Ideation We’re in a meeting room at a consulting firm (whiteboard, ergonomic chairs). Four consultants (MBAs, engineers) and an intern (Scooter) have been tasked with conceptualizing a system for the liquidation and disposal (killing and hiding) of a million or more victims in the (as yet) theoretical event of an extinction-level viral outbreak. The consultants focus all their brainpower and arrogance on ideating (brainstorming) the problem. But as they draw arrows and circles on the whiteboard (“LF” = “liquidation facility”) it occurs to them that things may not be what they seem....

Just about everything Scott McNiece has put his heart into since high school has revolved around music: playing in bands, organizing shows, putting out records. Like most people with such obsessions, he’s had to work straight jobs to pay the bills. In 2010 he became a food runner at Gilt Bar, the first business in the sprawling Hogsalt Hospitality empire built by restaurateur Brendan Sodikoff—and after learning that McNiece was a musician, Sodikoff asked for advice about the music piped into the restaurant....

Carla Bozulich, Boy (Constellation) After several phenomenal albums with her versatile, razor-edged band Evangelista, singer-­songwriter Carla Bozulich took things into her own hands for the new Boy—she not only played many of the instruments but also produced and mixed the record (Italian drummer Andrea Belfi provides most of the beats, while Bay Area multi-instrumentalist John Eichenseer contributed keyboards, viola, and electronics). The press materials for Boy call it Bozulich’s “pop record,” and that’s true insofar as the songs follow standard verse-chorus-­verse forms—her focused, aspirated singing and the music’s harrowing textures aren’t exactly sweet and accessible....

It’s a hallmark of excellent songwriting when a tune delivered in a stripped-down format on acoustic guitar and vocals is every bit as alluring as if it were performed by a full band. Maryn Jones, whose previous projects include indie-folk bands Saintseneca and All Dogs, creates solo material under the name Yowler, and she keeps her instrumentation minimal to allow her raw talent to shine. Jones’s voice and deeply vulnerable lyrics demand an immediate intimacy; watching her onstage feels like a rainy-day crying session with a close friend....

“City officials estimated 175 buildings would have to be wrecked because of fire damage; many more would need extensive repairs,” wrote the late Chicago Tribune reporter Robert Wiedrich regarding the Chicago riots in April 1968. “A Monday morning count disclosed that more than 2,000 persons had been arrested for looting, arson, and other crimes during the disorders, which finally subsided April 7.” How times have changed. Fast-forward nearly 50 years later, and Chicago protesters continue to call for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s resignation, pointing to police brutality cases that have come to light under his watch amid accusations of a widespread cover-up....

In 2013 LA collective cum indie label Soulection launched a digital white-label series, dropping an EP by local beat maker Monte Booker in October 2015. For that EP’s closer “Baby” Booker recruited Chicago R&B singer Ravyn Lenae—a fellow member of local collective Zero Fatigue, along with ascending rapper Smino—whose luminescent vocals playfully swerve around fluttering Spanish guitars. Roughly a year later Soulection, which also produces events and runs a clothing company, interviewed Lenae for its radio show, and during the program she talked about finding the right balance between her budding career and her education at Chicago High School for the Arts: “It’s superhard juggling that with lack of sleep and regular personal issues—and then music issues....

Q: I’m a straight guy, married for 16 years, kids in school. My wife cannot find a way to be intimate with me. We’ve had therapy individually and together. I nearly divorced her, but we decided to stay together—we do love each other, and the economics and child-rearing favor it. After I asked for a divorce, she fucked the shit out of me for the first time in ten years. That was the last time she fucked me....

Later this week, the recently revived Northwest Chicago Film Society presents a screening of Anthony Mann’s Bend of the River, one of the director’s numerous collaborations with actor James Stewart. Mann and Stewart made different kinds of movies together, but it’s the westerns that endure. Psychologically knotty and unconventionally violent, the films’ revisionist nature reshaped the traditional western landscape by acting as allegories of masculinity under fire during the Cold War....

There were two things everyone asked me when I was first diagnosed with cancer: “Will you lose your hair?” and “Can you get medicinal marijuana?” The short answer to both of those questions was “yes.” But when it comes to the issue of medical cannabis in Illinois, nothing is as simple as a one-word answer. The application alone requires three forms of ID, a current photo, fingerprints, a background check, a five-page physician approval form, and a $150 fee ($100 for the application, $50 for the fingerprints)....

The first total solar eclipse to cross the U.S. in 99 years will occur in the early afternoon of Monday, August 21. While Chicago is not in the “path of totality”—you’ll have to head to downstate Carbondale, Illinois, to see the spectacle in its full glory—the Adler Planetarium says Monday will be the closest the city has been to a total eclipse in 92 years. In Chicago, the moon (that jerk!...

AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh White Sox shortstop Alexei Ramirez flies around the bases after hitting the game-winning homer yesterday at the Cell. Any team in baseball would love to have an eighth-place hitter like the one playing for the White Sox. Shortstop Alexei Ramirez leads the American League in hitting—by 35 points. He’s batting .420. The Sox have played 13 games, and Ramirez has hit safely in all of them....

Described as being on a mission “to expose bad writing for what it really is: damn funny,” DrekFest, Stage Left’s annual contest of truly terrible ten-minute plays, comes to ComedySportz Theatre next week for one night only. This year’s fest, the eighth, features four works by local playwrights vying for the title of worst of the worst. Can they possibly top past “grand losers” such as Abortion Carnival of the Juggalos and F*** You Janine: A Play Ruined by My Ex, Like Everything Else in My Life?...

I won’t lie, when I found this band’s recent debut full-length on Bandcamp, I listened to it because of their name—the album’s title, Toasted, was just the schmear on top. But my amusement at Hot Bagels‘ silly jokes was quickly overshadowed by my love for their lo-fi rock jams. Main man Craig Woods writes catchy melodies that hook you in seconds, and he douses his poppy tracks in fuzz—my favorite songs (“Off Your Face,” “I Need a Lift”) burst with a sort of scuzzy, electric tension....

Courtesy of ECM Records Hal Russell’s NRG Ensemble Earlier this week the city formally announced the lineup for Made in Chicago: World Class Jazz, another of its free summer concert series at the Pritzker Pavilion. (Full disclosure: I served as a volunteer on the committee that programmed this series.) The program kicks off on Thursday, July 24, and continues for the next six weeks, culminating with an August 28 concert by Ernest Dawkins that’ll help launch this year’s Chicago Jazz Festival....

The singer Ava Cherry was sound asleep in her Lincoln Park home on the morning of January 11 when her phone began incessantly chiming and vibrating with alerts. Who’s Facebooking me and texting me this much this early? she wondered. What’s going on? Clearly something was wrong. She awoke at almost 5 AM to find some 350 messages reacting to the death of her ex-boyfriend and collaborator David Bowie. “My heart just sank,” recalls Cherry, who was raised in Woodlawn....

Practitioners of what’s known as jazz manouche, gypsy jazz, or hot jazz are a peculiar breed: the style is pretty much an ongoing homage to prodigious Belgian-born French guitarist Django Reinhardt, who developed a distinctive and influential sound during a career cut short by a brain hemorrhage in 1953, when he was 43. The music he developed with violinist Stephane Grappelli is thrilling and fast-paced, propelled by joy, technical derring-do, and nonchalant bravado....

Composer Emmerich Kálmán was a Hungarian Jew who found fame in Vienna during the 1910s and ’20s with such operettas asDer Zigeunerprimas (The Gypsy Band Leader) and Countess Maritza. Perhaps he sensed that, despite his success, he would always be a bit of an outsider in the world of Austrian high society that embraced his music, which distinctively fused elegantly romantic Viennese waltzes with the csárdás, a robust folk dance whose name derives from a Hungarian word for “tavern....

This piece was reported in collaboration with Pando.com. However, what the mayor and his aides didn’t mention—and what has gone unreported until now—is that in the year leading up to the lucrative deal for Marriott, the hedge fund of one of Emanuel’s largest campaign contributors bought millions of shares of stock in the hotel chain. Griffin describes Mayor Emanuel as his “good friend.” Over the last three years Griffin and his wife, Anne Dias Griffin, have together donated more than $210,000 to Emanuel’s campaign....

Michael Gebert Kurosawa saba “megamaki” at Momotaro Jeff Ramsey, the head sushi chef at Momotaro, which opens tonight, waxed poetic about the fish from Japanese waters for a small audience of food journalists. “The waters of Japan are especially nutrient rich,” he said. “Japan has all these crinkly little coves along the edge, it has more coastline than America. So there are all these little inlets where the fish feed....

The latest iteration of the France-Chicago music exchange known as the Bridge rates as one of the most beguiling and interesting combinations yet. All four of the musicians involved have mercurial tendencies, working within the jazz and improvised-music traditions while also pushing well outside of both. Included in the Chicago cast is bassist Jason Roebke, one of the most skilled and forceful practitioners in the local jazz scene and one who’s explored more experimental contexts—his old group Combine used analog synthesizer splatter to provide an abstract contrast to his structural conceits....