Last fall the success of the inaugural concert in this series surprised even its participants, who’ve all returned this year. Once again this marathon of post-1980 chamber compositions, organized by local composers Frank Abbinanti and Patricia Morehead, is loose and inclusive; this year’s program, called “New Demons, New Sounds Today,” includes 19 composers–most of them Chicagoans, some of them newcomers–divided into four age groups. In the “senior” category, Elliott Carter’s Changes (1983) will be performed by ace guitarist Paul Bowman, and George Flynn’s new trio American Summer will be performed by Stuart Leitch (piano), Katherine Hughes (violin), and Peter Szczapanek (cello)....

I haven’t seen David Mamet’s controversial two-character play on the stage, but his own film adaptation is easily his best movie since House of Games. The two characters are a pontificating, bullying male college professor (William H. Macy) up for tenure and his initially cowed, eventually empowered female student (Debra Eisenstadt), who winds up charging him with sexual harassment. The stage versions have often been attacked for siding with the professor, but what seems most impressive about the movie, which may have benefited from refinements in the material, is that the two characters are so evenly matched by the dramaturgy that they become Strindbergian antagonists in a life-and-death struggle– equally odious in their authoritarian reliance on institutions to define their own identities and equally crippled by what might be described as their political impotence, which drives them to reach desperately for whatever institutional weapons are available to them....

Last Saturday I was strolling down State Street among the parade of holiday shoppers when a scuffle broke out in front of Marshall Field’s. A man was getting pinched by the police apparently for shoplifting. A crowd of rubberneckers encircled the scene at a standard radius of ten feet, blocking the doors to the store. Suddenly another scuffle started somewhere beyond the crowd, and the onlookers began to shift and sway, torn between tussles....

GRIFTERS 5/5, EMPTY BOTTLE On The Eureka EP (Shangri-La), a just-released seven-song blast, this Memphis combo jettisons its usual brink-of-destruction suspense games and simply runs through terrific, blues-tinged songs that rock hard and sink mean hooks. What a concept. Rex, who get the Critic’s Choice treatment elsewhere in section three, also perform. DR. LOCO’S ROCKIN’ JALAPENO BAND 5/5, Olympic Theater, 5/6, CORONET This San Francisco troupe skims through infinite styles, sometimes within a single song....

One day early last month some zoning lawyer sent Evie Camp a letter telling her that the county planned to build a jail across the street from her near-west-side home. “So far, the people who support the jail have managed to scare the hell out of everyone around here,” says Camp, who has led local opposition. “Why should we trust any of them?” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “We are not talking about arsonists, rapists, or murderers,” says Curran....

The screaming and shouting began at the end of the Canadian national anthem and of course didn’t let up until the end of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” If it wasn’t quite as loud as we remembered it, it was just as delighted with itself, just as determined to intimidate the opposing team–on this night the Edmonton Oilers. It had been years since we’d been out to see the Blackhawks, and we regretted the lost time almost immediately, as in the first moments of a joyous meeting with a long-lost friend....

The Tender Land, Aaron Copland’s only opera besides a student work, is a midwestern pastoral tinged with sadness and sentimentality. Its plot, set during the Depression, is simple, direct, almost archetypal. A farmer’s daughter falls in love with a migrant harvester, and when he fails to keep a promise to elope with her she goes out into the world alone. The music is openhearted, rhythmic, and tuneful, evocative of Copland’s famous ballet scores....

By Rose Spinelli Indisputably dead is the condition in which he finds many of the hunted by the time he gets to them. Because our furry friends have never quite gotten the hang of sharing the road with the human interlopers who mow them down with such abandon, last year alone Chicago’s Bureau of Road and Control picked up a reported 7,600 dead animals. Evanston’s estimate comes in at about 600 per year....

Arabian Knight With the voices of Vincent Price, Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Beals, Eric Bogosian, Toni Collette, and Jonathan Winters With Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, John Leguizamo, Stockard Channing, Blythe Danner, Arliss Howard, Jason London, and Chris Penn. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Arabian Knight, once titled The Cobbler and the Thief, started out as a labor of love for Richard Williams, a Canadian-born animator who after brief stints with Disney and UPA settled in England in his early 20s and built his own studio there....

With gnats flitting about his face, Ken Otto pours yellowish slop from a dark green garbage bag into a wooden bin. The unmistakable stench of rotting kitchen waste fills the air in this subterranean pump room, lit by a single overhead bulb. He stops and peers into the bin, then adds another splash of the mushy stuff for good measure. “This is pretty ripe stuff,” he says, pointing with a small flashlight....

The path along Lake Michigan was where I pushed my wheelchair to the limit. The path spanned the Chicago waterfront from south to north, nearly 20 miles in all. Just before 33rd Street there was a hill where I would push as fast as I could until I felt a tingling in my scalp. I would need to be able to go all out, I thought. I would need the ability to push my arms this fast without stopping....

Friday 4 “Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure / Like doth quit like, and measure still for measure.” Those who wonder what the heck William Shakespeare was talking about in the lines that gave title to one of his more elegant comedies can check in at the Newberry Library’s open forum series today, which features Shakespeare Repertory artistic director Barbara Gaines, Champaign English prof Carol Neely, and Loyola law school’s Keith Cleveland talking, about Measure for Measure, which happens to be Shakespeare Rep’s current production (at the Ruth Page Theater through March 20)....

Transnational Identities/ The group show is primarily the work of the curator, who brings art by many disparate artists together like found objects to make a point. In fact the curator often functions like a critic, and the exhibit’s words–in the form of wall texts, catalog essays, taped explanations, and panel discussions–often dominate. This discourse frequently reflects the current cultural debate on issues of “globalization of capitalism,” “transnational migrations,” “centers and peripheries,” “difference,” “identity,” “postcolonialism,” and “multiculturalism....

Don’t be fooled by that killer single “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm”; the Crash Test Dummies, from Winnipeg, are an acquired taste. The band’s very weird first album, The Ghosts That Haunt Me, was hokey and kind of countryesque. Now the band, which is primarily distinguished by songwriter Brad Roberts’s unapologetic basso, is playing spaciously produced pop music and, indeed, has a hit with that hummingly titled song from its second album, God Shuffled His Feet....

Chicago Symphony Orchestra But Shostakovich too swayed with that wind. Denounced in 1936 for the repulsive characters, depraved story line, and degenerate scoring (which was utterly appropriate given the characters and story) of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Shostakovich kept his mouth shut and pulled back artistically. Accused in 1948, along with several other composers, of celebrating a “cult of atonality, dissonance, and discord,” and displaying “formalistic perversions and antidemocratic tendencies,” he obediently confessed: “I…deviated in the direction of formalism and began to speak a language incomprehensible to the people…....

A nice magazine with New Age tendencies once asked me to write a calendar of ideas on how to enjoy each month of the year in Chicago’s bioregion. I started with May, the month the issue was to come out. “Watch the warblers at Montrose Harbor,” I gushed. “See the phlox and wild false indigo bloom in the prairies.” May was a piece of cake. I typed breezily, full of ideas for it and the four months that followed, when nature kicks into overdrive....

The durable collaboration between the University of Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lyric Opera’s Center for American Artists has grown into a summer institution in Hyde Park. One reason for its popularity is the caliber of singing, playing, and conducting put forth by these apprentice outfits. Another is the unusual choice of operas, such as this felicitous double bill of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti. Though it seems odd at first glance, the pairing of these comic one-acts makes a lot of sense: both mock familial pretensions and expectations....

I’M SWEATING UNDER MY BREASTS The show’s structure is simple enough: each actor gets up at Voltaire’s stripped-down cabaret space and performs an original piece, which may or may not be autobiographical (they all sound as if they were). Each monologue is introduced by an image projected onto the back wall showing the performer with a sign announcing her name and the title of her piece. The props are minimal (a chair, a leather jacket); lighting is basic; and because the show has built a surprisingly steady following, foam pads and blankets are laid out on the floor at the foot of the stage, putting audience members even closer to the performers than usual....

Two years ago, when Joshua Redman captured the top prize in a national competition for tenor players, many jazzbos figured they’d heard this number before. Redman had terrific technique, he showed undeniable respect for the jazz tradition, he was the son of a musician (Dewey Redman, the former sideman to Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett), and he wore a suit; you can see how easily he might have been cast in the Wyntonian mold....

The “reunion” in this ad hoc ensemble’s name has a rather narrow focus: it refers to the fact that Eric Hochberg, one of Chicago’s most soulful bass men, attended college more than 20 years ago with keyboardist Alan Pasqua, and they both thought they’d like to play together again. That’s the excuse for cooking up this quartet; but any excuse that brings both Pasqua and saxist Bob Sheppard to town–and also puts drummer Paul Wertico back in the driver’s seat–requires neither apology nor further explanation....