A handful of local rappers decided to celebrate Independence Day by releasing new music: Hurt Everybody dropped their debut self-titled EP (which is actually longer than most albums), GLC put out By Ism Means Necessary, and King Louie brought the world Tony. I’ve been thinking about Louie with greater frequency lately. He’s occupied a peculiar position since drill broke out nationally in 2012. The rapper is very much a forefather to that specific Chicago scene, but he’s got a lyrical prowess and fluid flow that doesn’t quite jibe with the rudimentary and all-too-familiar definition of drill—that it’s an apocalyptic mutation of trap filled with hollow, uncreative, and unrepentantly violent lyrics....

Michael Gebert Posting the day’s seafood at Nico Osteria. In the first part of my interview with Erling Wu-Bower, posted yesterday, the Nico Osteria chef and I talked about his Italian approach to food in general and seafood in particular. Ha. Italian seafood breakfast is tough. We do some crab, a crab sabayon with poached eggs. We do a seafood brunch, for sure, we do seafood towers, we do fish collars....

Michael Gebert Andy Hatch with Rush Creek Reserve at Uplands Four years ago this fall I was on a cheese junket, a tour of Wisconsin cheesemakers arranged by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board (being so perishable, milk’s only shot at wider markets comes in cheese form). We were at Uplands Cheese Co. near Dodgeville, makers of Pleasant Ridge Reserve, which had just won Best of Show at the American Cheese Society’s annual competition for a record third time....

Local pianist and composer Jeff Kowalkowski has consistently demonstrated an easy fluidity between experimental music, contemporary classical, and improvisation, and that mutability might be one of the main reasons he isn’t recognized more widely—people don’t know where to put him or his music. That’s a shame, because he’s one of the most beguiling and interesting performers in Chicago, whether he’s making wonderfully strange sounds with Carrie Biolo in Jack the Dog, playing as sideman in Rob Mazurek’s Electro Acoustic Exploding Star Orchestra, or heading the Chicago Scratch Orchestra, an experimental music ensemble he founded in 2010....

The Adventures of Robin Hood This children’s play, written by Oliver Emanuel, features just two people in its cast—Molly Bunder and Jyreika Guest, who energetically portray the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood, respectively, as well as a host of supporting characters. Under Omen Sade’s direction, the duo’s accents and well-aimed archery are enhanced by lighting and sound that engages and excites the youngest audience members. During explainer breaks, Bunder and Guest appear as themselves and describe the significance and history of the character of Robin Hood....

Editor’s note: José Ángel’s last name is being withheld to protect him from retribution based on his status as an undocumented immigrant. They likely won’t gain it anytime soon. The Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill has stalled in the House, and a path to citizenship—or even legalization—for the 11 million or so undocumented immigrants in the country appears to be off the table for 2014. Republicans want to gain control of the Senate in the midterm elections, and House Speaker John Boehner recently cited a lack of trust in the Obama administration as a stumbling block....

For the past few years the Hyde Park Jazz Festival has featured a sidebar of free film screenings. The tradition continues this Saturday with three half-hour documentaries from the late 1960s by British filmmaker and scholar Dick Fontaine. The films, all of them screening from 16-millimeter, will play at Black Cinema House, which is copresenting the program along with Michael J. Phillips of South Side Projections. Screening at 2 PM is Who’s Crazy?...

A Field in England Starting this Friday Facets Multimedia will host a weeklong run of Nothing Bad Can Happen, an unsettling German docudrama written and directed by Katrin Gebbe. This is Gebbe’s first film, though it feels highly familiar, in part because the novice filmmaker wears her influences (Michael Haneke, Harmony Korine) on her sleeve, and in part because it has much in common with other recent titles released by Drafthouse Films, a young distribution company that aims to “destroy the barriers between grindhouse and art-house....

I first met Olivia Ortiz in the spring of 2015, which was three years after she’d accused her then-boyfriend of sexually assaulting her when she was a second-year student at the University of Chicago, and two years after she’d filed a Title IX complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights about the way the university had handed the accusation. The linchpin of Ortiz’s complaint had been that Dean Susan Art, the administrator who had handled her initial accusation, had offered to resolve the issue through an informal mediation session between Ortiz and her ex-boyfriend, after which she told Ortiz that the university didn’t consider her complaint sexual assault....

COT/Corey DiNardo Andrew Wilkowske and Cassidy Smith in The Emperor of Atlantis This weekend, for the first time since its move from the Athenaeum to the Harris Theater a decade ago, Chicago Opera Theater is opening a subscription-season show in a different venue. The double bill of Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis and Carl Orff’s The Clever One will have a four-performance run beginning Saturday (and continuing June 4, 6, and 8) at DePaul’s Merle Reskin Theatre....

Trombonist Willie Colón was something of a teenage salsa sensation when he signed to Fania Records in 1965 at age 15. He made his recording debut two years later with El Malo, which featured vocalist Héctor Lavoe and was right in the boogaloo mold that attracted several young New York Latin musicians and audiences. Tracks like “Willie Whopper” fused Latin rhythms with R&B grooves; neither side came up short. Not content to stay in the realm of Latin soul (which he would later dismiss as “rotten” “backbeat” music), he expanded his palette to include traditional sounds from Africa and Brazil....

There are people who roll up their pants and expose their ankles to the elements in the dead of winter. It’s their prerogative, but to me it seems insane—as strange as those bros bustling around outside in cargo shorts and flip-flops on the first day in March when the temperature finally breaks 40. Then there are people who wear closed-toe shoes and long pants all summer long. Again, their prerogative, but one gets to wondering if they’re religiously observant, or if they’ve experienced trauma, or suffer from a draconian corporate dress code or a dreadfully over-air-conditioned office, or whether they’re so unnaturally cold they prefer, even enjoy, keeping themselves wrapped up during heat waves....

The Rhinoceros Theater Festival is billed as “Chicago’s longest running fringe festival,” but last year’s edition took a different tack from the 27 before it. Or seemed to, anyway. Where its predecessors appeared to follow the familiar fringe-fest pattern of ignoring patterns, the 2016 fest had a clear curatorial concept: Coartistic directors Beau O’Reilly and Jenny Magnus shaped it around Rhinoceros, the black comedy by Eugene Ionesco that, interestingly enough, didn’t inspire Rhinofest’s name....

Julia Thiel The bar at the Brixton The space that used to house In Fine Spirits has seemed slightly doomed since the neighborhood favorite closed two years ago (the lounge, that is; the liquor store next door is still going strong). It was replaced by Premise, a pricey fine-dining establishment that lasted just four months before abruptly shutting down in August 2012. Brasserie 54 by LM quickly took its place, but didn’t fare much better....

Few record labels have been as committed to preserving and championing the legacy of saxophonist and musical visionary Albert Ayler as the Swiss label Hatology (née Hat Hut). Since releasing a stunning live recording Lörrach/Paris 1966 back in 1982—a collection of live material cut in the title cities, when the saxophonist was leading a remarkable lineup featuring his brother Donald on trumpet, violinist Michael Sampson, drummer Beaver Harris, and bassist William Folwell—the imprint has repeatedly issued various live and radio recordings Ayler made during his few European tours....

By chance, I stumbled on the latest gentrification fight in Uptown around the time I read Walter Isaacson’s essay on the rise of the ride-share and home-share industries in the new economic order. The Uptown controversy has to do with a sign posted outside 4525 N. Kenmore, the building that was formerly Graeme Stewart School. Chicago Public Schools closed the school and sold it to a private developer who’s turning it into the Stewart School Lofts, which are being marketed shamelessly on a placard over the school’s abandoned playground as “best in the class” rentals....

Yesterday my colleague Philip Montoro shared a track from See Heat, the debut album from a new project of Brian Case and Justin Walters called Bambi Kino Duo. The pair will celebrate the release and play its first live show ever on Saturday at the Burlington. Headlining the concert is another duo, but this one has logged hundreds of performance, including many in Chicago: Asheville, North Carolina’s Ahleuchatistas. During the last visit guitarist Shane Parish and drummer Ryan Oslance made to Chicago, in August of 2014, they went into Observatory Studios with engineer David Allen, who happens to be a partner in the local label International Anthem....

“Confronting Truths: Wake Up!,” Ti-Rock Moore’s new solo exhibit at Gallery Guichard in Bronzeville, was intended to start a conversation about racism in America. Instead it’s started a controversy. Andre Guichard, one of the principals of Gallery Guichard, says the gallery, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary, focuses on the art of the African diaspora, and that race has always been part of the conversation. While he and his business partner Stephen Mitchell did expect some controversy surrounding the exhibit because of its subject matter, they were taken aback by viewers taking issue with Moore’s being Caucasian....

Q I am a liberal parent. I raised a daughter who is bi and poly. I always thought that I could accept anything that parenthood might throw at me. I knew that I could embrace my son if he were straight, gay, bi, trans, etc. If there is a controlling consciousness of the universe, it has a nasty sense of humor. Putting it bluntly: my son is sexually attracted to Pokemon....

This month I’d planned to compile my annual list of my 40 favorite albums of the previous year. After I fell behind, I figured I could just do it a bit later than usual, but ever since the inauguration it’s been hard to think about ranking records. I do know, though, that the latest album by Laura Cannell, Simultaneous Flight Movement (Brawl), would’ve landed high on that list. The Brit plays fiddle and recorders, and her exquisite solo recordings connect British folk, contemporary music, drone, and medieval music in ways that I struggle to understand....