Last year, writing in the wake of Donald Trump’s election and the Republican platform calling for the elimination of federal funding for Amtrak, mass transit, and other sustainable forms of transportation, I predicted that, on that front, 2016 would likely be the best year Chicago saw for a while. Also annoying was the further delay of the $60 million-plus Navy Pier Flyover bike overpass project, which has already taken longer to complete than the Golden Gate Bridge....

Earlier this week Chance the Rapper announced he’d take over U.S. Cellular Field in September with Magnificent Coloring Day, a single-day festival packed with high-profile musicians: Skrillex, John Legend, Lil Wayne, Tyler the Creator, Alicia Keys, Young Thug, 2 Chainz, and Lil Uzi Vert are on the bill (not to mention the “special guests”). Magnificent Coloring Day is the latest example of Chance using his pop-star power for the benefit of his hometown—and specifically for the benefit of kids on the south side....

The impressive 2016 debut from this superb young string quartet suggested they might be paragons of orthodoxy: Tribute—Dover Quarter Plays Mozart (Cedille) not only focuses on the composer’s final two string quartets along with his String Quintet in C Minor, it pays homage to the venerable yet forward-looking Guarneri String Quartet in the process. The group’s musicians had studied under three of Guarneri’s members at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, and timed their release exactly five decades after their mentors made their recording debut with interpretations of the same two Mozart quartets....

Local electronic production duo Flosstradamus, aka Curt “Autobot” Cameruci and Josh “J2K” Young, rose to fame in the late aughties by forging EDM’s propulsive power with trap rap’s percussive ingenuity. In 2013 Young reminisced with former Reader music writer Miles Raymer about the creative freedom he found during the group’s nadir: “No one was watching. You know how people say ‘dance like nobody’s looking?’ It was like ‘produce like nobody’s listening....

Andrea Bauer The Map Room’s tap handles are exactly what you won’t be able to see on Sunday. Earlier this month I got a reminder of just how thoroughly the human brain conditions its sensory input. At an Andersonville restaurant, a friend was served the wrong beer, and it took me three samples at the bar to figure out what was actually in her glass—even though she’d been poured the same thing I’d been drinking not ten minutes before....

Dan Shore started working on his one-act opera, Freedom Ride, nine years ago. It was the 50th anniversary of the Congress of Racial Equality-organized protests that actually integrated public transportation in the United States, after the Supreme Court had ruled that segregation violated the constitution. Shore, a composer who also writes his own librettos, was teaching at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans and had been asked to create something that would celebrate both that city and the civil rights movement....

The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. You are probably feeling blue today. It is the Tuesday after a three-day weekend. It is January. There is snow. But here is another, more entertaining form of blue-ness. In 2001, Philip Montoro tried out for the Blue Man Group and wrote about it. (Spoiler: he’s currently the Reader music editor....

It’s gift-giving season and neither rain nor snow nor social distancing will prevent some gift-givers from the swift distribution of their treasures. If you find yourself in Andersonville this weekend, you can swing by Chicago Dance Supply and get your gifts wrapped. The dancewear store is collaborating with Extensions Dance Company to offer free gift-wrapping services to interested shoppers in exchange for donations to two local public schools: Peirce and McCutcheon....

I’ve gotten a lot of pleasure out of the way Nap Eyes singer Nigel Chapman stretches his lyrics across bar lines, elongating certain words with extra syllables—in fact, I usually like his delivery more than the words themselves, which feel a bit too interior and elliptical for me to figure out quite what he’s trying to say. Fortunately, Nap Eyes’ third and best album, Now I’m Bad (Paradise of Bachelors), doesn’t rely on the content of his lyrics—the melodies to which they’re set and the band’s nimble, deceptively simple attack have never been stronger or more seductive....

The Chicago hip-hop community mourns musician, designer, and entrepreneur Quincy “Q” Easton Kelly, who died on Thursday, December 7, at age 25. No cause of death has been announced. “He was motivating people to do what they wanted to do,” says Kelly’s longtime girlfriend, Briana Smith. “He’s a person that pulled out the absolute best of anybody.” Raised by his grandparents in Gary, Indiana (Smith says he called his grandfather Alfred Kelly his “angel”), Kelly enrolled at DePaul at 16 and graduated last year....

Chicago rapper and librarian Roy Kinsey has drawn national attention for his remarkable concept albums and their sensitive, piercingly thoughtful lyrics. In 2018 he dropped Blackie: A Story by Roy Kinsey, a deeply personal and thoroughly researched record about race in America that’s informed by Kinsey’s family history and the Great Migration; last year he put out Kinsey: A Memoir, which makes equally nuanced and emotionally resonant observations about Black queerness....

After cooking the octopus sous vide with dried aji amarillo peppers, white wine, lemon and lime zest, shallot, and garlic for several hours, Marrelli cooked it on the wood-burning grill for a few minutes until it was just slightly charred. He served it with pommes puree (because boiled potatoes are traditional in Peruvian cuisine), the aji amarillo vinaigrette, a cilantro vinaigrette with freeze-dried aji amarillo, tiny potato chips made from fingerling potatoes, walnut pieces, and fresh baby cilantro....

If the current Jiri Trnka retrospective at Gene Siskel Film Center, highlighting the work of the famed Czech animator, has whetted your appetite for even more films featuring nontraditional animation techniques, we offer a selection by five great artists in the field, working in stop-motion, puppet, and cut-out works. Films by the Brothers Quay These two excellent programs collect short puppet animations by Stephen and Timothy Quay, identical twins from Pennsylvania who studied at Britain’s Royal College of Art in the late 60s....

Chicago DJ and producer Jermaine Collins, aka Composuresquad, became a pillar of the city’s nightlife scene after hooking up with local dance collective and record label Them Flavors in 2013. He joined the crew the following year, and soon the name “Composuresquad” on a party’s bill became a sure sign it was worth attending. His interest in DJing kept him glued to the decks, which helps explain why he’s only now issuing his first full-length, Auto D....

Chicago has plenty of workhorses among its young indie rockers, but few of them can grind like brothers Jake and Paul Stolz. That’s partly because they’re inseparable musically: they make up the rhythm section for pop-minded five-piece Varsity, and they both play in arty foursome Pool Holograph (Jake on drums and Paul on guitar). A couple years ago the Stolzes decided to launch a band where they could take the lead, and their four-piece, Discus, debuted in 2018 with EP (Middle Distance), which showed their grasp of slightly rambunctious slacker rock....

You might know that data from the census is used to draw congressional and state legislative districts, determine the number of House seats a state has, and distribute federal funds for things like Medicaid, schools, and emergency preparedness. (That last one’s particularly relevant now.) But you might not know that getting an accurate census count is also important for the arts. Census-related funding in Illinois helps put foreign language curricula in schools, supports the careers of local artists in every discipline, and assists with keeping museums like the Block and the National Museum of Mexican Art free of charge....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.

Miriam Nielsen Lotte Anker Since the early 90s the Danish saxophonist Lotte Anker has been a key force in transforming the focus of the sound of jazz in her homeland. For decades jazz in Copenhagen largely replicated the sound of American bop, in large part because heavies like Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew, and Ben Webster had taken up residence there for long spells during their careers; their presence had a deep effect on local players....

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons Almonds, the silent killer Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • That the worst job to have in 2015 is “newspaper reporter”? —J.R. Jones • This rundown of Yelp reviews of the Tamale Guy? —Aimee Levitt

For certain film lovers, April is all about Lucrecia Martel. The Argentine director’s first feature in almost a decade, Zama, continues at the Gene Siskel Film Center for another few days, and her acclaimed “Salta Trilogy” begins on Friday with The Headless Woman. We celebrate the return of one of contemporary cinema’s great filmmakers by taking a look back at five other women directors who made a mark on Latin American cinema: Margot Benacerraf (Venezuela), Sara Gómez (Cuba), María Luisa Bemberg (Argentina), Suzana Amaral (Brazil), and Maria Novaro (Mexico)....