In 2003 Mariss Jansons took over as chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and turned an already good orchestra into one of the finest in the world. Their 2005 CD of Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony won a Grammy for best orchestral performance, and their latest recording, of his 3rd and 14th symphonies, is phenomenal, with stunning playing from all sections–the musicians’ sound is remarkably well blended, and they show extraordinary vitality, finesse, and musical depth....

Journalist Chris Mooney described his hometown’s unique vulnerability to hurricanes a few months ago, in a May 23 article for the online edition of The American Prospect that sketched a cataclysmic “Atlantis scenario” for New Orleans. But the Bush administration–with its lethal claims of ignorance of such a possibility–is only one of Mooney’s targets in his new book, The Republican War on Science (Basic Books). Choosing to disregard long-standing scientific advice for political reasons is bad enough, he points out, but it’s nothing new, and at least it leaves the process of scientific investigation itself intact....

Coming to Douglas Century’s new biography, Barney Ross (Schocken/Nextbook), you might be forgiven for thinking, “Barney who?” You wouldn’t be alone. Though his life was chronicled in lurid detail in the 1957 movie Monkey on My Back, “in this great blue-collar city where he was once one of the most famous of sportsmen,” Century writes, “he is scarcely remembered.” Born Dov-Ber Rasofsky in 1909 to European immigrants, Ross grew up fast in the rough Maxwell Street neighborhood....

Romantic disappointment fuels It’s a Game (Drag City), Edith Frost’s first album in four years, but there’s no bitterness or anger–Frost embraces her sorrow like a surrogate for the lovers she can’t hold on to. On their own her lyrics are an endless downer, self-obsessed to the point of obliviousness: “You’ve got so much time for that other woman / I don’t know why you won’t spend your time with me,” she sings on “Emergency....

Debut solo albums tend toward the personal and/or confessional, so it was reasonable to expect that the songs on Eef Barzelay’s Bitter Honey (Spinart) would be more autobiographical than the ones he writes and sings for Brooklyn indie rockers Clem Snide. But he quashes that preconception with the disc’s opening line: “That was my ass you saw bouncing next to Ludacris.” Said ass belongs not to Barzelay but to a hip-hop video vixen who’s a nursing-school dropout and the daughter of a cleaning woman; on “Ballad of Bitter Honey” she explains how and why she manipulates men....

Marsha Estell’s 2004 comedy drama about four African-American women baring their souls during a long, hot summer’s day (and night) receives a respectful if somewhat stilted production under Ilesa Duncan’s direction. Estell has the basics of the genre down pat, providing perfectly timed insights from aging, occasionally addled Mudear; sibling rivalry between her wild child, Rose, and straight-arrow Sharon; and mild rebelliousness from a young woman, Sharon’s daughter Shelly. Each character has at least one “revelation,” none exactly unexpected....

Fellow Travelers Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Local playwright Margaret Lewis doesn’t need developments like this to give her emotionally complex, morally confounding Fellow Travellers urgency, but the timeliness of this Stage Left world premiere does add a certain extra chill. The play, which is about Nazi censorship and its repercussions, focuses on German art students and best friends Karl and Max. Karl is a committed modernist who paints jarring compositions in unnatural colors, a darling of the German avant-garde, while Max is a neoclassical landscape painter dismissed as a brilliant technician out of touch with the times....

Is Roadworks Roadkill? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It was a surprising turn. Since its founding in 1992 by a group of Northwestern University theater majors headed by Abby Epstein and Debbie Bisno, Roadworks had regularly attracted top-quality talent and earned great press. The New York Times called it “the prototype Chicago ensemble–talented, fortunate, and ambitious” in 1998, and it was regarded by locals as the next big thing in off-Loop theater....

Buried Child Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Which makes director Hans Fleischmann’s staging of Buried Child for Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company all the more remarkable. A month ago the 30-year-old Fleischmann, Mary-Arrchie’s producing director for the last four years, was cast as Vince, a 22-year-old struggling musician who returns to his grandparents’ Illinois farm only to find that no one in his family has the faintest idea who he is....

The mesmerizing puppets dramatizing a new myth by Peter Fugiel and Patrick McCarthy seem to sweep toward the audience thanks to 3-D glasses handed out with the program. The myth involves a heroic alchemist trying to save his village from drought, a sinuous dragon that moves like a snake, and a sun (hypnotically represented by a swirling cutout) that looms malevolently over the village, parching the crops. Together the privacy provided by the glasses and the Rubber Monkey Puppet Company’s surreal shadow puppets (which resemble the Indonesian variety) bring audience members into a dreamlike world, enhanced by three live musicians....

I originally met Chris online, and then we met in person in a public park three summers ago. We started dating each other, and we ended up falling in love. Then one night when I tried to call him, his phone was disconnected, so I figured that was that. I started back at school and I met another guy I dated for a while. Then last summer I ended up calling a chat line, and I left a message for one particular guy who sounded very interesting....

Clifford Odets’s follow-up to Waiting for Lefty and Awake and Sing! was this “fuzzy piece of a wool-gathering quiet,” as its original director, Harold Clurman, put it. In Louis Contey’s finely honed staging, the struggling Depression-era middle-class Gordon family face their disintegrating dreams with a mix of stoicism and bitterness. Janet Ulrich Brooks as matriarch Clara, a character who could easily feel like a palimpsest of Awake’s Bessie Berger, is a compelling blend of vinegar and sugar....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » San Diego manager Bud Black played three butchers in the outfield in the most critical game of the year, and they cost his team the game. Yeah, I know, Mike Cameron and Milton Bradley were hurt, but what, you’re telling me the entire San Diego minor league system didn’t have even a Sam Fuld* to call upon? That indictment falls on San Diego general manager Kevin Towers as well....

Age has only improved the national treasure that is Sheila Jordan. The human voice deepens naturally over time, and this has softened the pinched timbre that sometimes characterized her earliest recordings, more than 40 years ago. As she approaches 80, her voice, like an Amati violin, has not only grown mellower but seems, improbably, even more responsive to her well-chosen whims and admirable fancies. Perhaps no other jazz singer has exploited the malleability of the instrument so flamboyantly: singing an up-tempo standard, Jordan riffs off the melody, preferring sensuous glissandi and touches of sprechstimme, and on a ballad solo her trademark gestures–an upswept fifth that plummets to a minor second, quarter-tone trills, hearty warbles–unmistakably evoke Native American chants....

Theatre Building Chicago hosts its 11th annual weekend-long showcase of new musicals, offered here in concert readings (with the actors at music stands) and staged readings (with the actors moving about while using scripts and scores). The eight works in progress assembled by artistic director John Sparks range in subject matter from the Wild West to ancient Egypt, from Al Jolson to Jack the Ripper, from the sentimental songs of Stephen Foster to the paranoid fables of Franz Kafka....

On opening night writer-performer Frank Farrell was several rehearsals shy of having memorized his 90-minute one-man play about Chicago native Walt Disney, being presented by Equity Library Theatre Chicago. The resulting evening-length effort to remember his lines precluded narrative coherence and any meaningful character development: Disney’s famed charisma was replaced by Farrell’s nebbishy charm. But I suspect that this vigorously researched script, even if perfectly delivered, would be featureless, an encyclopedic sprint through the first 46 years of the producer’s life (why stop there?...

Poor Man’s Amos Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Poor Man’s Amos could have been a disaster: one man, Clint Sheffer, is the playwright, one of the show’s two performers, and Bruised Orange’s artistic director. Instead it’s a terrific evening, impeccably paced and balanced between humor and pathos. One of the show’s many strengths is that it doesn’t go in any expected direction. It begins like a poor man’s Zoo Story, with a random hostile encounter between two strangers....

One of America’s most praised sitcoms, All in the Family, was a remake of a BBC series, so I guess it’s conceivable that NBC’s The Office, which premieres at the end of the month, will have a life of its own. But after watching a few clips of it online–many of them moments re-created from the original series–I don’t think it stands a chance of capturing the British show’s weird comedy of excruciating personal awkwardness....

Recently a friend of the family had a heart attack. While he was in the hospital, they gave him nitroglycerin pills to stop the attack and ease his chest pains! I consider myself as having a rational mind, but the ingestion of explosives (no matter how small the amount) does not on the surface seem to be a great way to promote cardiovascular health! In fact, it would seem that nitro might have caused a few heart attacks (especially around the Fourth of July)....

When I say that Hirshorn demonstrates a specific ignorance of the form, I’m referring both to his analysis of This American Life and of (for lack of a better list of terms) features/literary/narrative journalism. Writes Hirshorn: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hirshorn gives an example, but it reflects more on his methods than Glass’s. One of the reasons that I like This American Life is that I fell in love with literary journalism at a young age, long before I’d ever heard of the show....