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I had listened to Hotel Grief (Intakt) several times before I noticed that leader and drummer Tom Rainey, guitarist Mary Halvorson, and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock were credited for improvising all five pieces when the recording was made live at New York’s Cornelia Street Café in April 2014. I’m still shaking my head in disbelief that it was all created on the spot. Although the performances ripple with an attractive looseness and sense of space, the musicians shape melodies with such empathy and cooperative grace that the music feels composed and rehearsed....

Sanchez had suffered from insomnia since his mother’s death from cancer a year ago, according to Osoria’s sister Maria Cartage. She says that early in the morning on Sunday, February 21, Sanchez strolled a mile west of his home to his regular tavern to have a beer or two. “He was trying to do the responsible thing by walking instead of driving to the bar and, ironically, that’s what got him killed,” she says....

Update: City officials have announced a 25-cent fare hike on CTA train rides and bus fares beginning January 7, 2018. We’ll soon learn what’s in the cards—the CTA is slated to announce its final 2018 budget this week. Thus far no one’s said how big a fare hike might be needed, but it should be noted that even a 25-cent increase to the current fares of $2.25 per train trip and $2 per bus ride could tip the scales for some customers, who might turn to other affordable options like Uber Pool, Lyft Line, or Divvy as an alternative, which could be counterproductive for increasing revenue....

Correction (Wed 7/24, 1 PM): The Tree performing at the Peace Beach Party is not the Tree this column described (and linked to a story about).

Everything about Djembe! The Show starts to make more sense when you imagine it out of its current context—the theater—and back in its spiritual place of origin, a corporate seminar. Created by Doug Manuel, a white British inspirational speaker and social entrepreneur who sells motivational speeches and leadership retreats, this 90-minute commercial interactive musical experience invites audiences to learn djembe drum fundamentals by playing along to affordably licensed hits. As a concert and work of children’s theater, components of it are pretty damn cool....

Some folks ride bicycles in Chicago for exercise, while others do it to reduce their carbon footprint. Amanda Aamodt and Emily McCrary pedal for a higher purpose; biking, they say, is the most affordable and efficient way to spread their faith to others around the city. Bingham, 69, a farmer by trade, temporarily moved to Chicago in July with his wife, Sherry, a piano teacher, from Honeyville, Utah, near the Idaho border, after they were “called” by their faith to mentor young missionaries....

Allá en San Fernando Collectivo El Pozo presents Allá en San Fernando as a commemoration of 72 would-be immigrants murdered on August 24, 2010, victims of corruption and bloodlust along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Raúl Doronte’s play (which is performed in Spanish with English supertitles) begins on a desert plain, with two snickering assassins, a knife, and three helpless women—Judith (Leslie Magdalena Holguín), Salomé (José Rochel), and María (Carolina Escrich)....

In this year’s eclectic Chicago Palestine Film Festival, two themes dominate: the tension between tradition and modernity, and the uneasy, often tragic relations between Palestinians and Israelis. The opening-night film, Annemarie Jacir’s crowd-pleasing Wajib (Sat 4/21, 8 PM), stars real-life father Mohammad Bakri (Since You’ve Been Gone, HBO’s The Night Of) and son Saleh Bakri (The Band’s Visit) as a Palestinian patriarch and his expatriate son, a hipster architect who reluctantly leaves his home and girlfriend in Italy to return to Nazareth for his sister’s marriage....

One of the highlights of the 25th Chicago Underground Film Festival, which runs this Wednesday through Sunday at the Logan, is the local premiere of Good Luck, the latest documentary feature by noted avant-garde filmmaker (and former Chicagoan) Ben Russell (Let Each One Go Where He May, A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness). Russell has carved out an interesting niche for himself over the past decade or so, blending elements of ethnographic and experimental cinema, and Good Luck falls squarely into this idiosyncratic subgenre....

The Super Bowl is this weekend, but do you really want to watch Tom Brady and the Patriots again? There are plenty of others events going on in Chicago this weekend. Here’s some of what we recommend: Sat 2/3: The Urban Livestock Expo at Southside Occupational Academy (7432 S. Hoyne) teaches you how to raise goats, chickens, ducks, and bees in your yard—complaints from neighbors be damned. 11 AM-2 PM, freeSat 2/3: Known for his quick timing and wordplay, comedian Myq Kaplan—a finalist on Last Comic Standing—appears at Zanies (1548 N....

Valentine’s Day can be a complicated time of year, especially if your relationship can’t be defined in traditional terms. It’s 2020: who is even “in a relationship?” It’s not like you want to have anything in common with everyone in your high school graduating class, right? If you’re “dating” someone in an open relationship: Cole’s Bar Whether it’s the emotional compartmentalizing or the constant blurring of boundaries, the fun never ends when you’re hooking up with someone in an open relationship!...

John Prine’s new record, The Tree of Forgiveness (Oh Boy), is his first album of original material in a decade. He underwent surgery for lung cancer in 2013, and his characteristically cracked voice is a little worse for wear, but he’s as avuncular, funny, and wise as ever—a poet of the everyday. Prine’s influence continues to be felt through each new generation of roots musicians, so it’s fitting that this album was produced by current Nashville darling Dave Cobb and has instrumental support from a crew of contemporary players and singers that includes Sturgill Simpson and Brandi Carlile....

ARTIST: Scott Williams SHOW: The Soul Summit DJs with guest Easy Mo Bee at East Room on Sat 3/16 MORE INFO: scottwilliamsdesign.com

Sam Adam Jr., who defended both R. Kelly and former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and has routinely been recognized as one of the top trial lawyers in America, says, “It’s obvious what’s coming here is gonna be self-defense.” The attorney says he has had success in defending a client who had stabbed his wife 15 times by having a psychiatrist testify that the action became automatic in the adrenaline-fueled heat of the moment....

The awful statistics are widely publicized: More than one-third of black men in America are obese; they also experience the highest rates of HIV infection and die from gunshots at a higher rate than any other population. One in six African-American men has been incarcerated, and if trends continue, a black man born after 2001 has a one in three chance to be incarcerated in his lifetime. Black men have the highest school dropout rates and highest unemployment rates in the country....

Experimental Sound Studio is a nonprofit music venue, recording studio, art gallery, and audio archive that’s provided a nexus for creative work in Chicago since 1986. ESS has built an audience with concerts and public exhibitions, both of which the pandemic made impossible, but despite that constraint 2020 has arguably been the studio’s finest hour. As soon as everyone’s shows got canceled, the studio got to work launching the Quarantine Concerts, an ongoing series that kicked off March 20 and has since included hundreds of streamed performances (some live, some prerecorded for the occasion) by musicians playing in their homes and rehearsal spaces, out in the woods, and in at least one pottery studio....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. Older strips are archived here.

Some of the best films screening at the festival each year are short works. Following are reviews of eight that are featured in various programs; for more information visit cuff.org. The subject of Haley McCormick’s D A N C E R (Thu 6/7, 7 PM) is whatever the viewer wants her to be. Obscured by static in cotton-candy hues, she appears in parts—tap-dancing legs, lips, cleavage—that add up to something primal....

Welcome to the Reader‘s weekday news briefing. Mother of police shooting victim Quintonio LeGrier waits for answers Quintonio LeGrier, 19, was shot and killed by a Chicago police officer on December 26, 2015, following a domestic disturbance call. LeGrier’s family sued the Chicago Police Department just two days later, but the case is still tied up in court. The city quickly dropped a lawsuit it filed against the LeGrier’s family in December, but Robert Rialmo, the officer who fatally shot both LeGrier and neighbor Bettie Jones, is countersuing both the family and the city, contending that LeGrier swung a bat at his head several times and failed to drop the bat when asked, giving him reason to believe that LeGrier would kill him unless he used deadly force....