Pigment International, a Chicago-based art collective, and the DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E 56 Pl., will present the second annual Black Fine Art Month in October as a series of online talks, exhibitions and events.
Chicago Opera Theater opened its 2020–2021 season, where every performance will be streamed online, with a concert version last week, of the new opera “The Transformation of Jane Doe.”
The nominees for the 52nd annual Equity Jeff Awards were announced last week, and Court Theatre garnered 11 of them.
Hyde Park Jazz Festival artistic and executive director Kate Dumbleton has spent years bringing international jazz stars and local heroes to a growing neighborhood audience. The COVID-19 pandemic made her completely reverse course and discourage mass numbers from gathering while still presen…
The Room is the realization of a dream for American Blues Theater—but not in the way the ensemble envisioned.
Lyric Opera of Chicago formally kicked off its 2020–21 season Sunday night with a free online gala concert. Lyric had originally planned a cabaret-type event but when coronavirus restrictions made large events impossible, it pivoted and created a virtual concert instead.
The University of Chicago will play host to a new public art project by Jenny Holzer, a conceptual artist best known for her text-based light projections.
Myriam Ben Salah, the incoming executive director of the Renaissance Society, is excited to take command of her first art museum after organizing the upcoming biennial at the University of California, Los Angeles' Hammer Museum and working as curator of social projects and public programs at…
The Museum of Science and Industry has set Sept. 9, 10, 16, 17, 23, 24 and 30 as free admission days for Illinois residents.
With performances before large live audiences still considered unsafe, some of Chicago’s biggest music makers are moving forward with digital offerings either for the rest of the year or for the entire season. Both the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Opera Theater have just made impor…
The Rush Hour Concert Series, hosted by the International Music Foundation, continues their weekly free summer concert streams on Tuesdays, concluding Sep. 22. This past week they featured a talented and exciting trio from Nexus Chamber Music.
Theaters all over town are grappling with how to keep their artists and audiences engaged amid the uncertainties of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Chicago Opera Theater teamed up with the Refugee Orchestra Project to offer four performances overlooking Lincoln Park this past weekend, two performances each on Saturday and Sunday afternoons at the Chicago History Museum’s Uihlein Plaza. Matching up these two groups was natural to Lidiya …
The International Voices Project (IVP) started a decade ago with the goal of bringing world theater to Chicago, but the shift to an online format because of the Covid-19 pandemic has made founder and executive director Patrizia Acerra see its potential to bring Chicago theater to the world.
The Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC) will open "Artists Run Chicago 2.0" for a two-month run on Sept. 1, presenting works out of 50 artist-run spaces in the Windy City and beyond, from more than 200 people.
At a time marked by racial strife and deep-seated social and economic inequity, one theatrical work paints a picture of the struggles and successes of Black people in the United States.
Fulcrum Point New Music Project had an idea that would allow them to perform live music in public with an audience and which would maintain physical distance among listeners. They found large park spaces where several dozen folks could space themselves out and still enjoy the music. And what…
When Kelvin Roston, Jr. moved from St. Louis to Chicago to further his acting career in the spring of 2008, he rented a Hyde Park apartment with his then-wife and infant son and expected to spend the rest of the year auditioning to line up roles for 2009, although he had a day job as a pirat…
Faheem Majeed, artist and former executive director of the South Side Community Art Center, and his assistant, artist Eric Perez, use an 80-foot boom to make a graphite rubbing of the façade of the South Side Community Art Center, 3831 S. State Street, Wednesday, August 19, 2020.
The Newberry Consort has been performing Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music in Chicago since 1986. The Consort’s mission is to “create accessible and historically informed performances.”
The Fulcrum Point New Music Project is bringing a live, in-person music performance back to Chicago.
In 2012, then 16-year-old Collaboraction Theatre shifted its mission to become a theater of social change dedicated to ending all forms of oppression. The catalyst, according to artistic director Anthony Moseley, was its hit production of "Crime Scene: A Chicago Anthology," a work about the …
Two principal players from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra — both relatively recent appointments by music director Riccardo Muti — and a talented freelance pianist joined forces for a marvelous concert of trios last week.
Before the pandemic, Goodman Theatre planned to offer three live performances of “Stateville Voices,” one each at the theater, Kennedy-King College, and Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, IL where the 21 short plays were written by the incarcerated men who were students in a Sprin…
Fundraisers are a time to put a group’s best foot forward, brag a little, and offer tempting examples of the kind of performances your organization is known for. There was all that and more for the Chicago Sinfonietta’s online fundraiser this past weekend.
Porchlight Music Theatre was all set to hold its 25th-anniversary gala at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on March 23.
"The Allure of Matter," an art exhibition documenting material usage among contemporary Chinese artists, has reopened at the Smart Museum of Art through Aug. 9, but all reservations to see it have been booked.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has given the Muddy Waters Mojo Museum a $50,000 grant to begin renovations on legendary bluesman's long-derelict former home in North Kenwood.
The opera and classical music communities continue to grapple with coronavirus restrictions that make live performances nearly impossible. Planning for future performances remains a tricky enterprise because no one knows when venues will be able to reopen.
Court Theatre is revamping its 2020/2021 season again, only this time the changes are a lot more substantial than just shuffling shows and dates.
No one who saw the world premiere of Manual Cinema's “Frankenstein” at Court Theatre in late 2018 will forget the unique blend of shadow puppetry, 3D puppetry, actors, old-fashioned cinematic techniques, sound design, and live music that brought both Mary Shelley's novel and parts of her bio…
The Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) will open on Aug. 1 for the first time since March with timed admission tickets, limited capacity, required face coverings and some modified exhibits to create physical distancing.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began to seriously affect everyday life earlier this year, museums and galleries that were forced to close responded by moving their collections online, creating viewing rooms for digital visitors. (In Hyde Park, the Museum of Science and Industry launched a websit…
There won't be free popcorn this year, but the Chicago Park District is moving forward with its 20th annual "Movies in the Parks" season, with two screenings planned in Hyde Park-Kenwood.
Steppenwolf Theatre Company had an ambitious 45th-anniversary season planned for 2020-2021 with six main stage productions, the opening of a brand-new, in-the-round theater, and lots of other activities, but the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying uncertainty have changed much of that.
The Rush Hour concerts began 20 years ago as a brief respite of music between the end of the Chicago workday and the beginning of a warm summer evening. The International Music Foundation (IMF), the organization putting on these concerts, knew that government coronavirus rules wouldn’t allow…
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association and WFMT have announced the extension of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra radio broadcast series launched in April of this year. The programs air under the somewhat bulky title, “From the CSO’s Archives: Maestro’s Choice—For All Music Lovers in These …
When I got the press release about Court Theatre's latest plan to engage audiences, I thought it might be a joke. Called “The Liminal Space,” the project is a 24-hour live video feed of the stage of the Abelson Auditorium as it was in mid-March right after Ibsen's “The Lady from the Sea” was…
As the emerald ash borer — the beetle called “the most destructive forest pest ever seen in North America” by the Chicago Parks District (CPD) — continues to chew through the city’s trees, artists are continuing their own efforts to salvage something out of the remains. Last month, Jackson P…
Coronavirus may have caused the Chosen Few Picnic to be a virtual festival this July 4, but 90,000 people watched the 30th annual event nevertheless — more than twice the typical audience in Jackson Park.
Current plans call for the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, last of the neighborhood's warm weather cultural events, to be the only one with in-person events. Alongside a big virtual concert on Sept. 26, artists are slated to perform at mobile stages across Hyde Park on Sept. 27.
The University of Chicago Presents continues at the forefront of classical music here in Chicago during the pandemic. While venues remain closed to live audiences, UCP has kept its audiences engaged with top-quality online streaming concerts. Last week they joined with several other organiza…
When Michael Weber wrote “The War of the Well(e)s” a decade ago, he was thinking about how the public's panicked reactions to the infamous Oct.30, 1938, radio broadcast of Orson Welles' The Mercury Theatre on the Air's adaptation of H.G.Wells' novel “The War of the Worlds” related to the ph…
Several Hyde Park museums have confirmed they will remain closed after Friday, June 26, when the city and state will enter the next phase of their coronavirus response plans that allow movie theaters, museums, zoos and performance venues to reopen.
While theaters and theater artists have been coming up with all sorts of inventive programs to connect with each other and audiences on the internet, a key element has mostly been missing: live theater.
A composer based in Hyde Park has written what may be the first work based on the coronavirus pandemic, which has been released on YouTube with a fascinating video.
The Chicago theater movement that has grown to more than 250 companies and garnered international recognition really started in Hyde Park, according to Mark Larson's recently published “Ensemble: An Oral History of Chicago Theater”.
Court Theatre is revising its schedule again since we last reported on it (April 10, 2020), and the theater is brainstorming about options, among them outdoor performances, digital courses surrounding classic titles, and virtual possibilities. An announcement about programming is expected ne…
In the world of opera and classical music the biggest effect of the coronavirus pandemic has been the shutting down of all live performances with an audience. But another huge effect has been the uncertainty of what will follow in not just the days and weeks ahead, but the months and years a…
Actor John Tufts' two professional passions come together in “Fat Rascals: Dining at Shakespeare's Table,” his recently released cookbook bringing the food of the Bard's plays and days to life.
Because the Hyde Park Youth Symphony could not have a live spring concert as they would normally do, they decided to have an online one. On May 20, they unveiled a 20-minute video that featured both music and spoken word. Both of the leaders of the organization, Matthew Sheppard and Lindsay …
