Our 11 picks for concerts
Fake Shore Drive showcase with Mannie Fresh, Lucki Ecks, ZMoney, and Giftz
Kranky Records celebrates 20 years
Giuseppe Verdi isn’t around to celebrate his 200th birthday this fall, but that won’t stop us. Lyric Opera opens its season with Otello on Sat 10/5 (with seven more performances through Sat 11/2), Chicago Opera Theater performs Joan of Arc at the Harris Theater (four shows between Sat 9/21 and Sun 9/29), and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Riccardo Muti, has put together a Verdi festival that includes a Thu 10/10 performance of the Requiem (coinciding with the composer’s actual birthday) that will be simulcast on the fancy new LED screen in Millennium Park. But the event that sounds most intriguing to me happens a little earlier: the CSO and chorus in a concert version of the early Verdi opera Macbeth. In Chicago, we don’t often get to hear Muti conducting opera, though he’s a Verdi master and presided over La Scala for nearly two decades. He did this one two years ago in Salzburg and Rome with one of the same lead singers he’s bringing here, soprano Tatiana Serjan—she’s the evil Lady Macbeth, the character Verdi put at the center of the work, specifying that she should be ugly and have a grating voice. Baritone Luca Salsi will sing the title role. —Deanna Isaacs
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All year long Drake has been teasing the late-September release of Nothing Was the Same (Young Money/Cash Money) with songs, videos, and trailers, but throughout that campaign he’s kept most information about his third album under wraps—any detail he’s revealed has sent the rap Internet into a tizzy (see the response to the album art). The music says a lot all by itself, though: with his alpha-dog swagger and charged rapping on the sumptuous boom-bap cut “5 AM in Toronto,” Drake pushes himself beyond the comfortable confines of Take Care‘s lush rap-R&B. On “Hold On, We’re Going Home” he all but abandons the “rap” part of his sound—instead of sticking to his usual style, which falls somewhere between rapping and singing, he concentrates on his love-balladeer moves, cooing over stark 80s dance-pop beats and washes of warm synths that float upward like the sun rising over a secluded beach. On that track Drake sounds a bit like his touring partner Miguel, or at least like the retro-leaning numbers on the charismatic R&B sensation’s slinky and rapturous 2012 album, Kaleidoscope Dream (RCA). With these two guys playing a concert together, I wouldn’t be surprised if area hospitals notice a spike in births nine months later. —Leor Galil
Goblin
Wed 10/16, 8:30 PM, Logan Square Auditorium, $25. 17+. Update: This show has been rescheduled for Fri 3/7.
According to its Twitter account, Land and Sea Dept. is “a concept and project development studio cohesively and creatively working across disciplines.” Whatever that means, this Chicago organization is responsible for putting on last summer’s Bill Callahan show at Garfield Park Conservatory, an ingenious choice of venue for the singer-songwriter’s wry, autumnal musings (Land and Sea will try to one-up that coup with another Callahan show this fall, this time at the ostentatious Alhambra Palace). The next concert the group is hosting at the conservatory took place previously at the Guggenheim Museum in New York: LA singer Nika Roza Danilova (aka Zola Jesus) with vocalist and composer J.G. Thirlwell (aka Foetus, Manorexia, Steroid Maximus, and many more). Danilova’s songs are treated to Thirwell’s arrangements for string quartet, and her clean, soaring vocals blend harmoniously with the relatively restrained strings—the results appear on the gorgeous collaborative album Versions (Sacred Bones), released in August. Some of the Guggenheim performance is available on YouTube, but compared to the stuffy, cylindrical setting of the museum, the lush surroundings of the conservatory should create a soothing fairy-tale vibe. —Tal Rosenberg
Sparks
