thursday17
Thursday17
Rise Against
Friday18
The Merry WidowRise AgainstTreasure Fingers
Saturday19
Detroit CobrasHamid Drake & Michael ZerangSnow Angels
Sunday20
Hamid Drake & Michael ZerangJoan of ArcWiz KhalifaThe Merry WidowAram Shelton’s Fast Citizens
Monday21
Hamid Drake & Michael ZerangNetherfriends
Wednesday23
Covers For Cover II
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THE MERRY WIDOW The scene that opens Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Merry Widow is a stunner, inspired by an 1873 Tissot painting: a tableau of belle epoque gowns in sherbet shades against a silver foil backdrop. It’s one of many high points in this production of Franz Lehar’s classic 1905 operetta about a rich widow whose matrimonial plans are critical to the survival of her fictional eastern European country. Directed by Chicago Shakespeare’s Gary Griffin and conducted by Emmanuel Villaume, it has relatively spartan sets by Daniel Ostling, exquisite costumes by Mara Blumenfeld, and a hard-rhyming translation of its often cynical lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. Soprano Elizabeth Futral plays the widow, Hanna Glawari, whose haunting second-act solo (“Vilja”) is another highlight; the gentlemen’s lament in the same act (“Everywoman”) had Lyric’s buttoned-up audience clapping time like the crowd at a hootenanny. Andriana Chuchman and Stephen Costello deliver winning performances as the itchy young wife of an aging diplomat and her determined lover, while the orchestra (just released from contract limbo), chorus, and dancers all add to the frivolity. One hitch on opening night: in a few instances voices failed to carry, particularly from the back or upper part of the stage. The trouble may have been a gremlin in the sound system, in which case it should be fixable, but tenor Roger Honeywell (who plays the widow’s love interest, Count Danilo Danilovich) was inaudible in his lower register and managed to fumble an entry in which he’s supposed to be stumbling drunk. See also Sunday; The Merry Widow continues until January 16. 7:30 PM, Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker, 312-332-2244, $46-$207. —Deanna Isaacs
TREASURE FINGERS Atlanta’s Ashley Jones, aka Treasure Fingers, makes music that’s not easy to find a genre tag for, which makes him something of an oddity in the dance world, where there are so many—two records that sound more like each other than like anything else are practically enough to qualify as a subgenre. Most of Jones’s material tops throwback disco-house beats with things like burbling electro-funk synths, bursts of chiptune bleeps, IDM-style sliced-and-diced samples, and the kind of filter-swept vocals most commonly associated with Daft Punk. His remixes are crafty and inevitably several times funkier than the originals, but his best work yet is a song of his own, the addictive “Cross the Dancefloor,” which is one of those rare dance tracks that could appeal to people who make a point of avoiding dance music. Only Children and Kid Color open. 10 PM, Smart Bar, 3730 N. Clark, 773-549-4140, $12, $10 before midnight. —Miles Raymer
HAMID DRAKE & MICHAEL ZERANG Whether you long for snowy slopes or just for one more minute of sunlight, the winter solstice is worth celebrating, and in Chicago we have a reason that’s uniquely ours. Every year since 1990 master drummers Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang have marked the year’s shortest day with a series of sunrise performances that are as much rituals as they are concerts. Each one starts the same way, with the two men walking into a room lit only by candles and selecting an instrument from their transcontinental collection of bells, gongs, and drums—djembes, dumbeks, frame drums, tablas, congas. As the darkness lifts, the music swells: Drake and Zerang range freely through rhythms drawn from jazz as well as from the traditions of India, Africa, and the Middle East, winding through passages of crystalline delicacy and surges of pure sound as they bring the music to a series of climaxes. When dawn finally shines through the windows, the duo end with a silence as enveloping as any percussive barrage. See also Sunday and Monday. 6 AM, Links Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield, 773-281-0284, $20, $18 in advance at Bookworks (3444 N. Clark, 773-871-5318). —Bill Meyer
HAMID DRAKE & MICHAEL ZERANG See Saturday. 6 AM, Links Hall, 3435 N. Sheffield, 773-281-0284, $20, $18 in advance at Bookworks (3444 N. Clark, 773-871-5318).
