There’s little doubt that Tony Bennett is the greatest living pop singer–Frank Sinatra may still be alive, but he’s not much of a singer anymore. As a few superb thematic albums have recently demonstrated, Bennett’s voice still possesses dazzling flexibility. While it’s novel that Bennett has had his very own MTV special, singing duets with Elvis Costello and K.D. Lang–which subsequently bolstered both his record sales and his hipster cachet–the show was ultimately a cutesy stunt that allowed inferior vocalists a chance to bask in the shadow of a master; Bennett’s last three albums with the ever-tasteful Ralph Sharon, his long-standing musical director/pianist, have testified to his art with much more clarity and effectiveness....

Dear Editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One can imagine that Mr. Williams felt his comparison of Remains’ fund-raising efforts to the plot of Mr. Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation was a witty, intelligent turn of the pen. Unfortunately, the facts were ignored. Despite Mr. Williams’ assertion, there was no “misuse” of funds and certainly no deception or fraud. Remains was understandably excited to have the chance to bring John Guare and Red Grooms to Chicago to collaborate on a play....

Each jazz generation boosts a handful of musicians who serve to define their instruments. Bassist Buster Williams, who began to make his name in the late 60s, belongs to this elite. Like his contemporary Cecil McBee, Williams displays his mammoth technique without exhibitionism, and his virtuosity proves all the more impressive for its matter-of-fact quality. He produces a tone best described in winelist terminology–rich, dry, velvety–which has proved something close to perfect for his contributions on literally hundreds of post-60s albums....

Captured at newsgroup rec.travel.asia I am interested in studying traditional dance in Japan and would greatly appreciate any information anyone can give me regarding his/her own experiences. Thanks in advance, What type of dance are you interested in? How much Japanese do you understand? How much money can you afford to spend? I’ve studied nihon buyo and jiuta mai for 51/2 years in Japan and noh for a brief 6 months....

Pre-Columbian meets postmodern in this production (whose title translates as “The Sky Below”) created and performed by Jesusa Rodriguez and Liliana Felipe. Leading figures in Mexican avant-garde theater, Rodriguez and Felipe are noted for synthesizing U.S. and European influences into shows that nonetheless maintain a strong Mesoamerican identity; their visually fascinating, strikingly costumed works link ancient ritual with contemporary skepticism and satire. This Spanish-language piece expounds a cyclical vision of life and death as it follows a woman’s journey into the afterlife in search of her lover; dense with mythopoetic metaphor and tinged with ironic humor, it marks the Chicago debut of a team of very unusual artists as part of the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum’s “Del Corazon” festival....

Composer Shawn Decker has been deeply involved with electronic music since his graduate-student days at Northwestern in the early 80s. And as a member of the avant-garde group Kapture for several seasons, he came to enjoy the give-and-take of collaboration. Then, last fall, choreographer Shirley Mordine approached him about a joint venture: she wanted to make a dance about how the media can distort the truth, and she wanted music that would somehow interact with the dancers....

When Patrick Woodtor came from Liberia to study at Northwestern University, he was shocked to find that the U.S. had such high levels of poverty and discrimination. “I didn’t expect to see people living in worse conditions than some parts of Africa,” he says. “I saw people eating from garbage cans. I didn’t expect that in America.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » After Woodtor earned a degree in transportation planning, he headed back to Liberia with his American wife....

Kenneth Branagh’s second attempt (after Henry V) to popularize Shakespeare for the screen yields his best movie to date–not especially interesting as art perhaps, but a smashing piece of entertainment. The comedy has been cut and deprived of its urban setting so that the whole thing could be shot in and around a 14th-century Tuscan villa, but the trade-off seems worth it, and most of the cast shines: I especially enjoyed Michael Keaton’s outrageous mugging as Constable Dogberry....

Dear editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A casual reading of the July 26 Neighborhood News article, “Bait and Switch,” may leave you wondering why a 125-year-old community agency is actively deceiving its immediate community. Erie Neighborhood House is situated in the West Town community area, just minutes from the Loop. Author Ben Joravsky’s description of our neighborhood, “where property values are starting to rise,” sorely minimizes the degree of change that market forces have brought to bear on this community....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Such sophomoric earnestness. First, Jonathan as judge and jury deciding on the survival of Western civilization is a notion so barbaric, I can only beg: Mercy, Jonathan, spare us!! Spare us, that is, your “ideas” on who should or shouldn’t survive, and stick to reviewing films. As for the evil nature of violent films, your simplistic viewpoint dilutes your thesis....

Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD Festival–which has toured 12 countries outside North America since 1981–hits the U.S. with a vengeance this year. Gabriel, P.M. Dawn, the Stereo MC’s, and Crowded House provide the commercial pull for a daylong world-music and arts fest that includes outre entertainments like the Drummers of Burundi, Native American poet John Trudell, Russia’s Terem Quartet; workshops in art, music, and dance from around the world; and a display of new technologies called “Future Zone....

Hayden Lounge Ax, July 12 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hayden (formerly Paul Desser), a 25-year-old singer-songwriter from suburban Toronto, has been saddled with the burden of being hailed as the Canadian Beck–Beck being the 26-year-old LA postmodern folk-punk phenom whose fluke 1995 hit “Loser” saddled him with the transient title of king of the slackers. It’s a lazy shorthand that diminishes Hayden, Beck, and, as always, Canada....

IRIS DEMENT Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The 33-year-old singer was born in Paragould, Arkansas, into a large family–13 brothers and sisters–and strictly reared in the Pentecostal church. They up and moved to Orange County, California, when she was only three, but tight familial bonds and a close-knit rural mentality were in her blood. Even in the suburbs of Los Angeles, DeMent’s mother raised her on country gospel, regularly playing then-current songs by Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn alongside old hillbilly music by the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers....

The Secret Garden Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Though the musical version sweetens the characters and adds several ghosts as narrative devices, it remains remarkably faithful to the original. The Secret Garden is the story of Mary Lennox, a spoiled and unhappy little girl orphaned by a cholera epidemic in India and sent to live with her embittered, hump-backed uncle in his cavernous English mansion....

Sonia Herrera had waited almost forever for this moment, and now that it was here she didn’t know what to say. At least two or three times during a run of such hot-ticket shows as Phantom of the Opera and Tommy, the council offers free tickets to students from Chicago public high schools. The purpose, theater officials say, is to awaken inner-city kids to the power of the performing arts....

May 10, the scheduled date of John Wayne Gacy’s execution, should be a special day for Dan Kelly. After all, Kelly puts out a true-crime zine called Evil, and in the subculture that follows the exploits of serial killers he’s considered quite an expert. “To be honest, I don’t like being known as the death guy or the murder guy,” says Kelly. “I just like to collect books.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Liz Atlas Medallions, Transformations Atlas’s titles often signal humor. Spring Walker is a single large twig with two upside-down-Y forks that suggests a figure, its two legs walking forward, the unadorned upper branch perhaps a swinging arm. One of the “legs” leads into a metal disk while the other, a metal spring around part of it, leads to a wooden wheel of a “foot,” angled forward in about the same direction as the “arm....

George Jones shows are notorious crapshoots; his voice remains as powerful as ever, if a bit fuller and more rueful, but inspiration and engagement, along with the man himself, are frequently missing in action. However, at least theoretically, a duet gig makes it more likely that Jones will hold up his end of the bargain. His terrific new album with ex-wife Tammy Wynette, One (MCA), actually delivers on the hype his albums initially generate, usually without warrant....

Busride to Heaven But given all the toothless cross-dressing today, both on the tube and in theater, a performer has to do more to make a point than don a dress. Sadly, no one has gotten that message to Manhattan-based Mark Dendy. He spends three-quarters of his sweetly entertaining, mildly funny one-person, four-character show in drag, playing a black transvestite hooker, an overly made-up televangelist, and a bitter old southern lady....

As we expected, the Reader has done a hack job of “reporting” the situations occurring in Wicker Park [August 26]. It is curious that the Reader printed Jeff Huebner’s story two weeks before the Around the Coyote (ATC) festival, which the Reader is sponsoring this year. The article has been sitting in their office since last year. There was some useful, albeit incomplete and inaccurate, research which will hopefully spur some lively discussion and perhaps action, on the process of gentrification....