Since moving here from Florida in 1999, Aram Shelton has become one of the most valuable players on the local improvised-music scene. Equally adept on clarinet, laptop, and alto saxophone, he’s done everything from negotiating Guillermo Gregorio’s challenging graphic scores to tearing off paint-peeling solos with Berlin-based drummer Tony Buck–and in his own groups, like the chamber-jazz ensemble Arrive and the electroacoustic duo Grey Ghost, he covers even more ground. Dragons 1976, his trio with bassist Jason Ajemian and drummer Tim Daisy (all three were born in ’76, the Chinese Year of the Dragon), mostly sticks to straight-ahead jazz, but this narrow focus just seems to increase the music’s intensity....

Dreamy Scenes Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » To create the delicate look of his pieces, Sjovold applies thin layers of paint with a brush, then uses a palette knife to press out the ridges and soften the boundaries between colors. His objects look misty, as if filtered through a veil of emotion–a soft-focus effect that also signals the painting’s artificiality. Subtly orchestrated color variations bring the image to life....

For complete information see Theater & Performance at chicagoreader.com. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Scrap Mettle Soul’s version of the Thomas classic, on a double bill with their version of The Snow Queen (see separate listing), Ravenswood Fellowship United Methodist Church, 4511 N. Hermitage, 773-275-3999. A Christmas Carol, Krista Scott’s version, Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 Campbell, Arlington Heights, 847-577-2121....

This production of Paula Vogel’s play, which uses shifting between gears as a metaphor, is stuck in neutral. As directed by Elizabeth Schwan-Rosenwald, 20% Theatre Company Chicago’s staging of a potentially intense story is too even in its pacing and performances to have much impact. The play revolves around a young woman, Li’l Bit, who was sexually abused by the uncle who taught her to drive. Jessica Hutchinson is confidently coy as the adult Li’l Bit recounting her tale but unconvincing as the confused, awkward girl made uncomfortable by her uncle’s attentions....

John Ronan sees dead people, more than a million of them, floating in boats up the Chicago River, being driven in hearses down the Eisenhower, carried on train cars. They’re all headed for the same place: the old central post office just west of the Loop. Booth contends that “expressways don’t make livable cities,” and his plan would start by demolishing the post office except for the end pavilions along Van Buren and Harrison–substantial buildings in their own right....

In the 80s Jason Kahn played drums in the Universal Congress Of, an outfit that fused the democratic chatter of harmolodic jazz with bruising punk. Since moving to Europe in 1990 he’s worked with minimalist composer Arnold Dreyblatt and electronically oriented improvisers like Toshimaru Nakamura and Gunter Muller. Like the latter two, he’s simplified his playing to explore the complexity of isolated sounds. On Music for Cymbal, a Taku Sugimoto composition he recorded last year for his own Cut label, Kahn uses the titular instrument and mallets to create a world of rich overtones and resonances; on Till We Meet Again (For 4 Ears), a new duet with Tetuzi Akyama, Kahn’s wavering synth and bell tones flicker through stark, discordant slide guitar as subtly as sunlight through trees on a darkening day....

Danny’s got a problem. It’s not that the mob ran him out of Manhattan. Or that he can’t get any cell reception in the remote eastern European mountains where he’s landed. Or that he’s seeing things–ghosts?–around the moldering medieval castle his cousin Howie has hired him to help turn into a most unusual hotel. His real problem is that by page 13 of Jennifer Egan’s new novel, The Keep (Knopf), he’s lost his own starring role in the story....

Most current neo-new-wavers are either formalists or ironists, happy to have found a plastic sound and style they can remold without making any concrete statements about historical context. But judging from Metric’s Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? (Everloving), front woman Emily Haines seems to have chosen synth rock simply ’cause she happens to play keyboards. Charting the mass media’s colonization of the imagination, songs like “Combat Baby” and “Succexy” would sync up nicely with a jagged montage of America’s Next Top Model and Fox war coverage; their indirect approach feels allusive where that of Haines’s other band, Canadian art-rock commune Broken Social Scene, feels evasive....

Last month panic spread among devotees of Chinatown’s Spring World when the Yunnanese restaurant abruptly closed its doors and its interior was ferociously gutted. But after the fastest remodeling in world history, James An has already reopened in his sparkling new room. In response to customer demand, he’s also offering an expanded Yunnanese menu that focuses largely on dishes made with dried wild mushrooms said to have medicinal properties—the southern Chinese province is famous for such fungi....

It’s no longer unusual for the musical styles of a particular region to get hijacked by people who didn’t grow up there, but it’s still rarely done well. Greek singer Savina Yannatou’s latest album, Sumiglia (ECM), features songs from Spain, Moldavia, Palestine, Italy, Armenia, Albania, Corsica, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and her homeland, but it never feels like a jet-set jaunt around the Mediterranean. She takes the far-flung traditional songs in her deep repertoire and makes them her own without compromising their integrity....

Columbia College needs big bucks, and the election of Allen Turner as board chairman late last month signals the first all-out effort in the school’s history to get it from private donors. Columbia has grown from a scruffy broadcasting school with an anything-that-breathes admissions policy and a faculty of moonlighters to one of the largest arts colleges in the country. It has an annual budget of $160 million–90 percent of it from tuition–and it’s the biggest property owner in the South Loop, but it can’t keep paying its own way....

Like his two earlier novels, Tony Lindsay’s Chasin’ It is set on Chicago’s south side and examines spirituality, family ties, redemption, and black pride. A pulp thriller reminiscent of the novels of Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim, it depicts the life of Terri Parish, a drag queen, ex-convict, and crack addict who turns tricks downtown. When he’s beaten up by a customer he knew in prison, Parish sets the guy on fire, takes off in his Chevy Blazer, which happens to be loaded with cash and drugs, then hides out in West Pullman....

Israeli director Eytan Fox follows up his art-house hit Yossi & Jagger (2002) with this nervy generational drama that urges Jews to let go of the Holocaust. A young Mossad agent (Lior Ashkenazi) assassinates a Hamas leader in Istanbul, then returns to Tel Aviv to find his wife has committed suicide. Swallowing his grief, he throws himself into his next assignment, tracking down an octogenarian Nazi fugitive by befriending the man’s adult grandson (Knut Berger) and granddaughter (Carolina Peters)....

Virginie Lamarche calls her untitled photographs at Schneider “empty narratives”: though they hint at stories, the people in them aren’t really doing anything. One image shows about a dozen women in white tank tops, perhaps stretching or just sprawled on the floor, against a mirrored background that suggests a gym. Their reflections don’t match what they’re doing in front of the mirrors, though: she created the panoramic background here, and in two other pictures, by digitally pasting images together....

Sometimes talented artists get miscast early in their careers, having hoisted sail under some prevailing trend out of shrewdness, naivete, or desperation–Elvis Costello, for one, debuted as a new wave act when his closest precursor wasn’t Bryan Ferry or David Johansen but Randy Newman. Anders Parker began releasing records in the mid-90s as the gritty, lo-fi indie-rock act Varnaline despite being at heart a singer-songwriter in the mold of Steve Earle (who put out a few Varnaline albums on his E-Squared label) or Jeff Tweedy....

Bob and Karyn Schauf welcome visitors to their Indianhead Holsteins spread in northwest Wisconsin, 1659 101/2 St. in Barron, where they breed and milk some 250 head of dairy cattle. The barn entrance is a shrine to the original Blackrose. More info at 715-537-9376 or www.indianheadholsteins.com. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Barron is best known for its Turkey Store, a sprawling, belching turkey-processing plan at 34 N....

Friday 2/27 – Thursday 3/4 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There’s very little science involved in SonicVision, a “digitally animated alternative-rock music show” that opens at the Adler Planetarium today–but who needs astronomy when you’ve got dancing aliens? Other visuals including fireworks and trippy special effects will play across the planetarium’s 9,500-square-foot StarRider dome tonight, set to songs by the likes of Radiohead, Stereolab, the Flaming Lips, and Moby (who helped design the extravaganza)....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Before 1862, when Louis Pasteur determined that heating and refrigerating milk could kill harmful pathogens, all cheese was made with raw milk. Since then there has been continuing pressure to pasteurize all milk products, though in 1949 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration OK’d the use of raw milk for cheese as long as the cheese was aged 60 days....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Pro-lifers have to deal with the suspicion that their stance is a Trojan horse to keep women barefoot and pregnant. This suspicion is not quieted when a right-wing journalist uses the word “people” to mean “men,” can’t be bothered to tell the experiences of any pro-life women, and is unembarrassed by it all. (Several right-wing blogs have already linked to and quoted his article as gospel....

What a coincidence! Give or take a day, the new dates announced last week for Chicago Contemporary & Classic, the show that’s replacing Art Chicago on Navy Pier this year, are the same dates Art Chicago announced last fall for its relocated exposition. Art Chicago will be held April 28 to May 2 in a tent on Butler Field, adjacent to Millennium Park; CC&C’s new schedule runs April 29 to May 2–moved up a week from the traditional slot on Mother’s Day weekend to avoid overlapping with the New York auctions....