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Jazz Brunch – Storyville – Sundays

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The Storyville jazz infused, red-light district in New Orleans closed in 1917, or so I’m told, though you can revisit it in the 1992 movie of the same name.

One result of the closing was that famous jazz cornet player King Oliver left town and came to Chicago, followed a few years later by his mentee Louis Armstrong.

Neither of them was in attendance at brunch at Chicago’s Storyville establishment, not even for old times’ stake, but a nice trio led by guitarist Kevin Lipa entertained the patrons. As far as I can tell Lipa is not related to singer/songwriter Dua Lipa, who is someone I would know something about if I were a lot younger, or less clueless.

Kevin Lipa is a member of the band Bowmanville, named after the Chicago neighborhood where the only red lights are at intersections, but I’m not sure if the other two musicians were from that band as their names were not displayed. Hopefully they still get their share of the tips.

Consistent with the ambience, I went with the Blackened Shrimp n’ Grits. Tasty, but the grits were a little loose. Perhaps the chef was the witness from My Cousin Vinnie.

Next time I’ll take a double dose of cholesterol meds ahead of time and try the beignets.

Alex Edelman: What Are Your Going to Do – Steppenwolf Theatre – August 16, 2026

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My biggest takeaway from Edelman’s 75 minutes on stage was that, compared to him, I’m Rip Van Winkle. The man is a world class insomniac, which makes it all the more amazing that he has the energy to never stand still on stage, though perhaps it’s to prevent himself from dozing off in the middle of his own show, not that anyone could given the continuous laughter that he elicits from the audience with his unique reflections on life.

Edelman, perhaps above all else, is irreverent, but never irrelevant. His topics in this show ranged from being a hospital clown in Jerusalem to going on the road for two weeks with a Christian music tour to his collection of thousands of sea shells.

As in his Tony award-winning one-man show Just for Us (available on HBO), which I heartily recommend, Edelman addressed his heritage, his parents and his personal anxieties. As in The Big Bang Theory, where Sheldon often denied that he was insane, his mother having had him tested, Edelman told us several times that he wasn’t autistic, having been tested.

Luiz Ewerling & Amada – Night Out in the Parks – Washington Square Park – August 14, 2026

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Luiz Ewerling was born in 1958 in Southern Brazil and started playing the drums at age six, making his first television appearance two years later. What took him so long?

 He moved to the U.S. In 1984, bringing his roots with him, and possibly his drums, though he may have upgraded since then, judging by how good they sounded in the park.

The group was a joy to hear. As I know nothing about Brazilian music, I recorded a little on my phone and sent the recording to a knowledgeable friend, who gave me the following soundbite:

“The music is of a style called MPB, for Música Popular Brasileira, which first emerged at the end of the 1960s and mixes bossa nova with pop and so-called Tropicalista tendencies. I could also hear certain influences from Milton Nascimento and his crowd. Nice vocals too.”

As to those vocals, the singer was not Amada (which means beloved or loved one in Portuguese), but rather Ana Everling. As far as I know the similarities of her last name and Luiz’s is coincidental, as she is from Moldova, which is about 6500 miles from Brazil.

I found a good video of her with the band at the Old Town School of Folk Music that is very representational of their performance in the park. I have no idea what the translation of the lyrics might be, but they can’t possible sound as good in English.

Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares – Steppenwolf Theatre – August 9, 2026

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According to Laura Benanti, one of her daughters told her, in response to some personal revelation, that nobody cares.

Her daughter was wrong. I cared. Well, maybe not cared, but certainly enjoyed hearing about her life, through her particular off-kilter lens, as did the entire audience. It was a great show.

I had heard Benanti sing in radio highlights of her 2013 show In Constant Search Of The Right Kind Of Attention and in the wonderful, filmed version of the 2016 Broadway revival of She Loves Me. In person, even better.

I knew she was funny from the above and from her many TV appearances, but she’s even funnier than that. Great personal stories told with impeccable, comedic timing and highlighted by attention to every detail.

I didn’t know how well she moves her body. Not your average stand-up comedian or cabaret singer.

She also co-wrote the show’s original, funny, no-holds-barred songs with Todd Almond. Some of them contained lyrics that reminded me of material that Garfunkel and Oates (Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci) used to put out, and that’s a good thing.

Champions of Magic – Studebaker Theatre – Through Sept. 2, 2026

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All seven reviews of Champions of Magic that I was aware of highly recommended it. If you’re looking for something to take your pre-teen grandchildren to, then go for it. They’ll probably have a great time, based on the enthusiasm of the kids when I attended, though I can’t personally relate based upon my youth.

As adult entertainment, unless you’re been living in a monastery your whole life, I would pass.

To be fair, there may have been awe-inspiring things in the second act, but I left at intermission, as did the two adults sitting next to me, having seen nothing I hadn’t seen before, and nothing that made these versions of old tricks stand out, not that I’m suggesting that I know how every illusion was done or that the craftsmanship was missing.

What often separates magicians is the quality of their banter, There was some decent back and forth between the performers and with the audience, and there was mild humor, all very professional, but, again, nothing memorable. The closest I came to excitement was when I almost got hit in the eye by a ping pong ball that was among the dozens launched from the stage.

Even the “death-defying” escape from a straightjacket was no match for the very old Penn and Teller version, which, though on the surface less dangerous than when performed in the manner done in Champions (a bear trap was involved), was far more entertaining.

If the regular magic shows around town aren’t enough for you, perhaps delay a trip to the Studebaker until Lucy Darling appears there in late September.  Past experience tells me that she’s a hoot.

 

Elaine Dame – Fourth Presbyterian Church Noonday Concert – July 24, 2026

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Elaine Dame let the crowd know right away not to request that she sing Old Man River, as it is not in her wheelhouse. Smart move.

She did, however, sing Moon River, and also played the flute for parts of it, though not simultaneously, which would have been something.

Her jazzy version of West Side Story’s Somewhere, while okay, did not have the emotional strength of the version sung by the four vocalists at the Grant Park Music Festival the night before.

I love jazz, but, in my opinion, layering that style of music just doesn’t make sense for every song. This profound revelation, along with Dame’s excellent scatting on some other songs, led me to wonder how composers feel about scat being added to their songs.

Out of laziness, and lack of concern for accuracy, I’m going all AI on you here. First, composers often write songs with scatting in mind and notated accordingly. Second, “songs that lend themselves best to scatting share specific traits, primarily up-tempo rhythms, jazz harmony, and repetitive or pentatonic melodic structures.” Third, singers like to ad lib different scats, even to the same song, but may defer to repetition of a scat that has become well known from a recording.

Dame included a Portuguese Samba song, the name of which I missed, as I don’t speak Portuguese. Dame admitted that she doesn’t either as she apologized in advance to anyone in the audience who did for any mispronunciations on her part. Turned out someone did, but I didn’t stick around afterward for any language lessons.

Local jazz guitarist favorite Andy Brown accompanied Dame and will be back as a headliner next week. I imagine he’ll also accompany his wife, Petra van Nuis, when she appears in three weeks.

Broadway Sings America – Grant Park Music Festival – July 23, 2026

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Giving Mel Brooks’s History of the World a run for its money, Broadway Sings America covered an historical period of approximately 225 years, in 19 songs, before finishing with a 100+ year-old topic from a current show that is still relevant in today’s political atmosphere.

Host and singer Scott Coulter provided interesting commentary before each selection and only made one glaring mistake when, despite that fact that he lives in New York, he said that the Statue of Liberty is on Ellis Island. Someone back stage must have said something to him, as next time out he corrected it to Liberty Island (duh).

Coulter sang beautifully, as did all the performers, including the Grant Park Chorus, though I found it amusing that his two big solos, Tomorrow and Maria, both contain lyrics where the title is repeated over and over again. If he does have memory problems, that probably helped.

Blaine Krauss’s big moment, on the other hand, was his rendition of My Shot from Hamilton, a five and a half minute song that, while it also repeats the title a lot, has about a million lyrics in rapid-fire succession. He was flawless.

Tiffany Mann singularly graced us with Everything’s Coming Up Roses and I Know Where I’ve Been.

Jessica Hendy won the award for most costume changes, which was a reflection of the range of styles she displayed with her crystal-clear voice, and precise stage movements, in singing everything ranging from Burn to All That Jazz to Summer Nights.

The festival will be hard-pressed to top this program in any future Broadway tributes.

Cirque: A Space Odyssey – Grant Park Music Festival – July 22, 2026

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Christopher Nolan’s epic movie wasn’t the only Odyssey playing in Chicago this week, as the Grant Park Music Festival presented Troupe Vertigo’s Cirque: A Space Odyssey. Though I haven’t seen the movie yet, I can’t imagine that Matt Damon, or his stunt double, Devyn Dalton, had to perform the kind of death-defying aerial acrobatics that the cirque performers did, high above the stage, without a net, unless they’re counting on the first row of the string section of the orchestra to help break any falls.

And, although Damon described Dalton as having “the greatest arms I’ve ever seen,” I doubt she can do the bent over backward, one-armed handstands that the troupe’s contortionist did while using her feet to take off and put back on her hat (my description doesn’t do her justice). And don’t even get me started on hair hanging (ouch!).

Moreover, while the infamous Hollywood accounting practices are a great example of juggling the books, let’s see those executives keep multiple balls in the air while swinging on a wire.

Not to be forgotten through all of this was the orchestra providing a cornucopia (like The Odyssey, arising out of Greek mythology) of musical excellence, ranging from DeBussy, movie scores and pop tunes, all the way to cartoon themes, in half the time it takes Damon to get home on the screen.

Three Friends, Three Third Coasts, Three Non-calendar Decades

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In the late 1990’s I enjoyed watching Chicago’s 3rd Coast String Quartet, of which a friend was a member, play at a local club, after which I became the proud owner of their eponymous album, from which, apropos of the current World Cup, one can listen online to their take on the jazz classic Spain, along with the rest of the album’s songs.

Fast forward to July 8, 2026, when the Grammy award-winning Third Coast Percussion performed, with their usual aplomb, with the orchestra at the Grant Park Music Festival and, thanks to a different friend, I was able to attend a post-concert reception with the group.

Regular-speed forward to July 16, when a third friend invited me to attend, at Depaul’s Holtschneider Performance Center, Third Coast Music’s Scoring for Chicago Summer Benefit, which included a raft of performances (my favorite, of course, being Marianne Parker’s deft piano work on Pictures at an Exhibition), coordinated nicely with a variety of videos, to drive home the drive to raise money to “build the Midwest’s first scoring stage; anchoring an audio post-production center, educational facility, and community event space,” which would be about an eight-mile drive from the Center, straight down Halsted Street.

If nothing else, I now know what a scoring stage is, as does the event’s engaging emcee Lisa Parker (no relation to Marianne), who joked about her initial misunderstanding (and fear) of what it might mean. And I heard a good story — about John Wiliams recording, with the CSO, the score to the movie Lincoln with the aid of sound-dampening acoustic trucks and baffles outside Orchestra Hall — used as evidence of Chicago’s need for a scoring stage and the possibilities it might bring.

Grant Park Music Festival – Millennium Park – July 15, 2026

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Some people I know who have season tickets to the Grant Park Music Festival skipped this concert, I would guess out of concern for the heat. The weather was very warm, but not unbearable. The only thing that was too hot to handle was Michelle Cann’s virtuosity on the piano, which may have been why a couple of the bass players were wearing shorts on stage.

Cann, who I have seen and written about several times before, thrilled the crowd with her work on Ravel’s Piano Concerto, but what really set the place on fire was her encore, which wasn’t listed in the program, but, if I had to guess, was Hazel Scott’s arrangement of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C# Minor. I could practically see the smoke rising from the piano.

The orchestra opened with William Grant Still’s Festive Overture and closed with Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, both well-performed and well-received, but the night belonged to Cann, another in the list of must-see pianists the festival has presented this season.