Copresented by British music magazine the Wire and the Empty Bottle (1035 N. Western), Adventures in Modern Music runs Wed 9/8 through Sun 9/12—overlapping with the inaugural Chicago version of the electronic-music festival Sonar (Thu 9/9-Sat 9/11 at Pritzker Pavilion and the Chicago Cultural Center) and earning it the appellation “Edition Sonar.” As in years past, most of the shows are at the Bottle, but a few happen elsewhere: the fest opens with a concert by the Rhys Chatham Trio, John Wiese, and Bill Orcutt at the Museum of Contemporary Art (220 E....

Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch were cool with that? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There are a lot of long shots—like the one where we’re walking up the hill with [Rudd and Hirsch] when they’re going to pound a stake into the ground. There’s a lot of sequences of them not speaking and just doing some work. We were really trying to establish a physicality in their performances....

In the mid-60s, American composer Alvin Curran moved to Rome, where he and several collaborators–including Richard Teitelbaum, Frederic Rzewski, Steve Lacy, and Allan Bryant–performed as MEV, or Musica Elettronica Viva, one of the first electroacoustic improvised-music groups and one of the earliest to explore the use of synthesizers and amplified found objects. Since then Curran has maintained a refreshingly wide-ranging approach to composing and making music, keeping up with evolving technology and tapping into the sounds of his childhood in Rhode Island–from 40s jazz to the low-end horn blasts of ocean freighters....

At 83, pianist Menahem Pressler remains the heart and soul of the Beaux Arts Trio, now in its 52nd season. Since its inception he’s played with five violinists and three cellists, but its current incarnation, with reflective Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses and dynamic British violinist Daniel Hope, may be the best yet. For this concert they join the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, led by James Conlon, in Beethoven’s buoyant Triple Concerto–not the most profound or groundbreaking middle Beethoven, but irresistible in the right hands....

Omnivorous columnist Mike Sula knows what he likes—and what he doesn’t. A good plate of chivo, Zaragoza goes through five to seven young goats in a weekend, seasoning the meat with kosher salt before gently cooking it in a sealed steamer on a stovetop for up to six hours. Unlike most birrieros, he makes his consomme, which is tomato based, without drippings; it’s a method he learned by videotaping Segura’s wife, and it results in a clean broth without the fat and excessive saltiness that can ruin a plate of chivo....

I love Rosenbaum, but am embarrassed for him when he shows his blind hatred for the Bush administration. Following is an exact quote from this week’s long review: “As the director has implied in interviews, it’s important to distinguish between Iranian people–their society, after all, is extremely multicultural–and their rulers, who are as dubious as ours” [“Don’t Judge a Film by Its Venue,” April 20]. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Local film critic Jan Lisa Huttner says she opened her Sunday New York Times one June morning five years ago and got hit in the face with an article that inspired her to start a consumer movement aimed at the film industry, WITASWAN. “Who reviews films on staff for the New York Times? Three men. Who reviews films for the New Yorker? Two. When the National Society of Film Critics published its recent book of 100 ‘essential films,’ how many of the contributors were women?...

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The New York string quartet Ethel isn’t like most other classical groups: their name sounds better suited to a rock band, their repertoire includes improvised material, they amplify instruments, and their performances feature customized lighting and choreography. They may like to have fun now and again—Kronos Quartet is the model—but the members are all serious, Juilliard-trained players. Last year they released two fine albums with new violinist Cornelius Dufallo, who replaced founding member Todd Reynolds....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Given all that dramatic irony, as well as the broad targets presented by the wardrobes on display, it’s surprising that “Chicago Hip House Documentary 1989” didn’t attract more snark when it propagated across the Internet. Chicago hip-hop blog Fake Shore Drive, which covers nu-gangsta rap alongside relatively dance-friendly “hipster-hop,” posted it with the one-word commentary “Dope,” and the site’s pool of hard-line commenters—who can usually be counted on to savage anything that doesn’t meet their impossible standards—barely raised an eyebrow....

Everything gets just a little darker around 3 AM. Late-night spots like the Continental in Humboldt Park start to spill over with patrons eager to eke out an hour or two more of party before heading to a hangover. Plane-going-down makeouts, witching-hour pickup attempts, and shots upon shots help create the perfect storm of wrong. And who has a better view of the depravity than those slinging the drinks and spinning the records?...

The Atrium Wine Bar Brand BBQ Market Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Brand BBQ is the embodiment of the new-style urban barbecue joint, with a chef who’s a graduate of culinary school, a spiffy interior with art on the walls, and not an anthropomorphic pig in sight. The formal training of pit mistress Sweet Charity Smith—a name perfectly suited to barbecue—shines on the cheffier portions of the menu....

Chicago native Hannibal Buress, who goes by Hannibal, is only 24 but has been performing stand-up for five years. Many local comedians are oddly selective about the rooms they play, but Hannibal is comfortable anywhere, he says, as long as he’s avoiding “hack” material. He moved to New York for a few months in 2006 for access to “more clubs and opportunities,” and he’s going back there for good in May....

To hear the bluster, you’d think the campaign for Cook County assessor was the ultimate showdown in the fight for right against wrong. For one thing, the assessor plays a major role in determining how much you pay in property taxes. And by you I mean everyone who pays for a place to live—including renters, most of whom have never even seen a property tax bill but pay property tax hikes for their landlords in the form of higher rents....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Mike Sula reviews Au Cheval, the new Randolph Row venture from prolific chef/entrepreneur Brendan Sodikoff. Sula brought a dieter with him to dinner, but won’t repeat that mistake—there’s nothing for weak eaters on the menu at the closest thing Chicago has to Montreal glutton mecca Au Pied de Cochon. While at APdC the focus is foie, Sula found the centerpiece for many of Sodikoff’s successes to be the egg—you can get it scrambled with foie gras, poached in chilaquiles, beside bacon and escarole in a salad, or crowning a croque madame....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For me, I get to interact with people I know by reputation but would probably never meet and would probably not know what to say if I did meet them. I suspect one of the reasons Twitter has taken off in journalistic environments is that, in writing, you get a lot of people who are verbose and attention-driven behind a keyboard but normal to retiring in real life....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Let it be said at the outset that the Pasadena Now Web site is a handsome piece of work. Further, let’s agree it’s a feather in Pasadena’s cap that its city council meetings can all be accessed in streaming video. Now we come to the crux of the matter, the help-wanted ad that has journalists in a tiz: Pasadena Now’s announcement that it seeks “a newspaper journalist based in India to report on the city government and political scene of Pasadena, California, USA....

Steve Dolinsky: “72 year-old Edna Lewis — who was the matriarch of her namesake West Side restaurant — died early this morning from complications of ovarian cancer, according to her older sister, Alice McCommon.” [Here’s the Reader‘s review of Edna’s] Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Blair Kamin: “The ballpark, perfectly ordered and pastoral, is Edenic. Its surrounding neighborhood, chaotic and commercial, suggests Paradise Lost....

Q My boyfriend and I are straight college students, and he’s always wanting to try new things. Recently he asked to put a finger in my ass while we were having sex. Someone did that to me before, but it felt uncomfortable and it kinda hurt. I told my boyfriend that he could do it once and then I’d decide whether to let it continue. So we tried it. It still felt uncomfortable and still kinda hurt....

“This is my body,” said Jesus, breaking the matzo and passing it around to the apostles before uncorking the Jerusalem red. “This is my blood.” And so was born the miracle of transubstantiation, the transformation of bread and wine into the flesh of Christ (and the indoctrination of centuries of confused Christian children in the practice of church-sanctioned cannibalism.) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The name of the newcomer seems a little less presumptuous when you consider that all but the last are BYOBs, and the neighborhood, full of handsome single-family homes, really is thirsting for some decent wine and snacks and simple meals to go with it....

Isaac Brekken/AP Republican electoral reform and the Obama power play are not equivalent. The Tribune editorial page and Sun-Times op-ed columnist Steve Huntley both made the same sorry stab at equivalency Tuesday, deriding as Washington shenanigans two very different attempts to alter the political process. The first was President Obama’s attempt to get the National Labor Relations Board up and running again by making three so-called recess appointments to the board a year ago....