Music
The Plaster Caster
Cynthia Albritton, a Chicago native and South Side resident better known as “Cynthia Plaster Caster,” has lived the dream of teenage girls around the world. A self-titled “recovering groupie,” she has been making plaster casts of rock stars’ naughty bits since 1968. It all started in her college art class, where she was given... »
Pillaging Hallowed Grounds
Something was wrong at the Reynolds Club. The late Saturday sun hadn’t quite set, and passersby on 57th street turned their faces up towards the second floor coffee shop with varying degrees of concern, curiosity, and confusion. The perpetrator? The noisily melodic wails and screams of Divinity School student Daniel Wyche, a man who... »
South Side Crescendo
When one considers Chicago African-American music, the first things that come to mind are probably twelve-bar blues and stirring gospel. But Cornelius V. Johnson, the calm and sagacious Artistic Director and tenor of the South Shore Opera Company (SSOC), which is based out of the South Shore Cultural Center, has something else in mind.... »
Playground Poets
On April 10, in the mezzanine of the South Shore Cultural Center, an unusual partnership was formed between Ed Borstein and Noah Emmanuel. Ed is a lanky 25-year-old University of Iowa graduate and drummer for the Chicago punk band T’Bone. Noah is a sixteen-year-old South Shore resident and avid Drake fan. The pair spent... »
Out but not Down
Just as the modest wooden structure in the yard at 57th and Woodlawn brings together events from different times and places, SHoP was intended from its beginnings in October 2011 to provide a meeting point for differing perspectives. SHoP’s current arrangement, however, will soon be coming to an end in the summer with the... »
With a melody
Two musicians Julianne Skones and Dominic Rotella formed part of the Civic Woodwind Quintet, with the three other woodwind players seated behind them. Along with a string and brass quintet, and a percussion trio, the groups are part of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Musicorps program. »
High-Octane Sound
Johnny Drummer wants to know if Lady Cadillac is in the building. A woman at the back of the joint in white go-go boots, ostensibly not Lady Cadillac, calls out to the septuagenarian bluesman, letting him know that he is “S.O.L. tonight,” and proceeds to raise her highball. She’s either flagging down a hostess... »
Out of Hiding
Bernard Scavella, the veteran saxophonist, is a man of few words. His breath seems like a terrible thing to waste. The virtuoso divides his time between his work as a pharmacist and mesmerizing gaggles of jazz buffs on the weekends. Scavella has grown a little hoary around the temples, and his face registered a... »
