various locations artandsciencesalon.com Runner-Up Sine Qua Non

3131 W. Logan 312-698-8685 wolfbaitchicago.com Runner-Up Neighborly

Blue Havana Chicago 3240 N. Clark 773-242-8262 bluehavanachicago.com @BlueHavanaCigar

Vape Daze 2817 W. Belden

For this year’s Reader Key Ingredient Cook-Off, we asked some of Chicago’s top chefs to create a dish to honor a person who influenced their cooking. The exercise stirred many kitchen memories. Dish: Black-and-white bread with asparagus salad

In his liner-note essay for the new Bach Trios (Nonesuch) pianist and composer Timo Andres writes of Bach’s work, “Part of the utility of his music is its protean adaptability to any number of instrumental combinations; the labor of performing is divided easily into voices or parts, each a satisfying narrative thread on its own.” Indeed, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, bassist Edgar Meyer, and mandolinist Chris Thile traverse a variety of works the composer originally penned for different instruments....

Siriá by Mestre Cupijó e Seu Ritmo (The mythical sound of northern Brasil)

The legal principle cui bono? matters because it clears the air: Who benefits? Yet American jurisprudence doesn’t hold the opposite question in the same regard: Cui patitur? Who suffers? The Will I’d known in school engaged life like a bookish Scaramouche, with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. I didn’t know this side of him. Maybe it came from Marsha, who was deeply religious. It might always have been there....

Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 exploration of the rot at the core of a prominent family is meant to be a scathing indictment of societal hypocrisy. But in this new take at Redtwist Theatre—adapted and directed by Erin Murray—the result is mostly maudlin moralizing. A son comes home from abroad stricken with the venereal disease he inherited from his late, sainted father. He falls for the beautiful maid who’s his father’s illegitimate child....

Daniel Miller, an artist and grad student at Northwestern University, and Nathan Smith, who codirects Rogers Park gallery Roman Susan, became interested in Kong’s work last fall after wandering into his store. The two helped Kong make a website on which he can promote his art, and have begun to organize years’ worth of Kong’s pieces stashed in a back room of the store. With Kong’s blessing, Miller and Smith plan to turn the room into a mini exhibition space, allowing Kim’s Corner Food shoppers to browse the artist’s work just beyond the densely packed aisles....

steffbomb.com Runner-Up Reuse First

4802 N. Broadway 773-878-5552 greenmilljazz.com Runner-Up Jazz Showcase

A few years ago, Jan Tichy was invited by the art department at Indiana University Northwest in Gary to create a site-specific work. Tichy, an assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago known largely for his video projections that intersect with architecture, was shown several sites, including Gary’s abandoned and moldering Union Station. Tichy was intrigued by the possibilities but ultimately felt that the idea didn’t make sense....

For this year’s Reader Key Ingredient Cook-Off, we asked some of Chicago’s top chefs to create a dish to honor a person who influenced their cooking. The exercise stirred many kitchen memories. Dish: Esquites de camaron

If you have access to a human cloning machine or a Time Turner (a la Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), you might want to call dibs on it now for the first two weekends of November. The Chicago Humanities Festival is back, and bigger than ever. This year’s theme is Citizens, and 130 writers, thinkers, artists, scientists, philosophers, comedians, chefs, and musicians will be descending upon Chicago to discuss what it means to be an individual living in society....

At the core of the Chicago jazz and improv scene is the constant building of new groups fueled by distinct personnel, concepts, or instrumentation. Drummer-composer Charles Rumback has exemplified this particularly well in his many projects. In 2017, he released Threes and Tag Book with his trio of pianist Jim Baker and bassist John Tate, and both of those subdued acoustic albums play with the relationship between structured improvisation and composition....

North-side microlabel Friendly Otter releases a lot of underground emotive posthardcore. Some of it’s the kind of bristling, erratic screamo spiked with whiny yelps that doesn’t have much reach beyond the folks who pack basement DIY spaces. And then there’s Asterisk Ellipses, which makes fragile, lightly detailed fourth-wave emo indebted to American Football. It’s a solo project from Luming Hao, a Lehigh University student majoring in computer science and music composition; his fragile, slightly restrained singing suggests he’s recording in a dorm room late at night and wrestling with a strong desire to belt out his vocals....

Shangri-La Vintage 1952 W. Roscoe

Twenty-year-old British R&B singer Jorja Smith hasn’t broken any new ground on her singles; her style is resolutely retro, with her throaty, jazz-tinged vocals sliding over smoky grooves. If that sounds boring, you should probably skip on down the playlist to some other artist. If throaty, jazz-tinged vocals and smoky grooves are your thing, though, you’ll want to check Smith out. Her highest-profile performance so far is probably her guest spot on “Get It Together,” a track from Drake’s More Life, where she runs her voice sensuously over and around a lounge beat by Black Coffee....

‘Twas near midnight on the night after Christmas. Gossip Wolf was stirring a drink at Rainbo Club, when what to these wondering eyes should appear but Cecily Strong! The current Saturday Night Live cast member (and former Second City and iO Chicago performer) was hanging with some pals, and this wolf didn’t have the guts to buy the funny lady a drink—or even interrupt her conversation, for that matter. But it was tough not to walk over and tell her that her set at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last April (in front of the president, political reporters, and celebs) was totally killer—or ask for pointers on jokes and puns....