County Commissioner Bridget Gainer's proposal would require a County Board vote on any amusement tax exemption that costs the city $150,000 or more. Lollapalooza currently enjoys that exemption to the tune of at least half a million dollars. more ›

Bela Fleck recently took time to exchange e-mails with Chicagoist about the re-addition of Howard Levy, Future Man's new Drumitar, and whether or not you should dance at a Flecktones concert. more ›

On July 4, 1991, The Replacements gave their last performance ever at the Taste of Chicago, of all places. That was twenty years ago today. more ›

Think of the best, most thoughtful holiday card you've ever given. Now prepare to feel bad about your feeble effort as we tell you about the card composer Augusta Read Thomas gave flutist Claire Chase in 2008 that contained "Euterpe's Caprice," a two-minute solo work dedicated to Chase. As of posting, we cannot determine whether the card also contained a tedious summary of the achievements and news of Thomas's family that year. Anyhow, you can hear "Euterpe's Caprice" and other works for free at a concert put on by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), one of our favorite new-music groups kinda-sorta based in town (they split their time between here and New York), at the Art Institute this Friday evening. more ›

About an hour into his "Winter Dance" show at the Congress Theater on Saturday night, 84-year-old Rock N' Roll Hall of Famer Chuck Berry collapsed on-top of his keyboards before a standing-room only crowd. After Berry didn't move for several minutes, he was helped off stage by three people. He came back on stage 20 minutes later, although most of the audience had left by that point. He tried to play another song before stopping and telling the audience he had no strength and leaving the stage again. more ›

In their sixteen years, the Sones de México Ensemble has been the local standard bearer for Mexican "son" and how the music varies by region. Their mission has also allowed them to incorporate as a 501(c)3 educational non-profit, allowing them to take their music and traditions to schools, communities, and other organizations across the country, and further research the history of one of Mexico's best-known musical styles. more ›

As we told you earlier, the Adler Planetarium is moving the stargazing out to Wheaton this evening, but you'll see more of the universe indoors at Adler's Sky Theater, with projections of stars accompanying a performance of Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" by the Fifth House Ensemble. more ›

Sometimes a concert looks great on paper, but, for one reason or another, it doesn't meet expectations. Such was the case with the baffling Chicago Symphony Orchestra dance-heavy concert we recommended last month. With strangely mismatched music and long pauses between pieces, including an unusually lengthy intermission, the show never got any momentum going. And while the Hubbard Street dancers were terrific, the audience was filled with their riffraff fans. (That's right, dancers, we're picking a fight, an altercation that'll probably look a lot like this.) more ›

For "Computers Come Alive!," their last concert of the season at the Harris Theater, new-music group Fulcrum Point will once again feature a new hip-hop-infused work by composer-in-residence Randall Woolf. more ›

Dan Peck, who mans the tuba for the new-music group International Contemporary Ensemble, feels that tuba players have been living a lie. Solo tuba music has only been around for a little over a half-century, and like other instrumentalists new to the solo world, there's a pervasive insecurity that comes from comparing the worth of your chosen voice to instruments like the violin or piano that have centuries' worth of repertoire written by history's greatest composers. Try as tuba players might by playing technically-demanding music, often music written for other, more virtuosic instruments, their efforts to be taken seriously only bring the ridiculousness of their endeavor into greater focus. Peck wants tuba players to come to terms with the gigantic maze of metal tubes they bear hug in their laps: the tuba is a bass instrument. In his solo performances, like the one he'll give this Friday night at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Peck digs in his heels and explores the tuba's neglected, extreme-low end range in all its muddled and often silly-sounding glory. more ›

Classical music is a funny thing, and we're not even referring to the ambiguous nature of the term "classical music" (like the Supreme Court and pornography, we know it when we see it). The role of a professional symphony orchestra has largely become that of a curator, producing a unique, exciting, or technically perfect - ideally, all three - interpretation of an established piece of music. To be fair, orchestras do program new music - just last weekend the Chicago Symphony Orchestra played a piece by one of their new composers-in-residence, 33-year-old Mason Bates - but they also have to pay attention to their bottom lines, and the classics put butts in seats. Point is, there's an aspect of classical music that's old news. more ›

This weekend my parents are visiting from Virginia. These are the people who didn't bat an eye when I told them I wanted to go to college to pursue a career in music - classical music, mind you - and although the performing days are behind me, my love of music has remained. I have them to thank, so I owe them a good cultural time this weekend. They're eager to have one, too, coming from Virginia and all. It's not that the state is some boorish backwater - despite what Virginia's deceptively insane governor and aggressively insane attorney general would lead you to believe - but, hey, it just ain't Chicago, you know? more ›

Chicago native Anthony McGill made it to the top of his profession in a hurry. He graduated from the elite Curtis Institute of Music at age 20, immediately won a position with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and four years later became the principal clarinet of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Now 30, McGill is one of the most sought-after classical clarinetists. more ›

Fans of classical piano will have a difficult choice to make this Sunday when the legendary Maurizio Pollini and the budding superstar Lang Lang each kick off their respective concerts at 3:00 p.m. just a few blocks from one another. more ›

Some music begs to be heard in nice weather. We've been listening to Ziguala, the latest album by Brooklyn-based Las Rubias del Norte for about a month now, and it just didn't seem complete without a warm breeze tickling our kicked-up feet. Finally, though, the gods have intervened, cranking the temperature for the band's first Chicago visit tonight at Morseland. more ›

Fulcrum Point and eighth blackbird, two leading ensembles of the Chicago new-music scene, will present multi-discipline, multi-genre concerts at the Harris Theater this week. To make it even more enticing, Wednesday's eighth blackbird show has cheap tickets available. more ›

From a technical proficiency standpoint, there are two types of talented musicians. The first, the regular ol' talent, is special but relatively common. The rarely-seen second contingent consists of musicians whose astonishing command is tied to movement so relaxed and fluid it's like they took up their instruments in utero. For a succinct illustration of this difference, check ut this video of a drum battle between drum legend (and Chicagoan!) Gene Krupa and drum god Buddy Rich. Zakir Hussain, master of the tabla - two small tuned hand drums, one wood, one metal - falls into the latter group. Like Rich, his playing is paradoxically calm. As an added bonus, Hussain couples his eye-popping speed with sensitive musicianship. more ›

There's a wide variety of classical music being written today. If you don't mind the use of the term "classical music" (which is more inaccurate but slightly less pretentious than the best alternative, "art music"), then you may also pardon the gross oversimplification that that music falls roughly into two camps: complicated, dissonant music from the 20th-century modernist tradition; and more minimalist work from the Steve Reich family tree branch. Composers of the latter group believe that music doesn't need to be harmonically or developmentally complicated, sensibilities that are aligned with other "simple" music. more ›

The career of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), which got underway shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, can be seen broadly as cycling between angering the Soviet authorities and getting back in their good graces. The paper trail of the actual intentions behind his various pieces of music is thin and often contains an array of dubious patriotic claims. That was, of course, out of necessity. Being on the wrong side of Stalin often led to the gulag, or worse. more ›

At one point in the not so distant past, there existed a primitive form of podcasting called "radio." Radio stations would broadcast programming at a specific frequency that you could tune in to. During the development of these stations, many added in-house symphony orchestras to provide music for their various shows, as well as to perform separate stand-alone concerts. more ›

Two new-music groups that normally perform chamber music programs that tend toward the avant garde and experimental are taking the edge off by going back in time this weekend, with concerts featuring music that's, relatively-speaking, downright ancient. more ›

With our last stop on our week-long Stay-Home World Tour, we come almost full circle geographically with Tinariwen's performances this weekend at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Tinariwen's members are Tuareg, a Saharan culture which is historically nomadic but whose lives were uprooted during the region's colonization in the late 1800s and the subsequent independence in the 1960s, so the musicians have bounced between points all over north and west Africa, forming up in Algeria and somewhat more officially in a military training camp near Tripoli, Libya. more ›

Our next stop on the Stay-Home World Tour is Tuva, a small Russian republic that sits on a plateau between Siberia and Mongolia, as Huun Huur Tu plays a pair of shows this Friday night at the Old Town School of Folk Music. more ›

After swinging through Africa and Iran, the next stop on our passport-less vacation takes us to Hong Kong, the home of the Windpipe Chinese Ensemble, which will be performing for the first time in North America this Thursday night at Northwestern University. The concert is a collaboration with Chicago-based Fulcrum Point to celebrate the Chinese New Year - the Year of the Tiger - which began on February 14. more ›

Our staycation continues Tuesday night when the Masters of Persian Music perform at Symphony Center. Persian classical music is ancient - some suggest it predates the 7th-century Muslim conquest - and for most of its history was only heard by the upper crust. The decline of royal power at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as the subsequent invention and development of recording and radio broadcast technology, led to a spreading of the music. Although its popularity ebbed during post-World War Two Westernization, the 1979 Islamic Revolution led to a renewed interest in a national cultural identity, and Persian classical music once against flourished, even in the face of the theocracy's stance against music and other fun things. more ›

Pop quiz: What instrument sounds the first official note at an orchestra concert? more ›

The Bad Plus returns to Chicago for the first time since last April's concert at the Old Town School of Folk Music, bringing their uniquely varied repertoire and top-notch musicianship to the University of Chicago Presents concert series this Friday. more ›

On Monday and Thursday of next week, Fifth House Ensemble will present "The Great Exodus of the Tamed," the second act of their musical graphic novel Black Violet. The story is set during London's last plague outbreak in 1665, with Fifth House performing live music to accompany projected panels by Chicago-based artist Ezra Clayton Daniels. more ›

Here are a couple reasons to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra this week: more ›

The Tree House Humane Society is holding its fifth annual Kittypalooza at the Empty Bottle this Thursday. This year's fundraiser is dedicated to the memory of Radley, the former resident cat of the Empty Bottle who died last August, and will feature four local music acts, Brice Woodall, One & Only, Cobalt and the Hired Guns, and Todd Kessler. more ›