Frode Gjerstad once explained the concept of his group Detail as “too free for the jazzers and too jazzy for the improvisers.” The 69-year-old Norwegian reedist, who currently favors alto saxophone and B-flat clarinet, has struck that balance throughout his career. Gjerstad grew up in Stavanger, Norway, which had next to no free-music scene. He figured out early on that he’d have to get out of town to find like minds, and so he’s developed long-­standing relationships with musicians from Europe, South Africa, and the U....

ABC FAMILY/Ron Tom Miguel Pinzon, Jennie Garth, and Tori Spelling need to get a clue. Now that we’re pretty sure we’re getting a summer, it would be a shame to waste any of these precious, sun-filled hours watching TV, right? That is, aside from making sure to DVR the final season of True Blood, or keeping an eye out for the return of Masters of Sex or Pretty Little Liars....

Indecent is more of a known quantity for me, inasmuch as I saw the version that ran on Broadway last year. In it, Vogel revisits the relatively obscure but wildly resonant history of a play: Sholem Asch’s The God of Vengeance. The sensational tale of a Jewish brothel keeper whose daughter falls for one of his prostitutes, Vengeance was such a succes de scandale in Europe that Asch brought it first to the Yiddish theaters of New York and then, in English translation, to Broadway....

Since singer-songwriter David Bazan dissolved his most popular band, Pedro the Lion, in 2005 he’s continued to make the kind of intimate, self-questioning indie rock that Pedro was known for, just operating under his own name. Pedro material has stuck around in Bazan’s performances too, albeit mostly in small doses—he’s been known to incorporate a track or two into the frequent solo acoustic living-room tours he’s made since 2009. (These intimate shows take place in galleries and even in the homes of strangers who open their doors to small groups of fellow fans....

In Jackson Heights is the most joyful feature by master documentary maker Frederick Wiseman, celebrating not only the title neighborhood in Queens but American life in all its diversity. The film’s design evokes that of a sprawling patchwork quilt, with scenes focusing on the immigrant experience, LGBT activism, municipal governance, the serenity of old age, working life, and more. Wiseman touches on such dark topics as police brutality and the exploitation of migrants, yet he manages to put a positive spin on them, recording citizens’ groups as they look for constructive solutions....

But the FOP, the union representing Chicago police officers, asked Cook County Chancery Court judge Peter Flynn to block the release of the records, contending that publication of the records would violate terms of its contract with the city. Flynn issued a preliminary injunction limiting release of the records to the last four years. The city has appealed, and the matter is currently before the appellate court, which has been fully briefed but has not yet scheduled oral arguments....

Kevin Warwick,Reader associate editor Kraftwerk in 3-D I was one of the privileged few who got to witness—through 3-D glasses—the forefathers of minimalist avant-garde electro awe a sold-out crowd at the Riv. The band keyed through Kraftwerk cuts at their trademark glowing podiums, which was great enough even without the supernatural visuals. Sometimes menacing (“The Robots“), sometimes colorful (“Autobahn“), the projections provided mind-bending accompaniment, as well as a fun excuse for the crowd to collectively gasp as a satellite propelled itself from the screen....

When Bill Orcutt—the abstract guitarist of 90s experimental noise-rock technicians Harry Pussy, now a prolific solo artist and collaborator—pairs his gnarled acoustic blues technique and akimbo tuning style with an equally intrepid drummer, the results can sound like an overflowing toolbox that’s been chucked down a metal flight of stairs. And it’s all you can do to not listen and stare in wonderment. On his 2015 duo album with Jacob Felix Heule, called Colonial Donuts (released via Orcutt’s own Palilalia imprint), he leads the way with violent, stabbing lines backed by his faint primitive groans and chants, while Heule fills in the space through improvisation, often dragging behind Orcutt and branching out in peculiar ways....

On “Unqualified” Chicagoan Mykele Deville takes breaks from rapping about code-switching and cultural colonization to drop in skits that show the peculiar challenges he’s faced as a black person in a white space—or perhaps simply show strangers that he’s filled with multitudes, like anyone else. “Well, look, I wasn’t really just calling myself a rapper—I mean, I rap,” he says near the end of the song. “But I’m a poet and an actor and a curator, like I just think it all goes hand-in-hand, being a full artist....

George Bernard Shaw once called Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew “one vile insult to womanhood and manhood”—and with reason. The main plot concerns a boorish opportunist (Petruchio) who woos and wins a strong-willed woman (Kate) by breaking her with gaslighting and, after they marry, intimidation and starvation. The subplot, involving a sneaky suitor who fools a controlling father into letting him court and marry Kate’s beautiful younger sister, is contrived and confusing....

Sting wasn’t born Sting, you know. Years before he got famous as lead singer of the Police, he was Gordon Sumner of Wallsend, a spot in the northeast of England known for shipyards that boosters today call “historic” and “proud” because little in the way of shipbuilding actually goes in them anymore. Born in 1951, Sting grew up during the slow Detroitification of the Wallsend yards; now, at 62, he’s apparently in a retrospective mood—ergo his farfetched yet entertaining new musical, The Last Ship, set in the Wallsend of his youth....

It’s been 20 years since Dutch Harbor: Where the Sea Breaks Its Back first screened in Chicago. A black-and-white documentary about the encroachment of modernization on America’s last frontier, it was shot in the Aleutian Islands by directors Braden King and Laura Moya, but its gray-shaded score was tracked at the South Loop’s Truckstop Audio by the Boxhead Ensemble. Guitarist Michael Krassner selected the ensemble’s members like he was casting his own film, directing different combinations of musicians from Gastr Del Sol, Tortoise, and Eleventh Dream Day to improvise along with scenes from the movie....

Ren Schofield has been making deranged sounds for years in projects such as noise-rock outfit Gang Wizard and challenging electronic collective Form a Log. With his solo project, Container, the Providence musician is able to fuse all of his past artistic identities into one. Existing at the crossroads of techno and noise, Container is a simple, streamlined project in which Schofield lays out four-on-the-floor electronic beats and pairs them with twisted, circuit-bent synth pulses and washes....

Chicago Craft Beer Week is back, and it’s as overwhelming as ever: the first night alone features more than two dozen tap takeovers, beer dinners, special releases, and other events. The length of CCBW has actually been scaled back slightly, to eight days (May 18-25)—down from the week and a half that’s been the norm for the past several years—but the events still number in the hundreds. Many perennial favorites, like Beer Under Glass, Goose Island’s Battle of the Breweries Dodgeball Tournament, and the Northwest Side Craft Beer Ride, remain unchanged (and are still good bets)....

The trailer for American Ultra promised something like The Bourne Identity by way of Pineapple Express, with an aimless stoner (Jesse Eisenberg) discovering that he’s really a CIA-programmed killing machine with amnesia. That is in fact the plot, but the mood is far more melancholy than the trailer conveyed. American Ultra isn’t an exuberant action comedy like Pineapple, but rather a downbeat suspense film with jokey elements. (Screenwriter Max Landis is the son of director John Landis, and his ambitious, if unsuccessful, mix of tones suggests an update of his father’s noble failure Into the Night....

In December 2017, months before BTS became the first K-Pop band to hit number one on the Billboard 200, BTS member RM collaborated with Fall Out Boy on a remix of their single “Champion” for the seventh album by the suburban Chicago natives, January’s Mania (Island/DCD2). For FoB, the track was the latest in a long history of reaching across cultural gaps to collaborate with artists that would otherwise never work with a once-scrappy pop-punk group weaned on shows at the Fireside Bowl....

The countdown continues. Read about numbers 40 through 31 here. Ty Segall, Sleeper (Drag City)Ty Segall makes another superlative bedroom record, a collection of bummed-out midtempo tunes and raw ballads that channels John Lennon at his most melancholy and soulful. There are occasional well-placed strings played by someone named K. Dylan, but otherwise Segall does everything himself. I admire the efficiency of his methods—he turns out records at a fairly staggering pace—but you shouldn’t assume that his no-fuss approach means he’s “just a garage rocker....

There’s not much out of the ordinary about Sidelong, the 2015 debut by North Carolina singer Sarah Shook—recently reissued by Bloodshot Records—but few things are more renewable than jacked-up twang fueled by heartbreak and loneliness. Her powerful voice may be punctuated a bit too often by goatlike trills and hiccups, but its intensity is undeniable. On “The Nail” she assails a lover in a dysfunctional relationship because she’s incapable of pulling the trigger to end things herself, ruing, “I can’t decide which one of us will be the nail in this here coffin....

Starting today and continuing through Thursday, I’m counting down my 40 favorite albums of 2015. The usual caveat applies: I truly love all this music, but take the rankings with a grain of salt. And please bear in mind that I’m not trying to be definitive. (Also, I consider D’Angelo’s excellent Black Messiah to be a 2014 release, which is why you won’t see it here anywhere—due to a poorly timed move, though, I didn’t manage to make a list last year....

Hours after Muse finish their headlining set on the opening day of Lollapalooza, Keith Kay will return to Grant Park. He’ll arrive at around 2 AM, like a housekeeper entering a just-vacated hotel room, to help make sure that the festival grounds are just as ready for the next 100,000 fans as they were for the first 100,000. Kay sees what most of us never will: the vendors prepping mountains of food and oceans of beer, the grounds crews picking up every crushed plastic cup and scrap of litter, the delivery trucks refueling the generators that power the refrigerators and stages....