Getty Dave Holland I’m consistently impressed with the work Peter Margasak, John Corbett, and Bill Meyer do every year they cover the Chicago Jazz Festival. So many acts play, and yet every year the three writers pack each preview capsule with knowledge and insight without coming off as stuffy or impenetrable. I don’t know nearly as much about jazz as those three do, but as a person who enjoys music in general I’d highly recommend checking out Dave Holland’s Prism on Saturday night....

When I first heard about “Mount Bridgeport” I imagined a large mountain in some magical part of Chicago I’d never seen before. I readied myself to hike up rough terrain and get a taste of the wilderness within the city limits. But when I arrived at Palmisano Park I saw that the “mount” was really more of a hill. At first, I was disappointed—it looked like I’d put my hiking boots on for nothing....

Holidays don’t make us any deeper, but they give our minds a little room to wander. I find myself with a few curious things to say about the New York Times, where the most interesting item I read over the past two weeks was a correction. A chart on Friday with an article about racial disparities in deaths from breast cancer misstated the mortality rate gap between black women and white women in Tennessee....

Puig Detroyer’s best attribute is the name Puig Destroyer. Because punning on the name of grind powerhouse Pig Destroyer to incorporate Cuban wunderkind outfielder Yasiel Puig is just kind of brilliant, right? The gimmick, as executed by four Dodgers fans/musicians (two dudes from Kowloon Walled City, one from Curl Up and Die, and one from Thrice), created some ripples in the metal scene in July of 2013 when Puig Destroyer first hurled heaters like “Destroyer of Baseballs” and “Stop Fucking Bunting” on their self-titled debut....

There are few musicians at work with the curiosity, rigor, and range of Seattle-area violist Eyvind Kang, who has gradually expanded his arsenal to include string instruments like the Persian setar and the Indonesian plucked zither called the kecapi. Those additions weren’t without study—Kang is fluent in Arabic, Persian, and Indonesian traditions as well as improvisation, jazz, and art-pop, and he’s played with guitarist Bill Frisell and crafted string arrangements for the likes of Aoife O’Donovan and Marissa Nadler....

Since fall 2017, Haley Fohr has been on the road playing songs from Reaching for Indigo (Drag City), the sixth full-length by her primary musical project, Circuit des Yeux. The singer-guitarist is finishing the tour and the year with a three-night weekly residency at the Hideout entitled Intentions of Sociable Creativity Through Light & Sound, which will retire the album’s material, celebrate Fohr’s relationship to Chicago’s experimental- and improvised-music communities, and point toward the music she’ll make in 2019....

If last year was all about Italian food, this year was all about red meat, with some five major steak houses opening over the past 12 months. Steak houses are sort of like the new Union Stockyards, with a never-ending supply of conventioneers herding into these cow palaces, releasing cash from their expense accounts like bovine emissions. Historically, they’ve been predictable, and I’ve tended to greet the announcement of a new one with dread....

The villain of The Perfect Guy, currently the number one movie in America, is an IT expert who uses his skills to spy on the heroine and make her life a living hell. This premise touches on fears of overreaching Internet surveillance, a common anxiety in light of Edward Snowden’s revelations. Yet the script, written by Tyger Williams from a story created by Williams and Alan McElroy, doesn’t really explore the zeitgeist—it simply exploits it for a reasonably engaging thriller with some topical overtones....

Look, I think Amy Schumer’s funny. When I spotted an essay online late Monday night ripping Schumer a new butthole over ugly, racist humor that makes her a few fast bucks but poisons the well of American comity, my reaction was, “Say wha’?” But I was half asleep. I figured the authors might be making good points I was too wiped out to appreciate, so I let it go. I say apparently because their next sentence is not totally clear....

Now in their 27th year, Mexico City quartet Café Tacuba have arguably done more than anyone to give Mexican rock music a broad, serious platform worldwide. As key players in the ascent of rock en español, the group refused to sing in English and deftly forged a vanguard sound that encouraged countless others in Latin America to follow their own creative imperatives rather than imitate bands in the U.S. or Europe....

Q: Longtime Savage Love fanboy with a bit of a conundrum—and it’s your fault! I’m a bi man in my 30s. To use Charles M. Blow’s word, my bisexuality is “lopsided.” This means that I fall in love with women exclusively, but I love to have sex with men occasionally. My current girlfriend not only approves, she likes to join in. We have a great kinky sex life, and at times we invite a hot bi dude to join us....

During last winter’s polar vortex, the brave souls who cycled through the ice, snow, salt, and sludge could be viewed as examples of midwest resiliency. They also could be seen as bundled-up question marks, daring us to explain why we endure a Hoth-like landscape. The contest focuses on urban utility bikes and encourages both iterative design and a fusion of craft and technology. Alderman’s collaboration with Minimal went according to script....

Two years ago Chicago’s Spektral Quartet were paired with the French accordionist/bandoneon master Julien Labro for a performance at Northwestern University, part of a concert called the Big Squeeze that explored various incarnations and traditions of the squeezebox. Labro and the group hit it off and decided to extend their collaboration, which has proven fruitful. Tonight they perform together at City Winery to celebrate the forthcoming release of their strong new album, From This Point Forward (Azica), a dynamic portrait of where tango nuevo music has gone in the wake of the great Astor Piazzolla....

At the Gelato World Tour Grand Finale this weekend in Rimini, Italy, 36 gelato masters from around the globe will face off, entering flavors such as Gorgonzola-pear, apple sorbetto with caramelized speck, and smoked chocolate with bourbon. Among them will be Cocco Sogno, a coconut gelato with dark chocolate and almond brittle from Angelo Lollino of Elmwood Park and his team, Ali Caine Hung and Lollino’s son, Giuseppe. Last year the trio took first place in North America and second in the Americas at the regional semifinal competition, held in Millennium Park, with a Rocky Road variation called Chicago Pothole that included chocolate sauce, chocolate chunks, caramelized pecans, and meringue in a chocolate base....

courtesy Illinois Holocaust Museum There are plenty of things to look at in “RACE: Are We So Different?”, a traveling exhibit that originated at the Science Museum of Minnesota and has now settled in for three months at the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie. There are charts and pictures and videos and buttons to push and explainer text to read. If you stop a few times to say, “Huh, I did not know that,” the staff of the museum, and also of the YWCA Evanston/North Shore, which is cosponsoring the exhibit, will be pleased....

I watched my mom make clothes for the guys in the neighborhood and I could see the confidence it gave to them. I saw the way they acted when they dressed well,” says Milton Latrell, 38, about the transformative power of a great outfit. Agriculture also carries other brands, such as footwear by Mezlan and Bacco Bucci and sturdy cardigans made of twined rope imported from Turkey ($90). For those in need of some guidance, Latrell prides himself in offering personalized service, in which he caters to his clients’ unique needs: “We listen to what each person really wants and try to adapt our selection to their lifestyle—not the other way ’round....

Roscoe Mitchell is an elder of the African-American avant-garde. In 1965 he joined the brand-new Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, whose vast influence on black art-making is still felt today; within two years he launched the group that would become the Art Ensemble of Chicago, which transformed the future of improvised music. (Once the AACM’s flagship band, it’s recently risen again after a hiatus of several years.) As a composer, improviser, and educator, Mitchell integrates material from a broad array of sources, including free jazz, hard bop, Baroque music, and contemporary orchestral composition....

New York combo Slavic Soul Party!, led by versatile percussionist Matt Moran, has arguably advanced the cause of Balkan brass music further than any other U.S.-based group, honoring the rollicking Romani style popularized by the likes of Boban Markovic and Fanfare Ciocarlia while putting its own spin on the tradition. Over its 17-year history, the group has mostly consisted of jazz musicians, but they’re players with omnivorous appetites and sophisticated palates....

Mi Tocaya Antojeria For each installment of the Reader’s regular Key Ingredient column, a local chef chooses an ingredient and challenges a fellow chef to create a dish with it. (The ingredient doesn’t have to be difficult to procure or unusual or gross, but that’s the direction most chefs go, testing their colleagues with everything from marshmallow creme to ant eggs.) Our annual Key Ingredient Cook-Off usually follows a similar format, except that we’re the ones who decide what ingredients the chefs have to cook with—until this year’s event, which was held May 18 at the Ivy Room at Tree Studios....

After his 2007 development deal with Interscope dried up, Gary rapper Freddie Gibbs gathered the pieces of his career and built a new one. His trek since then has been unconventional; for nearly a decade he’s attracted a grassroots following, largely through a string of EPs, mixtapes, and full-lengths, many of which he’s released through his own ESGN imprint. His flow is fierce, and likewise his career has grown, blossoming in unexpected streaks....