Here are the best books I read in 2012, a listing which, unlike every other critic’s list, is not limited to books published in 2012. Most readers don’t read books published in the past year, so why should we limit our best-of lists to such an irrelevant criterion? Each of these books stood out for [...]
The first feeling is one of anticipation. An incline and series of stairs slants away from you to the south, and you’ve been walking already for ten minutes down Roosevelt Island, and here’s yet farther to travel. But the incline isn’t too high, and you can’t see what’s at the top of those stairs. It’s [...]
Next door in The Onion‘s A.V. Club, Steven Hyden throws down a prov0cative test for musical greatness: Five consecutive albums of surpassing greatness. Those are my words; he never comes out and says whether the albums have to be classics, or just great, or can be very good if at least one is a classic. [...]
The news came today that Borders will be liquidated, and its passing saddens me. I’ve spent countless dollars at its stores on books and CDs starting when I was about 17, so much of what I’ve heard and read was something I’d acquired from there. The stores in Indianapolis (the biggest bookstore in the state) [...]
The International Contemporary Ensemble has long looked at boundaries, decided they weren’t in quite the right place, and moved them several football fields away. They, and Claire Chase, the executive director who’s inspired her own hashtag, have done this again with ICELab. From the outside, it looks like a university residence turned inside out and [...]
I suppose it has to do with connecting to someone else, in the end. Why else would you go to the trouble today of an hour, two hours, or the better part of an afternoon in a store selling the books and music of someone who didn’t want them? Or had that decision made for [...]
The International Contemporary Concert gave a memorial concert last week, a rare occurrence and one that doesn’t often happen with contemporary classical music. The occasion was the murder of violist Omar Hernández-Hidalgo in June. He had been kidnapped four days earlier, and was found in the trunk of a car. Hernández-Hidalgo was 39, and an [...]
This year, Chicago cements its growing reputation as the place to go to hear John Luther Adams’s music. You won’t find it in any tourism guidebooks, and his oeuvre is not going to inspire tours such as the Gangland Chicago tours, but it’s true. Take a look at his calendar: 14 shows going back to [...]
Last week, a package arrived containing CDs at the loading dock at work. These were discs that are to be sold at Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts, and I had to get them up to the store manager. This is a regular occurrence in my line of work, the arrival of several pieces of plastic which [...]
By now, the Chicago Tribune and Time Out Chicago have published their Fall Previews, showing you all the schmancy things our fair city has to offer you. But I have one not-so-meager advantage over them: Everything below is for a performer or presenter for whom I either have paid or will pay cash money to [...]