CONCERT PREVIEWS THURSDAY29

Pandelis Karayorgis See also Sun 7/2. Karayorgis performs two improvised sets in a quartet with Dave Rempis on saxophones, Jakob Heinemann on bass, and Bill Harris on drums. 8:30 PM, Elastic Arts, 3429 W. Diversey #208, $15. b

Pandelis Karayorgis is all about connections. On The Hasaan, Hope & Monk Project, a fantastic trio session released last year by Driff Records, the Boston-based keyboardist explores the overlapping idiosyncrasies of fellow pianists Thelonious Monk, Elmo Hope, and Hasaan Ibn Ali. In other settings, he has delved deeply into the music of Misha Mengelberg, Duke Ellington, and Sun Ra. Like those past masters, Karayorgis finds endless inspiration in the tensions he can create by suspending complex harmonies and judiciously situated pauses over hard-swinging rhythms. What keeps his music in the present tense is the dialogic rapport he’s developed with other musicians, especially those active in the Boston area (where he’s lived since leaving Athens, Greece, in 1985) and in Chicago. On a series of recordings with Karayorgis—including with the Pandelis Karayorgis Quintet, the Whammies, and Cutout—saxophonist Dave Rempis and trombonist Jeb Bishop have each brought a bristling intensity that tests the stress tolerances of the pianist’s compositions. This week, Karayorgis will reconnect with both of them, and he’ll also play for the first time with a few Chicagoans of a younger generation. On Thursday, he and Rempis will play two sets with bassist Jakob Heinemann and drummer Bill Harris. And on Sunday, he’ll appear in two different ensembles: first in a trio with Bishop and revenant vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, then in a quintet with Rempis, alto saxophonist Sarah Clausen, and drummers Tyler Damon and Lily Glick Finnegan. —BILL MEYER

Emily Kuhn Quintet 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15. 18+

DO YOU EVER feel incapacitated by the firehose of depressing news about our deteriorating environment and the stubborn nonresponse by the governments and corporations who could actually help? What about the deeply ingrained structural racism that disenfranchises and marginalizes large swaths of our communities, or the fascists who want to increase that misery? Maybe what gets you is the untenable rise in the cost of living, while the 1 percent get richer and richer and the management class fantasizes about using AI to destroy our livelihoods. Or maybe you just can’t believe how much money and energy was funneled into making The Flash. Whatever it is that’s pressing down on you, it’s probably already compounded into a ball of stress that sits on your chest—sadly, that’s a feeling almost anybody can recognize. You may also recognize it in The Whaler (Wax Bodega), the new second album from Florida fifth-wave emo standard-bearers Home Is Where—and it might even help you find some catharsis. The Whaler focuses on 9/11 as a symbolic tipping point past which everything has gotten worse every day. The attacks function as the nexus on an evidence board that’s tangled with connections, linking a web of ideas and feelings and experiences without oversimplifying them. Home Is Where’s impressionistic lyrics give you breathing room to interpret the band’s thesis about our crumbling world, and even if you don’t bother to parse them, the way front woman Brandon MacDonald yelps and brays lets you feel how much worse o we all are. The band blends rough-hewn folk-punk instrumentation and the desperate energy of screamo to supersize the desperation and anger bubbling through the songs, and the album is a reminder of what even a small group can accomplish when they unite as a single organism. Even though we’re born into a hellscape, together we can make something great. —LEOR

GALIL

An up-and-coming musician usually gives themselves a starring role on their first record as a bandleader—what better time to show the world what they’re made of? But trumpeter Emily Kuhn, who moved to Chicago a er graduating from Oberlin in 2016, bucked that tradition on her eclectic, dreamy 2020 debut, Sky Stories, which diplomatically spotlights her free-jazz quartet and her nonet, Helios. Kuhn edges into the spotlight on her new second album, Ghosts of Us (BACE), but it still features another of her regular bands—a quintet with drummer Gustavo Cortiñas, guitarist Erik Skov, pianist Meghan Stagl, and bassist Kitt Lyles—with generous coequality.

Sky Stories is many things: suffusing, enveloping, inquisitive, and sometimes sweetly quirky. But it isn’t provocative, and the rather traditionalist Ghosts of Us is even less so. The liner notes of this cool, unfussy album trace the songs’ origins to the 2020 COVID lockdowns, but it sounds more like an easy voyage of bountifully talented friends than a pro-