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Philip Glass is as close to a household name as living composers get these days. He's been referenced in South Park and The Simpsons and made an appearance on The Colbert Report earlier this year. His musical style is immediately identifiable and, just as important to his renown, has pervaded our culture, either through his own numerous and highly visible works (for example, he composed the film scores to Thin Blue Line, Candyman, Kundun, The Truman Show, The Hours, and Fog of War, among others) or through his massive influence (Brian Eno and David Bowie were early devotees). more ›

The last time tabla player Zakir Hussain came to town, in March, we could barely keep our pants on while previewing his Masters of Percussion show at Symphony Center. That concert exceeded even our lofty expectations, and we'd already removed our belt before finding out that his June show with Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer was canceled, apparently due to low ticket sales. Our disappointment was slightly tempered by the enormity of the accompanying acts - playing adjacent to Chick Corea, Christian McBride, Kenny Garrett, and Roy Haynes, as well as the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, we were worried the trio would get short shrift. The venue was also a concern: the ideal setting would be as small a room as possible, not at a large outdoor amphitheater. more ›

Ah, the bell tolls for summer: shortening days, screaming locusts, and now the Grant Park Music Festival is set to close its 2010 season this weekend with performances of Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony on Friday and Saturday night. more ›

You don't have to break the bank to see live classical music, and with so much great free stuff going on, we're putting it all in one place so you can plan your week. more ›

We didn't get around to reminding you last week about Music Without Borders getting underway. The weekly summer world music concert series in Millennium Park is free, though, so we owe you exactly zero dollars. Truth is, we've had today's performance by Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba circled on our calendar since we saw them at Bela Fleck's Africa Project show at the Old Town School of Folk Music back in February. more ›

Rush Hour, the free weekly classical music concert series at St. James Cathedral, begins its eleventh summer-long season this evening. We love Rush Hour for its simple formula that appeals to seasoned fans and classical music neophytes alike: short, casual post-work concerts (usually about 30 minutes long), preceded by refreshments, with additional information to consume, if you're interested (a blog, a podcast, online concert notes, and recordings of the concerts available immediately afterward to take home via flash drive). more ›

Today at 12:15 p.m., Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, FREE more ›

In the lobby following a recent Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert, I ran into a couple intrepid friends who attended the show despite being entirely unfamiliar with classical music. Their opinion of the performance was cautious and mixed; they wished there was some sort of church crying room where they could've taken in the concert, had a few drinks, and asked me questions about what was happening on stage. The CSO is fantastic, both as an ensemble and as a night-on-the-town outing, and everyone should check them out at least once, but they had a point: The classical music concert-going experience is staid and not without an air of exclusivity. It's no mystery why the genre is seen as inaccessible. more ›

In celebration of National Opera Week, the Chicago Opera Theater has sent its members to random places throughout the city to give short "Pop-Up Opera" performances. You can get tips on the locations and times on COT's website or Twitter. As an added bonus, if you tweet about the "Pop-Up" performance you're seeing (make sure to include #popupopera), you could win COT subscriptions, tickets to Kathleen Battle's performance with the Chicago Children's Choir, and $50 restaurant gift cards. more ›

This trio of concerts includes solos, duets, and a bunch of people playing a concert entitled "Duality." more ›

Don't be fooled by the kneading paws or the eighteen hours of sleep per day; cats haven't had it easy. In 1232 Pope Gregory IX declared them tools of the devil. They were burned alive as part of Queen Elizabeth I's coronation. Even today, conscientious animal shelters have strict requirements for adopting black cats in October because they're frequently used as Halloween party decorations and, even worse, for sacrifice in occult ceremonies. more ›

If you're jonesing for some opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago is your enabler. Maybe you can wait until the season preview concert on September 21. Maybe you can even hold out until the opening night gala on September 26. But if you need a taste of that sweet, sweet opera - and don't have the do-re-mi to be a subscriber (one of the requirements for the exclusive preview) or to afford a ticket to the premiere (still available for $260-$400) - then go to Millennium Park this Friday night when Lyric will be giving away the goods for free. more ›

This weekend brings the 31st installment of the Chicago Jazz Festival, packing Grant Park with its usual solid mix of local, national, and international acts. The Festival is broadly split into daytime and nighttime slates, with the afternoon performances spread over three stages: Jazz on Jackson, the Jazz Heritage Stage, and the first new stage added in a decade, the Young Jazz Lions stage, which will feature high school and college groups from the metropolitan area. Once the clock strikes 5:00 p.m., things will switch over to the Petrillo Music Shell for the headliners. Check out this map for help with navigation. The full schedule is available on the websites of the City of Chicago and the Jazz Institute of Chicago, but make sure to check out the handy-dandy grid that the City provides for the best sense of what's happening where. more ›

Ah, the embarrassment of riches that awaits classical music fans this Tuesday. We told you earlier today about Anaphora's season opener, and there's another must-see show on the docket tomorrow night as local percussion quartet Third Coast Percussion performs for the finale of Rush Hour's tenth season. Rush Hour, the free summer concert series that you should've been going to for the past twelve weeks, has come up with a simple and successful formula: After you're plied with food and drink, talented musicians play short thirty minute concerts in the beautiful (on the eyes and ears both) St. James Cathedral, with everything free of charge and wrapped up by 6:15 p.m. more ›

Even if you've never been to a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, you're familiar with the piece. At some point, and probably recently, you've heard the finale's "Ode to Joy" theme, the initial fragment from which Beethoven developed his last symphony. It's been used everywhere from the Olympics (performed at most Games since 1956, including as the temporary national anthem of the unified German teams of the 1950s and 1960s, the unified post-USSR team in 1992, and, for a half dozen years, of Rhodesia, until it became Zimbabwe in 1980); to church services (the hymn "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee"); to movies ("A Clockwork Orange," "Help!," and "Die Hard," to name a few). Parts of the rest of the symphony pop up in similarly varying locations; samples from the Scherzo appear as a stock sound in Microsoft XP and as introductory music in "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" (which itself is a tribute to the excerpt's use in "The Huntley-Brinkley Report"). more ›

There was no time for a music hangover from Lollapalooza as the latest edition of the free concert series at Millennium Park's J. Prtizker Pavilion featured local minimalist rockers Shellac and a few readers were on-hand to catch the band in action. more ›

Success has come in a torrent for Rudresh Mahanthappa since he released "Kinsmen" almost a year ago. The album was declared one of the best of 2008 by folks from the New York Times, NPR, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, the Boston Globe...well, you get the idea. more ›

Rush Hour, the free weekly after-work concert series at the St. James Cathedral, offers up yet another great show tonight, with piano music by Charles Ives and George Gershwin and poetry by Kevin Coval. more ›

Chicago's snowballing new music scene won't let summer - the usual downtime for musicians - slow it down. Tonight is the premiere of Dusk Variations, a new series of four free contemporary music concerts at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. more ›

Next door to this year's Taste of Chicago the Nike 6.0 BMX Open will be underway from June 26 - 27 in Grant Park. While the image of BMX bikers butting heads with stout suburbanites wielding oversized turkey legs is enough to set our phasers on "gleeful irony" we've learned a little piece of news that makes the event all the more awesome. more ›