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The Umbrella Music Festival continues through Sunday night, and I suggest reading Peter Margasak’s guide to the city’s most daring jazz festival. There are plenty of other shows too. Tonight there’s Bridesmaid at Empty Bottle and Basia Bulat at Schubas. Tomorrow you can check out Allen Toussaint at SPACE or Grant Hart at Red Line Tap. Saturday you can see the World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die at Saki in the afternoon or at Beat Kitchen in the evening. To close out the weekend, on Sunday evening there’s Sebadoh at Schubas, Absu at Cobra Lounge, and Chicago Opera Theater’s Orpheus & Euridice at Eckhart Park.
Thu 11/7: Sparks at Lincoln Hall
Gospel vocal group the Blind Boys of Alabama have been kicking around since 1939, and most of the folks who helped make the recent I’ll Find My Way (Sony Masterworks) weren’t involved in the group at the start. “Clarence Fountain, the sole surviving original member, added his trademark bass vocals from his home in Birmingham (he requires weekly kidney dialysis and isn’t fit for travel), while the rest of the band holed up in Fall Creek, Wisconsin, with producer Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, who frequently used them as background singers for an eclectic cast of his peers—Sam Amidon, Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond, Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards, Patty Griffin, and Casey Dienel of White Hinterland, among others,” writes Peter Margasak. “Thankfully the Blind Boys still take center stage for some stirring performances. On ‘I Shall Not Be Moved’ and ‘Take Me to the Water,’ the recently enlisted Paul Beasley astonishes with his falsetto singing, while the band put together by Vernon and Phil Cook of Megafaun recalls the slide-happy gospel-rock sound Ry Cooder fashioned when he worked with Terry Evans and Bobby King in the 80s.” My Brightest Diamond opens.
