Peter Gannushkin/Downtownmusic.net Peter Evans This Sunday afternoon International Contemporary Ensemble presents the latest event in its OpenICE concert series at the Chicago Cultural Center. ICE, of course, is one the most adventurous and accomplished exponents of contemporary composition, but this weekend’s concert veers toward raucous improvised music with a duet performance by trumpeter Peter Evans and pianist Cory Smythe. Both musicians are equally at home in many disparate contexts—from harrowing modern composition to modern jazz—and this event, billed as Early Jazz to White Noise, promises to draw on those expansive abilities....

What better way to kick off the Halloween weekend than watching a disgusting, gory video from bloody death-metal staples Cannibal Corpse? Today’s 12 O’Clock Track is “Kill or Become,” which is taken from the band’s latest album, last year’s A Skeletal Domain. “Kill or Become,” of course, is about murdering hordes of zombies—the song’s brutal chorus erupts with, “Fire up the chainsaw! Hack their fucking heads off”—and in the video, the lyrics come to life in all their vile glory....

AFP PHOTO/THE NEW YORK TIMES/DOUG MILLS Dean Baquet Former colleagues generally speak highly of Dean Baquet, who just became executive editor of the New York Times as executive editor Jill Abramson was tossed out on her ear by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. last week. Baquet joined the Times after being fired as editor of the Tribune Company’s Los Angeles Times. Earlier, he was a Tribune reporter. I apparently saw Baquet on a bad day....

photo courtesy FOX TV The truth is out there. Thanks to Netflix, I’ve been pretty immersed in the brilliant, creepy, and amusingly self-aware 90s TV series The X-Files. I watched some of season two and all of seasons three and four when it was originally on the air, but only upon rewatching the show am I starting to become aware of its true genius. Last night I was watching the season-two episode “Ascension,” and while deranged abductee Duane Barry is driving through the North Carolina woods with agent Dana Scully tied up in the back of his trunk, what’s playing but Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand....

I’m a bit of a freak about art-rock outfit TV on the Radio. For example, as a college senior enrolled in a small liberal arts school outside of Boston, I hopped a bus down to Brooklyn to catch guitarist-singer Kyp Malone play a solo set—it didn’t matter that I knew nothing about his non-TVOTR music, I just wanted to hear his heartbreaking falsetto in person. I don’t have to travel nearly as far to get a similar experience tonight, as Malone is on the bill for tonight’s free Empty Bottle show....

Classical and modern dance crowd Chicago playbills like belles at a ball. To rectify that, Alliance Dance Company artistic director Jennifer Gage last year launched Kaleidoscope, a choreographers’ festival that doesn’t make wallflowers of contemporary, jazz, tap, and hip-hop. This year Gage shepherds an impressive flock of 25 choreographers, seven from Alliance, the rest from other local and regional companies. The 26 pieces certainly don’t try to make people eat their vegetables; the main criterion for selection was entertainment value, says Gage, whose own mix of contemporary with jazz and ballet leans heavily on pop music and technical bravado....

I had one of those existential moments of doubt when I opened my morning Sun-Times on Tuesday and found myself facing the following headline: “TIF flap forgotten as mayor breaks ground on DePaul basketball arena.” I confess—I was one of those critics. Oh, brother. The arena’s being built at Michigan and Cermak in the South Loop, one of the hottest neighborhoods in town. This is the last Chicago neighborhood that needs a handout to stimulate development....

If you happened to follow the trail of well-dressed people out onto Navy Pier last night, they would have led you to Vernissage, the opening event of Expo Chicago, the biggest art fair of the year. Galleries from all over the world send their representatives here with some of their finest, or at least most salable, art, and members of the Chicago art world put on their finest clothes and go out to meet them....

Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s production of George Stiles and Anthony Drewe’s musical based on the J.M. Barrie classic is a captivating 75 minutes for both adults and children. The story centers on Peter Pan, played with lightness and impish excitement by Johnny Shea, who teaches the Darling children, led by Elizabeth Stenhold’s precocious and adventurous Wendy, how to fly to Neverland: “second star to the right and straight on ’til morning.” This is where things really get magical, thanks to flying effects created by ZFX....

In 2013, things were looking up at Columbia College. After several years of dicey relations between the administration and P-fac—the part-time faculty union that represents the majority of Columbia’s teachers—a new college president, Kwang-Wu Kim, was in place. It seemed to P-fac’s president, Diana Vallera, like the beginning of a new, much more congenial era. The college included faculty, staff, and students in the development of a strategic plan last year, and is changing “because the world of creative work has changed, and we must prepare our students to succeed in that world,” according to a Columbia spokesperson....

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. Hey, did you read: That Donald Trump’s poll numbers are up 13 percent since October? —Tal Rosenberg That Ronnie Woo Woo has called for Rahm’s resignation? —Brianna Wellen About how the newest season of South Park perfectly captures our era of outrage? —Sue Kwong This obituary for 92-year-old Robert Craft, a conductor, musicologist, and word freak best known for serving as Stravinsky’s amanuensis and factotum in the composer’s later years?...

In 2014 art critic Christian Viveros-Fauné and his Artnet News colleague Blake Gopnik made a five-minute, tongue-in-cheek video in which they pretend to be billionaire collectors on the prowl at the New York edition of the Frieze art fair. The fair drew 38,000 people in 2016, Karman says; this edition has 135 galleries from 25 countries. That’s down ten from last year, but Karman explains that the number is also strategic, and the important thing is quality....

Russ Tutterow, longtime artistic director at Chicago Dramatists and much-loved nurturer of plays and playwrights, will be remembered during An Evening of Sharing, at 6:30 PM next Monday, July 13, at the Goodman Theatre. Tutterow, who’d been battling cancer, died May 4. In three decades at Chicago Dramatists, most recently as artistic director emeritus, Tutterow had worked with the likes of Keith Huff, Tina Fey, Rebecca Gilman, Brett Neveu, and many, many more....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, August 4, 2017. Have a great weekend! J.B. Pritzker’s health-care plan involves letting anyone buy into Medicaid Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker’s health-care plan includes establishing a “public option” called IllinoisCares, which would allow Illinoisans to buy into Medicaid at cost. “It is clear that the cost to Illinois families will be competitive with plans being offered in the private insurance market,” he said....

Few jazz musicians over the past four decades have developed a practice as rigorous and original as that of alto saxophonist and composer Steve Coleman, whose many awards include a 2014 Mac­Arthur Fellowship. A Chicago native, he grew up on the south side in thrall to the music of bebop pioneer Charlie Parker, whose harmonic dexterity and rhythmic invention remain cornerstones of Coleman’s work. He studied with Chicago legend Von Freeman, a fiercely individualistic player who no doubt helped Coleman find the fortitude to trust in his own vision....

KJ Whitehead, a black genderqueer performer (who prefers the pronoun “they”), takes pride in being able to go into the “straight white men’s lair” of the Chicago comedy scene and introduce a new perspective. At a recent open-mike night, after sitting through an evening of racial jokes all made by white comics, Whitehead got onstage and turned the tables. “I don’t want you guys to feel left out,” the 25-year-old said, and performed a set making fun of white people....

Ah, the joys of the practice space. A safe haven to experiment with your creative energy. A room to party in. A place to get really weird. In the video for the brand-new single “Middle Of,” off their upcoming Nothing Valley LP (coming out October 13 on Carpark Records subsidiary Wax Nine), Melkbelly use their rehearsal room to do all of the above. The lo-fi, no-nonsense clip, directed and edited by Matt Engers (better known as local psychedelic hip-hop artist Sophagus), takes place entirely in the band’s practice space....

It’s been a busy few days on the local opera beat, starting with a little shocker: over the weekend, Chicago Opera Theater announced that its innovative, high-profile artistic director, Andreas Mitisek, will leave the company when his contract expires at end of August. Mitisek will have an ongoing relationship with COT as a guest conductor and director. And, according to Clayton, the company “will continue to discuss coproductions with Long Beach Opera,” which Mitisek also heads....

In the last few days, I’ve heard a lot of people say there’s no way Mayor Emanuel would have defeated Jesus “Chuy” Garcia had voters been able to see the video of police officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. This is something I know a little about—as I’m the guy who unsuccessfully begged and pleaded for voters to oust Rahm and Mayor Daley, for that matter. By February, word had already emerged about the tape of the shooting....

Soon after Governor Bruce Rauner took office last winter, he sat down for a meeting with state rep Kelly Cassidy. She says Rauner asked if she would support his “turnaround agenda,” a series of probusiness proposals that would, among other things, restrict union organizing and worker’s compensation. Cassidy is one of the most liberal members of the General Assembly, and she says she explained to the Republican governor that her far-north-side district wouldn’t support his “turnaround” plans....