Friday 8
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
YO-YO MA & THE SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE Cellist Yo-Yo Ma hasn’t been shy about using his star power to introduce listeners to sounds from around the globe; on individual albums he’s made excursions into music from Brazil, Appalachia, Argentina, and elsewhere. But he’s invested the most energy into his Silk Road Ensemble, which pulls in a revolving cast of master musicians from countries along the legendary Silk Road trading route, which spanned the Middle East and Asia. The new Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon (Sony Classical), the second album by the project, includes Persian, Armenian, Chinese, Indian, and Turkish traditional music, and the all-star lineup provides plenty of reasons to overlook the rather effete Western classical gloss that Ma brings to the proceedings. Among the players are Alim Qasimov, an astonishing vocal master of mugham, Azerbaijan’s classical music; Gevorg Dabaghyan, the Armenian duduk virtuoso who leads the Shoghaken Ensemble; and Wu Man, an artistically daring player of the Chinese pipa. The program features new and traditional music from India, Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Romania. 8 PM, Orchestra Hall, Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, 312-294-3000 or 800-223-7114, sold out. All ages. –Peter Margasak
LEE ANN WOMACK Country singer Lee Ann Womack began her career as a songwriter–she’s one of the few chart toppers who seems to care about the quality of her material–but until recently she’s polished her records with an increasingly unappealing gloss, aiming her bodice-ripper ballads directly at country’s soccer-mom demographic. So her new album, There’s More Where That Came From (MCA Nashville), is a delightful surprise. Though it’s not nearly as retro as the packaging suggests–the soft-focus cover photo is part of a booklet that mimicks the design of a 70s LP–it’s still wonderfully out of step with much of Music City’s recent output. The multitracked vocals and compressed drums sound contemporary, but the woozy pedal steel and demure grooves make no concessions to pop-rock. The real twist, however, is that Womack’s gorgeous singing and the record’s lovely melodies serve lyrics that focus almost exclusively on moral weakness and breakups–no-no’s in a genre that these days often sounds like the musical wing of the family-values movement. a 8 PM, Rialto Square Theatre, 102 N. Chicago, Joliet, 815-726-6600 or 312-902-1500, $33-$53. All ages. –Peter Margasak
LUDACRIS On his fourth and latest album, The Red Light District (Def Jam South), Ludacris makes no effort to tweak his hectoring delivery, though that isn’t necessarily a bad thing–I can’t think of another rapper who can get so much mileage out of a single approach. As usual, the album’s packed with killer bouncy beats crafted by the likes of Timbaland, DJ Green Lantern, and Organized Noize, but the focus is always on Luda’s torrential flow. He has a seemingly bottomless pool of slick couplets at his disposal; brash, funny, and irreverent, his rhymes reflect the pleasure principle of early hip-hop without sounding retro. On their own, there’s nothing too impressive about lines like “Drive through the window, the industry super-sized me / Now the girls see me and a river’s what they cry me” or “But I ain’t speaking about ballin’, ballin’ / Just thinking about brawlin’ till y’all start bawlin’.” But they come stacked in tight verses, one kicker after another–at times there’s so much verbiage it’s almost suffocating. The Ying Yang Twins, Twista, Mike Jones, and Brooke Valentine open. 9 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 1106 W. Lawrence, 312-666-6667 or 312-559-1212, $40, 18+. –Peter Margasak
monday11
Wednesday 13
