David Banks/Getty Images Against the White Sox last week, Samardzija went nine innings, gave up no earned runs, got the Cubs’ only hit through the first eight innings, and scored their only run. For which he got a no decision. Cubs fans are sure to see something special at Wrigley Field this afternoon (weather permitting). Jeff Samardzija, the north-siders’ best pitcher, will either win for the first time since August, or his teammates will help him stretch his winless streak to 15 games....

Through February 2016, visitors at the Art Institute of Chicago have an opportunity to take in “Degas: At the Track, On the Stage.” By combining two works on loan with pieces from its permanent collection, AIC, says president and curator Douglas Druick, has created “a focused exhibition exploring how Degas used the popular activities of his day to capture the intricacies of the human figure in motion.” The centerpiece of the exhibit is the 1866 oil painting Scene From the Steeplechase: The Fallen Jockey, on loan from the National Gallery of Art....

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Wedding Girl Stacey Ballis

Via Instagram Chance the Rapper and the Social Experiment In a new interview with Billboard, Chance the Rapper has announced the follow-up to last year’s breakout mixtape Acid Rap. The 21-year-old Chicago artist has a new release on the way called Surf that he recorded with his band the Social Experiment. Surf, which will be out by the end of 2014, also features collaborations with big names like Rick Rubin, who produced Kanye West’s Yeezus, and Frank Ocean, who scored six Grammy awards for his 2012 album Channel Orange....

Michael Gebert Nick Spencer at Spencer’s Jolly Posh Foods “You can tell what popular culture Americans have been exposed to by what foods they ask for in the shop,” says Nick Spencer of Spencer’s Jolly Posh Foods, 3755 N. Southport. “If they’ve seen Wallace and Gromit, they want Wensleydale. If they watch Doctor Who, they ask for Jammie Dodgers.” I’ve just introduced him to another one: my kids play the computer game Minecraft (think Legos on a screen) and watch a series of Minecraft vidcasts from the UK, the commentary on which introduced them to Jaffa Cakes, a brand of thin little sponge cakes smeared with orange jam and covered with chocolate....

Courtesy of Amara Enyia Amara Enyia—a 31-year-old community activists with all of $650 in her coffers—takes on our $7 million mayor. By all conventional wisdom, Amara Enyia hasn’t a chance of getting elected mayor, so she shouldn’t even try. Hard to argue with that. Her parents—Samuel and Irene—were born and raised in Nigeria. Her father fought for Biafra in the Nigerian Civil War. Then she got a PhD in educational policy....

Pianist and composer Chris Brown, who spent his high school years living in Hyde Park, possesses one of new music’s most curious, restless minds. He’s an inveterate explorer who veers from the strictures of composed music with a hearty improvised music practice: he’s played live computer music in the network band Hub, studied various world music systems, and worked with interactive setups between computers and live instruments. For his latest Chicago visit he’ll play music from his superb Six Primes (New World), a 2016 album of solo piano pieces written in just intonation—a tuning system in which the intervals in a scale are derived not from a constant frequency multiplier but from varying ratios of whole numbers....

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Soul singer Zeshan B was born in Chicago, but from a glance at his bio you might not expect him to have rooted his debut solo album so strongly in black music—he’s the son of Muslim Indian immigrants, and that “B” stands for “Bagewadi.” He studied opera in college—we were in the same program nearly a decade ago—and he’s trained to sing qawwali, an ancient Sufi devotional music, as well as ghazal, a south Asian poetic form that often refracts romantic love through the lens of Islamic mysticism....

In the last few years a little-known movement of 70s rock music from the African nation of Zambia has become one of the more satisfying discoveries of the Internet age. Reissues of albums made by groups and singers like Witch, Amanaz, Paul Ngozi, and Chrissy “Zebby” Tembo have exposed this peculiar strain of pysch-flavored rock, known as Zamrock, to new ears. In 2011 the great Now-Again label released Dark Sunrise, a deluxe two-CD package of music by a singer and guitarist named Rikki Ililonga, widely regarded as the driving force behind the movement and the guy who’s helped chronicle its history by facilitating the surge of reissues....

Hi, my name’s Sean,” said the server, flagrantly at variance with his crisp, white, 50s-style gas-station-attendant work shirt, which clearly identified him as “Lloyd.” At Bernie’s Lunch & Supper, the first foray into Chicago from a nascent restaurant group based in the Detroit area, all the servers wear pseudonyms. The menu is equally unfocused; the Mediterranean is a big drink of water, after all. Spain, Italy, and southern France all weigh in, but none more memorably than Lebanon, with a dish confusingly called “lamb hashwi....

Wye Oak The weekend of nice weather we just had feels like an occasion worth celebrating, and there’s no better way to continue to toast the end of a brutal winter than with live music. Fortunately you’ve got plenty of opportunities to do just that during the next few days. “This Swedish trio reflects a sun-baked American stoner-rock style back at us from the cold, dark north,” writes Monica Kendrick....

Michael Gebert Chef Jake Bickelhaupt and his wife, Alexa Welsh, at 42 Grams, one of Chicago magazine’s top picks If there were a Chicago food “establishment,” its debutantes’ ball would be the list of the best restaurants published by Chicago magazine around this time each year, trotting out the latest all-dressed-up progeny from distinguished families such as the Mergeses and the Nahabedians, the One Off Hospitalitys and the Element Collectives....

New York clarinetist and sound artist Jeremiah Cymerman has developed a multipronged artistic practice over the years, working his mixture of improvisational exploration and pure sound into a variety of disparate projects. His curiosity is on display regularly in his terrific, broad-minded podcast 5049 (a name shared by his label), which has run for more than 110 episodes and features discussions with folks like jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, new-music cellist Michael Nicolas, art-rock drummer Greg Fox, and singer Amirtha Kidambi....

Although Rudy Winfrey says he’s “blind as a bat,” he regularly experiences the joy of cycling. Winfrey, a 72-year-old clerk with the Chicago Department of Streets & Sanitation, lost his sight in the 90s to retinitis pigmentosa. Andy Slater, the visually impaired musician profiled last month in this column, has the same condition. However, while the national bike-share revolution has made cycling accessible and affordable to a wider swath of the population, municipal rental networks have been geared almost exclusively toward able-bodied riders....