SEPTEMBER
The 17th Annual Chicago Jazz Festival has lost its national radio broadcast this year, but that hasn’t stopped organizers from booking more than two dozen nationally and internationally known performers to fill up two Grant Park stages. Tonight from 6 to 10 at the Petrillo Music Shell you can catch Kurt Elling, Stanley Turrentine, Cassandra Wilson, and the Jackie McLean/Bobby Hutcherson Quintet. Tomorrow and Sunday the music runs from noon to 10; Saturday’s headliners are Henry Threadgill and Eddie Palmieri, Sunday’s are John Scofield and Clark Terry. (See Section Three for Critic’s Choices on Palmieri, Scofield, and Muhal Richard Abrams Experimental Big Band.) All shows are free. The Petrillo Music Shell is at Columbus and Jackson; the other stage is at Jackson and Lake Shore Drive. Call 744-3370 for details.
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For its 18th annual event, the Fox Valley Folk Music & Storytelling Festival has lined up a bunch of folk and bluegrass acts on eight stages, including Mark Dvorak, Kat Eggleston, David Massengill, the Chicago Sacred Harp Singers, Tom Paley, and the Special Consensus bluegrass band. The music provides the setting for two days of related fun, from storytelling to songwriting and vocal workshops to events like tonight’s “old-time community barn dance.” The fest is from 11 to 6 today and tomorrow in Island Park, which is on an island in the middle of the Fox River in downtown Geneva. Admission is $10 a day, $8 for teens and seniors, free for kids. Call 708-897-3655 for details.
With its new Tuesday-night series, A History of Censorship in Hollywood, the folks at the Film Center hope to show that not only did the notorious Hays Office censor sex and such from the movies of the 30s and 40s, it also enforced an upbeat portrayal of American ideals and values. The series begins tonight at 6 with a collection of very early risque material, including perhaps the first onscreen kiss (from 1896) and other similarly salacious shorts from the early 20th century. It continues through December 12 with movies like Howard Hawks’s 1932 study in sociopathy, Scarface (September 26), the deeply subversive Preston Sturges comedy The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (October 31), and more recent scabrous stuff like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (December 12), the Chicago-made film given an X rating for “general tone.” The Film Center is at Columbus Drive at Jackson; admission is $5 per film. Call 443-3737 for details.
Thursday 7
