Imogen Cunningham at Edwynn Houk Gallery, through March 19 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » While Cunningham got her start as a portrait photographer, opening a studio in Seattle in 1910, the strongest works in this show, and the ones she is best known for today, are her plant photographs. In sharply detailed close-ups, the form of each species is captured with a portraitist’s eye for the one perfect angle that will best reveal its uniqueness....

Lovingly produced by ex-Blaster Dave Alvin, the HighTone debut of Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys, Jumping From 6 to 6, clocks in at 16 tracks, which is either more bang for your buck or too much same old, depending on your taste for authentic reproduction. What separates this Orange County-based quintet from lesser rockabilly outfits is its superb musicianship and its relatively expansive musical view. Influences include all the usual Sun suspects–Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and of course Elvis–but Big Sandy and crew also veer righteously into Bob Wills western swing, Jackie Brenston rockin’ rhythm and blues, and country boogie a la Maddox Brothers and Rose....

David R. Nelson: Demiurge in the Crucible The muted colors surely play a role. This is an exhibit of tans and browns and grays and blacks; the occasional green or red is pale, as if mixed with the natural colors of wood or rust. The number of repeated objects certainly suggests an artist obsessed: all but two sculptures contain a canteen, a sieve, or a forked stick like a dowser, and most contain two of these items....

What you think of the Compagnie Philippe Genty depends a lot on how much narrative you require in your drama. Those who need to know at all times why they’re watching and where the story is going are advised to satisfy their yearning for theater elsewhere. With its witty optical illusions and ever-changing stage pictures, this Paris-based troupe presents a theater of images, not words–in fact I don’t remember a single line of dialogue from Derives, their entry in the 1992 Chicago International Theatre Festival....

Trombonist/composer George Lewis has consistently opted for the road less traveled in his 30 years of music making, from his early and formative membership in Chicago’s groundbreaking AACM to his pioneering improvisations with electronics. His dazzling technical facility, redoubtable lyrical invention, and daring structural ideas have established him as one of postbop’s most formidable trombonists–perhaps only the more centrist work of Albert Mangelsdorff and Ray Anderson proves equal. In the trio News for Lulu with John Zorn and Bill Frisell, his vibrantly modern but faithful revamps of Blue Note-era tunes by hard boppers like Kenny Dorham and Hank Mobley show off his command of standard jazz language, while his breathless playing with Anthony Braxton provides striking testimony to his more abstract yet still rooted side....

Four years ago Scott Rutherford decided to combine his two main interests–cars and music–to create the fanzine Speed Kills. But far from being a testosterone-charged muscle magazine, Speed Kills is a literate and visually stimulating look at the finer points of rock music, auto design, and racing. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “The magazine is almost like my mirror, a reflection of what I enjoy and what I like,” Rutherford says....

One of the most dexterous and eloquent Baroque violinists of our time, John Holloway has participated in a number of important “historically informed” performances conducted by the likes of Roger Norrington, Andrew Parrott, and William Christie. For this recital he’ll be joined by four colleagues–Stanley Ritchie (violinist and Indiana University prof), Andrew Manze (concertmaster of Ton Koopman’s Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra), Nigel North (lute and theorbo), and John Toll (harpsichord)–all equally prominent and as widely recorded in the field of early music....

Vestigio (9 minutos depues) Sometimes I think critics have an entirely different experience in the theater than other audience members–not necessarily better, just different. If the press materials for Antares Danza Contemporanea hadn’t told me, I would never have known that the evening-length piece by this Mexican modern-dance troupe, part of the festival Cruzando Fronteras (“Crossing Borders”), was about “confront[ing] death, both physical and otherwise.” The same materials also informed me that the work “evokes the literary style of magical realism found in the writings of Gabriel Garcia Marquez…and Isabel Allende....

Finally, the opportunity to see one of Chicago’s best-known dance exports–a troupe that’s toured all over the country and outside it–in a mainstream theater: for two nights only, as part of the Spring Festival of Dance, Muntu brings its fascinatin’ rhythms downtown. As usual the program, “Dances of the Diaspora,” reveals a complex approach to issues of assimilation. Two pieces come directly from the motherland: South African Suite (with sections devoted to praising the ancestors, the initiation rites of young girls, and an Izulu women’s flirtation dance) and the Senegalese dance Djon Dong Wolosodong....

When Ruby Harris steps up to play a solo he looks small, shy, and entirely out of place as he chins a 166-year-old electrified violin. But when he starts sawing out Muddy Waters’s “You Can’t Spend What You Ain’t Got,” the notes pour out with demonic intensity–a blistering glissando that somehow sounds both eerily exotic and comfortably familiar. Harris, a 41-year-old sign-company owner and classically trained musician, says he’s “reinventing the violin for the blues....

Medeski, Martin, and Wood Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At first glance there’s nothing particularly unusual about the trio of John Medeski, Billy Martin, and Chris Wood, but few bands do a better job of confounding the categorizers, or seem to have as much fun doing it. Medeski’s frequent use of the Hammond organ–and his obvious affinity for it–has led to comparisons with the traditional jazz organ trio, but ultimately such comparisons fall short....

DUKE ROBILLARD 10/21, BUDDY GUY’S Perhaps best known as Jimmie Vaughan’s replacement in the Fabulous Thunderbirds, guitarist Duke Robillard has a long and varied past. His list of accomplishments includes founding seminal blues revivalists Roomful of Blues, and on a host of solo recordings he’s displayed significant range, even offering up some Louis Jordan-esque jump blues a few years back. His new Temptation (Pointblank) is more restrained, though, a dose of mainstream blues-rock that wouldn’t be out of place on the current Alligator Records roster....

Returning to Orchestra Hall for the fourth year in a row as part of his ongoing survey of the Beethoven piano sonatas, Alfred Brendel this time tackles the most difficult and emotionally rewarding of the cycle, the last three sonatas. Never mind that just about every worthy pianist is embarking on the same project–though in a shorter span, as Maurizio Pollini is doing–Brendel’s experience-informed Beethovens are still very much a treat....

KAHIL EL’ZABAR QUARTET WITH DAVID MURRAY BELMONT HOTEL, JULY 29 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » That’s how I explain David Murray’s recent, seemingly inexplicable rash of bad taste. Back in the 70s and 80s Murray was an uncompromising musician. He released important solo records like Conceptual Saxophone (Cadillac) and searing trio records like 3-D Family (Hat Art). His octet records, Ming and Home (both Black Saint), show how much thinking he was doing, both as a player and as a composer, arranger, and bandleader....

BIG GODDESS POW WOW III: THE EMPRESS PROVOKED These are women with something to say, something disturbing, something that might not quite fit into a traditional play or cabaret act. These are the women who have to talk while standing next to their sculpture, to read their writings with a wry twist so we understand the layers of meaning. We all have to be in the same room for this one, face to face; this won’t fit anywhere else....

The ten-year-old Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College, a leading archive of works written by black musicians from the 18th century on both in this country and abroad, showcases the most significant of its findings in concert tours by its resident repertory ensemble. But while these concerts celebrate a variety of unsung achievements, their anthology format doesn’t quite address the issues of what “black music” is or why some composers strive for intellectual respectability by embracing Eurocentric styles....

Dear Mr. [Albert] Williams: In conjunction, I also have to point out, Mr. Williams, that your review of your colleague’s work was obviously protective and biased and uncharacteristically kind, lacking the sharp-tongued, ready-to-attack tone customary of your review section. Frankly, it smacked of the worst kind of cronyism. Is the arts section one big club and fraternity, or is it a place where the public can expect worthy journalism? Best of Chicago voting is live now....

To best discuss the circumstances of George Freeman’s recent Southport album Rebellion, I paraphrase George Burns (in discussing his intermittent film career): Apparently, people were so fond of Freeman’s previous album, released in 1969, that they asked him to do another one. Seriously, though. It defies logic that a quarter century should pass between dates by this monumentally quirky guitarist, whose style fits into a category occupied by such equally iconoclastic contemporaries as Sun Ra, Wilbur Campbell, and his own brother, Von Freeman....

Dear editor, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I just wanted to take a moment of your time to commend you on your recent article “Guns & Women,” which appeared in the February 4 edition of the Reader. It is all too rare to see an objective and dispassionate reporting when it comes to guns in general, all the more when women are involved. The great part is, when empty rhetoric and false statistics are left behind the truth emerges–namely, that criminals fear and leave alone the educated, well-armed female citizen....

Today’s most outspoken critics of the First Amendment have arisen on the left. One of the most reasonable of them is Cass Sunstein, who calls for a “New Deal” on freedom of speech. But Sunstein sounds eminently reasonable compared to them. In his book, which recently won an award from the Kennedy School of Government, he speaks of “Madisonian” ideals, though some of his critics have charged that James Madison would have been appalled at what’s being proposed in his name....