For more than 20 years Art Former left his trumpet in the case and perfected his command of the larger, mellower flugelhorn; in recent years he brought the trumpet back to his music; and now he uses a specially designed hybrid called, with a disarming lack of dignity, the flumpet. No matter. In every case, Farmer produces a caramel-coated tone that such terms as “burnished,” “honeyed,” and “velvety” must have been meant to describe....

Friday 20 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » According to the folks at the C.G. Jung Institute, “Symbolically, we can imagine vampires as unconscious energy that preys on our feelings of desire, preys on the desire to connect to life itself. Intermingled with this vampire energy in the unconscious are the dynamics of sexuality, aggression, and power. The psychic energy tied up in vampiric acting out is the prima materia that can be transformed and integrated as intimacy, creativity, and playfulness....

The 13th Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival concludes this weekend, running from Friday through Sunday, November 12 through 14, at Chicago Filmmakers, 1543 W. Division. Tickets are $4 or $5 for most matinees, and $5 or $6 for most evening shows; they go on sale a half hour before the first show. Advance tickets can be purchased the day before the scheduled screening; festival passes and discount cards are also available....

The 15th Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival runs from Friday, November 3, through Sunday, November 12, at the Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, and at Kino-Eye Cinema at Chicago Filmmakers, 1543 W. Division. Advance tickets can be purchased at Chicago Filmmakers or at the box office of either theater a half hour before the first show of the day; orders for tickets can also be placed by mail. Tickets for evening shows at the Music Box are $7, $6 at Kino-Eye; shows before 6:00 pm at either theater are $5; discount passes are available for $30 (six screenings) and $50 (ten screenings); and a festival pass good for admission to all screenings except opening night is $75 (opening-night tickets, which include a reception, are $15)....

One day toward the end of the Bush era, Donna Blue called New York looking for the revolution. She had lost track of it sometime after her guerrilla theater days in the late 60s, when she had, among other acts of antiwar, dressed as a Vietnamese woman and wailed through the halls of the Capitol in Washington. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Lachman had been told by a Haitian voodoo priestess that she’d be doing the life of Luxemburg....

DANCING AT LUGHNASA Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “You try to keep the home together,” says Kate, the eldest. “You perform your duties as best you can–because you believe in responsibilities and obligations and good order. And then, suddenly, you realize that hair cracks are appearing everywhere–that control is slipping away, that the whole thing is so fragile it can’t be held together much longer....

Dear editor: The Amundsen High School Local School Council calls your attention to two errors in the article May 6, 1994, Neighborhood News section about George Schmidt and his candidacy for the Chicago Teachers Union presidency. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The facts are: George lost his position at Amundsen last September, along with 20 other teachers, some with more seniority than he, when the Chicago Board of Education established the 50-minute-period schedule for all public high schools....

“I’m a hip hop child,” says Barry Mayo, sincerely, and laughs. “A 42-year-old hip hop child!” Mayo–born in the south Bronx, raised in Harlem–made his mark in radio broadcasting in the late 70s and early 80s, helping turn Chicago’s black-pop station WGCI into a nationally known powerhouse. From there he went to New York and did the same with WRKS, the renowned “Kiss.” There, he says, he was one of the first broadcasters in the country to play rap, boosting the careers of and hanging out with people like Run-D....

Frank Melcori is talking about his recent monthlong trip to northwestern India, which inspired his new performance piece, By the Time I Get to Jaipur. As he tells the story he tends to ramble, but you don’t mind because he rambles interestingly. Deep down it’s not rambling at all, but searching. After unhurriedly chewing through such topics as Hindu/Muslim violence in Kashmir, the odd parallels between the heroes of the Iliad and the Bhagavad Gita, and the beautiful old steam locomotives still in use on the subcontinent, Melcori finally gets around to what happened after he bought a legal hashish cookie while browsing through the old quarter of a town in Rajasthan....

The five Pulitzer Prize jurors in the Public Service competition made two piles. One consisted of 20-some entries on the general theme of violence against children. At the top of this stack was “Killing Our Children” from the Chicago Tribune. Rumors fly in the newspaper business around Pulitzer time, and inside the Tribune newsroom rumor had it that the Tribune would win a Pulitzer in Public Service for “Killing Our Children....

There will always be bands like Soundgarden: thunderously loud metalheads with pretensions to seriousness and both a corps of proletarian followers and a back choir of gullible critics to urge them on. Starting with their major-label debut, Louder Than Love, in 1989, their ponderous releases have been gobbled up by fans and hailed as breakthroughs one by one; their latest, Superunknown, debuted at number one. Their achievement? “Smart” heavy metal, it’s said, the best since Zeppelin....

THE BUZZ 12/6, FITZGERALD’S This local roots quartet delivers driving funky blues with precision reflective of the music-performance degrees held by two of its members. But material like “All the Lovin’ You Need” and “Keep On Lovin’ You” never progresses beyond pedantry. DELTA 72 12/6, METRO The departure of bassist-singer Kim Thompson for grad school (she’s been replaced by former Goat Bruce Reckahn) has altered this randy D.C. foursome’s sound since the recording of The R & B of Membership (Touch and Go) earlier this year, but most of the elements that make the band a rump shaker’s delight–warped tremolo slide guitar, frantic Farfisa organ and harmonica, and off-kilter drumming–remain intact....

Bob Eisen Dance, Gus Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, and Winifred Haun & Dancers I ran into Bob Eisen on opening night of Dance Chicago ’95 a few weeks ago, when a lot of the participating artistic directors were in the audience. He was wearing a festive red vest and his customary bemused look, and when I asked if he was looking forward to being on the Athenaeum’s big proscenium stage (he usually performs at Link’s Hall, where he’s the manager), he responded with surprising enthusiasm for someone usually studiously unimpressed....

Jim Seibert began making his haunting short The Chill Ascends as four separate films. The first intercuts the faces of a child and an older woman, gradually merging pictures of Seibert and his paternal grandmother and including vaguely frightening images of an upstairs corridor and a ball rolling on the floor. The second shows an installation another artist made for the Day of the Dead. With candles, flickering lights, and strange moving puppet figures, its shifting patterns are like a child’s nightmare....

On one wall of Scott Bernstein’s office at the Center for Neighborhood Technology is a yellowing, hand-drawn diagram–a maze of squares and circles with interconnecting lines, all of which are enclosed within several sets of multicolored borders. It looks like the design for some piece of computer technology, but it’s a map of Evanston–or, to be more exact, Evanston’s economy. On another wall of the office is a huge chart displaying the periodic table....

WILHELM REICH IN HELL Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Nothing if not ambitious, this is one of the most physically and intellectually challenging dramas to come along this year. Combining vaudeville slapstick, commedia dell’arte, surreal fantasy, straight drama, pop-culture satire, and musical theater, pop sci-fi author Wilson seeks to re-create the consciousness of philosopher, therapist, anarchist, and alleged loony Wilhelm Reich, whose writings were burned by the U....

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA This superb staging, directed by Robert Falls–one of the five or six most satisfying evenings I’ve spent in any theater–is an example of what can happen when artistic vision and technical prowess work in tandem. The brilliant design by Loy Arcenas (set), James F. Ingalls (lights), and Richard Woodbury (sound) creates a completely realistic environment–a run-down Costa Verde hotel nestled in a Mexican jungle complete with hovering mist and a sudden steamy thundershower....

Johnny Griffin Quartet Jazz drummers talk back. In other musical styles the drummer’s role is important but fundamentally different than in jazz. A great rock or R & B drummer–like the Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts or the Hi Rhythm Section’s Howard Grimes–will maintain a steady groove, providing the singer or lead instrumentalist with a solid rhythmic foundation, but won’t engage him in dialogue. A jazz drummer, though, will mix it up with a horn player, retorting, cajoling, and provoking....

Initially you might be inclined to chuckle over the fact that this LA hip-hop combo proudly espouses its Jewish heritage within a predominantly black musical form. The two races have a less than harmonious past despite the ridiculously apparent similarities of their oppression. But Blood of Abraham succeed because they aren’t joking. Their convictions thankfully avoid any notions of racial supremacy in favor of a multilayered ecumenism–check into the fierce antiseparatism of “Stick to Your Own Kind” from their stunning debut Future Profits (Ruthless)....

CYRANO DE BERGERAC Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So Cyrano becomes a passionate go-between for Christian, Roxane’s poorly chosen lover, a hot-blooded, handsome, bashfully inarticulate Gascon warrior. In the most lyrical scene of this unashamedly romantic drama Cyrano woos Roxane in the dark while Christian, pouring out borrowed words, reaps the rewards of that ardor. Only later–when it’s too late for joy but not for regret–does Cyrano discover how much he was loved, for his beautiful soul....