It can be lonely at the top—particularly from the great heights of the unusual musical instruments known as carillons. Or so it seemed for Hunter Chase, the UIC graduate student who was one of only five people chosen to venture alone to the top of the 132-foot bell tower to perform at the Rees International Carillon Competition in Springfield’s Washington Park on Saturday night. Watching him play—it’s easy to see why that might be the case....

The big news about this year’s Chicago Blues Festival is that it’s followed in the footsteps of Jazz Fest and moved to Millennium Park. This should finally guarantee state-of-the-art sound, at least on the main stage at Pritzker Pavilion—the system there leaves Petrillo’s PA in the dust. The change of scenery seems to have had a salutary effect on the bookings as well—at the very least, they present more of a challenge to genre boundaries than those at some previous Blues Fests....

Keanu Reeves in John Wick John Wick, the Keanu Reeves vehicle opening today, probably has more in common with Carlos Saura’s dance films than with any other actioner currently at the multiplexes. The film is deliberately lacking in suspense. There’s no question as to whether the title character will triumph over the Russian crime family that ruined his life—Wick is presented as such an outstanding hit man that even other killers fear him....

“A violent and concentrated action is a kind of lyricism: it summons up supernatural images, a bloodstream of images, a bleeding spurt of images in the poet’s head and in the spectator’s as well.” —Antonin Artaud in The Theater and Its Double Maher’s Lehrer comes across at first as the quintessence of loneliness. But he’s not completely solitary. Before long he’s joined by his housemate and amiable doppelganger, Jim Lehrer II—apparently not an imaginary construct but a flesh-and-blood person....

The notion of “world music” has attracted its share of criticism. Looked at cynically, it’s just a way for bougie white people to feel like culturally enlightened global citizens without actually learning anything. But I’ve had some of the best concert experiences of my life at Chicago’s World Music Festival—and I go to a lot of concerts. The joy and vitality of the Boban Marković Orkestar at Martyrs’ in 2002, or of Mahmoud Ahmed at Pritzker Pavilion in 2015, would’ve swept up those crowds no matter how the music was marketed....

On July 13 a shabby, 114-year-old house in Avondale, named Animal Kingdom by its tenants, hosted a concert in its backyard. Animal Kingdom had been an unlicensed DIY show space since summer 2012, and though this was far from its biggest event—that distinction belongs to an Independence Day bash in 2013, which featured 20 bands and a record fair and attracted hundreds of people—it would be the one that finally brought the house to the attention of 33rd Ward alderman Deb Mell....

PULL QUOTE: “An open relationship for her but a closed-on-a-technicality relationship for you? Yeah, no.” Q: I am a 50-year-old queer man who never really came out—except to people I’m cruising or fucking. Oh, and to my wife. Is there any social or political value to coming out now, in the shadow of a Trump presidency? A: Your friend’s head is what’s up—up his own ass. Stop letting him stick his dick up yours....

The Ape of God Formed in 1999, Old Man Gloom is a sort of on-again-off-again experimental hardcore supergroup, cofronted by three heavy metal giants: Aaron Turner of Isis, Nate Newton of Converge and Doomriders, and Caleb Scofield of Cave In. Every few years, this beastly team will emerge from the shadows, drop a massively heavy record, and disappear once again (there was a solid eight-year gap between their last two releases, 2004’s Christmas and 2012’s No)....

It’s 1968 and 18-year-old Pemon Rami, a recent graduate of Wendell Phillips Academy High School, stands in front of the Umoja Black Student Center in Bronzeville. He stares off into the distance, quiet, determined. Behind him, a poster with an illustration of Malcolm X preaches unstinting devotion to radical change, challenging viewers: “He was ready! Are you?” The past five years have seen a wellspring of student activism in Chicago and beyond, actions that hearken back to the unrest that transformed society 50 years ago....

There’s a reason Gossip Wolf has been repping for Chicago-bred singer and rapper Kid Sister since column number one in 2010—she rules the school! Now based in LA, she reached out to us on Twitter a few days ago with tidbits about her new album, which should drop in the next few days. (It’s a mixtape, her first since Fool’s Gold released Kiss Kiss Kiss in 2011.) She wouldn’t tell us what it’s called or who’s putting it out, but she did say that she wrote her own string charts for a disco-fied track produced by the Neptunes....

Last Friday after prayers, outside a blue-tiled mosque in spacious southwest-suburban Orland Park, dozens gathered in the cold around Reverend Jesse Jackson. To stereotype Muslims based on terrorist acts, Jackson said, is like stereotyping Christians based on the Ku Klux Clan. Most of the thousands lynchings in the United States, he said, happened outside of churches on Sunday. “When you start running, there is no end,” he said. “Stand your ground....

Meesh: Why would you say that to her?Manda: It’s the truth.Meesh: Who cares? —The Way West Mom should be frantic with worry, yet she isn’t. Like some astronaut from The Right Stuff, she likes to keep an even strain as she hurtles through space on her flaming rocket of debt. So she cultivates the zen of magical thinking. And she’s a master at it too. Told that she needs to declare bankruptcy, she serenely replies that that’s not really necessary—she’s already stopped paying her bills....

Mark Lawton/Sun-Times Media As a county commissioner, Mike Quigley did his part to shed light on the tax increment financing program. He now represents much of the north side in Congress. I took a trip down memory lane the other morning , biking over to Logan Square to have breakfast with the great Jeremy Thompson. As if President Bush would ever let prosecutors indict his favorite Democrat. Well, that’s sort of my paraphrase....

As of Monday, Carly Fiorina was tied for third in popularity among candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. I had never heard anyone I know say a good word about Fiorina. (It’s a sign of how high the walls rise in the silos so many of us live in.) Nor had I read a line of praise for her that went beyond nodding respect for her gumption. She can look Donald Trump in the eye and put him in his place—which isn’t all we’re looking for in a president....

Thankfully, the 40-year-old bicyclist who was struck by a Suburu driver near the Navy Pier Flyover construction site last week wasn’t seriously injured. But the crash sparked a new conversation about why the $60 million initiative to build an overpass for cyclists and pedestrians, to improve safety near Illinois’s second-most-popular tourist attraction, is taking so damn long. “We at the city have discussed this, we have debated it, we have deferred it for decades, and now it’s time to build it,” Emanuel said at the 2014 groundbreaking....

Playtime The Music Box’s highly successful 70mm Film Festival is back for a second edition, and a few titles from last year’s fest have returned for your viewing pleasure, including Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. (If you missed one of the sold-out screenings of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, here’s your shot at redemption.) The slate of new titles includes Lawrence of Arabia, Tron, and another Kubrick offering, Spartacus....

Read Zac Thompson’s review of Assassination Theater here. The culprit was—and is—much closer to home. In fact, says Levin, the shooter, James Files, has been cooling his heels for years in an Illinois prison. You can find him there today, serving a 50-year sentence for the attempted murder of two police officers—a cog in the once mighty Chicago mob that, according to Levin, took down Jack to get Bobby Kennedy off their backs....

In recent years the fertile imagination and syncretist impulses of Afro-Colombian music—a dynamic sound that emerged during the 70s when local rhythms collided with sounds gleaned from imported African pop—has been receiving its due acclaim. Colombia’s ubiquitous cumbia sound figures heavily in the mix, but the throbbing polyrhythms of West Africa define this raw dance music, where call-and-response chants and shuffling hand percussion, occasionally enhanced by lean guitar figures or sleek horn charts, cast deeply hypnotic spells....

You could say that Alexis Bouteville, owner of Hyde Park Records, discovered Chicago by way of Paris. Alexis had a record store in his native France and was going on frequent buying trips in the United States to keep the store stocked. Chicago always had the best selection of unique vinyl, and it wasn’t long before he fell in love with Hyde Park and the whole South Side area. In 2011, Alexis took over the existing Hyde Park neighborhood record store that had been there since the 1970s – Second Hand Tunes – and renamed it as Hyde Park Records....

Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times Grant Achatz’s tweet about bringing a baby to Alinea touched a nerve on social media, but the chef points out, “as many of us who have children, me included, realize, you have a very small window in which little ones behave themselves.” Maybe we shouldn’t expect a news story inspired by a tweet to go very far beyond the tweet in terms of informational content. But on the other hand, it’s been said this couple had already paid for their meals, and Alinea doesn’t refund....