Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Romulo Froes Cão (YB Brasil) This young Brazilian singer uses the hushed articulation of bossa nova within the dance rhythms of samba on this stunning collection. Lovely harmonies, original arrangements, and wild dynamic variation—to say nothing of some killer lead guitar from one-time Tropicalia instrumentalist Lanny Gordin—suggest the emergence of a major new voice. Boban Markovic The Promise (Piranha) The giant of Gypsy brass-band music returns with his best, most direct album in a decade, focusing on propulsive tunes written by him and his son Marko....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Ume CD sat on my desk for at least a week before I put it on, mostly because it’s called Urgent Sea — I can get down with a lot of bad puns and whatever, but I have a hard time finding the will to cosign on something that cheesy. But it took about 1.5 seconds of listening to the record for me to regret wasting all of that time....

The four one-acts in Pegasus Players’ 19th annual festival seem subtler and more sophisticated–less tin-eared and less prone to ham-fisted didacticism–than the scripts of festivals past. Imani Josey in Grace never gets preachy as she tells the story of a young woman who learns the dangers of swimming with the sharks. And Nikhar Ahmed in Waking Up never resorts to melodrama or hysteria while showing a young woman coping with leukemia....

What is there for a journalist to believe in? I have a copy of the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists in my lap as I write this, and it says in no uncertain terms that we should be “free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know.” OK, so we believe in the right to know. But ours is a slippery faith....

“Amelia Earhart would be my fashion model,” says Ashley Siple, 25. A former curatorial assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Photography who’s headed for London to study at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Siple likes “pea coats, trench coats–anything that has to do with sailing or aviation.” Her choices here are a little more glam but still show a feminine daring and confidence. Siple says the Abigail Glaum-Lathbury skirt, which is slightly hitched in the back and has a striped silk lining, was an obvious choice: “The bustle is something that should have another heyday,” she says....

Charles Dutoit has the ability to make even familiar works sound fresh, finding details other conductors miss or gloss over. Since resigning as the artistic director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 2002 following a dispute with musicians, he’s been guest conducting other orchestras and focusing on his specialties–the French and Russian repertoires, especially from the 20th century. His CSO program includes selections from Prokofiev’s high-octane Romeo and Juliet and Faure’s gentle Pelleas and Melisande....

Dallas Wayne is a perfect guest star for Robbie Fulks’s Secret Country series: while mainstream automatons and self-conscious alt hacks hog all the attention, Wayne just keeps building great albums out of honky-tonk fundamentals. On I’m Your Biggest Fan (Koch) the stirring melodies are as familiar as a favorite shirt, backed with a classic blend of twangy guitar and swerving pedal steel, and Wayne’s lyrics tell tales of romantic defeat rendered in slyly funny wordplay, from the tear-in-my-beer pity party of “Crank the Hank” (“I think I’ll paint the town my favorite shade of black / So bartender crank the Hank and crack open the Jack”) to the mistreated woman reaching the end of her rope in “She’s Good to Go” (“’cause all the good is gone”)....

This company has found its niche. The expansive, uberexpressive choreography created by artistic director Kevin Iega Jeff and associate artistic director Gary Abbott can seem unanchored on a program containing several pieces. But this new venture–a reworked 1977 musical–provides an enveloping context that supports and drives the dancing. Originally scored by David Spangler and written by Christopher Gore (who died 20 years ago–his brother Rick helped revise the book and lyrics), Nefertiti: A Concert of Music and Dance delivers a pacifist tale about the Egyptian queen, her husband Akhenaten, and the general Horemhab....

This 2006 Hong Kong-produced gangster film by director Johnnie To, set in Macao, is an entertaining product that presents a powerful artistic vision. The action begins when two gangsters try to execute a former colleague, Wo; two others try to save him. After a shoot-out at his apartment where no one’s killed, all five sit down to a convivial dinner, planning a robbery to help provide for Wo’s family after the two assassins kill him....

Eugene Ionesco’s monarch takes “Long live the King!” to heart. Berenger has been enjoying life for some 400 years while his mismanaged kingdom flounders, so he’s totally unprepared for the Doctor’s dire prediction that he’ll die within 90 minutes. Ionesco makes smart, witty observations in this lesser work, but overall Lance Eliot Adams’s staging for Theo Ubique Theatre Company lacks the light touch that would have made the farce fun. Bob Kaercher is a fine and funny king, swinging smoothly through many emotions as he resists, laments, and finally resigns himself to death....

As I mentioned yesterday, Chicago tenor saxophone great Fred Anderson is gearing up for the reopening of his jazz club, the Velvet Lounge. But that doesn’t mean his horn is gathering dust. Last night he joined an excellent trio from Boston at Elastic, and he sounded as good as ever. The trio, led by pianist Steven Lantner (pictured), was forced to operate a bit outside of its usual orbit. The music was a kind of harmonically complex postbop informed by both by the masterful composer and neglected improviser Herbie Nichols and obscure Boston abstractionist Lowell Davidson, juiced with hearty swing rhythms....

Lora Chamberlain stepped up to the mike on the Gunther Murphy’s stage, excited to report the latest returns for her presidential candidate, Dennis Kucinich: Hawaii, 30 percent; Idaho, 6 percent; Utah, 7 percent–states, it’s true, about as sparsely populated as the fund-raiser Chamberlain was hosting. But though only 20 or so people showed that Thursday night, Chamberlain believes there’s still a case to be made for supporting her man, at least until the Democratic National Convention....

It’s been a good year for Loyola University. In October the city awarded the school up to $46 million in tax increment financing dollars for the renovation of several buildings on their north lakefront campus. In May the Illinois General Assembly quietly slipped it another $8 million for the very same project. Loyola officials were never required to explain publicly why they need the additional $8 million, or how the funding will benefit the state that’s giving it to them....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Amy Mueller announced in July that she’d filed a $50,000 lawsuit against Samy’s Bar and Grill in Joliet. Claiming she fell and badly broke her right ankle there in May 2006, she alleged that Samy’s shouldn’t have allowed her to try to climb up on the bar and dance without providing “a step-stool, ladder, or other device used for safety....

CYMBELINE CHICAGO SHAKESPEARE THEATER WHEN Through 11/11: Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM The Princess Club Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For Barbara Gaines, who’s staged Cymbeline twice before, the answer appears to be “more is more.” Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s luxurious space and technical capabilities allow her to paint a bold, silly cartoon that occasionally threatens to cross the line from crowd-pleasing to pandering and sometimes steamrollers the work’s rare but welcome moments of melancholy....

Based on actual events, Lanie Robertson’s one-act tells the story of a woman whose wealthy, powerful husband has her committed to a mental hospital in 1790s Philadelphia. Although no one knows the truth about the real Mary Girard’s mental health, Robertson makes her an unambiguous feminist martyr, wrongly imprisoned and thus entitled to spout female-empowerment bromides. Rather than a piece of storytelling, the play becomes an exercise in judging past sins by contemporary standards....

Ladd, IL There’s no menu at Rip’s. You order while standing in line: chicken strips or quarters of light or dark meat, hand-cut french fries, pickles or fried mushrooms; as an appetizer, there are “crumbs”–fried bits of batter. The chicken’s superb, moist and tender, with a delicate flaky crust. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Later this year Rounds plans to hike the prices by a quarter: the light’s going up to $3....

In one of the hilarious and sexy videos on this program, Ann Coppel’s mockumentary I Am Ann (2004), her shout “I am Ann!” becomes the basis of a self-empowerment movement with workshops and therapists and rallies. Cassandra Nicolaou’s Interviews With My Next Girlfriend (2001) intercuts a series of “interviews” in which each prospect offers an exaggerated portrait of herself: one says “chicks call me daddy,” another calls monogamy “so 20th century....

“Careful,” Thymme Jones told me when I asked about his band’s new album, What Sequel? (Pravda). “It’s pop music.” Indeed it is, though I’m not sure why that calls for caution–of all the strange things these supreme prog weirdos do, making the occasional pop album is among the least perverse. (The new one’s their first in that vein since The Why Album back in 1994.) What Sequel? is a fairly joyful record, for all the dark, painterly imagery of its lyrics–it’s full of improbable falsetto vocals and playful instrumental flourishes (brass, strings, flute, “fancy guitar”) and from time to time deliberately parts the curtains of its cleverness to let its heart shine through....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » MusicFirst is a lobbying group with ties to SoundExchange and the RIAA, but dedicated specifically to inflicting those entities’ brand of self-destructive greed on terrestrial radio. Also, like SoundExchange and the RIAA, it seems to be staffed mostly by colossal assholes. At the moment MusicFirst’s primary concern is making radio pay performance royalties–which the National Association of Broadcasters and the U....