Deanna Isaacs Lyric Opera’s Anthony Freud, Renee Fleming take a question It was a coincidence that word came out last Thursday about the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s $32 million gift bonanza—$15 million of it earmarked for education and outreach—while Lyric Opera was introducing its upcoming plan for its own outreach effort, Lyric Unlimited. —The Property, a klezmer opera by 28-year-old Polish composer Wlad Marhulets with a libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann and based on the graphic novel of the same name by Rutu Modan....

Bad Wolf Coffee We food writers never feel so loved as when our inboxes are full of Valentine’s Day pitches from PR people. We have lots of events for Valentine’s Day, and a few against it; one of them will be just right for you and your sweetie. Starting with the picture above, from Bad Wolf Coffee’s baker extraordinaire, Jonathan Ory (who I wrote about here), $65 gets you a whole box of his wonderful handmade treats including a chocolate-raspberry cake, macaroons, marshmallows, and his much-loved, quick-to-sell-out chocolate caneles....

Afrobeat scion Seun Kuti turned 35 early this year, and he’s already nearly two decades into his career. In 1997, when he was just 14, he took the reins of Egypt 80, his father Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s explosive working band. I was thrilled by his promise when he first surfaced internationally in 2006, and by the time he made his Chicago debut the following year, he had settled into the leadership role with amazing ease, casting a lithe, dynamic figure and dripping charisma while maintaining the band’s agile fire....

Mike Sula Buffalo wings, Ravenswood Q UPDATE: After I posted this, I learned that Larry Tucker left Ravenswood Q before my visit, which explains a lot. I still stand by what I said about the barbecue, and offer my apologies to Mr. Tucker. Mike Sula Baby back ribs, Ravenswood Q An order of smoked buffalo wings was more encouraging. While not aggressively sauced or crispy, they were saturated in wood smoke, and immediately brought me back to that first chicken....

Since you’re well rested and ready to head to Union Park with plenty of time to spare, you can plan your last day at Pitchfork on your own, right? You don’t need to consult these hour-by-hour itineraries for ideas. Not even a little. You’re just going to read them because they might be funny!—Philip Montoro Leor Galil Reader staff writer 2:30 PM Scream at the sky (and get emotional, of course) watching Deafheaven....

In 2014 beloved Nashville garage label Infinity Cat launched a cassette series that has since gone on to release tapes by a fascinating array of underground rock purveyors, including art-rock freaks Guerilla Toss, lo-fi pop whiz Colleen Green, and emo-tinged power poppers Rozwell Kid. Last month the label and series announced it had tapped Chicago act Dehd, the trio cofronted by Ne-Hi’s Jason Balla and Emily Kempf of Heavy Dreams. While on their 2016 self-titled album (Maximum Pelt/Fire Talk) Dehd dole out minimal, droning melodies, the easygoing simplicity of their beguiling material belying an expert sense of atmosphere, their grasp of the world around them is more evident on the Infinity Cat cassette, Fire of Love....

AP Photos U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that the United States is talking with Iran about the latest insurgency in Iraq. The first time I heard of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was last week. The group had swept through smaller Iraqi cities and was threatening Baghdad. Iraq was in chaos. “With just a few thousand fighters, the group’s lightning sweep into Mosul and farther south appeared to catch many Iraqi and American officials by surprise....

Going to a Place Where You Already Are A couple of years ago, the Pew Research Center confirmed that the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans has risen significantly over the last decade. For a culture that already isn’t great at having conversations about end-of-life issues, that’s just a further wrench in how folks emotionally prepare for the inevitable. With shades of Calderón’s 17th-century allegory Life Is a Dream, Bekah Brunstetter’s 2016 drama follows an avowed atheist couple’s spiritual splintering after Roberta (Kathleen Ruhl) receives a stage 4 cancer diagnosis....

Courtesy of Life or Death PR Lumerians I’ve often praised the high-quality booking of late-night Logan Square bar the Owl, which started hosting free shows at the beginning of last year. Since then they’ve set up shows for tons of locals, but their highlights are the weirdo out-of-town acts that have been popping up on their schedule, bands like Psychic Ills, Wolf Eyes, and legendary 60s experimental project Silver Apples....

Mike Sula Barbecue combo, Old Crow Smokehouse Wrigleyville, Lakeview, and Lincoln Park have been saturated with new barbecue spots in recent times, a few of them sporting the sort of ersatz hillbilly shtick that would make Larry the Cable Guy grimace, and even fewer delivering on acceptable barbecue. It’s incredible to me that we haven’t reached a tipping point—but they just keep coming. One of the more ambitious of these recent projects is Old Crow Smokehouse in Wrigleyville, 10,500 square feet of kountry-roadhouse kitsch, featuring 20 TVs, a soundtrack of the worst commercial country music Nashville is capable of producing, and a posse of indolent waitresses in short skirts and cowboy boots serving drinks in plastic glasses—because, presumably, the patrons can’t be trusted not to smash them over each other’s heads on game day....

After three months of earth-shaking EDM extravaganzas, sprawling grab-bag festivals packed with indie pop, hip-hop, or alt-rock, and neighborhood block parties headlined by Better Than Ezra (or by local bands covering Better Than Ezra), the prospect of attending yet another music festival might feel about as exciting as getting a student-loan statement—”What, this nonsense isn’t over with yet?” But Riot Fest has set itself apart and created its own excitement: since it transformed itself from a multivenue bash into an outdoor extravaganza in 2012, its lineup has been jammed with dozens and dozens of well-known punk and alternative bands, many of whom aren’t on the usual stateside summer-festival circuit....

Asked to explain the logic behind launching Riot Fest’s online magazine, managing editor Ben Perlstein calls the approach “the reverse Pitchfork.” He explains: “They got the website and then the festival. We had a festival and then the website.” Riot Fest founder Mike Petryshyn had been hoping to expand Riot Fest’s website for some time, and after Perlstein mentioned last winter that he’d been wanting to jump from artist management into a more creative career, Petryshyn offered him the editor’s chair at the new Riot Fest Magazine....

Since forming in 2011, San Francisco quartet Cool Ghouls have made a virtue of no-frills consistency, doing little to disguise their devotion to 60s garage pop. Loose, chiming guitars ring out over chugging rhythms, but it’s their singing—which borrows from the early Beach Boys without sweating shortcomings in pitch or precise harmony—that makes each album a keeper. Cool Ghouls have definitely gotten better with time. On last year’s terrific Animal Races (Empty Cellar) melodies are catchier than ever—during a song like “Sundial” vocal parts hit with assurance, their three-part harmonies cutting through a charmingly shambolic din....

Read Deanna Isaacs’s column on Hillel Levin and Assassination Theater here. And so it’s once more to the grassy knoll and the Zapruder film, as the two men walk us through a multimedia presentation designed to poke holes in the Warren Commission Report (the official 1964 postmortem) and propose an alternative explanation involving ruthless mob bosses arranging to have Dealey Plaza overrun with hit men. Mitchell and Ulrich are assisted by Anthony Churchill’s sophisticated media design, which incorporates a slew of archival documents and images....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, May 31, 2017. Obama Foundation names museum director for upcoming presidential center The Obama Foundation has named Louise Bernard as museum director of the Obama Presidential Center. Bernard is currently the director of exhibitions at the New York Public Library and helped develop the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. She has a PhD in African-American Studies and American Studies from Yale University....

Something Wild In this week’s issue, J.R. Jones reviewed A Master Builder, the new movie by Jonathan Demme. Pauline Kael once wrote that “you have to feel your way through” a Demme movie, and that’s true. Visually, his films are rather plain, but they’re deceptively impressionistic, specifically in the way they evoke the emotions of their characters via competent and intentionally austere composition and staging. With Demme, he’s most profound when he’s at his least stylish, an intriguing paradox that occasionally results in some unremarkable films (Rachel Getting Married, Philadelphia, The Manchurian Candidate)....

Roughly one in every nine acts on the Riot Fest lineup comes from Chicago, so if you circulate in Douglas Park all weekend you’re going to see some locals whether you mean to or not. But I’ll be honest: This far into festival season, I’m tired of talking about bands. So I’m going to treat these ten acts as though they were peanut butter. I’d like to see you stop me!...

Felicia Day calls herself “situationally famous,” and those situations are absurdly specific. The actor/writer/producer can walk around in most public places with anonymity intact, but the closer she gets to an epicenter of geek culture, like a comic book store or a video game convention, the higher the chance is that she’ll be mobbed by fans. There’s also a “huge barista recognition factor—75 percent,” she notes. I still feel anxiety and social awkwardness in daily life....

This Tony Award-winning touring revival, presented by Broadway in Chicago and based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, projects intimacy, authenticity and power. That’s no small feat in the sizable Auditorium Theatre, and it’s a testament to a commanding cast and carefully spare staging and music. Adapted for the stage by Marsha Norman, with music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray, the musical tells the story of a group of African-American women in the 1930s south....

Like Elizabeth, and the late, great Bunny, the Microbakery, Kitsune is a wee Regan joint of singularly enjoyable weirdness. Even though the studied and occasionally menacing woodland twee is dialed back, it’s still lurking in the shadows waiting for the right moment to surprise you. A mural depicting the restaurant’s namesake magical fox twines around the restroom walls, while smaller, three-dimensional representations of said canid—a seductive shape-shifter in Japanese folklore—dispense soy sauce at the table....