Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is indisputably one of the great milestones of Western civilization, a fervid profession of faith expressed in the classical style at its most mature. It is mandatory listening for those who care about musical humanism. This presentation, postponed from two years ago due to the musicians’ strike, is only the seventh in the CSO’s history. It comes at a time when music director Daniel Barenboim seems to be under siege, unable to match Georg Solti’s success....

By Harold Henderson Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “In a fragmenting nation, the duty of progressives seems clear: halt the fragmentation,” writes Salim Muwakkil in In These Times (January 22). “The logic of identity politics, and its multicultural offspring, seems to lead to chaos. If African-Americans can insist on Afrocentric curricula, for instance, what’s to stop Lithuanian-Americans from demanding their own specific version of history?...

Like his childhood mentor Sonny Rollins, saxophonist David S. Ware exploits his gargantuan tone to full effect. Having cut his teeth in New York’s potent 70s loft jazz scene, Ware worked with pianist Cecil Taylor (power-blowing in a particularly blustery mid-70s version of Taylor’s Unit) and later locked horns with trumpeter Ted Daniel in drummer Andrew Cyrille’s Maono, a primo inside-out postbop combo. But for much of the 80s the metaphysically inclined Ware retreated from the jazz scene, reevaluating and refining his approach to the music with a Zen-like discipline....

Famous Door’s Dating Game: Uncensored I’m not convinced that game-show hosts are fully human. They never seem to come from anywhere in particular, except maybe other game shows, materializing before us like highly advanced alien life forms (it’s not a strain to imagine wires popping out of the back of Wink Martindale’s head). And with few exceptions they seem perfectly ahistorical creatures, hermetically sealed within a timeless world of sparkling oversize set pieces, invisible soundproof booths, and unmanageable screaming idiots....

Lead Story Early in 1995 billionaire foam-cup manufacturer Kenneth Dart moved from Michigan to Belize, reportedly to avoid U.S. income taxes, and moved his company and his family to Sarasota, Florida. Belize then asked the U.S. State Department if it could establish a consulate in Sarasota, probably to be run by Dart, who would thus be permitted to live in Florida with his family without paying U.S. taxes. In September the Washington Post reported that the State Department would probably deny the request....

Our Blues Heaven Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Willie Dixon was born in Mississippi and migrated to Chicago in the 1930s. In between spending time in jail for everything from some youthful indiscretions down south to conscientious objecting up north (“I said I wasn’t a citizen, I was a subject”), Dixon was an Illinois Golden Gloves heavyweight champ and a veteran of several not unsuccessful vocal and blues groups....

The most powerful moment of Beyond Beijing. The International Women’s Movement was inspired by a downpour. “My camera got wet in the heavy rain, so I had an off-record conversation with Bi Shumin,” director Salo Chasnoff states in text scrolling over a snapshot of two smiling Chinese women, one of whom is Shumin, a doctor who spent 12 years in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution Best of Chicago voting is live now....

“Estimates rank marijuana as the state’s leading agricultural commodity, even ahead of corn and soybeans,” according to the Compiler (Winter), published by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. “The estimated street value of marijuana eradicated through Illinois’ Operation Cash Crop in 1991 was $3.1 billion, compared to a 1991 estimated harvest value of $2.9 billion for corn and $1.9 billion for soybeans.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Bicyclists’ heaven, according to Randy Neufeld of the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, in the words of Dale Eastman (New City, March 18): “A calmer world where children play safely and people meet most of their needs within a short walk or bicycle ride from home....

THE PAIN OF THE MACHO South American machismo has been studied, however, in such books as Octavio Paz’s The Labyrinth of Solitude and Samuel Ramos’s Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico. But the sort of machismo one associates with Latin America can also be encountered in this country and in such far-flung places as Japan, Italy, Ghana, Turkey, and Russia (to name a few). The languages may differ, but the pride, the sense of brotherhood, and the simultaneous love and mistrust of women are all the same....

While growing up in Winnetka, the Ying siblings gravitated toward music but weren’t sure about a musical career. Phillip studied economics at Harvard before transferring to Juilliard, and Janet toyed with the idea of becoming a physician like her father. But eventually all four siblings ended up at the Eastman School pursuing graduate work in string playing. Their choices of instruments–Timothy and Janet, violins; Phillip, viola; and David, cello–marked them as a traditional string quartet, and about seven years ago, when Janet was still in high school, they started performing as a quartet....

Mr. Wyman, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Yet, you seem to use your column to congratulate yourself for such understanding, as you simultaneously ridicule the rappers and fans who took issue with your mention of anti-Semitism. In fact, your opening statement implies that they revealed a lack of intelligence for countering your remarks–that they were “otherwise pretty smart.” Bill, your values of mental prowess don’t apply to any cultural environment you choose to drop in on....

You’ve probably never heard of this crime picture and love story (1994), but it’s almost certainly the best American genre movie released so far this year–the sort of beautifully crafted personal effort that would qualify as a sleeper if our film industry still allowed sleepers to function as they did in the 50s. Given the kinky (and highly erotic) sex scenes and the quirky comedy, the expert handling of actors and the playful experimenting with both narrative form and genre expectations, one is tempted to compare writer-director Mark Malone to Quentin Tarantino....

Wacky optimist award. From Mayflower Transit’s “checklist for a smooth move”: “Give yourself at least two weeks to unpack and organize your belongings.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Like Christianity and most other religions, TV offers its congregants a coherent story concerning how to live in the world,” writes David Marc in his new book Bonfire of the Humanities. “Television is the oracle of a religion called consumerism…....

When Muddy Waters sang, “The blues had a baby and they named it rock and roll,” he neglected to mention the idiom’s first-born child–jazz. That family history comes to the fore in the Chicago blues band led by Dave Specter. Jazzmen have almost always returned to the blues, yet few blues bands have borrowed so heavily from the brainy energy of jazz improvisation. Specter manages to incorporate an undeniable jazz sensibility, and he does so without jeopardizing either his roadhouse guitar or his blues credentials: a Chicago native, Specter jammed in west-side clubs in the early 80s, then played one summer with the Legendary Blues Band, organized by Calvin Jones and Willie Smith....

David Evans’s Dishonorable Discharge Sixteen months ago Evans wrote that “the feeling among many current and former naval officers” is that the chief of naval operations, Admiral Frank Kelso, should resign. “Kelso was the man at the helm when the Navy’s credibility ran aground spectacularly at the 1991 Tailhook convention,” Evans explained–as a retired marine officer he’s equally comfortable with military values and military metaphors. A few weeks ago, the secretary of the Navy agreed....

During the dark days of censorship in the Soviet Union–from World War II to glasnost–about the only endorsed performing arts were ballet and opera. No expense was spared when it came to sumptuous revivals of 19th-century masterpieces that ironically (or intentionally) recalled Russia’s imperial past, so most of these productions featured stellar casts and top-notch orchestras. The best of them, such as the Bolshoi’s Boris Godunov in the 50s and the Kirov State Theater’s Prince Igor in the 60s, were later adapted equally lavishly to film....

Of the participants in the Knitting Factory’s Loud Music Silent Film project, bassist Mark Dresser is, in strictly musical terms, perhaps the most exciting and developed. He has scored the silent German expressionist classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene, with exceptional skill, managing to capture an eerie, haunting feeling that’s at once extremely contemporary and true to the film’s 1919 production. Dresser’s music also functions well without the film (the Knitting Factory has already released the CD version), drawing on his and his cohorts’ abilities to combine crisp, definite, sometimes extreme textures and memorable melodic fragments....

MATS GUSTAFSSON Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Much has changed for Swedish saxophone marvel Mats Gustafsson since he made his first Chicago appearances two years ago. Virtually unknown outside of European improvised-music circles back then, he’s quickly gained a reputation and released a flurry of recordings that capture his sublime talent and stylistic flexibility. Whether performing solo, in a hard-charging context with Ken Vandermark, or with his highly intuitive trio Gush, Gustafsson’s style is distinctive and his expressive abilities seem limitless....

If it weren’t for his film scores, Michael Nyman might have remained a prophet without a public. Back in his salad days, after studying at London’s Royal Academy of Music (under socialist composer Alan Bush) and at King’s College (with early-music pioneer Thurston Dart), he worked largely as a critic, railing against academic orthodoxy and the rigid formalism of Stockhausen, Boulez, and other continental avant-gardists. He leaned more toward the kinder, gentler music of Cornelius Cardew and Philip Glass, coining the term “minimalism” to describe its modest gestures and limited materials, and in 1974 published a valuable survey of British postmodernism titled Experimental Music–Cage and Beyond, in which he urged young composers to be more eclectic, more relevant, more populist....

“They call me a blues singer,” veteran soul man Tyrone Davis declares with the resigned air of one who’s had to explain this distinction too many times before. “I’m not a blues singer–I’m a rhythm and blues singer.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The 56-year-old Davis has been a local mainstay for so long that some forget how important he’s been in the development of contemporary R & B....