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Arts & Entertainment - chicagotribune.comHeadlines from chicagotribune.com
Memoir grounded in bricks and soil, not sighs and whispers
Most memoirs are mush.Given the tender emotions, fragile reminiscences and flights of fancy that tend to flit and twirl within your average autobiography, the genre is known for its shifting, dreamlike core, not its steely spine.
Most memoirs are mush.Given the tender emotions, fragile reminiscences and flights of fancy that tend to flit and twirl within your average autobiography, the genre is known for its shifting, dreamlike core, not its steely spine.
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M. Ward is known for creating concise, atmospheric songs with craftsman-like details and deceptive simplicity. Tuesday at a packed Vic, the vocalist/guitarist experienced an identity change. Attacking music with the pent-up curiosity and surplus moxie of a boy who's been confined in a room too long, he took chances and risked imperfections. The Portland-based troubadour blew through a 75-minute set with a breathless pace that forced one to wonder if this was the same guy who paired with Zooey Deschanel in She & Him on three dulcet, retro-minded albums.
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Green Bay Packers receiver Donald Driver is a Super Bowl champion and now a "Dancing With the Stars" winner.
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CSO's 3-week event promises in-depth look at instrument
Music festivals typically invite listeners to regard familiar pieces in different contexts and perspectives, seek out musical connections between scores, and discover new things about works they may have long taken for granted.
Music festivals typically invite listeners to regard familiar pieces in different contexts and perspectives, seek out musical connections between scores, and discover new things about works they may have long taken for granted.
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Conan O'Brien, Charlie Sheen, Reese Witherspoon, Peyton Manning coming to Chicago
Now is when Chicago's celebrity scene gets interesting.
Now is when Chicago's celebrity scene gets interesting.
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Brian Wilson all the rage, as 44 songs survey 50 years of music
Brian Wilson broke character Monday at the Chicago Theatre in the first of two 50th anniversary concerts by his longtime band.
Brian Wilson broke character Monday at the Chicago Theatre in the first of two 50th anniversary concerts by his longtime band.
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Achatz teams with competition chef to bring U.S. culinary gold
Alinea/Next chef/co-owner Grant Achatz is teaming with a chef to bring the U.S. culinary gold in the Bocuse d'Or competition.
Alinea/Next chef/co-owner Grant Achatz is teaming with a chef to bring the U.S. culinary gold in the Bocuse d'Or competition.
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LONDON (Reuters) - Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb, who with brothers Barry and Maurice helped define the disco era with their falsetto harmonies and funky beats on hits like "Stayin' Alive" and "Jive Talkin'", has died after a long fight with cancer. He was 62. The singer had colon and liver cancer and, despite brief improvements in his health in recent months, passed away on Sunday evening. Gibb died at the London Clinic surrounded by his second wife Dwina, sons Spencer and Robin-John and daughter Melissa. Officials at the clinic declined to comment on Monday. Barry, now the last surviving member of the Bee Gees, had been in Britain in recent weeks to see his ailing brother, but was in the United States when he died. Funeral arrangements are expected to be announced later this week, a spokesman said. "The family have asked that their privacy is respected at this very difficult time," read a statement on Gibb's website. Fans, fellow musicians and politicians paid tribute to the musician, and at the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas late on Sunday the show stopped for a moment of silence to honor him. Canadian rocker Bryan Adams was among the stars who took to Twitter to say farewell. "Robin Gibb RIP. Very sad to hear about yet another great singer dying too young," he wrote, referring to the death on Thursday of another giant of the disco era, Donna Summer. She was 63. In Britain, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, a friend, called Gibb "a highly intelligent, interested and committed human being. "He was a great friend with a wonderful open and fertile mind and a student of history and politics. I will miss him very much," he said in a statement. "My thoughts and prayers are with Dwina and all the family." Gibb spent much of a career spanning six decades pursuing solo projects. But it was his part in one of pop's most successful brother acts, the Bee Gees, that earned him fame and fortune. Born in 1949 on the Isle of Man, located between England and Ireland, Robin and his family moved to Manchester where the brothers performed in local cinemas. They went to live in Australia where the Bee Gees as a group was officially born, and in 1963 released the first single "The Battle Of The Blue And The Grey." Believing their future lay in Europe, the Gibb brothers travelled to England to pursue a career in music and had their first British number one with "Massachusetts" in 1967. TRAIN CRASH The same year, Robin and wife-to-be Molly survived the Hither Green rail crash in south London that claimed around 50 lives. He later recalled that they probably would have been killed had they not been sitting in a first class carriage. Rather than build on the early successes, the Bee Gees almost threw away the promising career they had worked so hard to achieve. After recording the double-LP set "Odessa," the siblings fell out over which track should be the single and Robin walked out. Two years later the Gibbs were back together, and the 1970s was to belong to them. Early in the decade
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Their hits could fill an entire Saturday night, last until the first church bell rang on Sunday morning and provide a sweat-drenched workout on the dance floor that broke only for the slow numbers. Even more remarkable was that each classic gem of the Bee Gees,whose co-founder Robin Gibb died Sunday after a long battle with cancer, would be packed with feeling.
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Alternative comics legends, headlined by R. Crumb, make for quite a scene in Hyde Park
Alternative comics legends, headlined by R. Crumb, make for quite a scene in Hyde Park.
Alternative comics legends, headlined by R. Crumb, make for quite a scene in Hyde Park.
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The night climaxed, of course, with what ringleader Tom Morello called "a revolutionary class warfare anthem," although its sounded more like a jubilant New Orleans parade march as about two dozen musicians crammed the Metro stage Saturday night to perform "This Land Is Your Land."
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Bonnie Raitt claimed she was "intimidated" by the Chicago Theatre, but that hardly seemed the case Saturday in the first of two sold-out concerts at the Loop landmark.
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Welcome to Questions of Characters, the column that puts a name to some of the most familiar faces in movies, on television, the stage and commercials who either hail from Chicago or have spent enough time here to consider it home.
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THEATER REVIEW: "The Whole World is Watching" by the Dog & Pony Theatre Company at the Biograph ★★
THEATER REVIEW: "The Whole World is Watching" by the Dog & Pony Theatre Company at the Biograph ★★ ... On a weekend when the streets of Chicago are expected to fill with protesters, here's a look back at 1968.
THEATER REVIEW: "The Whole World is Watching" by the Dog & Pony Theatre Company at the Biograph ★★ ... On a weekend when the streets of Chicago are expected to fill with protesters, here's a look back at 1968.
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This week's NATO meeting may have put a chill on attendance Thursday night at the Jazz Showcase, but it didn't turn down the temperature on the music making a bit.
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At its 25th summit in Chicago this weekend, NATO will be preoccupied with the tricky business of how to advance its various institutional priorities - like global security and the building of stability - even as its member nations are more worried about local recession and red ink. Austerity may abound across Europe and beyond, but NATO still says it intends for the Chicago summit to be the place where philosophical decisions taken at the Lisbon summit 18 months ago are turned into actual programs and initiatives.
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Donna Summer was typecast as the disco-era "bad girl," the diva who was too salty and sexual for some radio stations to play in the ‘70s. But she was also a musical revolutionary, a versatile singer who created a radical new template for dance and pop music with such songs as "Love to Love You Baby" and "I Feel Love."
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CANNES, France -- Three years ago, French director Jacques Audiard's sprawling, intense prison drama "Un Prophete" won the Grand Prix here at Cannes, a main competition award signifying (despite its name) second prize only to the Palme d'Or.
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You might think Roy Lichtenstein loved the stuff of everyday postwar American existence. Swirling washing machines, diamond engagement rings, steaming hot cups of coffee, hi-top sneakers, golf balls and hot dogs covered in mustard are just a few of the familiar subjects portrayed big and bold in his iconic paintings of the early 1960s, paintings that launched a revolution called pop art.
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What has supermodel Cindy Crawford - who was hard to miss in the 1980s and ‘90s thanks to her countless magazine covers and Pepsi and Revlon commercials, not to mention her MTV show "House of Style" - been up to the last few years?
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CANNES, France -- Here's Bill Murray, a rumpled riot in mismatched summer wear, talking about his ongoing screen collaboration with writer-director Wes Anderson, the filmmaker (who still shoots on actual, tactile-friendly film, Super 16 millimeter in this case) who gave us "Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums,""Fantastic Mr. Fox"and other fastidiously framed and eccentrically observed studies in young people, their addled elders and their elaborate coping mechanisms:
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CANNES, France — Here's Bill Murray, a rumpled riot in mismatched summer wear, talking about his ongoing screen collaboration with writer-director Wes Anderson, the filmmaker (who still shoots on actual, tactile-friendly film, Super 16 millimeter in this case) who gave us "Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums,""Fantastic Mr. Fox" and other fastidiously framed and eccentrically observed studies in young people, their addled elders and their elaborate coping mechanisms:"Sometimes," Murray said at the press conference following the premiere of Anderson's"Moonrise Kingdom"here in Cannes, " when you work with a director you know you not only may never see him again, sometimes you hope you never seen him again. And that goes for the director as well. They can't wait for you to leave. They drive you to the airport to make sure you leave. That happens.
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"Dancing With the Stars" fans sent home Maria Menounos, who scored a perfect 30 from the three judges.
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The living room is the stage as actors mount theater equivalent of house concert
The woman and man sitting in the living room are having an argument. This is generally bad news. Awkward. Not something you'd pay to see.
The woman and man sitting in the living room are having an argument. This is generally bad news. Awkward. Not something you'd pay to see.
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Riot Fest, the annual punk festival, is moving outdoors for the first time this year, promoters say: Sept. 15-16 at Humboldt Park. The festival's Sept. 14 opening will be held at the Congress Theater.
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