocated solely to vouchers.

n June 10, 2014, U.S. rep Aaron Schock stood before members of Congress with a proposal to curb voucher exception payments, arguing that they “reward a few at the expense of so many” and “allow some families to, in essence, hit the lottery.” The next month, news of the supervouchers started to spread. Stories appeared in Crain’s Chicago Business and on local TV networks. A Crain’s editorial cited the program as “an apparent waste of money, even if the numbers are small” and asked “how are the lucky winners selected? Are politics and favoritism at work?” Some landlords and property J

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 13

One voucher holder’s long ride

Erika Weaver’s commute became routine after two unsuccessful years seeking housing in Chicago.

12 AM On Sunday nights Erika Weaver arrives at Union Station after a three-and-ahalf-hour train ride from her home in downstate Mattoon. From here she takes the Blue Line to her grandmother’s house in west-suburban Hines.

continued from 13

managers of buildings that had accepted voucher holders were complaining too. “This is nuts,” property manager Tony Rossi told Crain’s. “Do [voucher holders] really need a 25thfloor apartment with a lake view? It just doesn’t make sense to me.” The week that news of the exception rents broke, attorney Allison Bethel was on vacation from her job as director of John Marshall Law School’s Fair Housing Legal Clinic. Bethel has represented many voucher holders in discrimination cases, and when she returned from her trip, her voice mail was filled with concerned calls from them. The message from CHA to her clients was “get out now,” Bethel says. “Many of them, it really disrupted their lives. . . . They had moved and they understood that they were not guaranteed this in perpetuity, but they certainly didn’t think they would be ousted within a year, or so quickly.” On August 29, 2014, Lorena received a letter from the CHA informing her that effective August 11—more than two weeks before the letter was postmarked—the CHA would only approve exception

payments of up to 150 percent of the fair market rent. Lorena’s share of her monthly housing payments would go from $95 to $1,390; the CHA would cover just $1,310, instead of the $2,605 it covered previously. “Mentally, I couldn’t even wrap my mind around it,” she says. In the end, there was no legal ground to halt what Schock had set in motion, as the CHA had made no commitment to residents about how long they’d receive the exception payments. Bethel and her staff were, however, able to halt the relocation of the 244 households whose exception rent was above 150 percent until their leases were up or their vouchers were up for renewal, the last of which turn over in 2018. “We were able to limit the harm,” she says. Still, as the summer turned to fall, voucher holders kept calling Bethel, each one more deflated than the next. “The calls changed from being angry and frustrated to sad and then resignation. And now people are just so disillusioned with the whole thing,” Bethel says of the program. “Most people who come to me are not looking for a great legal case,” she says. “They are looking to get a house.”

14 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

7:30 AM Weaver leaves her grandmother’s and heads downtown for school.

n August 2014, though the CHA had already moved to curtail the program, HUD’s Office of Inspector General launched an audit at Schock’s urging. The office requested reams of data and interviewed HUD and CHA staff, investigating how the housing authority had come to set supervouchers at three times the fair market rates and why. The audit revea led that the program was giving exception payments to 766 families, costing the CHA $4.8 million a year, less than one-half of 1 percent of its total annual budget. In addition, the report noted that CHA started that year with $220 million in reserves for the entire voucher program. That number backed up the findings of a study released six months earlier by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a Chicago-based bipartisan think tank. It claimed that between 2004 and 2012, the CHA averaged an annual surplus of $90 million while issuing far fewer vouchers than funding allowed—13,534 fewer a year since 2008, to be exact. Schock also complained that tens of thousands of low-income families

7:45 AM Weaver has been taking the same route to the Blue Line for so long that she knows the bus drivers by name.

languished on a voucher waiting list. However, in 2014, the real number was far less: 332, according to CHA. (In contrast, the separate waiting list for public housing units was more than 11,200, according to the housing agency.) What crippled the CHA’s defense of exception payments most of all, though, was its lack of institutional memory. During the life of the supervoucher program, the CHA was helmed by four different CEOs. The churn meant that no one could produce for HUD investigators documents that explained how the agency arrived at the 300 percent cap in 2010. “We don’t know exactly why 300—I think that was a safe number just to be able to capture and give people flexibility,” says Michael Merchant, who headed the CHA when HUD launched its audit. In the end, HUD’s inspector general found that the CHA “lacked the documentation” to justify its master plan for supervouchers and prove that it was “reasonable and cost effective.” (Some CHA sources have claimed that the 300 percent cap was based on a 2010 market analysis, but the CHA was unable to provide these

documents to the federal government or the Reader.) Merchant, who’s now the director of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, emphasizes that the vouchers covering the full 300 percent were only supposed to be used for “extreme situations,” such as a person in need of handicappedaccessible housing. The CHA’s own records show that throughout the life of the program only 22 households had vouchers that maxed out at the 300 percent exception payment. Additionally, in response to the inspector general’s inquiries, the CHA conducted a retrospective housing market analysis for 2010, which revealed that the Near North Side and Lakeview had more housing units than any other neighborhood, but required nearly 300 percent of the fair market rent to become accessible to families with children. Records also show that from the start of the exception-rent pilot, CHA was transparent with HUD about its objectives and the local housing authority’s cost. In fact, it had come to an understanding with the federal agency that cost management wasn’t the program’s driving factor. In

Photos by SUNSHINE TUCKER

8 AM Waiting for the train at the Forest Park stop

9 AM After an hour on the Blue Line, Weaver transfers to the Red Line at Jackson. She waits at particular parts of the platforms to make her transfer easier.

9:15 AM Weaver finally arrives at Loyola University’s downtown law school campus. On Wednesday she’ll head back to Mattoon and start the cycle again.

CHA’s 2010 proposal for the program to HUD, the housing authority said it sought to revise the objective of exception payments, from “reducing costs and increasing housing options to only increasing housing options for low-income families.” CHA’s primary concern was no longer how much the subset of supervouchers cost, but rather what options it could provide low-income families to get out of high-poverty neighborhoods. Documents show that in 2010, when HUD asked CHA about the anticipated cost savings from the exception rents, CHA replied: “there is no anticipated amount of reduced costs.” HUD approved the change of language. As such, every subsequent annual report states only one statutory objective for the supervoucher program: “Increase housing choices for low income families.” During the audit, in September 2014, CHA provided HUD’s inspector general with a financial analysis of people in the program who were receiving higher exception payments. The analysis showed that if the exception payment cap was dropped to 150 from 300 percent, only 9 percent of families would be able to afford their current units, or 21

families out of 234. Despite the fact that hundreds of people like Lorena were likely to be priced out of their homes—and despite HUD’s 2010 approval of CHA’s revised objectives— investigators determined that CHA was in violation of its Moving to Work agreement. Both HUD and CHA sources say the inspector general’s findings were frustrating after the two agencies had collaborated on the pilot. Once the report was published, however, HUD had no choice but to enforce the findings—the Moving to Work agreement with the federal government cited all three objectives. But not only did HUD enforce the report’s findings, last winter it asked the CHA to conduct a thorough financial analysis (yet to be completed) of the original supervoucher program. Based on the conclusions of the analysis, the agency could be asked to reimburse HUD for “unreasonable” voucher payouts.

children decided Lincoln Park was their top choice. But Weaver, who is African-American, quickly realized that even with access to CHA’s new supervouchers, finding affordable housing in a prime Chicago neighborhood wasn’t easy. “We had a few places that said, ‘Yes, we love her, we want to do this!’ ” Weaver recalls. “Then when they found out I had a voucher they would say no.” Eventually Weaver told her real estate agent to alert people up front that she had a voucher and see if they were still willing to show her the apartment. “I would say out of ten at least seven canceled.” Weaver continued her apartment hunt throughout the north side over the summer of 2013. But by August she still hadn’t found anything, forcing her to defer law school until the following academic year. The decision was “traumatic,” she says. “I think I cried for two weeks.” A year later, Weaver was still spinning her wheels—there was a shortage of family-size apartments in neighborhoods with good public schools, and when she located one, landlords continued to reject her application. Come fall 2014 Weaver was still apartmentless, but she had to

egardless of its reputation as a golden ticket, many Section 8 families who received a supervoucher found that, despite having more money to work with, they still

faced discrimination. In spring 2013, Erika Weaver received a letter of acceptance from the Loyola University Chicago School of Law, a goal she’d had since she was 14 years old. Then 39, Weaver was living with her three children, 17-year-old son Kylon and two daughters, Tayler, 14, and Morgan, nine, in Mattoon, a small town three hours south of Chicago. Weaver worked at Lake Land College there, and had a Section 8 voucher from the local housing authority to help pay for her three-bedroom apartment. That May, she began to search for a new place in a Chicago opportunity area, where supervouchers were provided as part of the CHA’s mobility program. On paper, Weaver was the perfect candidate. She had a credit score well above 600, no eviction record, and no criminal history. She had also managed to save $4,000 for a security deposit and move-in fees. Weaver’s priority was finding an apartment in a safe neighborhood with a good public high school, “a place that would be comfortable for my family, moving from a small, rural town into the city,” she says. After driving around different neighborhoods, she and her

start law school or lose her deposit. By then, her son Kylon had graduated high school, so she enrolled him at Harold Washington College in anticipation of the move to Chicago. They spent the first semester sleeping at a friend’s house, Weaver regularly dipping into her savings to pay application fees anywhere between $75 and $90 apiece for apartments that continued to fall through. When she could no longer afford their security deposits, she gave up searching in downtown buildings altogether. Yvette Jones has been a real estate broker for 22 years and works with many voucher holders. She says that out of ten listing agents or landlords she might reach out to, “maybe one” will be open to leasing the unit to a Section 8 client, supervoucher or not. Chicago is one of the few places in the country that bars discrimination based on a renter’s source of income, including vouchers. The law is supposed to protect voucher holders like Weaver, but it’s rarely enforced, and when it is, the penalty for landlords is only $500. According to the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, which investigates discrimination cases of every sort, only about 60 voucher-related rental J

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 15

continued from 15

discrimination complaints are filed every year in the city. Bethel, the fair housing lawyer, says that this is because legal action against discriminatory rental practices is slow and rarely rewarding. Her clinic usually tries to resolve the issue by attempting to persuade offending landlords to “change their decision voluntarily.” Many landlords and property managers simply don’t know how the voucher program works or that they are legally bound to accept voucher holders if they meet other requirements such as credit and background checks, she said. In January 2015, after having searched for almost two years and trying to secure more than 40 units, Weaver threw in the towel. She wouldn’t move to Chicago after all. “The process should not be that exhausting,” she says. She’s now in her second year of law school at Loyola but still lives in Mattoon. Every Sunday, Weaver takes a three-hour train ride into the city to stay with her grandmother, then commutes another hour to Loyola’s downtown classrooms by public transit. On Wednesday nights she returns home to spend the remainder of the week with her children. “Trying to move to Chicago was one of the most disgusting and deplorable experiences I’ve had,” Weaver says. When landlords saw she was in law school they were impressed and motivated to rent to her. “Then they hear that I have a voucher and they feel like I’ve defrauded them in some way.”

eanwhile, for a typical voucher holder, the vast majority of whom do not live in o p p o r t u n i t y a re a s where exception rents were granted, discrimination on the part of landlords is only the first hurdle. Once a unit is secured, many must contend with poor property maintenance, unpredictable rent increases, unsafe neighborhoods, and frequent moves. The Reader’s analysis of CHA inspection data for 2015 shows that 69 percent of units paid for by CHA vouchers failed at least one inspec-

tion. (According to CHA spokeswoman Molly Sullivan, “It is common for owners to fail the first inspection, usually for minor reasons that are easily corrected.”) However, nearly a quarter of the units failed two or more inspections. Meanwhile, the owners of the seven buildings with the most violations that year received more than $4 million in total voucher payments from the CHA—nearly as much as the $4.8 million per year it cost to house all the supervoucher families. The analysis supplied by CHA to HUD’s inspector general found that 53 percent of exception rent households had access to top-rated elementary schools in their opportunity area neighborhoods, compared to 15 percent of households in poorer neighborhoods. There are other problems to contend with too. Jackie Paige, 52, has had a Section 8 voucher since the early 2000s. Paige is African-American and a native south-sider, and she wanted to live in the Hyde Park area so she could send her two children to Kenwood Academy. Her voucher, however, covered only enough for rent in the most decrepit and crime-ridden parts of the neighborhood. Her first apartment, on 54th and Maryland, was infested with rodents, she says. “I hated that place,” she recalls. “I couldn’t wait to get out.” She knew there were gangs in the area and that drugs were sold along Drexel Avenue, just a block away. After a few years she moved to a new apartment nearby, but it wasn’t much better. Then, in summer 2002, when Paige’s son, Tarek, was nine and her daughter, Jameelah, was 12, she wasn’t able to afford summer camp for them. Tarek “hung out with people who did drugs, and they took him under their wing because I had to work,” she says, her voice heavy. Soon enough, a gang had pulled him in. In 2009, after the rent went up in her second Hyde Park apartment, Paige moved to Bronzeville. Still, her son “continued his associations with the bad element,” Paige says. “He’d go back and visit them. Once that connection was made he never severed it. Even though I would move and get him away from that.”

16 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

“People resent lower-income people living around rich people. I think that’s what this is all about.” —CHA voucher holder Jackie Paige

At 3 AM on a day in November 2011, Paige got a knock at the door. It was the police. “[They] told me that my car was found and a body was in it. And they showed me [his] tattoos.” Tarek, then 18, had been shot to death. Paige is grateful for her voucher; without it, she says, she would have had to live in even more dangerous neighborhoods. But she can’t help but wonder if living in a different neighborhood, a more prosperous neighborhood—perhaps with the help of a supervoucher—might have saved her son. In 2012, two years into the CHA’s program, Paige qualified for a supervoucher. She found a South Loop apartment she knew she could afford. Her application was approved. But the deal fell through when the landlord realized she had a subsidy, Paige says. In all, Paige moved four times in ten years. She now lives with her daughter (who just graduated from Roosevelt University) in a quiet part of Bronzeville, where her street is always plowed in winter; her building has a cleaning staff and a laundry room on each floor “so no long waits.” It’s not in an opportunity area, but she feels safe there. And she only needs to take one bus to get to her job at a Magnificent Mile department store. Though she never benefited from exception rents herself, she thinks they were a good idea and is disappointed by the CHA’s response to the controversy. “People resent lower-income people living around rich people. I think that’s what this is all about.”

“T

here is probably never going to be enough vouchers,” says Bethel, the fair housing attorney. “But it seems that reducing them so that all you’re doing is perpetuating segregated housing patterns as they already exist is not helping anyone. It is not helping the city. And that, arguably, is illegal.” So why did the CHA slash the exception rents program before it was properly evaluated, before it had a chance to succeed? The question is especially perplexing given

the federal government’s renewed commitment to housing integration. The supervoucher program was by no means a panacea for the myriad problems facing precariously housed Chicagoans. However, it was the only strategy that targeted Chicago’s long pattern of segregation by offering the financing, unit by unit, to combat it. The CHA didn’t have to rely on housing voucher holders in luxury condo buildings to put a dent in the city’s segregation patterns. However, the severe shortage of available rental housing in the city’s more affordable and integrated neighborhoods, combined with rampant discrimination, left the agency with fewer viable options. For example, a recent study by the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law found that on the northwest side—where rental prices are low enough to accommodate working-class families and neighborhoods are integrated—landlords turned away African-American voucher holders 58 percent of the time, “the highest frequency of refusal to rent” for this demographic in the entire city. The same study found that landlords “discriminated against African-American voucher holders 53% of the time, in all areas of the city tested except the Loop and Hyde Park.” Even more than a year after scaling it back, CHA continues to be under fire for the exception rent program. Meanwhile, fair housing experts and advocates keep urging us to look at it in context, to not distort the issue or turn the conversation away from the conventional voucher program’s failure to challenge existing patterns of segregation. Today, with the exception rent scaled back to 150 percent, the CHA reports that 12 of Chicago’s 77 community areas have fallen out of reach for families with vouchers. Among them are Lincoln Park and the Loop, but also more moderately priced neighborhoods such as Uptown and Bridgeport. More than 80 percent of the city is still accessible, at least in theory. By now, though, it’s clear the obstacles to finding safe, affordable housing are more complex than the numbers reveal.

Last May, when the Harvard study on the long-term benefits of mobility was published, housing secretary Castro told the New York Times he was energized by the new data—so much so that HUD was looking at altering funding so that some people moving to more expensive neighborhoods would be eligible for larger vouchers. He didn’t specify by how much. There is also mounting evidence that keeping low-income people in segregated, shoddy housing is costing taxpayers significant money. In March, Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond published Evicted, a landmark book on skyrocketing eviction rates among poor Americans. Desmond’s work focused on Milwaukee, but his findings are as relevant to Chicago. Only a small fraction of rent-burdened families (those paying more than 30 percent of their monthly income in rent) benefit from vouchers across the country. In Chicago more than 40 percent of households in 73 of 77 community areas are rent burdened. And while a single person making less than $43,000 can qualify for a voucher, fewer than 7 percent of renter households in the city have one. Milwaukee, like Chicago, has landlords who recruit voucher holders into poor neighborhoods to bring in more revenue than the market would. Desmond, the first to crunch the numbers, found that “overcharging voucher holders cost taxpayers an additional $3.6 million each year in Milwaukee—the equivalent of supplying 588 more needy families with housing assistance.” In Chicago—which has eight times as many voucher households than Milwaukee—using vouchers to pay for substandard housing in segregated neighborhoods is likely costing the CHA far more than the supervouchers ever did.

fter months of trying to get answers from the CHA about her options, Lorena was notified that she’d have to move when her lease was up, in January 2016. With nowhere to go, she and her son moved into the Woodlawn home of her friend, a nail techni-

cian. The following week she sat at an orientation session hosted by Housing Choice Partners, where she and other voucher holders were told not to bother looking for a home downtown—the reduced exception payments would most certainly not be enough to cover the cost. Nearly three months later, Lorena is still living in Woodlawn with her friend. “I’m sick of living out of a box,” she says, shaking her head in frustration. Her goal is still to move to a neighborhood where her son will be safe. To this day she doesn’t understand how a legislator from Peoria, three and a half hours south of Chicago, where median rents for a two-bedromm apartment were $705 in 2015 compared to Chicago’s $1,840, was able to exercise such power over her housing. Sitting at a round metal table inside a South Loop Mariano’s, she gets worked up when she thinks about Schock. “I think he made a comment like, ‘They got a golden ticket,’” she says of the former congressman, who in an ironic turn of events was forced to resign when questions arose over his misuse of public funds—among them spending $40,000 from his official office budget to redecorate his Capitol Hill digs to resemble the set of PBS’s Downton Abbey. As of press time, Schock had not responded to a request for comment on his campaign to restrict exception payments. Digging into one of two overstuffed purses, Lorena pulls pages of letters from the CHA and printed e-mails of her frantic back-and-forth with the leasing office at 215 W. Washington. She pauses to check another text from her son, then continues, “A lot of these people, they wasn’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth. A lot of these people is trying to better themselves,” she says, addressing Schock. “They don’t want to stay in messed-up areas. They wanna live like you livin’. And then you come in here and you just put a whole damper on their dreams?” But she’s also disappointed with the CHA. “They basically did what he said, honored what he said, and didn’t have our backs. No one stood up for us.” v

This story was produced as part of the Social Justice News Nexus fellowship at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University, with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

SAVE THE DATES!

2 DAY SPRING BOUTIQUE SALE FRIDAY & SATURDAY, APRIL 29TH & 30TH at Spirit of God Fellowship Hall, 16350 S. State Street, South Holland, IL (One block south of 159th Street)

Friday 10AM - 4PM • Saturday 10AM - 2PM New & Gently worn Designer, High end clothing for every occasion - Petite thru Plus Size LOTS OF NEW W/TAGS CLOTHING SPRING & SUMMER CLOTHING PROM DRESSES • CASUAL & BUSINESS ATTIRE SPRING JACKETS & COATS • JEWELRY • PURSES SANDALS & SHOES MOST ITEMS $20 & UNDER VISA, MASTERCARD & DISCOVER ACCEPTED

SE HABLA ESPANOL All proceeds will support Restoration Ministries of Harvey and our life changing programs for at risk youth, recovering addicts and families struggling in poverty.

www.restorationministries.net

43 YEARS IN BUSINESS

SAME OWNERSHIP | SAME LOCATION

Come Spend Your Holidays With Us!!

FREE PARKING

SUNDAY – THURSDAY 11AM-11PM FRIDAY & SATURDAY 11AM-12 MIDNIGHT

Authentic Grecian Cuisine 222 S. Halsted (Greek Town)

312-454-0800

RESERVE YOUR TABLE TODAY!

12 O’CLOCK TRACK SERIES

A SIDE OF JAM WITH YOUR

LUNCH EVERY WEEKDAY

THEBLEADER.COM

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 17

Never miss a show again.

EARLY WARNINGS

chicagoreader.com/early

please recycle this paper 18 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

ARTS AND CULTURE A 2015 Beyond the Score performance on the work of composer Leonard Bernstein ! TODD ROSENBERG

CLASSICAL

CSO gives Beyond the Score the final curtain The innovative multimedia shows were meant to bring new audiences to the symphony. By DEANNA ISAACS

s there a future for symphony orchestras? That question was in the air a decade ago, when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra hired British writer, broadcaster, and composer Gerard McBurney to launch an extraordinary experiment called Beyond the Score. And it’s still hanging there now, as CSO ends Beyond the Score. Two performances scheduled for next month will be the last in this innovative, ambitious, and arguably most successful of the orchestra’s attempts at audience expansion. In three original multimedia shows each year, Beyond the Score put great pieces of music into the context of the lives and times that created them. The shows include actors, a narrator, video, and the full orchestra; the result at its best is a powerful sort of documentary theater that anchors and enhances the music. The live events at Symphony Center have been one piece of a three-part strategy. Each new show was filmed, so that it could be

posted online, free to anyone with a Web connection anywhere in the world. And each show was available for license to other orchestras for their own live performances—with the assumption that licensing fees would offset some of the original production costs. The shows at Symphony Center were so popular that CSO eventually added a second performance for each. In the ten years since they began, McBurney has developed and narrated 30 different programs, presenting everyone from Beethoven to Bernstein. This season included a much-praised tribute to the difficult music of Pierre Boulez, with stage design by Frank Gehry. So why is the program now being axed? Well, for one thing, there’s been a changing of the guard at CSO. McBurney—who was recruited for the job after he and his brother, actor and director Simon McBurney, created a piece for the launch of LA’s Disney Hall—says Beyond the Score was the idea of former CSO president Deborah Rutter and vice president Martha Gilmer, both of whom have since left.

(Rutter is now president of the John F. Kennedy Center; Gilmer is CEO of the San Diego Symphony.) Rutter’s successor, Jeff Alexander, took over at the start of last year, after CSO’s iconic music director Riccardo Muti reportedly advocated for him.

“It had run its course and we really needed to move on. Not every project continues forever.” —CSO president Jeff Alexander

Artistically, “we were all proud of it,” says Alexander of Beyond the Score, but “we just felt it was time, after ten years. It had run its course, and we really needed to move on. Not every project continues forever.”

And, he says, this program wasn’t hitting all its marks: CSO did an audience analysis of Beyond the Score about a year ago and “found that the majority of people who were coming were actually not new to the CSO.” (The majority weren’t when I wrote about the program in 2008 either, but Kevin Giglinto, then vice president of marketing, was pleased to report that “more than 35 percent . . . are first-time customers.”) The audience also failed to grow when the schedule was expanded, Alexander says, though he’s not citing any numbers. “But the real problem was the cost of doing it,” Alexander says. “The cost of all the extra elements far outweighed the revenue from ticket sales. And the ability to attract large philanthropic funds to support the project after its third or fourth or fifth year became very difficult. For the last five years, it was losing quite a bit of money.” How much? CSO’s not willing to say. (According to CSO’s annual reports, the symphony had a $1.3 million deficit on an operating budget of $72.7 million in 2015, down a hair from its $1.4 million deficit a year earlier.) However, one part of the Beyond the Score strategy is getting a second chance. CSO is now making a “revitalized effort” on the licensing component, “because we have 30 of these wonderful programs in stock,” Alexander says. Until now, “revenue from the licensing was not enough to be particularly helpful.” The final Beyond the Score show is focused on Nights in the Garden of Spain by early 20th-century composer Manuel de Falla. McBurney says it was inspired by the Alhambra palace in Granada. “It’s a piece about night and dreams,” McBurney says, “and the nighttime is always a good place to end a cycle of stories.” As for the future of symphony orchestras? Alexander says he’s been eyeballing the lobby crowd, seeing “more and more young people coming on a regular basis.” He thinks they realize that “to come hear a live classical music concert with a full magnificent symphony orchestra is a very special experience, more invigorating than all the electronics that they’re bombarded with.” The average age of CSO subscribers and single-ticket buyers is 50, which, he says, “is the youngest average age of all major U.S. orchestras.” Also, 20 percent of the audience is millennials, 19 percent are Gen Xers, and last year 17,000 student tickets were sold at $20 each. His glass is clearly half full. v

! @DeannaIsaacs APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 19

ARTS & CULTURE

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

Steve Haggard, McKenzie Chinn

THEATER

Back from the dead By TONY ADLER

n a time when you can find anybody, disappearance is a powerful fantasy. ¶ Last week I saw Steep Theatre’s production of The Few, Samuel D. Hunter’s recent play about a man who returns home after four years spent who knows where. Before that Jackalope premiered Calamity West’s The Rolling, in which a disgraced reporter goes into seclusion—physical and digital—while trying to sort out her life. I know that’s not a wide sampling, but the theme of somehow getting beyond the reach of all webs and every connection seems especially striking in light of Ike Holter’s astonishing new piece of work on the subject, Sender. Leonard Harris is the sort of guy who can pull off a nickname like “Lynx.” Holter’s character description calls him “magnetic and attractive.” His former lover Tess, on the other hand, calls him “motherfucker” when he materializes in her Chicago apartment 365 days (366, she corrects, since it’s past midnight) after having stolen off without a word, leaving everyone to believe that his bike, found abandoned on the shore, signified a drunken stumble into Lake Michigan.

20 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

Well, almost everyone. While Lynx’s other friends mourned as best they could in the absence of a body, the classically and aptly named Cassandra knew, as she says, “something else was up.” Married, pregnant, and earning serious money at a grown-up job, she’s become the inverse image of Lynx’s airy irresponsibility and is no longer subject to his mystique. Cassandra sees herself as having assumed leadership of the group that once gathered around Lynx. As having shepherded them through their trauma. She wants him gone again, this time for good. Most of all she wants to keep him as far as possible from her husband, Jordan, who idolized Lynx with a fervor that rivaled Tess’s. Of course, Cassandra fails in that regard. And once Jordan sees Lynx, matters get serious. The Peter Pan of Logan Square (or Humboldt Park, maybe—some locus of hipsterism) hasn’t dropped his fantasy of escape. Lynx isn’t back to resume his life but to lure others out of theirs. It’s a tempting offer. Tess is a dog walker (“I have a degree in poetry and a minor in art, the only thing I can do is walk dogs”), Jordan works for Groupon, and the baby in Cassandra’s womb has made

reality entirely too real. Beer was good once. Music was fun. Sex was amazing. It might be nice to fuck up completely, once and for all, and drop off the grid. A big part of the genius of Sender is the breakneck momentum embedded in Holter’s script and carried through by Shade Murray’s canny 90-minute staging for A Red Orchid Theatre. Holter, the Chicago-based wunderkind best known for his Stonewall-riot drama Hit the Wall, is fearless here. He lets his characters spin out like wet clay on a lopsided potter’s wheel, knowing there’s every possibility they’ll end up, well, hitting the wall. Yet, for all its centrifugal force, the play never gives the impression of outrunning its author’s capacities. Holter’s comic sense is too strong for that, endlessly and hilariously asserting itself. More so is his poetic sense. Sender treads an interesting, exhilarating line between everyday hipster patois (“I’m just saying”) and something more ugly/exalted (“Lynx, why did you screw everything the fuck up? Everything the fuck up. Everything the fuck up, everything the fuck up, Leonard Harris . . . ”). Like the name Cassandra, Holter’s language occasionally touches the mythic. And the cast is pretty much perfect for its demands. Steve Haggard’s Lynx exudes the slimy, smooth, uncertain confidence of a man who used to be celebrated for his cool recklessness but aged out of his golden god phase and is now just plain lost. It’s fascinating to watch him wield the one power he’s got left: his ability to play on the nostalgia and affection of the people he used to exploit. Mary Williamson and Steven Wilson are depressingly believable as the exploitees, Tess and Jordan. Wilson, in particular, combines the softness of the perpetual second fiddle with something far more desperate. McKenzie Chinn, meanwhile, is positively Delphic as Cassandra—taking no shit, unshakeable in her sense that she knows what things cost when she’s mistaken about the currency. v R SENDER Through 5/29: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells, 312943-8722, aredorchidtheatre.org, $30-$35.

! @taadler

! TIM BARDEN

! MICHAEL BROSILOW

DANCE

Kyle Abraham is still insisting HATE IS A POWERFUL MOTIVATOR for Kyle Abraham. And the New York-based choreographer doesn’t shy from putting it front and center in “When the Wolves Came In,” a trio of dances whose title refers to the 1960 protest album We Insist! Freedom Now Suite by jazz drummer and composer Max Roach and singer-songwriter Oscar Brown Jr. Set to a score that ranges from contemporary classical composer Nico Muhly to spirituals and designed by artist Glenn Ligon, the striking work incorporates projections “of incidents that were racially charged, racially questionable,” says Vinson Fraley, a member of the choreographer’s company Abraham.In.Motion. “You have people in blackface, you have interesting things happening visually,” Fraley says. “The images are so vivid, so strong you can’t not have a reaction to them.” Reaction seems to be the point. One of the questions Abraham grapples with in Wolves is the progress—or lack thereof—of civil rights in the time of Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, Laquan McDonald, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. “People ask how much of the work has to do with what happened a long time ago, back in the civil rights movement,” Fraley says. “I think what we’re trying to get across is that these things are happening today, right now. They’re happening in a lot of ways, we just don’t see it.” —MATT DE LA PEÑA R KYLE ABRAHAM/ABRAHAM.IN.MOTION: WHEN THE WOLVES CAME IN 4/28-5/1: ThuSat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago, 312-280-2660, mcachicago.org, $30.

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 21

ARTS & CULTURE Rules, by their very nature, are oversimplifications; there are many exceptions to them. Sometimes it’s those exceptions that make the most elegant writing or give a writer a unique voice. PINTO: That’s so cool, Carol. It reminds me of something—I have several friends that English is their second language. I always find it really intriguing how they might use a word in such a different context that it kind of brightens the meaning of it in an interesting, strange way.

Carol Saller and Maria Pinto ! COURTESY CHICAGO HUMANITIES FESTIVAL

CHICAGO HUMANITIES FESTIVAL

Editorial style and fashion style: It’s not all about appearances By JULIA THIEL

or the Chicago Humanities Festival panel Style Matters, fashion designer Maria Pinto and Chicago Manual of Style editor Carol Saller will join other style experts to discuss “how we should dress, write, and live” in a series of conversations. Pinto will talk with fellow designer Rachel Roy; Saller with New York Times reporter Jennifer Schuessler (SAIC Fashion Resource Center director Gillion Carrara will be talking with journalist and graphic-design expert Jude Stewart). Intrigued by the possible parallels between editorial style and fashion style, we asked Pinto and Saller what style means to them, what the rules are, and when it makes sense to break those rules.

JULIA THIEL: What does style mean to each of you, as it applies to your profession? MARIA PINTO: That’s kind of a trigger word for me. I think there’s an implied sense of what style should be by trends and fashion dictates. That’s not really the path I encourage my clients to take—I think that style should really be about personal expression. CAROL SALLER: People know what fashion style means, but when you say editorial style sometimes you get blank stares. So let me just say what that covers: the way you style a manuscript is by applying punctuation, capitalization, hyphenation. Those rules aren’t the same

22 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

for every publisher, so there are different style guides that lay out different rules. Writing style also has to do with personal expression, like Maria said. But there are more rules; grammar and usage come into play. In informal, creative contexts, the author can break all those rules. But I’m a representative of a rule maker. How do rules apply to fashion and writing? How strict are they, and are they made to be broken? PINTO: I think all rules are made to be broken. But there’s a time and place. If I have a

banker [as a client], I’m not going to encourage her to wear biker boots with her sheath dress, because I know that’s not going to be appropriate. Someone who’s creative, I might try to get her to express that creativity. Clothing is a great tool, because we do judge a book by its cover. SALLER: You’re using a writing metaphor. The parallels are uncanny: the context of writing has to be judged in the way that the appropriateness of clothing is judged, because the way we speak conveys something about our person, just like clothing. Rules, yes, are made to be broken, and it’s something that editors can facilitate. I went to a conference recently where someone, her name is Sarah Gray, said something great: “We are word professionals. Sticklers are amateurs.” I think what she was getting at is that sticklers have a limited bag of tricks. They haven’t gained the writing skills that professional writers and editors would use to manipulate the rules successfully.

Is it also true that in the fashion world, it’s the amateurs who really want to stick to the rules? PINTO: Fashion designers, I think, are always really trying to break the rules. I’m not sure they’re always doing it successfully. A set of words I use a lot with this new collection [M2057] is “deconstructed couture.” Couture is all about rules, understanding and knowing your craft. And then it gives you permission to really start looking at it and deconstructing it. When I work with my technical team—like a pattern maker, who is very technical, and she knows exactly how something should be done—it’s really fun to challenge them and put ideas in front of them that help them take that set of rules or knowledge to another place. That’s where the deconstruction comes in. Do you see other parallels between fashion and grammar? SALLER: When people online post comments on language sites, there’s often a lot of nitpicking and shaming that goes on. There’s a very popular book, Eats, Shoot & Leaves, where Lynne Truss seems to promote pointing out, or even defacing, signs that have the wrong apostrophes—grammar shaming. I feel that this is inappropriate and rude, and there should be civility and respect for people’s expression. When it comes to clothing and fashion, does this kind of thing go on too? PINTO: Oh yeah, look at the red carpet! These brilliant actresses or writers, and all they’re doing is ripping them apart for the dress they had on, or the bad hair they had. I’m finding it really intriguing how many parallels there are. The whole fashion thing, I take it very seriously, but a lot of people—it’s not their first thing. They might do things in a way that would be considered wrong or not as well put together. There’s an authenticity that we should be looking at as well. I don’t judge people that harshly. But [other] people do. My

Andrew Solomon ! TIMOTHY GREENFIELD-SANDERS

brain moves so quickly that I’m accused of going from one to six; I can’t express myself in a more poetic, thoughtful way because I’m trying to move so quickly. Should I be judged for grammar that’s not always perfect? SALLER: When you talked about deconstructed couture, I thought, that’s what poets are doing. They’re taking language and deconstructing it. Or reconstructing it. But it’s a whole creative process, taking components of something and putting them together in different ways. You start with fabric, and I start with words. Following the rules doesn’t make you inauthentic. There are people who have a great facility within the rules—and in some contexts, such as scholarly writing, it’s very rule oriented. A lot of eloquence and great arguments takes place within those bounds. PINTO: It’s very personal. It’s important to understand the rules. Alexander McQueen learned from the masters and totally deconstructed every aspect of it, but still maintained a lot of the rules around how to construct a well-tailored jacket. Our culture today, we’re not investing time—we want to go straight from school to being at the top of our game. There’s no room for you to really develop your craft. SALLER: That’s an interesting distinction, between craft and art. I tend to think of editors as craftsmen. We take what the writer has done, we hone it. In fact, I used the metaphor of a couturier in the preface to my book [The Subversive Copy Editor]. “Knowing how to tinker with a broken piece of prose until it hums is a source of contentment known by all who have mastered a worthy craft. The midwife works with a laboring woman to produce a healthy child. A seamstress or tailor finishes the couturier’s garment until it’s a perfect, flattering fit.” Someone who follows the rules more closely because they’re not in charge—they’re working to help craft a finished product. Whereas the rule breaker maybe takes art to a higher level. Both are worthy, authentic pursuits. v STYLE MATTERS Sat 4/30, 12:30-2 PM, Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall, 111 S. Michigan, 312-443-3600, chicagohumanities.org, $15.

! @juliathiel

CHICAGO HUMANITIES FESTIVAL

A brief interview with Andrew Solomon By NISSA RHEE

riter Andrew Solomon says he has “a burning curiosity about the world.” He’s journeyed to more than 80 countries during 25 years of reporting for the New York Times magazine, the New Yorker, and other publications. He’s been kidnapped by revolutionaries in Ecuador, faced tanks during the 1991 August coup d’etat attempt in Moscow, and been tied up in ram intestines during an exorcism in Senegal. Solomon recounts these adventures and more in his new essay collection, Far and Away: Reporting From the Brink of Change. The book is his fourth work of nonfiction and follows his National Book Critics Circle Award winner Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity; his 2001 memoir The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Solomon will appear in discussion with Aleksandar Hemon on May 1 as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival Spring Style series. The Reader spoke with him by phone from his home in Greenwich Village.

NISSA RHEE: In Far and Away, you write that if all young adults were required to spend two weeks in a foreign country, two-thirds of the world’s diplomatic problems could be solved. What do you mean by that? ANDREW SOLOMON: I think a lot of the time people assume that their values are universal. And they don’t understand which aspects of

their values are actually universal and which aspects are very specific. So I think what would be helpful about instituting that program of early travel is not so much the particulars of what people would encounter in the countries that they went to, but simply the fact that once you’ve been somewhere else, you will know that there are other ways of doing things. And there are other people who are doing things in that other way, who actually prefer doing things their way, and that they don’t want to turn into you. I think an awful lot of the diplomatic problems that exist in the world come from people assuming that their society is the one with a purchase on truth. It’s deeply humbling to realize that there is no such thing as a society with a purchase on truth. I was struck by how often you question your own truths and assumptions about a place. In your essay “Naked, Covered in Ram’s Blood, Drinking a Coke, and Feeling Pretty Good” you recall a trip you took to Senegal to research depression. And you go through a tribal exorcism called n’deup that sounds completely out-there and crazy from the American perspective of depression. But in the end, it sounds like it helped. Did it work for you? It didn’t work for me in the sense of me actually believing that I was occupied by spirits and that the ritual was casting the spirits out of me. But there were things that were in it structurally that were very powerful—particularly the sense of having a mental illness characterized as something that can be cast out. It’s an idea that I think is extremely useful. I was also struck by the fact that the entire village, without any pay or anything, took the day off to all come together and work toward my restoration. The support of all the people was moving. The sense of celebration, that they thought they did something that helped, was moving. And I was exhilarated by it in ways that I couldn’t have imagined. The fact of the matter is that going to a small, dark office on Central Park West lacks some of what it was that made n’deup powerful. And it’s too easy to make it into a big joke. To say, “That was way out-there, that crazy exorcism, can you believe that?”

ARTS & CULTURE

some profound way. And what other people really want is to become America. And that if you remove all the stuff that is interfering, you will automatically move toward democracy and move toward the creation of wealth. My experience is that people don’t automatically move toward those things. Often when you remove all those things, you get chaos, you get violence, you get horror, and you get tyranny. Sometimes you get other things that are better than that. This notion that democracy is where everyone is ultimately heading is a misguided one. I don’t think I would have understood that if I hadn’t spent so much time in so many other parts of the world.

Where do you want to travel next? Is there any country you’re itching to go to? The country that I am going to travel to next is Sri Lanka, because I’m going to write a travel story there this summer. I feel like the gap in my travel is in the Middle East. It’s such an explosive—in both the good and bad sense—part of the world map right now. And I’d really like to explore that area if the opportunity arises. v R ANDREW SOLOMON: FAR AND AWAY Sun 5/1, noon, Art Institute of Chicago, Rubloff Auditorium, 230 S. Columbus, 312-443-3600, tickets.chicagohumanities.org. $15, $12 for members, $10 for students and teachers.

! @nissarhee

How has traveling to so many different countries changed the way you look at the world? There is an assumption that people often make here that America has gotten it right in

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 23

The Club ssss Directed by Pablo Larraín. 97 min. Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $11.

ARTS & CULTURE

MOVIES

Priests gone wild By J.R. JONES

e all have problems with our parents, but Pablo Larraín’s play out on the national stage. His mother, Magdalena Matte, belongs to one of the oldest and wealthiest families in Chile, and his father, Hernán Larraín, serves as president of the Independent Democratic Union, a right-wing party founded in the 1980s to support military dictator Augusto Pinochet. As students at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in the early 70s, both parents were influenced by the procorporate authoritarianism of the Gremialismo movement, which helped drive President Salvador Allende from power. Pablo, who was born in 1976 and made his directing debut at age 30, has spoken out against the repression of the Pinochet years, and in his films he’s tried to make sense of his family’s role in Chilean history: Tony Manero (2008) is a chilling portrait of a Santiago serial killer in the bleakest years of the Pinochet regime; Post Mortem (2010) deals with a disappeared woman in the last days of the Allende presidency; and No (2012) follows a team of political strategists in the run-up to the 1988 plebiscite that finally ended Pinochet’s rule. With The Club, Larraín has found a powerful metaphor for the Pinochet years, one that strikes at the heart of his parents’ (and his own) identity. The film takes place in the coastal village of La Boca, among a group of disgraced Catholic priests who’ve been sequestered in a house by the ocean to atone for their sins. Father Vidal (Alfredo Castro) is a pedophile; Father Ortega (Alejandro Goic) is a ssss EXCELLENT

sss GOOD

baby snatcher. Not all of them are criminals— Father Silva (Jaime Vadell) simply ran afoul of the Chilean military—but all of them are unrepentant sinners enjoying a quiet, idyllic life in their rustic seaside home. This setting allows Larraín to examine their several varieties of denial, even as the men’s little haven is increasingly threatened by a disturbed man intent on avenging his childhood sexual abuse. As in the national memory, the crimes of the past just won’t go away. Father Ortega calls the house a prison, but it’s a pretty soft one: the men pray, sing, celebrate mass, hear each other’s confessions, and spend the rest of the time doing as they please. They’re allowed to walk around town at specified hours (though they’re forbidden to go out together, speak to strangers, or handle money or cell phones). This quiet routine is shattered with the arrival of a new boarder, the bearded, haunted Father Lazcano (José Soza), and, shortly thereafter, his scruffy, emotionally damaged victim Sandokan (Roberto Farías), who stands outside the house shouting out Lazcano’s past abuse in language so graphically ugly I won’t repeat it (even in the Reader). Father Silva, a former army chaplain, thrusts a revolver at Lazcano and orders him to go outside and fire a warning shot; instead the priest approaches his victim and, showing a penitence his housemates lack, shoots himself in the head. This shocking development, not ten minutes into the film, prompts a response from the Vatican in the form of Father García (Marcelo Alonso), a polished “spiritual director” who

ss AVERAGE

24 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

s POOR

•

takes up residence in the house to counsel the others and, simultaneously, conduct an investigation into what happened. The priests and their minder, a defrocked nun named Sister Mónica (Antonia Zegers), cover up the incident, claiming that Lazcano was depressed and smuggled the gun in himself. Even so, García doesn’t like what he sees. “This house is not a spa,” he tells Mónica. “It’s not a retreat. It’s a center for prayer and repentance.” García bans alcohol from the house and forbids the men to wager money on Monica’s greyhound, a prizewinner at local races. The men bristle at his sanctimony, and as he interviews them one by one, they hasten to justify their past offenses, inventing their own Catholic theology. Father Silva is really being protected by the church more than punished: after 35 years in the military, he was caught keeping a notebook of all the atrocities revealed to him by soldiers in confession. “Secret burial grounds, theft of money,” he explains to García. “Secret torture houses, murder. Everything.” This might position him as a hero in the story, but Silva is a ruthless man, schooled in the worst human impulses and given to hard realities. He scoffs at the efforts to prosecute these crimes. “A lot of soldiers repented,” he points out. “But those left-wing civilians wanted to resolve a spiritual matter in a secular court. They realized it was their only chance at revenge, because God would forgive all of them in heaven. Even the murderers.” For Father Silva, Judgment Day comes without any judgment at all. From the opposite end of the political spectrum comes Father Ortega, who has let

his liberation theology get the better of him: he’s been caught running his own secret adoption service, presiding over fake funerals and transferring infants to new homes. When García brings this up in their interview, Ortega denounces him as a bureaucrat who stays in five-star hotels. “How long has it been since you were in a parish?” he demands to know. “With people, suffering people? With women who cannot bear children. With girls who don’t want their children and want to throw them in the trash? Why? Why such injustice?” Because of him, he boasts, Chile has blond children in the slums and dark-skinned children being raised by wealthy families. García accuses him of playing God, but for Ortega this is the priesthood’s primary appeal. The most controversial of them all is Father Vidal, who confesses in his interview that he invited a child into his bed, “hugged and prayed” with him, and dolled him up with lipstick. But it was all very spiritual, you see. “You don’t know the sickness of the mind can be cured when the body explodes,” he tells García, defending human sexual impulse. Vidal is the one who spots Sandokan at a dog race and, flouting the house rules, approaches him. When Sandokan asks if he’s gay, Vidal explains that he’s celibate but adds, “Homosexuality has broadened my concept of sexuality. Between a man and a woman, it’s just a matter of procreation. Whereas, between homosexuals, it’s something much deeper.” For Sandokan it’s definitely been something much deeper, and he rebuffs the priest, sarcastically offering to come over and service everyone in the house. “It would be beautiful,” he promises. “We could all reach holiness!” Despite all the catechizing, The Club works beautifully as a suspense film, especially after Vidal’s encounter with Sandokan prompts the victim to resume his harassment of the priests, camping out near their house and continuing to shout accusations. Threatened with exposure to the neighborhood, some of the occupants begin hatching a plot against the troubled man, and as the situation careens toward a violent climax, the characters’ individual sins are all subsumed in original sin—the sin of Adam, passed down through the ages. Larraín clearly understands the concept of original sin from his many years of Catholic school: it’s the kind you get from your parents. v

! @JR_Jones

WORTHLESS

FIREWORKS WEDNESDAY ss Directed by Asghar Farhadi. 102 min. Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, 773-871-6604, musicboxtheatre.com, $11.

Susan Sarandon Rose Byrne

And

J.K. Simmons

“AN INSISTENTLY WINNING, HOPELESSLY IRRESISTIBLE MOTHER-DAUGHTER DUET.” –Manohla Dargis, THE NEW YORK TIMES

Fireworks Wednesday

TheMeddler

MOVIES

Written and Directed by Lorene Scafaria

You, me, and Allah

WWW.SONYCLASSICS.COM

STARTS FRIDAY, APRIL 29

By J.R. JONES

Chicago Chicago LANDMARK’S Evanston CENTURY 12 AMC RIVER EAST 21 CENTURY CENTRE CINEMA EVANSTON / CINÉARTS 6 & XD amctheatres.com (773) 248-7759 (847) 491-9751

VIEW THE TRAILER AT WWW.THEMEDDLERMOVIE.COM 164 North State Street

ranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi came to international prominence with the Oscar-winning A Separation (2011), about a husband and wife trying to end their marriage amid the strict morality of the Islamic Revolution. That Oscar win has stoked interest in Farhadi’s earlier work: his engrossing mystery About Elly (2009), in which the sudden disappearance of a young woman roils a group of vacationing professionals, screened last year at Gene Siskel Film Center, and this week Music Box presents Fireworks Wednesday (2006), another tale of a married couple on the rocks. Farhadi is an essential filmmaker, but I’m not sure Fireworks is an essential film: though I appreciate it as a warm-up for his later, better films, I have to concede that its plotting can be murky, and for the most part it lacks the provocative social and religious overtones that make some of his subsequent dramas extraordinary. Fireworks is Farhadi’s third feature, and his dramatic style is already pretty well developed. When his characters argue—and they argue a lot—they never trade in the sort of polished, writerly comebacks you hear in American movies. They speak plainly and fight bitterly, getting in each other’s faces, as if the sheer force of their anger will turn the tide. The bickering goes on interminably, and every conflict threatens to spiral out of control. Fireworks follows the sneaky young Roohi (Taraneh Alidoosti) during the course of a day as she collects an assignment from a temp agency to clean an apartment and arrives at the home of Morteza (Hamid Farokhnezhad) and his wife, Mozhde (Hediyeh Tehrani), who are on the brink of separation. Mozhde suspects Morteza of cheating on her with the hairdresser who lives upstairs, and she enlists Roohi in a plan to expose the affair. But Roohi has other ideas.

Farhadi’s stories tend to be physically complicated (the grievances and misunderstandings typically involve practical problems) and morally complex (the ethical high ground can give way at a moment’s notice). Much of Fireworks turns on the hairdresser’s business, which she’s running out of her apartment to the inconvenience and growing resentment of her neighbors. One hairdressing client, who has blocked the apartment’s entry gate with her car, comes downstairs after her appointment to find her tire slashed. But even as these complications take up most of the action onscreen, Mozhde and Morteza are constantly trying to get the upper hand over the other, the wife digging at her husband’s infidelity and the husband grasping at Sharia law to condemn his wife’s disrespect and disobedience. No one watching Fireworks could overlook the fact that it takes place in the Islamic Republic, but Farhadi still hasn’t figured out how to knit the country’s regressive social codes into the fabric of the story. In his next feature About Elly, the disappearance of the young woman implicates her travel companions, who have lied about her marital status so that she can accompany them to the seashore without a chaperone. In A Separation, the wife wants to take advantage of a temporary visa to get their daughter out of Iran so she won’t have to live in a theocracy, whereas the husband feels compelled to stay and look after his infirm father. Fireworks Wednesday may not equal those films (or Farhadi’s most recent release, The Past), but they show a filmmaker honing the storytelling skills that will serve him well on more ambitious projects. v

Between Lake & Randolph MOVIE HOTLINE: 312.846.2800

11 MINUTES

THE CLUB

NEW FROM PABLO LARRAÍN!

NEW FROM JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI!

April 29- May 5

Fri, 4/29 at 6 pm; Sat. 4/30 at 3 pm & 6:30 pm; Sun. 5/1 at 5 pm; Mon. 5/2 at 6 pm; Wed. 5/4 at 6 pm; Thu. 5/5 at 8:15 pm

"Disturbing, astounding."

Fri, 4/29 at 6 pm; Sat. 4/30 at 8:15 pm; Sun. 5/1 at 3 pm; Mon. 5/2 at 7:45 pm; Tue. 5/3 at 8:15 pm; Wed. 5/4 at 6 pm; Thu. 5/5 at 6 pm

– The Playlist

APRIL 29 - MAY 5 • RIO, I LOVE YOU BUY TICKETS NOW

“A charm-packed portrait of a gorgeous city and the varied characters that inhabit it.” — The People’s Movies

www.siskelfilmcenter.org

THE LATEST ON WHAT’S HAPPENING AROUND TOWN READER RECOMMENDS

WEEKLY E-BLAST GET UP TO DATE. SIGN UP NOW. CHICAGOREADER.COM

! @JR_Jones APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 25

26 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

MUSIC

TWIN TALK; PAUL GIALLORENZO, JULIAN KIRSHNER, AND ANTON HATWICH Sat 4/30, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $10, 18+

Katie Ernst rises like the tide By PETER MARGASAK

atie Ernst is one of the most promising bassists in Chicago’s bustling jazz scene, but she didn’t get exposed to much music growing up in Naperville. “My dad had a couple of records,” she says. “One was by Simon & Garfunkel, and I liked that. I had younger sisters who listened to Raffi, and I listened to that too. I could accept anything,

and I was into it.” Since then Ernst has gotten choosier about her listening—she’s developed an aesthetic of her own—but she’s also held on to that openness from her childhood. Combined with her quick wit, confidence, and charisma, it’s helped her seize opportunities that might’ve slipped past other musicians, or create opportunities of her own—at the ripe old age of 27, not only is she a dazzling

! JONATHAN GIBBY

This Chicago jazz bassist and vocalist isn’t just helping herself with her talent, wit, and confidence—she’s also lifting up her peers and students.

talent whose potential makes her someone to watch, but she’s also something of a trusted eminence. In summer 2011, having just earned a degree in jazz studies at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, Ernst began an internship at the Jazz Institute of Chicago, the venerable organization that programs the annual Chicago Jazz Festival—

TWIN TALK, STIRRUP WITH CHARLES RUMBACK Mon 5/16, 9:30 PM, California Clipper, 1002 N. California, 21+ F

and further promotes the music by organizing free concerts year-round and running a wide variety of educational programs. The internship paid Ernst a stipend that allowed her to work there for a year, and she spent many of her evenings trying to break into the local scene. At the time one of Ernst’s friends, saxophonist Corbin Andrick, led a weekly engagement and jam session at Lincoln Park bar Lilly’s. His bassist had just left for a gig on a cruise ship, and Ernst pounced. “It was great, because I wasn’t just going to a session and saying, ‘Hi, I’m Katie, I play the bass,’ ” she says. “I had a different relationship—people asked to play my bass.” She already knew some of the regular players at Lilly’s, having met them at a two-week annual jazz camp at the Birch Creek Music Performance Center in Door County, Wisconsin, that she’d attended for four years in the mid-aughts. Others, including acclaimed trumpeter Marquis Hill, she met there for the first time. “It was great to reconnect with the people in the house band,” she says. “But it gave me an instant ability to meet a bunch of young musicians in Chicago every week.” Ernst kept that gig for three years. She admits that dumb luck helped her land the position in the first place, but it was through preparedness and eagerness to adapt that she made the most of it—she’s grabbed the proverbial bull by the horns throughout her young career. For four years she’s played in Twin Talk, a leaderless trio with saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi and drummer Andrew Green, and after they drop their second album on Friday—a self-titled collection on local label Ears&Eyes—they’ll take their longest tour yet, a two-week east-coast trip that will pass through New York, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C., among other locales. The tour launches Saturday, April 30, with a release concert at Constellation, and after Twin Talk return to town, they play Monday, May 19, at the California Clipper. The album and tour are the latest points on Ernst’s steady upward trajectory, whose course she began to imagine in summer 2003—her first year at the Birch Creek camp. (She went every summer till 2006, then started at Eastman in 2007.) Someone at camp played her a recording by SuperBass—the all-star bass trio of Ray Brown, Christian McBride, and John Clayton—and it opened her ears to how much the instrument she’d been playing for five years could actually do. “It made me realize that the bass was much J

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 27

MUSIC continued from 27

more than just the whole notes I was playing in orchestra,” she says. “That was when I really got fired up.” That’s not to say Ernst wasn’t already curious and ambitious, though. When she was in second grade, a teacher’s offhand comment bolstered her confidence about using her voice. “I always sang in the choir, and at one point in my youth my piano teacher told my mom that I had a pleasant voice and that it was in tune,” she says. “So my mom somehow relayed that to me, and I always thought, ‘I have a pleasant voice and I’m always in tune,’ and that was all I needed.” She didn’t just play bass in her school’s orchestra and jazz ensembles but also sang in them—and she joined a madrigal group. “My MO is to be doing a lot of things all of the time,” Ernst says. “That’s been consistent since I was able to decide what I was going to be doing at any time.” By the time she arrived at Eastman, the knowledge of jazz phrasing and improvisation that she’d accumulated as a bassist had seeped into her singing, and she was soon recruited to sing in the school’s big band; she even took an off-campus gig as a vocalist for veteran Dixieland combo the Smugtown Stompers. Jazz Institute executive director Lauren Deutsch recognized Ernst’s energy and drive early on. While still in high school, the bassist had participated in JIC’s Jazz Links educational program, and Deutsch was happy to welcome her back for the internship. “I was impressed by her self-confidence and fearlessness, combined with an openness to working as part of a team,” she says. “Not surprising, really, since all of those are qualities of a good jazz player. “She immediately had good ideas, including starting an initiative that would connect next-gen players to the Jazz Institute—an idea that fortuitously collided with the Drake Hotel’s interest in starting a monthly jazz series to draw young people,” adds Deutsch, who has kept Ernst on as a part-time employee since the internship ended. “It’s been great to watch her grow her career over the past six years, both musically and in all of the other areas in which she works. She has a keen vision that propels her forward, but rather than leaving everyone behind in the dust, she sweeps us all along in her wake.” Twin Talk formed in early 2012, about six months after Ernst moved to Chicago. Though she knew Laurenzi through a mutual friend, she didn’t meet Green till the first time the

28 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

Andrew Green, Katie Ernst, and Dustin Laurenzi, aka Twin Talk, rehearsing at Green’s place ! JONATHAN GIBBY

three of them got together to read through some of Laurenzi’s compositions. “We all played sessions with lots of other people frequently, but there was something special about this particular grouping,” Ernst says. “Andrew [Green] and I would catch things together, turning on a dime, from the get-go.” The three of them immediately decided to form a working band, initially called Laurenzi/Ernst/Green, and in 2013 they released the album Sightline, whose cool, agile sound is rooted in postbop but whose tempered energy recalls vintage west-coast jazz. Ernst adds vocals on a handful of tracks, giving the trio a fourth voice by singing lyrics of her own as well as wordless lines. Last year the group renamed itself—as Ernst puts it in the new album’s press materials, “We didn’t want to be a jazz law-firm anymore.” As tightly as Ernst has bonded with Chicago’s thriving under-30 jazz community, she’s also grown increasingly invested in the city’s rich history. She’s been reading The Freedom Principle—a history of free jazz from the 50s through the 80s by Chicago critic John Litweiler—and thinking a lot about the AACM and Muhal Richard Abrams’s Experimental Band. “Our trio was thinking that we’re coming up with some new concept about being collaborative, but there’s already this precedent and huge canon for that,” she says. “Our belief system has already been established, and we can just feed off of it.”

Ernst doesn’t consider her education to have ended at Eastman. In 2013 and ’14 she participated in the prestigious Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead residency at the Kennedy Center. The program is under the direction of MacArthur fellow and pianist Jason Moran, and it was there that he became of an admirer of Ernst—eventually he asked her to participate in a high-profile commission, a collaboration with artist Theaster Gates called Looks of a Lot that premiered at Symphony Center in June 2014. For that one-off performance, Ernst sang an English translation of Schubert’s “Der Doppelgänger,” accompanied by the Kenwood Academy Jazz Band, and then played bass with Moran’s long-running trio the Bandwagon for the rest of the concert. “Katie Ernst I met because she was in the Jazz Ahead program at the Kennedy Center for the past two years,” Moran said at the time. “After the first year, I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, she’s a really great composer, she’s a really great bassist, she’s a really great singer.’ I said, ‘I’m doing this thing next year, and I want you to be a part of it. I don’t know what you’re going to do yet, but I need you to be up there with us.’” Last year Ernst released Little Words, an album of original settings of poems by Algonquin Round Table writer Dorothy Parker. She’s joined by her Twin Talk bandmates and New York pianist Samora Pinderhughes, and though her refined singing takes on a bigger

role than usual, she remains committed to the bass. More recently Ernst has started a duo with a veteran of the local scene, clarinetist James Falzone. “She’s smart as a musician and smart as a person, and she’s wise beyond her years,” Falzone says. “There’s something joyful about her music making that makes her open to anything. There’s no baggage. People respond to that joy, both listeners and musicians. They respond to her positivity and her openness for making art.” Twin Talk is Ernst’s current focus, and the new album demonstrates astonishing growth. Laurenzi plays with a beguiling cool that belies the sophistication and flexibility of his lines, and Green expertly drives the music without overpowering it. Ernst anchors the band with muscular, precise bass playing and adds her elegant vocals to four of the 11 tunes. “I’ve been advised by some jazz higher-ups that it would be wise to do more vocals or make that the forefront of the band,” Ernst says wryly. “But I think that’s coming from a desire to be able to categorize the group in the vocal-jazz box or something. I think it’s more interesting to present something where you can’t figure out what it is. Sometimes I’ll sing words, sometimes I’ll just sing syllables, and sometimes I don’t sing at all. I think that’s way more interesting, with a wider palette to play with. Our last tour we did, we turned a corner in taking a lot more risks and getting a lot more open and free. I started to add more wordless vocals to our improvisations. It’s cool to have that option without feeling like this is my role specifically.” Twin Talk is gaining confidence and attracting attention, but Ernst isn’t narrowly focused on her own ambition—she’s committed to giving back. She’s currently the jazz-ensemble director and jazz-bass teacher at Wheaton College, and she teaches at the same camp in Door Country she attended in high school. She also gives bass lessons at Whitney Young High School and coordinates the Jazz Links Student Council program for the Jazz Institute of Chicago. “My development has been so influenced by mentors, whether they’re just a couple of years older than me at jazz camp or they’re a professor,” she says. “There’s been this constant giveand-take, watching and learning from them, but there’s also these kids learning from me and my people. I love the idea of that mentorship cycle.” v

! @pmarg

DON’T KNOW HOW TO PLAY? JUST COME STRUM ALONG. Sign up for classes at oldtownschool.org

LINCOLN SQUARE • LINCOLN PARK

FIND HUNDREDS OF

READER-RECOMMENDED

RESTAURANTS EXCLUSIVE VIDEO FEATURES AND SIGN UP FOR WEEKLY NEWS CHICAGOREADER.COM/FOOD

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 29

DON’T KNOW HOW TO PLAY? JUST COME STRUM ALONG. Sign up for classes at oldtownschool.org

LINCOLN SQUARE • LINCOLN PARK

FIND HUNDREDS OF

READER-RECOMMENDED

RESTAURANTS EXCLUSIVE VIDEO FEATURES AND SIGN UP FOR WEEKLY NEWS CHICAGOREADER.COM/FOOD

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 29

MUSIC APRIL 28TH

TECH N9NE W/ RITTZ

APRIL 29TH

Recommended and notable shows, and critics’ insights for the week of April 28 b

ALL AGES

PICK OF THE WEEK

On the new Changes wailing soul man Charles Bradley reworks a Black Sabbath ballad

MINNESOTA

W/ SPACE JESUS

APRIL 30TH

PEGBOARD NERDS W/ GRABBITZ

Evan Weiss of Into it. Over it. ! CAMERON WITTIG

MAY 3RD LUCATURILLI’SRHAPSODY &PRIMALFEAR

THURSDAY28

MAY 6TH

Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires See Pick of the Week. Tenement open. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, sold out. 17+

SAY ANYTHING W/ MEWITHOUTYOU

MAY 8TH

HVOB Joel Chandler and Josh Adam open. 8 PM, Smart Bar, 3730 N. Clark, $13, $9 in advance.

ZHU

W/GALLANT *SOLD OUT*

MAY 13TH

ELEPHANT REVIVAL W/ DEAD HORSES

MAY 14TH

! ALEX WROBLEWSKI/SUN-TIMES MEDIA

CHARLES BRADLEY & HIS EXTRAORDINAIRES, TENEMENT Thu 4/28, 8PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, sold out. 17+

SNARKY PUPPY W/ CHARLIE HUNTER

MAY 15TH STREETLIGHT MANIFESTO

MAY 17TH

SIXX:A.M. W/ CLIVER

WWW.CONCORDMUSICHALL.COM 2047 N. MILWAUKEE | 773.570.4000 30 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

VETERAN SOUL SINGER CHARLES BRADLEY has grown on each recording he’s cut since Daptone Records capo Gabriel Roth stumbled onto his James Brown tribute act Black Velvet in 2000, and he’s moved beyond his trademark “screaming eagle” wail to convey an impressive range of expressions. His albums, including the new Changes (Dunham/ Daptone), tap into familiar old-school soul molds—especially the gritty Stax Records sound—but Bradley has never transcended the deployment of decades-old templates as he does on this latest effort. Punctuated by a buzzing little synthesizer figure, the smoldering midtempo burner “Ain’t Gonna Give It Up” finds him laying his heart bare, his throaty, low-down rasp betraying his vulnerability toward his lover even as he insists he’s not surrendering anything to her. On the album’s centerpiece, a cover of the Black Sabbath ballad “Changes,” Bradley supplies shades of anguish missing from the original. The mournful horn section, which adds layers of depth across the entire album, lends the track a kind of elegiac sadness, and the slow lope of the groove brings to mind the poignant Sam Cooke number “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Written by Bradley’s superb band, the solid new tunes subtly tweak conventions or make sly citations (the horn line in “Nobody But You” quotes a melody line from the Seals & Croft hit “Summer Breeze”). —PETER MARGASAK

The electronic sound of Austrian duo HVOB (aka Her Voice Over Boys) ebbs and flows with the seductive voice of leader Anna Muller, and the more her controlled singing resembles a whisper, the more you’re encouraged to crank the volume. Her tender, dramatically colored vocals nudge the group’s otherwise timid-sounding production into unfolding and building upward until it envelops you in a cocoon. HVOB is downtempo pop that’s minimal house music by way of long-standing German indie band the Notwist. It’s so easy to imagine Notwist front man Markus Acher dueting with Muller during a remix version of the pensive tune “Reason” (from HVOB’s 2013 self-titled album). Last year’s Trialog (Stil vor Talent) is more brooding and immersive than its predecessor, with HVOB layering complex instrumentation without letting the songs get too dense. The nimble, handclap-spiked percussion and melting horn lines on “Cool Melt” gel into an engrossing, ascending melody that goes higher and higher with no apotheosis in sight. Muller’s serene vocals keep the track grounded—and she remains prohibitively cool even as she features a word like “viscosity” so many times that you can’t help but harp on it. —LEOR GALIL

Lil Uzi Vert Famouns Dex, Martin Sky, Logan Cage, Webster X, Roy French, Warhol SS, and Elz the DJ open. 6:45 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, sold out. b Philadelphia rapper Symere Woods, aka Lil Uzi Vert, emerged last year with all the colorful gusto and amateurism of an elementary school J

1800 W. DIVISION

Est.1954 Celebrating over 61 years of service to Chicago!

(773) 486-9862 Come enjoy one of Chicago’s finest beer gardens! FRIDAY, APRIL 29.............4D BLUES BAND SATURDAY, APRIL 30........DANNY DRAHER BAND SUNDAY, MAY 1 ...............MIKE FELTON WEDNESDAY, MAY 4 ........SUSIE CHAY THURSDAY, MAY 5............SMILING BOBBY AND THE CLEMTONES FRIDAY, MAY 6 .................FULLERTON TRANSFER SATURDAY, MAY 7............BUCKTHORN SUNDAY, MAY 8 ...............HEISENBERG UNCERTAINTY PLAYERS MONDAY, MAY 9 ..............RC BIG BAND @ 7PM TUESDAY, MAY 10............THE FLABBY HOFFMAN SHOW WEDNESDAY, MAY 11 ......ELIZABETH HARPER’S LITTLE THING THURSDAY, MAY 12 .........THE FLABBY HOFFMAN SHOW FT. NATALIE NIMERALA FRIDAY, MAY 13...............DR. UNK SATURDAY, MAY 14..........DAN WHITAKER AND THE SHINE BENDERS CLEAN SLATE EVERY MONDAY AT 9PM CHRIS SHUTTLEWORTH QUINTET EVERY TUESDAY AT 8PM OPEN MIC HOSTED BY JIMI JON AMERICA

4544 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG • 773.728.6000

NEW CONCERTS • JUST ADDED! 5/21 9/21

Jerry Douglas (on sale now) Sara Watkins (on sale this Friday)

VISIT OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG TO BUY TICKETS! FRIDAY, APRIL 29 8:30PM Constellation & Old Town School present

Avishai Cohen Quartet Avishai Cohen (trumpet), Jason Lindner (piano), Tal Mashiach (bass), Justin Brown (drums) At Constellation • 3111 N. Western Ave.

SATURDAY, APRIL 30 7:30PM

Funkadesi / Los Vicios de Papá / Congress of Starlings 77 BEATS KICKOFF SATURDAY, APRIL 30 8PM

Bruce Molsky

In Szold Hall

SUNDAY, MAY 1 3PM

12O’CLOCK

TRACK SERIES A SIDE OF JAM WITH YOUR LUNCH EVERY WEEKDAY

THEBLEADER.COM

Fifth House Ensemble and Henhouse Prowlers present: Voices from the Dust Bowl FRIDAY, MAY 6 7PM

Lucy Kaplansky

In Szold Hall

TUESDAY, MAY 10 7:30PM

Aimee Mann FRIDAY, MAY 13 8PM

Birds of Chicago / Luther Dickinson SATURDAY, MAY 14 8PM SUNDAY, MAY 15 7PM

Patti Smith Spring Awakening II (A Celebration of Poetry & Song) with Jackson Smith, Jesse Smith & Tony Shanahan

ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL 4545 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL

4/29 Global Dance Party: Big Shoulders Square Dance with the Cook County Revelers 5/1 The Way Down Wanderers 5/12 Inside/Out with Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre 5/13 Global Dance Party: Ghana Seperewa Highlife

WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE

5/4 5/11

Pibo Marquez Afromundo Occidental Gypsy

OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 31

MUSIC continued from 30 student playing with finger paint for the first time. On 2015’s Luv Is Rage (Generation Now/Atlantic) the 21-year-old scoops up and mixes together distinct rap sounds that have been burbling up online—like Chief Keef’s vitriolic spewage and Young Thug’s syllable-splitting flow. More often than not Woods’s enthusiasm leaves more of a mark than does his artistry, and for now his performances are rooted more in his influences than in his own ideas (Young Thug’s appearance on “Yamborghini Dream” sounds colossal next to much of what Woods lays out on Luv Is Rage). But it’s all part of a process of self-discovery, and on the new Lil Uzi Vert vs. the World (Generation Now) Woods exerts himself in brief, Auto-Tune-speckled lines that melt away at the edges—which does wonders with the

New Album out May 20

serene, filmy synths on “Grab the Wheel.” Woods is joined by a mass of young Chicagoans, including the speedily ascending Famous Dex, who also plays with a mishmash of contemporary rap styles but comes out on the other side with a distinctive sound of his own. I’m not particularly keen on chunks of Dex’s recent OhhMannGoddDamm mixtape, but he always delivers his seesawing flow through what sounds like a mouthful of ice, and he always sounds like himself. —LEOR GALIL

FRIDAY29 Avishai Cohen Quartet 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $22. 18+

SATURDAY, MAY 28 • RIVIERA THEATRE ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM! Get Tickets Online at etix.com By Phone: 1-800-514--ETIX

32 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

Israeli trumpeter Avishai Cohen’s nimble trio Triveni has always been distinguished by its stopon-a-dime agility. Supported by drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Omer Avital, Cohen uncorks muscular, shape-shifting lines that dart and glide with a disarming ease that makes it seem like the trumpet is easy to play. The threesome employs rhythm and melody with stunning grace, pushing and pulling on postbop themes like they own them. With that sound deeply entrenched in my brain, I was initially stunned by the trumpeter’s assured new album Into the Silence (ECM), which features music Cohen composed in the wake of the passing of his father. The deeply introspective recording is lyric and fragile, the strong presence of Israeli pianist Yonathan Avishai (a band-

mate of Cohen’s in the quartet Third World Love) lending a mournful richness to the music as he lays down shimmering, pensive lines and atmospheric chords. Waits and bassist Eric Revis (partners in the trio Tarbaby) provide elastic slow-moving rhythms that ground the music and give it an imperturbably steady pulse but never get in the way of the sorrowful melodic explorations. On a few tracks the group is joined by pitch-perfect saxophonist Bill McHenry, but this album showcases Cohen, highlighting a different side of his vibrant personality—one that’s ruminative yet hopeful, delicate yet forceful. For tonight’s performance he leads a quartet featuring pianist Jason Lindner, bassist Tal Mashiach, and drummer Justin Brown. —PETER MARGASAK

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

Into It. Over It., Pinegrove See also Saturday. Into It. Over It. headline; The World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Sidekicks, and Pinegrove open. 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $20, $16.50 in advance. 18+ If you’re looking to take emo’s temperature—or perhaps challenge anyone whose perception of the genre is stuck in 2005, 1995, or 1985—this tour is the place to start. Hometown heroes Into It. Over It. headline behind their recent Standards (Triple Crown), a trenchant, sensitive, and contemplative album that explores our ever-changing, sometimes contradictory selves. Front man Evan Weiss sifts through his past, recalling youthful dreams, surveying changes that have marked his early 30s and

affected longtime friends, and examining the constants of his life as they appear to him today. Weiss is often tagged as a spokesperson for emo’s fourth wave and a standard-bearer for the second wave’s “golden age” in the 90s, but he comes off best when listeners put aside labels and simply bask in his explorations of the wishy-washy feelings resident in his head. On the nimble, muscular “No EQ” Weiss acknowledges the hypnotic power of nostalgia and recognizes that the energy it consumes makes it hard to work toward a future. Ultimately Weiss’s ability to give shape to this struggle emboldens Into It. Over It. to move forward. Opener New Jersey outfit Pinegrove are among those helping reshape what emo is today; these punks express themselves in a voice that’s thoroughly alt-country but powered by emo, and this year’s Cardinal (Run for Cover) is

affecting in every raw, cracked vocal and scuzzy guitar drawl. —LEOR GALIL

Myrkur Behemoth headline. 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $30, $25 in advance. 17+ Despite the metal-scene backlash Myrkur has provoked, the only mistake she’s made has been to assume the mantle of the hermetic, anonymous Scandinavian black-metal loner upon the release of her lovely self-titled debut EP in 2014. Amalie Bruun, the project’s mastermind, is in fact Danish by birth, but it was bound to come out that she’d lived in New York City for years, where she’d put out a few records with dream-pop band Ex Cops—and metalheads as a class care enough about “authen-

ticity” to resent feeling duped by PR. That said, the great majority of the ugliness directed at Bruun— she says she’s been bombarded with death threats online—has amounted to cretins flinging their poop because there’s a girl in their clubhouse. For the most recent Myrkur release, last year’s M (Relapse), Bruun enlisted top-shelf collaborators: Ulver front man Garm coproduced, Øyvind Myrvoll of Nidingr contributed live drumming, and Myrvoll’s bandmate Teloch (who’s also been in Mayhem since 2011) played bass and additional guitars. But if you’re tempted to dismiss Bruun as a woman propped up by talented men, put down the poop and step away. She wrote everything herself, draping a gauzy curtain of pop-friendly melody over the grim thicket of Norwegian black metal—the songs are often nudged toward northern European folk or J

3855 N. LINCOLN

martyrslive.com

THU, 4/28 - CHIRPRADIO.ORG PRESENTS…

FIRST TIME: FIRST DEAL FRI, 4/29

IAN MOORE & THE LOSSY COILS, DAVID PRUSINA & THE CRYING SIDE OF TOWN SAT, 4/30 - 6PM - ALL AGES

EL STOPPERS, GOIN DARK, NO CURRENCY SAT, 4/30 - 9PM

FOUND HOUNDS, COYOTE RIOT, MAD BREAD MON, 5/2

KILGUBBIN BROTHERS, THE BLACK HORSE PIKES TUE, 5/3

WRITERS WITH DRINKS WED, 5/4

TERRAPIN FLYER, 40,000 HEADMEN THU, 5/5 - NO COVER

BIG C JAMBOREE… ROCKIN JOHNNY BURGIN FRI 5/6

JAMES & THE DRIFTERS, SECRET SCIENCE, JOSEFINA SAT, 5/7

HERBERT WISER, MISTER F, SPLOR

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8 BUY TICKETS AT TICKETMASTER.COM THE CHICAGO THEATRE BOX OFFICE OR BY PHONE: 800-745-3000

JENNYLEWIS.COM

WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/JENNYLEWIS

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 11AM!

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 33

Special Guest:

DOTAN

FRIDAY, MAY 13 RIVIERA THEATRE 8:00pm • 18 & Over

SATURDAY, MAY 14 • PARK WEST 8:00pm • 18 & Over

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21 RIVIERA THEATRE 7:30pm • All Ages

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 9AM! BUY TICKETS AT

34 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

bottom lounge

Imarhan ! COURTESY POWERLINE AGENCY

continued from 33

medieval liturgical music, helped along by Bruun’s piano as well as by bowed Icelandic zither, Hardanger fiddle, violin, horn, and tuba. Her voice is sometimes a clotted, feral shriek and sometimes a bright silver ribbon, and she often multiplies it into a radiant angelic chorus. Excepting the touches of black ’n’ roll on “Mordet” and “Skadi,” M has a lyrical, pastoral feel—lots of black metal tries to evoke like a remote, unpopulated arctic forest, but Myrkur’s forest grows in the white light and frigid wind atop the anvil head of a towering thundercloud. Bruun typically tours with a three-piece backing band. —PHILIP MONTORO

SATURDAY30 Cross Record Loom open. 10 PM, Schubas, 3159 S. Southport, $12, $10 in advance. Though elements of wispy, free-spirited indie folk pirouette through and twirl in and out of her 2012 record Be Good, former Chicagoan Emily Cross was never meant for the stark path of the solo wanderer with an acoustic guitar slung over her shoulder. No, a track like that record’s “Dirt Nap” is so foreboding and discordant as Cross’s chantlike, almost unintelligible vocals glide in and out that it feels like you should be listening to it in a head-down, chained-ankle trudge. Now based in Austin, Cross and her husband, Dan Duszynski, have slunk deeper into the shadows with the striking Wabi-Sabi (Ba Da Bing). The pair create a sinister, fantastical atmosphere thanks to their willingness to weave in ambient noise via what sounds like an orchestra of supplemental instrumentation (to get a sense of the group’s present-day direction, please note that Thor Harris of Swans is one of the album’s contributors). Tracks often flicker and crackle like the brush at the base of a campfire, held barely in place by rhythms that are practically imperceptible; at other times, as on “Steady Waves,” a hard riff materializes from the ether to sternly direct the rest of the instruments between the fleeting swirls of guitar and Cross’s breathy, airy vocals. Wabi-Sabi is a no-doubt triumph for Cross Record and an exciting indicator of how far the couple is willing to explore. —KEVIN WARWICK

Into It. Over It., Pinegrove See Friday. Into It. Over It. headline; The World Is a Beautiful

Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Sidekicks, and Pinegrove open. 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, sold out. 18+ Maypole Folk Festival Henhouse Prowlers, Sanctified Grumblers, Son Monarcas, Chris Walz, Wandering Boys, Spitzer Space Telescope & Mareva, Glass Mountain, Blackest Crow, and Can I Get an Amen. 2 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $15. In Chicago, folk-music festivals—the kind with actual folk music as opposed to that bearded indie stuff from the aughts—are often corralled within college campuses, the burbs, or the Old Town School’s north-side stomping grounds. But for its inaugural run the new Maypole Folk Festival plucks some of the local scene’s most interesting and varied players for an afternoon celebration of traditional music very near the city center. Topping the nine-act bill are perennial favorites Henhouse Prowlers, who play a myriad of bluegrass and bluegrass-inspired styles, and the Sanctified Grumblers, who rep prewar roots music, often with a washboard or sousaphone twist. My eye’s on the trio of multi-instrumentalists Glass Mountain, who weave our country’s folk and gospel traditions into a musical arras as jovial as it is apparitional, and Son Monarcas, a local quartet carrying the torch for son jarocho, a folk style that originated in the port city of Veracruz, Mexico. Sink even further into the past with Spitzer & Mareva, a vocal-centric duo consisting of members of Old Town-approved collective Old Lazarus’ Harp, who specialize in the yo-ho-hos of sea shanties and traditional ballads of the British Isles. —ERIN OSMON

SUNDAY1 Julian Lage 7 PM, SPACE, 1245 Chicago, Evanston, $15-$25. b Guitarist Julian Lage has been firing on all cylinders of late, easily transcending his reputation as the wunderkind who helped bring new energy to vibist Gary Burton’s latest band. In the last few years Lage’s stunning facility has become one of the least interesting things about him, as he’s eagerly traversed new paths (evident both on his adventurous duet project with Nels Cline and last year’s knockout solo album World’s Fair). His new record, Arclight (Mack Avenue), pushes in yet another

MUSIC direction. It’s the first he’s made as a leader with an electric guitar—a Telecaster to be precise—and it’s the debut of his current trio with bassist Scott Colley and drummer Kenny Wollesen. Tracks are split between vintage tunes from the 20s and 30s— when the burgeoning American songbook had not yet been partitioned into categories like jazz, country, or blues—and a slew of flinty, catchy originals exploring a modern jazz sound that taps into American folk, whether the ruminative compositions of 70s-era Keith Jarrett or the atmospheric twang of Bill Frisell. With a bigger drum sound and a fatter bass tone, the originals give off a tough rock-influenced edge, and Lage’s nicely scuffed tone and crystalline phrasing suggest a kind of proto-surf-guitar sound (the opening part of “Presley” had me expecting a cover of “Sleepwalk” for a second). He’s just as imaginative on the old material, turning the trite Orientalist trifle “Persian Rug” into a buoyant swinger, and providing a totally modern take on the obscure ballad “Nocturne” with a crisp lyricism that feels genre agnostic. Tonight Lage leads the same group from the record. —PETER MARGASAK

ONSALE NOW

stitched up heart / 9electric / painted wives

04.29 ZOOFUNKYOU

MARMALETTA / GOOSE CORP / BUTTER

04.30 DROPHOLLOW

SKY MACHINE / RED NOVELLA / GATSBY / THEY NEVER SAY NO

05.06 FREELANCE WRESTLING PRESENTS: FEELMONGER 05.07 POINT BREAK LIVE! MIDWEST BASS & FESTIVUS PRESENT

05.13 XAEBOR

SOBER BERT / ZAVA / FILTH MOB / MIMIK MUZIK / TRUKKIS

05.15 ENTER SHIKARI

HANDS LIKE HOUSES / THE WHITE NOISE

Like Rats Disrotted, Staring Problem, and Mexican Werewolf open. 7 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $8. 17+ It would just be wrong for a band to be named after a Godflesh song and not also produce a monstrous, unholy racket—especially if that track is the crushing opener from the industrial-metal pioneer’s debut LP. On their brand-new full-length II (Southern Lord) local five-piece Like Rats do just that. With a rhythm section featuring two members from powerviolence punishers Weekend Nachos, Like Rats build their insanely heavy hardcore with the same kind of foundation-cracking tones, but instead of using them to whip up a wild frenzy, they anchor evil riffs on rock-solid rhythms and focus progressions on twisted, demonic moods while the vocals deliver death-metal-inspired grunts and growls. II is a brutal combo of massively dark and enormous sounds, and with Nachos calling it a day this coming fall it’ll be exciting to see how much more devastating Like Rats become once its members go full-time. Tonight is the release party for II; the compact-disc version of the album contains every song the band has recorded, including all the tracks from their limited vinyl-only releases. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

TUESDAY3 Imarhan Cafe Racer opens. 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 S. Southport, $15. On their recent eponymous debut for City Slang this young Tuareg ensemble, whose members grew up together in southern Algeria, join Nigerien guitarist Bombino in pushing Saharan guitar music toward Western influences. Imarhan move easily between different settings, though they never abandon the cycling riffs, clopping rhythms, and soulfully restrained singing. Acoustic guitars and sparse organ stabs shape the airy folksiness of “Tarha Tadagh,” while there’s a driving, almost funky thrust to “Tahabort,” and the influence of Algerian rai J

05.16 BEACH SLANG

POTTY MOUTH / DYKE DRAMA / TURNSPIT

05.17 BLAQK AUDIO

NIGHT RIOTS / CHARMING LIARS

05.20 MARWOOD’S FALL BUBBLES EROTICA

05.21 SCHOOL OF ROCK 05.25 THE GROW WILD TOUR 05.27 CHASE AWAYS

THE FLIPS / LEVER / ALL THE WINE / PAT EGAN & THE HEAVY HEARTS

05.28 WELSHLY ARMS

WILD ADRIATIC / BENNY BASSETT

06.04 WHEELER WALKER JR. 06.09 LOS AMIGOS INVISIBLES 06.18 ANDY BLACK - THE HOMECOMING TOUR COLOURS

06.24 WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS PRISM TATS

07.09 PITY SEX

PWR BTTM / PETAL 1833 PRESENTS

07.14 XXYYXX

LUMINATE / EDAMAME UPSTAIRS AT BOTTOM LOUNGE

007.14 7.14 TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

THE STONE FOXES / MAIL THE HORSE

08.13 THE FALL OF TROY ‘68 / ILLUSTRATIONS

www.bottomlounge.com 1375 w lake st 312.666.6775

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 35

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC continued from 35

wends its way into the incessant groove of “Imarhan.” Naturally, front man Iyad Moussa Ben Abderahmane (aka Sadam) is related to a member of wildly popular Tuareg outfit Tinariwen, but this combo are definitely staking out their own turf. The deft interplay of guitars would still be seductive even if Imarhan lacked originality. —PETER MARGASAK

WEDNESDAY4 Besnard Lakes J Fernandez and Crown Larks open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $14. Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, the husband-andwife team at the core of long-running Montreal band Besnard Lakes, tried something new for their latest album, A Coliseum Complex Museum (Jagjaguwar). The pair camped in a trailer by the rural Saskatchewan lake that gave the group their moniker, writing songs and preparing demos which they then brought back to the small coterie of collaborators that helped them build the album. The cinematic new record—lush with gorgeous post-Beach Boys vocal harmonies, sculptural guitar interplay, and a proggy depth—is another strong effort, its lovely melodies unfolding patiently amid dense shoegaze arrangements. But while the band’s method clearly works, they might need to shake up

Cross Record ! BRYAN C. PARKER

the process a bit more; I enjoy the new record, but there’s less and less that distinguishes each new effort from its predecessors. That’s a fine thing if you love a sound so much you can’t bear a change, but you’re out of luck if you want to be surprised. —PETER MARGASAK v

1035 N WESTERN AVE CHICAGO IL 773.276.3600 WWW.EMPTYBOTTLE.COM THU

4/28

LORD MANTIS ( FREE

FRI

RECORD RELEASE

)

MORAL VOID • SANFORD PARKER FREE

4/29

HARD COUNTRY HONKY TONK WITH

THE HOYLE BROTHERS BRIXTON CLOTHING PRESENTS

NATURAL CHILD THE HALF RATS • THE YOLKS AQUARIAN BLOOD

2PM

SAT

4/30

THE BESNARD LAKES

5/4

5/5

THE BRIBES (

EP RELEASE

)

CHICAGO SINGLES CLUB

FREE

SERIES FINALE SHOWCASE

FEAT.

GRANDKIDS

OSHWA • THE GOLD WEB • THE RUNNIES

BIG BLACK DELTA

SEGO • REACHES [I LOVE YOU] FREE

FRI

5/7

TEENAGE RAGE • RAHIM SALAAM & BENTO

J FERNANDEZ • CROWN LARKS

THU

CAJUN DANCE PARTY FEAT.

CHICAGO CAJUN ALL-STARS

DJ JOHNNY WALKER

5/2

WED

5/6

SON MONARCAS • CHRIS WALZ THE WANDERING BOYS & MORE!

SUN

MON

LES VIQK • AXONS

SANCTIFIED GRUMBLERS 2PM

5/1

MAYPOLE FOLK FESTIVAL FEAT.

HENHOUSE PROWLERS

ZIGTEBRA

TUE

5/3

HARD COUNTRY HONKY TONK WITH

THE HOYLE BROTHERS

LA SERA

TURN TO CRIME • THE BINGERS

MOTHERS

SAT

PALM • BASEMENT FAMILY

L.A. WITCH

SUN

SUGAR CANDY MOUNTAIN

5/8

MON

5/9

LEVITATION ROOM

FREE

CORNERS

DEATH VALLEY GIRLS • THE LIMBOS

5/10: CHAIN & THE GANG, 5/11: USELESS EATERS, 5/12: YOU WON’T, 5/13: GOOD VYBES FEST III FEAT. HEADBAND, 5/14: GOOD VYBES FEST III FEAT. SOLEDAD BROTHERS, 5/15: DUNGEN, 5/16: GOOD VYBES FEST III FEAT. RABBLE RABBLE, 5/17: RADIUS FUNDRAISER FEAT. COPPICE, 5/18: GLITTLER CREEPS PRESENTS MELKBELLY • A GIANT DOG, 5/19: BEN FROST, 5/21: SCHOOL OF ROCK ELMHURST (12:30PM), 5/21: WORK (6PM), 5/21: WINDY CITY SOUL CLUB (9PM), 5/22: WOMEN IN MUSIC - CHICAGO, 5/23: PEACH KELLI POP, 5/25: SPRAY PAINT, 5/26: THE CAVE SINGERS NEW ON SALE: 6/4: THE BODY, 6/11-12: PILSEN FOOD TRUCK SOCIAL, 6/17: NAILS, 6/20: STONEFIELD, 7/8: BULLY, 7/12: MARISSA NADLER, 7/16: CAR SEAT HEADREST, 7/18: HOOPS, 9/23: WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM

36 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

FOOD & DRINK

R ORIOLE | $$$$$ 661 W. Walnut 312-877-5339 oriolechicago.com

NEW REVIEW

Noah Sandoval spreads his wings at Oriole The Senza vet has made the West Loop restaurant one of Chicago’s pricey but fun multicourse destinations. By MIKE SULA

Lamb belly glazed with jus, macerated huckleberry, ramp leaf puree, anise hyssop, and roasted cipollini, and dusted with sumac ! DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

read service comes right down the middle of the 15-course degustation at Oriole. It’s a slice of sourdough, slathered with cultured butter sprinkled with toasted grains. The synthesis of the tang of the bread, the nutty seed, and especially the cheeselike dairy is so deliciously funky it hits the pleasure centers of the brain with the force of a dope shot. Upon eating this the folks at my table emitted such alarming groans of gratification that servers quickly returned to the table with seconds. That’s the kind of professionally hospitable gesture one comes to expect when participating in the sort of extravagantly ticketed, multicourse meals that manage to persist here and there in our great eating city. Up front, I tend to dread potentially precious epic meals in new restaurants. (If only I could recoup the hours and dollars I’ve spent captive to dreary, passionless vision, sloppily brooding over wine pairings.) And at $175 a person, not including pairings or tip, Oriole out of the gate is one of the most expensive restaurants in Chicago. But that bread course is something of a tell from chef Noah Sandoval, who previously worked at Senza, a restaurant that garnered much acclaim despite serving food completely free of gluten, that scourge of the digestively deluded (with apologies to celiac sufferers everywhere). Sandoval, after all, did time at Green Zebra and Schwa, and has a range of experience that should be comforting to the nervous. The event begins when you amble up the stairs to the unassuming doors off alleylike Walnut Street and into the host station, an old but operative industrial freight elevator, and then on into a warmly lit, slightly less raw space of exposed brick and wooden support beams containing a comfortably arranged 28 seats. A muted soundtrack of the Skatalites, Fugazi, and Grinderman keeps the atmosphere subliminally charged. Elliot Smith may make a cameo, for a misplaced dose of existential dread. By contrast, the bright white tiled kitchen is in full view, separated into savory and pastry sides, the latter where Genie Kwon of GT Fish & Oyster, Boka, and Senza fame operates. You can see through the windows that the tweezer game is strong. A blowtorch makes a cameo. And all is calm, quiet, Alinea-like intensity. The menu I ate in mid-April was dominated by seafood but began with fruit, a small dish of the year’s first tiny wild French straw- J

APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 37

MUST BE 21+

Join us for our marquee event

KEY INGREDIENT COOK-OFF

Venue ONE

Friday, May 20th 7pm -10pm

1034 W Randolph St, Chicago, IL 60607

THIS YEAR’S PARTICIPATING CHEFS:

Carlos Gaytan Mexique Rodolfo Cuadros Carnivale Diana Davila Brian Enyart Dos Urban Cantina Emily Kraszyk Farmhouse Chicago Dan Salls The Salsa Truck & The Garage Duncan Biddulph The Winchester Matt Troost Charlatan Abraham Conlon Fat Rice Edward Sura Perennial Virant Nicole Pederson Found Jonathan Zaragoza Birrieria Zaragoza Alfredo Nogueira Analogue Andres Padilla Topolobampo Ryan Pfeiffer Blackbird

Taste and vote for your favorite dishes created by 16 of Chicago’s most outstanding Chefs using one of four specific ingredients for a chance to be named this years’ Key Ingredient Cook-off Champion. This year’s theme is:

SOUTH OF THE BORDER $50 For more information visit chicagoreader.com/kico 38 CHICAGO READER - APRIL 28, 2016

FOOD & DRINK

A long pretzel cracker dotted with black currant puree, gianduja, and dabs of funky Raclette cheese ! DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

continued from 37

berries—practically out of season the moment they reached our mouths—garnished with watercress and vermouth-infused cream and paired with a cocktail of elderflower, creme de violette, and sparkling wine. It was a combination so ethereal as to make a diversion of what was to follow: a bite of sweet Scottish langoustine topped with a piece of warm lardo and a dollop of briny, buttery caviar. The plate this rested on concealed a bowl of tissuey Iberico ham complemented by sweet, nutty Campo de Montalban cheese, candied black walnut, and pickled mustard seeds. This set up creamy Santa Barbara sea urchin gonad with a touch of the fermented citrus-chile paste yuzu kosho, perched on a single maki roll packed with brown rice. Sweet Alaskan king crab hid in a bowl of fish-sauce-infused coconut cream swimming with cara cara orange (a redfleshed variety of navel) and tart oxalis (aka wood sorrel). Steelhead trout fillets bobbed in a pho-like shishito pepper consomme among smoky-salty roe, purple potato confit, and braised artichoke. The succession of sea creatures was broken only by the bread course and a single bite of

foie gras torchon garnished with a white-soy gelee and tart clusters of finger lime. Then it was on to meaty, savory courses. A square of rare, fatty Wagyu beef alongside charred Little Gem lettuce, bearnaise, black garlic puree, and onion ash was a powerfully moving bite that didn’t slow anyone down for the following tangle of caraway-flavored capellini with a cheesy butter sauce emulsified with black truffle and yeast, all showered with ground rye berries. Lush local lamb belly glazed with jus, macerated huckleberry, ramp leaf puree, anise hyssop, and roasted cipollini, all dusted with tart sumac, ended the savory courses. Kwon took the stage with passion-fruit sorbet lollipops enrobed in coconut and kaffir-lime-toasted marshmallow, cleansing the palate for a remarkable cheese course: a long pretzel cracker dotted with black currant puree, gianduja, and dabs of funky Raclette cheese, rich, fruity, sweet, and savory flavors harmonizing like a barbershop quartet. A dish of chicory custard and vanilla-cinnamon ice cream was a cool, creamy penultimate bite before mini croissants scented with cardamom and glazed with rose-acacia honey. Kwon also sends guests home with breakfast—in my case, a lemon-pecan mini pie that didn’t make it to morning. There are two pairings by former L2O and Intro sommelier Aaron McManus: one strictly wine focused ($125), the other a mix of wine, sake, beer, and cocktails ($75). They are invariably on point: the sea urchin with a multilayered junmai gingo sake from Japan’s oldest active brewery that just kept giving; the beef, or chef ’s “beer course,” with the fruity Belgian La Chouffe blond ale; and, to go with the gianduja, Brachetto d’Acqui, which happens to be the preferred bottle of the commedia dell’arte character the dessert is named for. Overall Sandoval and Kwon present a crescendoing succession of delicate dishes with excellent product and superb flavors and compositions from which not an ort should remain on the plate. The service is well practiced, almost clairvoyant, but in no way overformal. (There are tampons in the bathroom, along with dental floss, bobby pins, and hairspray, perhaps as a collegial reminder that we’re all human.) Oriole has joined the ranks of the city’s high-dollar but truly fun multicourse events—Alinea, Next, Elizabeth, Schwa—that you should make a point to experience, if only once. v

FIND HUNDREDS OF

READER-RECOMMENDED

RESTAURANTS EXCLUSIVE VIDEO FEATURES AND SIGN UP FOR WEEKLY NEWS CHICAGOREADER.COM/FOOD

$1.25 TACOS TUESDAYS (CHICKEN, GROUND BEEF, CHORIZO OR CARNITAS)

$6.99 EVERYDAY LUNCH PLATE SPECIAL 8AM-4PM • AVAILABLE FOR DELIVERY

BUY 1 DINNER AT REGULAR PRICE, GET THE 2ND 1/2 OFF

(2ND DINNER IS OF EQUAL OR LESS VALUE • DINE IN ONLY)

2829 N MILWAUKEE

4651 N CLARK · 5959 W GRAND

OPEN 24 HRS • WE DELIVER

773·227·1688 ELRANCHITORES.COM

A UTH E NTI C PH I LLY C H E E S E STEA KS!

S P DR EC INK IA LS

T F A ER R C BE

4757 N TALMAN · 773.942.6012 · ILOVEMONTIS.COM ·

S G N

@ILOVEMONTIS

Never miss a show again.

EARLY WARNINGS

chicagoreader.com/early

" @MikeSula APRIL 28, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 39

SPONSORED CONTENT

DRINK SPECIALS

FOOD & DRINK

○ Watch a video of Michael Tsirtsis making the Suicide Squeeze cocktail with Big League Chew at chicagoreader.com/food.

COCKTAIL CHALLENGE

A Big League Chew concoction not for minors By JULIA THIEL LINCOLN PARK

LINCOLN SQUARE

BERWYN

2683 N Halsted 773-348-9800

4757 N Talman 773-942-6012

6615 Roosevelt 708-788-2118

ALIVEONE THU

$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, $4 Lagunitas drafts, $4 Absolut cocktails, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

FRI

$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm-8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

S AT

$6 Jameson shots $3 PBR bottles

SUN

$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, $4 Temperance brews, $5 Absolut bloody mary’s

MONTI’S

$5 Martinis, Lemon Drop, Cinnamon Apple, Mai Tai, French, Cosmo, On the Rocks, Bourbon Swizzle, Pomegranate Margarita

$4.75 Bloody Mary and Marias

M O N $6 Jameson shots, $3 $1 off all beers

TUE

WED

PBR bottles, $4 Half Acre brews, FREE POOL, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm-8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

including craft

$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, $2 and $3 select beers

$2 off all Whiskeys and Bourbons

$6 Jameson shots, $3 PBR bottles, 1/2 price aliveOne signature cocktails, $4 Goose Island brews, “Hoppy Hour” 5pm-8pm = 1/2 price IPAs + pale ales

FITZGERALD’S

WICKER PARK

PHYLLIS’ MUSICAL INN 1800 W Division 773-486-9862

REGGIES

2105 S State 312-949-0120

$6 Firestone Walker Opal pints $6 Finch Vanilla Stout 16 oz. cans $7 house wines $8 Few Spirits