WE’ve got plenty in our calendar of cultural best bets and artistic long shots
SEPTEMBER
Sept. 14
Chicago Jazz Ensemble at Jazz Showcase (every other Monday)
Sept. 18
David Rousseve/REALITY Dance at Columbia College (also Sept. 19)
Sept. 25
CSO season opens at Symphony Center
Sept. 18
“Julia Margaret Cameron’s Women” opens at the Art Institute (through Jan. 10)
Sept. 27
“Art” opens at Royal George Theatre (open run)
Sept. 28 “Death of a Salesman”opens at Goodman Theatre (through Nov. 7)
OCTOBER
Oct. 1 DanceChicago `98 opens at Athenaeum Theatre (through Nov. 1)
Oct. 3
“The Belin Cycle” opens at Steppenwolf Theatre (through Nov. 15)
Oct. 6
Lyric’s “Mourning Becomes Electra”
opens
Oct. 9
Joffrey at Auditorium (through Oct. 18)
Oct. 13
“Mary Cassatt” opens at Art Institute (through Jan. 10)
Oct. 16
Movie “Beloved” opens
Oct. 20
Lionel Richie at Chicago Theatre
Oct. 23 DanceAfrica at Auditorium Theatre (through Oct. 25); Rising Stars at Ravinia 3rd Annual Asian American Jazz Festival at Museum of Contemporary Art (through Oct. 25)
Oct. 28
PJ Harvey at the Vic.
Oct 30
Movie “Life Is Beautiful” opens
Oct. 29 Joni Mitchell’s new album “Taming the Tiger” released
NOVEMBER
Nov. 2
Movie “Antz” opens
Nov. 4
Kennedy at Symphony Center
Nov. 15
Samuel Ramey at Symphony Center
Nov. 20
“A Bug’s Life” opens (movie)
Nov. 15
Billy Joel at the Rosemont Horizon
Nov.24
Chicago returns to Shubert ( through Jan. 3)
Nov. 27
Joffrey Nutcracker open at Auditorium(through Dec. 13)
DECEMBER
Dec. 4
“Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol” at Goodman Theatre (through Dec. 27)
Dec. 11
“Gifts of a Lifetime” at Art Institute (through March 6)
Dec. 13
“Glass Menagerie” opens at Steppenwolf (through Jan. 20)
Dec. 14 “Mefistofele” opens at Lyric (through Jan. 30)
Dec. 18
Movie “The Prince of Egypt” opens
Dec. 19
“Masterpieces From Central Africa” at Art Institute (through March 14)
Dec. 25
Movie ” A Thin Red Line” opens
ART LONG SHOT
James Lee Byars was an American performance and installation artist whose works brought together Minimal and Conceptual art with an otherworldly Zen-like quiet. His art was much in demand before he died a year ago at age 65, but rare was the show that could make the interior motives of the pieces intelligible, and a sculpture loaned to the opening exhibition of the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1996 seemed more like gaudy decoration for the atrium. The Arts Club of Chicago has its work cut out for it in Byars’ first solo exhibition here (Sept. 17-Nov. 21), presenting four installations and several works on paper. While alive, the artist often risked appearing a charlatan. This is a rare chance to see how his work survives him.
-Alan Artner
ROCK LONG SHOT
If the phrase “French disco” invites visions of K.C. and the Sunshine Band with bad Parisian accents, guess again. Air’s “Moon Safari,” concocted by the duo of Nicholas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel, is one of the year’s most alluring pop albums, a melange of lounge, ambient and, yes, disco textures that should please pop sophisticates, electronica addicts and dance queens alike. The duo will be making its first stateside tour in a few weeks, with a concert Oct. 19 at Metro (773-549-0203).
-Greg Kot
CLASSICAL LONG SHOT
Last year the Museum of Contemporary Art answered the question “Helmut who?” by giving local audiences valuable exposure to the original sound-world of German contemporary composer Helmut Lachenmann. This year the MCA and Chicago’s Ensemble Noamnesia are hoping to perform the same kind of missionary service on behalf of another dark-horse foreign composer.
Two composers, in fact. Germany’s Gerhard Stbler and Korea’s Kunsu Shim may have dissimilar backgrounds but each young composer has lived and worked in the other’s homeland. As the MCA publicity puts it, each man uses “a highly original, multi-faceted musical language to express (his) sense of social responsibility and political awareness.” You can catch an entire concert of their sure-to-be-provocative works at 8 p.m. Nov. 21 at the MCA. (312-397-4010).
-John von Rhein
THEATER LONG SHOT
Ping Chong, the Chinese-American director who has become one of the sacred names in performance art, returns to Chicago for his first public performance here in more than a decade. His new work is “Kwaidan,” which relates a series of ghost stories based on tales of the supernatural. Viewers may remember this as the same material used in a 1964 Japanese art-house film, also called “Kwaidan.” Chong’s stage version, however, features puppets, shadow play and live action.
Advance word promises “crabs with human faces, a dead lover reunited with her beloved and a blind minstrel performing before assembled spirits.” Judging from Chong’s past work, this is bound to add up to a visually rich experience.
Performances are 8 p.m. Oct. 3 and 3 and 7:30 p.m. Oct. 4 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave. (312-397-4010).
-Richard Christiansen
DANCE LONG SHOT
Clara’s no longer an apple-cheeked little girl but a grandmother mourning her dead husband. The Sugar Plum Fairy is Sugar Rum Cherry, and the setting isn’t a land of snowflakes but a Harlem brownstone in the days of the 1920s Renaissance. What “The Wiz” did for “The Wizard of Oz,” choreographer Donald Byrd’s “The Harlem Nutcracker” could do to “The Nutcracker,” updating the classic and using the 30-minute Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn arrangements of the Tchaikovsky score, with original music by Ellington band member David Berger. At the Chicago Theatre, Dec. 8-13.
-Sid Smith
MOVIES LONG SHOT
“The General” (director John Boorman). One of the highlights of this year’s Cannes festival and winner of a Best Director prize for Boorman, was this savage black-and-white wide-screen Irish crime story. The real-life chronicle of the life, heists and death of master Dublin thief Martin Cahill, it features a ferocious lead performance by Brendan Gleeson as Cahill: an ultimate charming psychopath, moving ruthlessly through the dark deadly landscape of IRA-torn Dublin. This is Boorman back in his “Point Blank” mode, with another great modern film noir. Opens Dec. 18.
-Michael Wilmington
JAZZ LONG SHOT
Most listeners think of jazz as an urban music, but the Arts Center at College of DuPage, in Glen Ellyn, in recent years has presented top-notch jazz concerts. This year’s lineup is the best yet, including a show by Chick Corea and his band Origins, Feb. 26. (630-942-4000).
-Howard Reich
WORST BET
“Psycho.” Director Gus Van Sant (“Good Will Hunting”) seems to be squandering his ample talent on a $25 million shot-by-shot “recreation” of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 movie of the very same name. With Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche in the Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh roles. Just one question: Why? Opens Dec. 4.
-Mark Caro
