BJ the Chicago Kid is ostensibly an R&B traditionalist: he’s reimagined Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” as a posthumous duet with the singer, he repeatedly alludes to the importance of the church in his lyrics, and he even sang the national anthem at President Obama’s farewell address here in Chicago. But it’d probably be more accurate to call BJ a restless polymath—for every reference to religion there’s a lyric about how he’s still looking for a lady friend, and for every homage to the Prince of Soul there’s a whole mixtape of Usher covers....

Contempo, the long-running new-music organization at the University of Chicago, casts a welcome light on five important female composers from Europe with this rigorous program performed by locals Ensemble dal Niente and the Kontras Quartet along with Polish pianist Pawel Checinski, expat Moldovan bayan virtuoso Stas Venglevski, and mezzo-­soprano Kayleigh Butcher, a founding member of Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble. While the connective tissue between the pieces doesn’t extend much beyond gender, geography, and modernist impulses, they undeniably share a dark power....

When I wrote earlier this month about the joys and tribulations of being a Saint Louis native and rabid Cardinals fan in Chicago, I had in mind a more complex story. I wanted to add to the mix my opposite: a Saint Louis writer who’s an unabashed Cubs fan. And I knew who I wanted that fan to be: Bill McClellan, a Chicago native and the longtime city columnist for the St....

If you recognize Jeff Rosenstock’s name, you might’ve been surprised to see him on the lineup for this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival. Rosenstock led staunchly DIY punk collective Bomb the Music Industry! from its formation in 2004 till its dissolution in 2014, operating in an ecosystem that barely overlapped at all with the festival circuit: the group distributed its music for free through its website, gave away stencils and paint so fans could make their own band T-shirts, and made a point of playing all-ages shows that cost $10 or less....

Every week Linda Holmes, NPR’s lead pop-culture junkie and editor of the site’s entertainment blog Monkey See, gathers a panel of her public-radio friends to dissect the week in TV, music, movies, and more on Pop Culture Happy Hour. Episodes cover everything from romantic comedies to graphic novels to the Super Bowl with a much more conversational style than many of NPR’s other podcasts. And things get even looser when the show goes on the road....

I gave a cursory listen to Libations & Meditations (Posi-Tone), the latest album by New York pianist Art Hirahara, when it dropped back in January. It sounded solid, and I put back on the shelf meaning to give it more time down the road. I wasn’t thinking that would be seven months later, but it was only this week that I really got to sit down with the trio recording, which features the wonderful Linda Oh on bass and John Davis on drums....

Michael Gebert Paul Kahan at the Publican, where he hosted his own honors “New York usually hosts the stars of the culinary industry, but here in Chicago we produce them,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel, with perhaps a bit too much Second City aggressive defensiveness. As was demonstrated by his tribute to Charlie Trotter at yesterday’s James Beard Foundation Awards announcement of the 2014 nominees, held at the Publican, Chicago doesn’t need to bluster about having an important place in the culinary world....

A Master Builder Jonathan Demme hasn’t made a dramatic feature since his acclaimed Rachel Getting Married (2008), though his latest film, A Master Builder, has so many competing levels of authorship—it was adapted by Wallace Shawn from the Ibsen play, and staged over a period of many years by theater director Andre Gregory—that the finished product probably has more in common with Demme’s music movies than with Philadelphia or The Silence of the Lambs....

Despite getting an extremely late start in his quest for Chicago blues stardom—his first domestic full-length as a bandleader was released in 1979, when he was 50 years old—guitarist Jimmy Johnson has been a local fixture for so long that some fans take him for granted. Bad move. Johnson’s spiky solos twist and dart with startling unpredictability, and his searing, high-pitched vocals remind you that in the 60s he used to back up top soul acts onstage....

Rich Hein/Sun-Times Media Dean Zanella at Rhapsody Several months back I wrote about the tragedy that befell the family of chef Dean Zanella, long of 312 Chicago and Rhapsody—his wife Mary died suddenly, just days after giving birth to their twin daughters. There are two benefits being held for the twins, Anna and Nora. One is Tuesday, August 26th at River Roast, from 9 PM to midnight; chefs Tony Mantuano and John Hogan (who will be the next Key Ingredient chef, incidentally) will host a star-studded group of chefs (Kahan, Tentori, Virant, Manion, Hickey, et cetera) serving up food and drink on the patio....

It’s been an up-and-down couple of weeks for Mayor Emanuel as he attempts to win back some of the black voters he alienated with closings, cuts, and firings in his first three years in office. The funny thing is that the mayor probably thought he was doing the politically smart thing this time around. “We did the same work, but we don’t get the same money,” says a janitor I’ll call Billy, who works for a private firm....

Word broke Monday that Chicago teachers had overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike. I’d like to note that Mayor Emanuel could have avoided all of this by agreeing to a one-year deal that wouldn’t have cost the schools any more new money in teacher salaries. Get ready for an eventful 2016, Chicago. If nothing else, the deal would have bought them time to go, hand in hand, to Springfield to persuade the governor and legislative leaders to send more money to Chicago....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, September 14, 2017. Emanuel’s right-hand man steps down, talks Rahm in 2019 Mike Rendina is stepping down from his position as a senior adviser to Mayor Rahm Emanuel to take an unnamed job in the private sector, freeing him up to work part-time on the 2019 mayoral campaign, the Sun-Times reports. Emanuel hasn’t announced his candidacy yet, but Rendina said be “shocked” if Emanuel doesn’t enter and win the race....

Edie Fake is a one-person comics locus. He works at Quimby’s, the city’s alt comics hub, and he’s one of the forces behind the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo, which holds its second annual convention from May 31 through June 1. The trans artist’s latest project is about community—specifically, the queer community. In the recently released book Memory Palaces, Fake offers a stunning series of illustrated reimaginings of spots from Chicago’s LGBTQ history: bars, bathhouses, bookstores, clinics, venues....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, July 19, 2017. J.B. Pritzker, Rauner are raking in millions for the 2018 gubernatorial race Governor Bruce Rauner and Democratic opponent J.B. Pritzker, who are both billionaire businessmen, are raking in money for the heated 2018 gubernatorial campaign, according to second-quarter fund-raising disclosures. Pritzker donated $14 million to his own campaign and spent $9.3 million on TV ads. Rauner has $67.6 million in his main campaign fund, but his biggest donor so far has been fellow billionaire Ken Griffin, who donated $20 million during the second quarter....

This high-and-tight New Jersey trio, often credited with single-handedly defending the honor of heavy indie rock ’n’ roll since they emerged in 2005, hone their attack through near-constant gigging. In fact, Screaming Females play in town so often you’d be forgiven for thinking they’re local. (the 2014 album, Live at the Hideout, recorded with Steve Albini and Timothy Powell in a porta-studio in the alley behind the club, cements their status as honorary Chicagoans in my book....

Michael Gebert Potato, leek, and bacon pizza at Parlor Pizza Bar I was talking to Jim Graziano, of the wonderful J.P. Graziano Italian grocery on Randolph Street, about the changes in the old wholesalers’ district turned hot restaurant row, and he made the observation that there’s kind of nothing to do there besides have a really fancy meal. (His own solution is to eventually have a little gelato window on his business for people walking around....

“You wanna be a punk gang member or do you wanna be a gangster? This guy there has his pants hanging off his ass—the gang member standing on the street corner. This guy there has got tunnel vision, only sees so far. . . . This guy here—the gangster . . . is going to all the fine restaurants and nightclubs and going to political fundraisers, getting things done.” In the privacy of those locked cubicles, Sal told Hagedorn stories he had never heard before....

John Smith’s Blight (1996), a collaboration with composer Jocelyn Pook, screens Friday at the Logan Center for the Arts. The coming week is packed with experimental- film screenings (though not at the Chicago International Film Festival, which hasn’t presented any experimental work in decades). The most important of these are surely the programs of films by British director John Smith, who will be in attendance for all three. Each program spans the entirety of his five-decade career, meaning you can get a taste of his life’s work even if you attend just one event....

In the art world, as in the real world, women are often underrepresented. Only around 5 percent of the artwork in major U.S. museums is by female artists, even though, according to a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts survey, 51 percent of visual artists are women. And on average, they earn 81 cents for every dollar a male artist makes. In light of this bleak picture of gender parity, “Woman As Warrior,” a group show at Bridgeport’s Zhou B Art Center, seems to be a step in the right direction....