Chicago jazz pianist John Wright earned his reputation with a string of LPs for the Prestige label in the early 60s—his 1960 debut made such an impression that its title, South Side Soul, remains his nickname to this day. His discography has been sparse since then, but he’s never stopped playing for long, and he’s just had an especially eventful week. On Friday, August 29, Wright spoke at the ceremony to formally designate the 3800 block of South Prairie “Dinah Washington Way,” reminiscing about his interactions with the great singer in the 1950s....

What happens when drunk video gamers try to direct a stage version of Hamlet? You’ll have about a minute to find out. “We’re not looking to becoming a video game theater company, but it’s part of who we are as an ensemble—a lot of our lives have been shaped by this element of gaming and technology,” said Dardai. “So this is more about our shared cultural dialogue. Even if you haven’t played a game in ten or 20 years, you remember what you liked about it and this taps into those feelings....

Gossip Wolf loves WBEZ’s Winter Block Party, an all-ages hip-hop fest copresented by Young Chicago Authors. This year it takes over Metro on Saturday, January 28, beginning at noon with a free celebration of hip-hop arts that includes a dance workshop, a DJ battle, and a graffiti wall. The ticketed concert at 7 PM ($10, $6 for students) is a doozy, with seven local female acts spanning generations; unimpeachable soul singer Jamila Woods headlines....

Une Annee’s Quad with bottled siblings present and future: Airing of Grievances, Maya, and Life Beyond Death When I reviewed Goose Island’s Belgian Fest in September, I pointed out that not one brewer had brought a quadrupel—a conspicuous lapse, given that the quad is among the few Belgian styles that even an entry-level beer nerd can tell you about. They’re customarily dark and strong, with a rich, malty body and mellow flavors of fruit and spice from specialized yeasts; Rochefort, La Trappe, St....

One of the great stories in Chicago jazz over the past few years has been the resurgence of guitarist George Freeman, a key figure in one of the city’s most celebrated jazz families. He’s now outlived his brothers Von (a brilliant saxophonist) and Bruz (a drummer), and at age 90 Freeman is about to drop one of the strongest recordings of his career. In 2013 Constellation owner and drummer Mike Reed approached guitarist Mike Allemana, who spent years in Von’s working band at the New Apartment Lounge, about putting together an organ combo with Freeman....

Synthesizers and chili go together like . . . well, like nothing else really. The pairing is as strange as it is ridiculous, and that’s kind of the point of the Synth-Chili Cook-Off, in which four musicians will each make a chili and perform an original “sonic interpretation” of it using a synthesizer—it’s a real thing, and it’s happening Sunday at the Empty Bottle. The absurdity of the event isn’t lost on the founders, Brett Naucke (Catholic Tapes) and Beau Wanzer (Streetwalker, Mutant Beat Dance), and I’m reminded of something Naucke told me when I wrote a feature-length preview of the first Synth-Chili Cook-Off:...

Donald Trump was saying the other day that John McCain isn’t much of a hero. “He’s a war hero because he got captured,” said Trump. “I like people who weren’t captured.” Winston Churchill. He got himself captured during the Boer War. Tito. The Russians captured him during World War I. Later, he ran Yugoslavia. Again, I make no claim as to the likability of any of these former captives, and it’s possible they’d all rub Trump the wrong way....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Philip is curious what’s in the rotation of . . . Courtland Green at Dove’s Luncheonette It says a lot that one of the best things about Dove’s Luncheonette in Wicker Park isn’t the food (outstanding Texas Mexican, not Tex-Mex as they claim) or the thorough mezcal collection but rather the impeccable music library of Courtland Green, who tends bar and DJs there....

Greenstar’s first two beers, an India pale ale and an American pale ale. I’m 80 percent sure that’s the IPA on the left. In 2011 the Green Restaurant Association named Uncommon Ground’s two locations the first and second greenest restaurants in the country—and in this case “green” means solar panels and wind power, not homemade composting toilets and fruit flies everywhere. Last month Uncommon Ground raised the bar by launching Greenstar Brewing, certified by Wisconsin-based nonprofit MOSA (the Midwest Organic Services Association) as the first organic brewery in Illinois....

The main flaw in Lauren Gunderson’s The Revolutionists is not that it’s yet one more play about a playwright agonizing over her unwritten play but that its running gag is about how surely no one would ever want to watch a musical about the French Revolution. (Les Misérables was about the Paris Uprising of 1832.) But of course history does not really matter in a play that brings together four women—playwright Olympe de Gouge (Kat McDonnell), Caribbean antislavery revolutionary Marianne Angelle (Kamille Dawkins), assassin Charlotte Corday (Izis Mollinedo), and (who else?...

This month, the Silent Film Society of Chicago (SFSC) is collaborating with three Chicago-area venues to screen the silent films The Kid (1921), The Artist (2011), and 7th Heaven (1927) with live musical accompaniment. Since its inception in 1998, SFSC has been preserving and presenting silent films across the Chicago area. “Our mission was to bring silent films to the forefront, because they’d gotten a bit musty,” Wolkowicz notes. “But we got started by doing most of our screenings at the old Gateway Theatre on Lawrence Avenue—that’s a 2,000-seat theater—and we would do it with all the bravado of going to a silent film in the 1920s, with the grand pipe organ and opening the curtain....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, February 24, 2017. Have a great weekend! Seven people killed in gun violence Wednesday as shootings in 2017 already outpace 2016 Chicago saw its 99th homicide in 2017 Wednesday, two days before its 99th homicide in 2016, according to the Tribune. Homicides had been slowing down slightly in comparison with 2016 until seven people were fatally shot Wednesday. [Tribune]

“One of my favorites, a wordless comic with great artwork and a story that takes a minute to figure out. Kinda sweet in a way.”—Eric Kirsammer, our Comics Issue curator, on why he chose Valbuena and Torres’s comic (CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO READ A COMIC)

Ryan McVay Take a dip. Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

Nick Kluding and Ricardo Mendoza are getting married on June 2. For the past few weeks they’ve been meeting with caterers, hunting for a cake topper, and shopping for suits for themselves and their 21-month-old twin sons. The one thing they haven’t had to worry about is the venue. They’ll be getting hitched in the Kovler Atrium of the Museum of Contemporary Art and having the reception out on the terrace overlooking the sculpture garden, including the famous Sol LeWitt installation, and Lake Michigan....

Update: This event is now sold out. Please tune in to the live stream of the party beginning Thursday at 9 PM here on the Bleader. Tomorrow night is the first of a new Reader-hosted series of DJ showcases that will be taking place in offbeat, obscure, or otherwise surprising spaces and places around Chicago. These free events have limited capacity and are invitation only—but you, dear Reader reader, are invited....

Lake Davenport isn’t blue or sparkling. It isn’t even a lake—just the muddy Mississippi as it flows past Davenport, Iowa. The Lake Davenport Sailing Club, founded 1935, hosts races on the river Wednesdays and Sundays, Memorial Day through November. One of the first things beginners learn is to steer clear of the dam downstream, past the old Wonder Bread factory. Like other cities in the Rust Belt, the Quads have tried to reinvent themselves, setting up riverfront entertainment districts with attractions such as brewpubs and art galleries, Moline’s iWireless Center (home of minor-league hockey team the Quad City Mallards), and Davenport’s Figge Art Museum....

Making a cocktail with the canned kid-pleaser SpaghettiOs “sounds like a nightmare,” says Luxbar bar manager Steve Gleich. But when Nicole Brudd of the Revel Room challenged him to do just that, Gleich got to work. His first idea was a Bloody Mary, which evolved into a Bloody Maria and then sangrita, a drink that’s typically sipped alongside tequila. Though sangrita originally consisted of just fruit juice and chile powder, today it often includes tomato juice as well, which is the route that Gleich went with it....

The University of Illinois Board of Trustees approved Thursday an $875,000 settlement agreement with Professor Steven Salaita that will end his lawsuits against the university—but will not provide him with a job. Salaita sued after former chancellor Phyllis Wise retracted the offer of a tenured position two weeks before he was to start teaching last year. Salaita attorney Anand Swaminathan, of Chicago firm Loevy & Loevy, said the size of the settlement “is an implicit admission of the strength of Professor Salaita’s constitutional and contractual claims....