One of the best local releases of 2016 was the debut self-titled tape from Dehd on the prolific Maximum Pelt Records. The trio of guitarist-vocalist Jason Balla (of Ne-Hi and Earring), bassist-vocalist Emily Kempf (of Heavy Dreams and Veil), and stand-up, cymbal-less drummer Eric McGrady explored dreamy, hazy postpunk with beautiful vocal interplay; simple, plunky guitar; and a dark, behind-the-beat throb. Earlier this year Dehd released a follow-up tape, Fire of Love, on Infinity Cat Recordings, which opened up their sonic palette with noisy guitar, upbeat tempos, complex arrangements, and a bit of sunny bounce....

The biopic has been a staple in filmmaking since the sound era began, though over the years literary figures seem to have gotten fewer screen treatments than other notables. On Friday, Gene Siskel Film Center opens Haifaa al-Mansou’s 2017 film Mary Shelley, starring Elle Fanning, and next Tuesday, Chicago Film Society screens Charles Vidor’s 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen, starring Danny Kaye. Taking a page from these, we’ve selected five additional biopics about writers, ones that don’t just rest on words but also offer up some visual artistry....

Nearly 23 years ago a jury decided that four Los Angeles police officers acted properly in using truncheons to beat the hell out of Rodney King. The riots that ensued killed 53 people. By comparison last summer’s protests over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner were models of decorum. Yet LA 1992 and Ferguson 2014 are similar in all too many other ways, starting with the rock-bottom, essential fact that the perps then as now were cops, the victims unarmed black men....

In March, Ravinia Festival announced that it would open “a major addition to the park, the RaviniaMusicBox Experience Center, later this summer.” It presents Bernstein as composer, conductor, political liberal, teacher, and media darling: “the greatest and most important classical music figure in American history.” Exhibits include a Bernstein baton, broken by Venezuelan prodigy Gustavo Dudamel, who’s there on video to tell you how it happened; the upright piano the future maestro learned on; and the New York Times front page documenting his career-launching conducting debut with the New York Philharmonic, when he stepped in at the last minute after Bruno Walter fell ill....

Chicago Dance Month returns for a ninth time this June with in-person events featuring Chicago dancers and dance companies outdoors at Navy Pier and McKinley Park. Previously held in April, this year’s celebration launches a whole summer of Saturdays featuring dance at Navy Pier produced by See Chicago Dance. There will also be an online presentation June 24 as part of Chicago Takes 10, a virtual tour of the performing arts in Chicago sponsored by the Walder Foundation....

Much of the new energy injected into Chicago’s bustling free-jazz and improvised-music scenes over the past year or two has come from a small group of players associated with Amalgam Music, a modest local label run by drummer Bill Harris. His efforts have introduced me to the music of pianist Matt Piet and saxophonist Gerrit Hatcher, among others, and members of the circle to which they belong have made themselves ubiquitous at local spots such as Elastic, Slate Arts, and Constellation....

With Autumn de Wilde’s new film version of Jane Austen’s Emma being released next week (the seventh time it’s been adapted for film or TV, not counting Amy Heckerling’s Clueless), it seems propitious that Chicago Shakespeare has Paul Gordon’s musical adaptation currently on the boards. I missed Gordon’s world-premiere musical of Sense and Sensibility on Navy Pier in 2015. But with Emma, Gordon and director Barbara Gaines create a world that, while charming, doesn’t really do much to expand the dramatic universe of Highwood, the bucolic country estate where self-involved Emma (Lora Lee Gayer) plots the romantic futures of others—with unforeseen results....

The Reader‘s archive is enormous, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. Today is Martin Luther King Day. Last year, Renata Cherlise, creator of Black Vrchives, “a curated visual journey through history,” teamed up with Danielle A. Scruggs, the Reader‘s former director of photography, to create this video composed of photos from the Sun-Times archive. “Nearly 50 years [after King’s march in Marquette Park],” they wrote, “Dr....

Titus Andronicus is a bloody tale about the illusion of peacetime. Despite being a child of the Clinton administration, I didn’t realize it until I sat through Haven’s latest production at the Den, directed by Ian Damont Martin. But that’s exactly what keeps the show relevant. Haven handily rises to that occasion, loading the show with contemporary commentary about race, gender, legacy, and violence that expands the Bard’s work in rebellious form....

This story is part of a package on homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Click here to read the accompanying piece. The hundreds of local hotel rooms designated as isolation housing, however, are not currently available to homeless people trying to get off the streets. Instead, they’re reserved for health-care workers and “individuals who either have a COVID-19 diagnosis or who are awaiting test results, but who cannot safely return home and do not need hospital care,” according to the mayor’s office....

In December 2015 world-class DJ and WGCI on-air personality Timothy Jones, better known as DJ Timbuck2, died from stage-four renal cancer at the age of 34, leaving the Chicago hip-hop community bereft. Jones had been involved in the scene since before he could legally enter most clubs; in the early 90s, he apprenticed with Common’s right-hand DJ, Twilite Tone, who was friends with his older sister. Jones went on to spin at popular clubs such as Dragon Room and Slick’s Lounge in the early 2000s, joined WGCI and the elite DJ crew Heavy Hitters in the mid-aughts, and went on to tour as a DJ for Kanye West and Lupe Fiasco....

When it comes to music, Sweden is perhaps most famous for sweetly catchy pop and brutal death metal. Five-piece Electric Hydra finds the spiritual midpoint between those genres on its self-titled debut album by leaning into another Swedish tradition—retro hard-rock revivalism. The record’s cover art brackets the band’s name with two gaping snake maws that look like tattoo flash, and the music is very much what you’d expect from that: 34 minutes of adrenaline-pumping, stadium-size pop-metal goodness....

I would have been perfectly content to get through life without ever reading a credit-rating report. Before I get to the details, you should know something about credit-rating reports. They’re supposed to be independent analyses of a government body’s financial strengths and weaknesses. Anyway, I read Moody’s recent reports on the city and the Chicago Public Schools to see if it discovered that Chicago has started sliding into the lake—that whole neighborhoods are going under, hundreds of businesses are collapsing, or thousands of residents are skedaddling for the suburbs....

I cruised through my pre-date ritual with a rhythmic familiarity: showered, moisturized, tweezed errant hairs from my eyebrows, put on makeup, threw on my favorite jeans and sweater, and paced around my room to whittle away at the nervous pit in my stomach. Standing in front of the mirror, I swiveled back and forth to investigate every angle, grimacing at the way my ass looked in my jeans as I normally would before catching myself—on the other side of the webcam, I would exist only from the shoulders up, and in one dimension....

This past week, Theatre Communications Group (TCG) announced that its job search engine, ARTSEARCH, would not only be free of cost to all users, but would additionally require all prospective employers to list a salary range for all postings. This announcement comes on the heels of seismic changes within the theater industry aimed at dismantling inequity and financial exploitation. “So much of the arts coverage focuses on the product and not the process,” says Hiltner, who knew she wanted to be a costume designer beginning in high school....

Welcome to the Reader’s morning briefing for Wednesday, June 1, 2016. Many Memorial Day shootings were concentrated on the west side Sixty-nine people were shot and six people were killed over the weekend, according to the Tribune. Much of the violence was concentrated on the west side, especially in the Harrison Police District. At least fatalities were down from last year, when 12 people were killed and 44 wounded. [Tribune]

A lot of journalists awoke November 9 to the same grim revelation: I don’t know the country I’m living in! We looked for culprits and found them in ourselves. We in the media had somehow failed to adequately inform them, the nation’s Trump supporters, of their candidate’s utter unsuitability to be president. And equally, we failed to inform ourselves. Out of a delusional belief in polls as the best way to reveal the American mind, we reached election day having no idea of what the electorate was about to do....

ABC Joshua Sasse is Galavant, a knight in not-terribly-shiny armor. As a society we greeted 2015 from the fetal position, sore in our backs and tushies from taking everything 2014 had and without lubrication. Then a princess from another kingdom comes a-knocking on Galavant’s door, ostensibly unaware that he’s no longer the stuff of legend, to enlist his help in taking her kingdom back from the same mean King Richard who absconded with Madalena—and our journey is set into motion....

Guitarist Joel Paterson is a devoted student of American roots and early jazz guitar who pointedly ignores the lines between the once racially defined genres. Although he’s recorded only a few albums under his own name, his technical ease and versatility have made him a ubiquitous presence on the local scene, where he’s collaborated with Devil in a Woodpile, Jimmy Sutton’s Four Charms, and Cash Box Kings, and he’s done session work with national acts like JD McPherson, the Cactus Blossoms, and Pokey LaFarge, among others....