Trollin' Adventures

One of the jewels of this year’s Chicago Tribune Food Bowl settled in Bronzeville Sunday afternoon. The Food Bowl is one of the city’s newest food extravaganzas with the stated mission of celebrating the entirety of Chicago’s dining scene, from the ever so humble to the ever so grand.  The two-week festival features an impressive range of innovative experiences that highlight the breadth of culinary choices Chicagoans enjoy and divides events into eight categories. Sunday’s event, the Bronzeville Chef’s Revival and Homecoming at the Parkway Ballroom on King Drive was part of the Giveback series and would benefit the Edna Lewis Foundation.  Lewis achieved notoriety as a chef in 1940’s New York with her restaurant Café Nicolson and is credited with inspiring generations of African American chefs.  Her career went beyond validating traditional Southern cooking by expanding our understanding of what soul food is and what it can be.  Connecting the event to her stature heightened the afternoon’s expectations. 

Nine chefs, with two of them focused on pastries, prepared examples of what constitutes contemporary soul food in the city.  Most served dishes that rest at the core of what soul food is understood to be.  Gumbo, crispy (fried) chicken, barbeque, greens and macaroni and cheese.  Many of them celebratory standards in the Black community.

Erick Williams’ (Virtue Restaurant – Hyde Park) composition of seared summer squash, pickled bing cherries, sunflower seed butter and sprouts was beautiful, delicious and completely surprising.  Not only were the ingredients wonderfully fresh, each component played like notes of music in a lovely melody.  The tender sweetness of the sprouts was particularly memorable.  Using local honey to act as the thread that tied everything together, the squash turned out to be an ideal complement to the richness present in other entrées.

There were other standouts but none held quite the same jolt of delight as the squash.  Strangely, mixed reactions surrounded Bernard Bennett’s smoked rabbit hot links.  The choice of meat may have been a little too far afield for some but no one quibbled about the flavors which were marvelous. Bennett (Big Jones – Andersonville) achieved something of a coup with his outside the box approach.  Using a vehicle that’s slightly milder than pork and carries the faint hint of game in its palette profile upended a hallowed tradition and worked beautifully.  Pairing it with standard pork rib tips and a bi-color corn pudding made for a novel culinary tribute to culture.

Maybe the deep old school vibe DJ Ayana Contreras was throwing down helped, but the easy conviviality of the 100 plus people attending the event lent a distinct warmth to the festivities.   And it seemed to make you want to eat more.  Presenting roast turkey, collard greens and (Edna Lewis) mac and cheese, Bon Appeitit Management’s Kenneth Dixon was ready with an all-encompassing feast that resembled a little sliver of an African American holiday table. Moist and succulent, the turkey was unassailably good. Although billed as spicy and despite the presence of distinct notes of heat, the greens were anything but intimidating and thoroughly acceptable.  The beautiful texture of chef Dixon’s mac and cheese couldn’t have been more comforting; but a stronger stance on seasoning might have made them even more delicious. 

Serving gumbo in a vessel no bigger than a sherry glass may have seemed a little mean-spirited, but there was no faulting the balanced perfection of the light roux Darnell Reed (Luella’s Southern Kitchen – Lincoln Square) created to prepare it.  And the ham dripping butter Brian Jupiter (Frontier – Ina Mae’s) used on his crispy chicken added another layer of decadence to a soul food classic.

Popular and appreciated, the most welcoming bar anyone could dream for served beer, wine, sangria, margarita’s and Uncle Nearest Tennessee whiskey with an easy hospitality that seemed to bring a little New Orleans charm to the Windy City.

Maya Camille-Broussard (Justice of the Pies) and Brown Sugar Bakery’s Stephanie Hart lay in wait in the ballroom’s hidden treasure of a courtyard with fairy tale pretty desserts in a perfectly idyllic setting. The velvet smoothness of Camille-Broussard strawberry-basil key lime pie was nearly as beguiling as its light peekaboo flavors.  Hart enlisted her own version of sublime textures in the batter used for her pineapple-coconut and praline cupcakes.

As an introduction to what adventures and discoveries this year’s Food Bowl might hold, you’d be hard pressed to top this venture honoring the contributions of Ms. Lewis.  Her youngest sister, Ruth Lewis Smith, was on hand to thank everyone for attending, applaud her sister and provide living proof how fiercely 95 years of age can be rocked.

Bronzeville Chef’s Revival and Homecoming

August 11, 2019

Parkway Ballroom

4455 S. Martin Luther King, Dr.

Chicago, IL    60603

It’s hard to say whether the story of Blue Note Records is the most implausible of love stories or an incredible and fascinating odyssey.  The brainchild of a young refugee who discovered and fell intractably in love with an American music form while a teenager in Germany, the Blue Note label has come to represent a very particular level of recording excellence.  In It Must Schwing!, Director Eric Friedler has created a beguiling tribute not only to the resounding success of Alfred Lion’s vision, but to grit and passion that brought it about.  Lion’s infatuation with jazz would ultimately lead him to devote his life to it and the musicians who performed it.  Francis Wolff, his best friend since the age of 14, shared that devotion and became his right-hand man and Blue Note’s famously introverted co-founder. 

Playing one night only at the Gene Siskel Film Center as part of the Black Harvest Music Festival, It Must Schwing! beautifully chronicled how two self-imposed exiles created a revered music powerhouse from nothing but an incessant craving. 

Weaving dramatic re-creation with first person interviews, It Must Schwing! lets you see and understand the scale of Alfred Lion’s and Francis Wolff’s achievement.  Both fled Nazi Germany to escape the hardship, oppression and slaughter of Jews in Hitler’s Germany.  The America they found surprised them.  And no doubt it disappointed them.  Here they saw the same discrimination and imposed otherness they fled in Europe being visited on Black Americans in the United States.  That shared first-hand familiarity with bigotry endowed them with an empathy that would prove a critical component in defining the character of Blue Note. 

The film enlists an astonishing cavalcade of Blue Note alumni to help tell the story about “the lion and the wolf”.  Their memories and accounts offer priceless insight into how the label grew from obscurity to worldwide prestige.  Uniform in their praise for the labels founders, the words of these musical and journalistic luminaries reflected something else that eclipsed mere admiration.  Again and again, respect surfaced as the overriding sentiment that colored their thoughts and words.

Lou Donaldson and Sonny Rollins are in their 90’s now as is the irrepressibly scrappy Sheila Jordan.  All have enjoyed luminous careers in the world of jazz and all have been proud members of the Blue Note family. That each of them and more would prove themselves to be such adroit and captivating storytellers should not have come as a surprise.  Supremely creative and gifted people are often accomplished on many levels.  Some, like Donaldson and Benny Golson, are wonderfully amusing and devastatingly insightful.  Others reflected the pure intellectualism of an ascetic as they discussed the impact of the Blue Note founders on the culture, jazz and its artists.

Technology was recruited to take you back 80 years when Lion decided to create his own record company because he couldn’t find the music he was looking for in the mass market, Rainer Ludwig’s Image Building animations were masterfully inserted into the film’s sequences to give the film drama, action and life.  Making every effort to insure the animated characters look like the people they were representing added incredible realism to the choice of incorporating illustrations.  The rendering of Billie Holiday singing her classic and searing Strange Fruit in this wonderfully stylized animated format proved heartbreakingly poignant, powerful and beautiful.

Defying convention from the moment Blue Note came into being, Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff not only celebrated the music they loved, they exalted the people making it.  Because they only recorded artists and music Lions himself liked, the music became a reflection of his highly subjective and impeccable taste.  The names tell it all.  Quincy Jones, Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Art Blakely, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock and Thelonius (Bubba) Monk were all a part of the Blue Note constellation.  Today each of them could be considered royalty; if not deity, in the universe of jazz. 

Blue Note was the first label to put the faces of black performers on the cover of albums and the first to pay musicians for rehearsals. It wasn’t unusual for some jazz musicians to be plagued with the type of demons that made them succumb to the pathos addiction.  Blue Note would inevitably take on the mantle of the Good Samaritan and help rather than judge with the hope that exceptional music would be the final result.

Lions seemed to have an innate sense of the way jazz should feel as well as sound and would often declare “It must schwing!” when encouraging musicians during rehearsals.  They knew when they were getting it right if they glanced up and saw Lion or Wolff gleefully bouncing, usually off beat, to the music.  Then they knew they were schwinging!

It Must Schwing!

August 7th, 2019

8:00 pm

Black Harvest Film Festival

Gene Siskel Film Center

164 N. State St.

Chicago, Illinois 60601

www.siskelfilmcenter.org/blackharvest

All’s forgiven if it slipped your mind that we have a National Picnic Month.  It’s July of course, the most appropriate month of all when summer is at full flower.  And perhaps the unlikeliest of suspects has created an ingenious way to celebrate al fresco dining at its purest. 

For the past few years, the Grant Park Music Festival has brought the celebration into the heart of the city by placing it on the Great Lawn facing Millennium’s Park spectacular center piece, the Pritzker Pavilion.

Known formally as a Pastoral Picnic in White, the themed commemoration of Picnic month cast a long net all the way across the Atlantic to find its inspiration.  Emulating a similar event that started in Paris during the late 80’s, this event also asks everyone to dress in white “from head to toe” for this novel and very fun happening. 

The French version started in the vast 2000 acre Bois de Boulogne, one of Paris’s most beloved and prestigious parks.  Participants wore white then just so they could find one another.  With a 6:00 pm start time last Saturday, finding people was a non-issue. 

Millennium Park’s Great Lawn can accommodate up to 7000 people and it would have been both dramatic and striking to see the entire lawn blanketed in white all the way to Monroe.  The evening’s impeccable weather would have enhanced the spectacle even more.  On this night pools of white clustered at the front of lawn closest to the band shell.  What celebrants lacked in numbers they made up for in style.   

Like haute pioneers, not only were these revelers clothed in white from tip top to flat bottom, they were dressed to the nines.  Most, conspicuously chic.  The inspiration may have been true French, but the feel somehow also had the unmistakable texture of New Orleans and carried the scent of extreme ease.

With long tables covered in white lace or linen, candelabra fitted with delicate tapers of wax, silver trays filled with an array of delicacies, stemmed wine glasses standing at the ready, and flower vases overflowing with pale green hydrangea and big white puffs of peonies, those who chose to go all in on the spirit of the event were a stunning sight.  Slightly awed, someone asked a person passing by why so many people were wearing white.  On hearing the explanation, he shook his head in mild dismay and replied, “I wish I got the memo”.

Sunset amplified the event’s theatricality.  And there was a reward.

The Grant Park Music Festival’s orchestra had selected Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7 to accompany the evening and invited two extraordinary artists, brothers, to join them.  Anthony McGill holds principal clarinetist status at the New York Philharmonic.  His brother, Demarre, is principal flutist with the Seattle Symphony.  They performed a piece written for them, Puckett’s Concerto Duo and Saint-Saëns’ Tarantelle. At peak, the music flashed and sparkled like tiny rockets of color.   Brilliant renditions, their performances were as exciting as they were splendid.  As suitable for a night in the depths of the Bois de Boulogne as it was last weekend in contemporary Chicago with a wall of skyscrapers standing sentry, the program charmed across both time and place.

As one of a few, if not the only remaining free outdoor classical music series in the United States, the evening’s music sponsored by the Grant Park Music Festival as well as the Festival’s Pastoral Picnic in White act as potent reminders of Chicago’s good fortune.   They represent generous spirit restoring gifts of the city at completely no charge.   

Pastoral Picnic in White

Millennium Park

July 27, 2019

Pritzker Pavilion & Lawn

6:00 pm Open

7:30 pm Concert

Chicago, IL  60601

gpmf.org

Autobiography as performance art can be dangerous territory.  Keeping an audience’s rapt attention while recounting the events of one’s life is not the habitat of the ordinary man or woman.  But as we saw Friday night at Skokie’s North Shore Center of Performing Arts, Renée Taylor is far from ordinary.

Resilient, talented and according to the many disclosures in her one woman show, My Life on a Diet; a striver always looking for the next big role.  During her 90-minute humor filled spree, she shared insights into a world of glamor that frequently touched on Hollywood’s golden age. 

Everybody knows the story.  Infected with the show biz bug in the womb. Maneuvering through the audition circuit until you land your first professional role at 15.   Scoring bit parts and then bigger parts until you get a star on your dressing room door.  By returning to her roots in stand up, it’s Taylor comedic slant that injected the tale with genuine vitality. 

Allegedly inspired by the warm and lucrative reception of her friend Nora Ephron’s monologue driven play; Love, Loss and What I Wore, Taylor and her late husband Joseph Bologna created My Life on a Diet to conjure similar magic.  Premiering last year to wide critical acclaim, all indications point to their achieving their end. 

Using the foil of a Hollywood staple, perpetual dieting, Taylor matched the stages of her life and career to the diet she was on at each significant juncture and milestone.  An unrepentant “diet junkie who used to think if she ate like a star, she’d just might look and live like one”, the Academy award nominated and Emmy winning actress and writer can say she succeeded admirably.  Her 70-year career include over 20 plays, 4 films and 9 television series and movies. Many of them conceived and co-created in collaboration with Mr. Bologna. 

Still a fun blond at 86, and resplendent Friday night in a glittering gold gown, Taylor deftly mixed the poignant and the sweet with the titillating and saucy.  An anecdote gently recounting the days leading up to her friend’s Marilyn Monroe’s final days would be offset with a retelling of how she craftily excused herself from an impromptu porn screening at a party in a Beverly Hills mansion.

With the use of movie clips and the wonders of PowerPoint, sitting comfortably ensconced on an elegant chair, Taylor took us on a stroll through a past bubbling over with goal driven living and recounted the many famous people she worked and became friends with along the way.  From studying under the tutelage of Lee Strasberg to working with Cary Grant, Barbara Streisand and Joan Crawford, Taylor not only rolled with them all as buddies, she politely took them off their pedestals during the show to reveal how much like the rest of us they are. 

With stagecraft imbedded in her core, she graciously acknowledged the warm applause following her very entertaining performance. Was that gesture at the close demure encouragement for the audience to rise in a standing ovation?  It hardly matters.  A career as full of color and accomplishment as hers deserves exactly that.   

Renée Taylor  – My Life on a Diet

Through August 4, 2019

North Shore Center of the Performing Arts

9501 Skokie Blvd.

Skokie, IL  60077

847-679-9501

www.northshorecenter.org

Some things you merely enjoy and there are other things you feel very fortunate having experienced.  Entering its final weeks within Wrightwood 659’s captivating galleries, About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art, falls firmly in the second category.

The show, which revitalizes our appreciation of the psychological power of art and challenges us to grapple with our notions of what sexuality and sexual identity are, will not be traveling.  It ends August 10^th, eleven weeks and three days after opening.  Considering the breadth of relentless artistic beauty saturating the exhibition spaces four floors, About Face’s limited residence at Wrightwood 695 seems particularly ephemeral. That no other city will be able to experience its tremendous human uplift makes the exhibition’s approaching close even more regrettable.

Timed to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the Stonewall riots when the marginalized stood together and answered subjugating force with fury; the exhibition seems to follow suite by saying no to rejection and victimization through the prisms of time and art. No one would have expected and many have forgotten that at the forefront of that rebellion stood a black trans woman, Marsha P. Johnson.  Her courage and that of the thousands who came to rally behind her helped make America see the invisible.

Those are also the attributes that ultimately link the riots to the About Face exhibit.   A torrent of voices that you’d never expect to hear acknowledging their own beauty and validating their link in the chain of humanity. 

Unlike so much that commemorates Stonewall, the voices in this exhibit are rich in variety and origin.  They come from Africa and Sweden and Indonesia and all the Americas.  They represent people who have and do live their lives in harmony with what they know themselves to be.  Queer.  A word that encompasses the familiar and the freaks and accepts them all through a shared connecting thread.

A confrontation with the bold, the demanding and the exhilarating happens almost immediately with the art of Canadian born Attila Richard Lukacs.  His works have the scale and tonal resonance of the Renaissance but carry messages from the underground.  Maddeningly beautiful, provocative and serenely defiant; most of the pieces in this setting only hint at sexuality and seem more concerned with social hypocrisy and political justice. 

By the time the show ends on the fourth floor, you’ve entered a world of metaphysical heartbreak and excruciating endurance.  The About Face exhibit is broken up in four parts with this last representing transcendence.   Here, the mood changes dramatically.  The art has a spiritual grandeur; a psychic bond connecting the paintings of each artist. Some are poignant and shaded in mystery.  Many of Jerome Caja’s works are wonderfully clever, some scathingly irreverent; the perfect reflection of a mind enraged.  And one with an insight that is nothing less than a sublime gift.  The artist died at 37 and youth permeates the 120 miniatures on display.  Even when many of his pieces openly allude to death and decay, there’s no hint of the macabre.  

To get to this point was a trek though some of the most beautiful artistic terrain imaginable.  Encountering the work of each of the exhibits 43 artists was like traveling through 43 countries where the language and topography is vastly different from the place to place and infinitely fascinating everywhere. Each of the nearly 500 pieces of art can be viewed as its own story. They’re told through photography, collage, surreally transfixing dolls, painting, video imagery, and sculpture.  Together they offer startling new ways to see the world we live in and those who are making this journey through life with us.   Much of the art is unforgettable. 

Seeing how Joan E. Biren’s images of lesbian affirmation compare to the exquisite work Sophia Wallace does in obliterating conventional concepts of masculine and feminine beauty feels revelatory.  And we discover a new Harvey Milk.   The one before he was iconized as a trailblazer and martyr and was working as a photographer in San Francisco.  His photographic skills were exceptional and his images reflected the positive acceptance of self and community we associate with his life.  Looking into the mesmerizing eyes of South African Zanele Muholi’s self-portraits where she transforms herself into a sexual and cultural question mark; regally inviting open scrutiny.  Realizing the staggering range of domestic unions that exists through Leonard Suryajaya’s photographic chronicle of his life as a family centric Indonesian man living with a white partner here in Chicago.

The show’s depth and scope makes it feel like a bottomless trove of treasure.  One that you’d love to plunder over and over.  A triumph from any measure, About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art is the kind of arts project that any city of consequence should and would be proud to host.  And here, the message is just as beautiful as the art.

About Face: Stonewall, Revolt and New Queer Art

Through August 10, 2019

Wrightwood 659

659 W. Wrightwood

Chicago, IL  60614

773-437-6601

info@wrightwood659.org

Admissions through reservations only

Pssssst.  What do you like most about summer in the city?  Beautiful surroundings. Top flight music.  A cold beer or a nice refreshing glass of wine on a beautiful summer night.  Good food.  A vibrant crowd.  Sinking into a polished vibe.  It’s all there every summer Tuesday night in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s backyard.  And there’s no charge.

After climbing the museum’s broad and imposing front stairs, shoot straight to the back to what’s formally known as the terrace.  A staple of summer for well over a decade, Tuesday’s on the Terrace has become even more suave since the space got a glamourous revamp a few years back.  Despite its sleek and refined good looks, it’s still as comfortable as your favorite hoodie and pretense free.

Depending on what your major objectives are for the evening, there are at least five different outdoor “rooms” or spaces to hang while listening to the featured music which is always jazz.  Running from 5:30 to 8p, everything hums with the precision of an atomic clock.  Music starts promptly (usually) at 5:30 for a one hour set.  There’s a half hour break and another set starts at 7. 

If you’re there for the music, about 200 very comfortable chairs in the colors of rainbow sherbet sit right in front of the impromptu non-elevated “stage”.  The seats go fast and the music is always jazz.  The bodies filling those chairs tend to be avid jazz heads and as such, are tremendously respectful to the musicians and the music.  Boisterous in their approval and otherwise quiet.

But with so many places to gather, the setting is still ideal for socializing.  How can you beat meeting friends after work or before dinner gathered around a table and surrounded by the towers of the Magnificent Mile; cab, chard or cold one in hand.  Stylish tables flood the rear of the terrace and high caliber speakers bring the music to you.

Same for the grassy lawn at the bottom of the terrace steps on the furthest east side of the property.  Outdoor chairs and picnic blankets rule this space but the same sense of relaxed chill prevails.  A concession selling generous portions of food and beverages does a brisk business on the north wall.

You would expect to find this jewel at its finest when all of the night’s components are in perfect harmony.  When the temperature and the breeze feel like a Polynesian dream, when the crowd is as affable as it is charming and when the music is astounding.  This ideal alignment is not rare.  Just check the weather and the roster before you head out if you want to ensure the most from the evening.  Mother Nature and James Sanders and Conjunto delivered all you could hope for and more last week (July 9^th) as he grafted Latin rhythms onto jazz’s solid gold bones on a beautiful balmy night.

As you can see below, there are still a lot of Tuesdays left in this summer’s line up to catch the magic:

Jul 16               Joshua Abrams and Chad Taylor

Jul 23               Tatsu Aoki’s The Miyomi Project

Jul 30               Maggie Brown

Aug 6               Victor Garcia Organ Quintet

Aug 13             Carolyn Fitzhugh Quintet

Aug 20             Ben LaMar Gay

Aug 27             Isaiah Collier and the Chosen Few

Sep 3               Art Turk Burton and the Congo Square Ensemble

Sep 10             Julius Tucker Trio

Sept 17            Thaddeus Tukes on the Vibes

Sep 24             Junius Paul

Museum of Contemporary Art

Tuesdays on the Terrace

220 E. Chicago Ave.

Chicago, IL  60611

312-280-2660

www.mcachicago.org

Few things leave themselves open to expansion and clarification quite as much as history.  Those mandatory studies of the past we took in school amount to tiny and often highly skewed slivers of what happened when. Compared to the enormity of events that comprise the whole of human history, they are but droplets on a vast sea.

Scheduled to move to Toronto in mid-July before coming to rest in the Smithsonian, Caravan of Gold, Fragments in Time:  Art, Culture and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa sets a few records straight while letting us peer into a startling and beautiful world where Africans played a pivotal role in global trade.  Currently residing in Northwestern’s Block Museum, the exhibit upends much of what we thought we knew about African history and details the staggering influence northern African countries held on the movement of gold, salt and ivory across the Sahara during the Medieval Age from the 8^th to the 16^th century.

Taking nearly eight years to assemble, the 250 art works and relics collected from Mali, Morocco, Nigeria and Europe give testimony to the depth of influence African cultures had on trade traveling across the Sahara west to the Europe via the Mediterranean and east to Morocco and the Middle East.

Shaped by colonialism and its legacy of enslavement and exploitation, contemporary views of African history before colonialism virtually does not exist.  But it is this period before the continent was plundered that Mali found itself not only the source of half of the world’s salt supply; but also half of its gold supply.  The commerce of both generated a sophisticated flow of trade and goods so extensive that Venice, Genoa and Granada were common destinations and departures points supporting it.  At its peak during the 13^th century, it saw the rise of the richest man in history, Mansa Musa, whose estimated net worth in modern day dollars has been estimated to have been 400 billion dollars. 

The Block Museum’s exhibit has collected and assembled artifacts that reflect the reality of that trade from highly ornate and beautifully elaborate camel seats to the ancient tools and accoutrements used for pressing gold into coins.  It also explains the significance of the salt trade and displays the result of how African goods like ivory were transformed into objects of art used in European religious ceremonies.

Admission is free. The experience couldn’t be richer.

Caravan of Gold, Fragments in Time:  Art, Culture and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa

Through July 22, 2019

The Block Museum of Art

40 Arts Circle Drive

Evanston, IL  60208

847-491-4000

block-museum@northwestern.edu

Museums can sometimes act as portals to rich and complex worlds. The Museum of Contemporary Art’s Figures of Speech, a retrospective on the work of 38-year-old Virgil Abloh, manages to reveal as much about one of the cornerstones of our culture, fashion, as it does about the prolific creative output of a gifted artist.

Because Abloh is black and does not fit conventional narratives of where robust seeds of creativity grow, especially when considering the exclusive world of luxury fashion, much has been written about his background growing up in the south suburbs of Chicago absorbing the many layered and densely textured influences of the south side.   Like many of his peers, skateboarding, music and looking good were obsessions; prompting many excursions downtown to check out what was the hottest look and to buy whenever possible.  Eventually the urge to tweak and twist items that he coveted would pave the way to acclaim.

Somewhere between obtaining an engineering degree and going on to ITT for a graduate degree in architecture, Abloh’s sustained interest in the creative arts led to a meeting with Kanye West and his creative team where he would help develop album covers, design concerts and oversee the look and direction of the burgeoning star’s merchandising.  He and West were to go on to forge a deep and lasting friendship grounded in their mutual passion to create. Abloh worked similarly with MCA to create merchandising that complement the Figures of Speech exhibit.

Although already well established in fashion design, graphic design and music before founding his own Milan based fashion house in 2013, the move brought him mainstream recognition.  Last year he was named the artistic director for Louis Vuitton’s men’s wear collection.

Organized and overseen by MCA’s Chief Curator Michael Darling who brought the David Bowie Is exhibit to Chicago in 2014, Figures of Speech shows how well Abloh takes looks we see every day on the streets and reinterprets them through the imagination of a visionary. 

As broad as the exhibit is in scope, it’s the dominance of fashion that propels it and sustains its energy.  Through it you see and feel the range of Abloh’s cultural commentary as expressed through clothing.  Sometimes nuanced and more commonly bold, it always manages to captivate with elements of mystery and excitement.  In tune with a black flag flying outside the museum that reads Question Everything, Abloh’s work does exactly that while offering new ways to see possibilities.

Like several members of the museum’s security team, the sneaker array will be a big hit and for many of the visitors attending the exhibit.  Collaborating with Nike in 2016 to put his stamp on the legendary Air Jordan, Abloh deconstructed the iconic Air Force 1 to take it in unexpected and invigorating directions.  It and several prototypes he created for Nike reflect the artist’s endless curiosity and make up an already popular component of the show.

Transforming himself from “consumer to creator”, from buyer to maker, he’s proven himself as savvy as he is talented.  Streetwear has always been more than just functional.  It’s been used to express individuality, style and daring.  Once America loosened up post Woodstock, when ties and heels were no longer de riguer in the workplace and denim displaced chinos on sidewalks, free expression in fashion has been on the rise.  It’s this freedom Abloh celebrates and elevates to luxury. 

The artist’s technical degrees may explain the analytical edge that creeps through some of his work.  His transparent chairs using bright gradient colors on a rigid wire frame testify to his willingness to cast away blinders to recreate the commonplace.  Objects ubiquitous to the urban landscape like gas stations broadcasting the going rate for fuel are scrutinized and recast into an arresting monochromatic narrative of who we are and how we live. 

Messages that reflect an all-encompassing awareness erupt from his creations.  Transmitted through text, color or superimposed images, they, like so much high fashion, insist on your attention and command appreciation.

The exhibit even includes a mini-store where select articles can be purchased.  Limiting some clothing to just 3 items in any given size and priced at a few thousand dollars each, exclusivity is guaranteed.   Given how mesmerizing some of the pieces are, there will be those who find the temptation irresistible.

Virtually alone as a black man thriving at the pinnacle of the global fashion industry, very like Andre Leon Talley, former American editor-at-large of Vogue who began his career in the 70’s, Abloh is dedicating the MCA show to the youth of Chicago.  Believing that “children of color will take center stage in the future of luxury”, he hopes his success will inspire others to believe in themselves and realize their own dream. 

Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech”

Museum of Contemporary Art

June 10, 2019 – September 22, 2019

220 E. Chicago Ave.

Chicago, IL   60611

312-280-2660

www.mcachicago.org

Children have no notion of history.  Even that of their own family.  It takes their own curiosity or the initiative of an adult to help shed light on who they are and how they fit into the world.  For most of the Black children whose parents and grandparents left the South between 1901 and 1970, there wasn’t a name tied to their leaving Arkansas to go to Pittsburg.  Or Mississippi to go to Chicago.  Or Georgia to go to New York.  But there was always a reason; few of them frivolous and not all of them spoken.  The root explanation for most could simply be called survival; of the spirit as well as the flesh.  You might be compelled to leave because you took a stance for your own dignity and chose not to pay for it with your life.  Or you might leave because your cousin told you General Motors was hiring in Detroit and you were fed up with picking that “dirty” cotton.  Over those 70 years more than 6 million Black Americans left what could be thought of as bondage of the mind and spirit to go somewhere that had to better than where they were.

It’s that long, painful and ultimately triumphant pilgrimage that Jason Moran and his wife Alicia Hall Moran celebrated at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last night in a fete that proved as extravagant as it was ambitious.  As beautiful visually as it was musically. 

Intended as a homage to the resilience, fortitude and creativity of those who gambled and traveled north, Two Wings, The Music of Black America in Migration was just as much as reflection of the Morans and their personal heritage. 

Outlining their own families’ migrations from Oklahoma in mezzo soprano’s Alicia Hall Moran’s case and Louisiana and Texas in MacArthur Genius recipient Jason Moran’s, they wove a coat of many colors using strands of classical, blues, jazz, and opera to showcase the breadth of impact black music has had and is having on the culture.  And they used the narrative of Pulitzer Prize winning cultural critic Margo Jefferson to bind it all together.  Jefferson’s clear eyed recounting of growing up black in Chicago proved colorful and beautiful in its own right.

Born in 1947 as the child of a pediatrician and his socialite wife, Jefferson grew up in a city still ballooning with the influx black Americans heading north.  She saw and felt the impact of the migration directly.  Even as a child of black privilege, neither she or her parents were immune from the large and small slights of racism.  Her words as the evening’s host were used to link each segment of the fast gliding three-hour program that included more than its share of highlights.  Words have rarely been so effectively and attractively used to form the foundation of a musical presentation.

Mr. Moran seemed to intentionally downplay his intimidatingly virtuosic piano skills to let everyone else shine.  His rendition of Carolina Strut was one sparkling exception.  Written by James P. Johnson in the early 20’s with “a bass line that walks” and all “about movement and syncopation”, it was a tremendously popular staple of the day.   Ace musicians in Harlem routinely used it to test one another’s creative breadth and technical skills. Moran’s electrifying rendition left the Symphony Center audience surging. 

On the other end of the spectrum, his four-part chamber piece performed with renowned wind ensemble, Imani Winds, was wrapped in subtlety and lovely melody with whiffs of a New Orleans wrapped in chiffon and was a dedication to the soil from which his family first began its journey.

Joined by an elite squad of pinnacle artists that included Pastor Smokie Norful whose performance segued from the raucous release of a Saturday night to the reverential reflection of a Sunday morning, he riveted the audience with refreshing intellectualism, passion, and explosive singing talent.

Mr. Moran’s cousin and mentor Tony Llorens later slid in to escort the piano through a round of exceptional blues with the Rico McFarland contributing sumptuous colors on electric guitar.

Collaborating frequently on projects like the one culminating in Two Wings, The Morans always manage to look forward even when they’re paying tribute to the past.  Mr. Moran, whose connections with Chicago go deep; has also established a close relationship with Hyde Park’s Kenwood Academy’s Jazz Band.  With his interest and involvement, the band has travelled to D.C. to perform at the Kennedy Center and has recorded a highly capable and successful album with the acclaimed pianist.  It was their youthful energy clothed in tuxes and the simple elegance of one piece long black dresses that filled the Symphony Center stage with an undeniable freshness and glimpse into the future. Accompanied by eight members of the school’s drum and bugle corps, resplendent in red marching jackets and ornate military styled hats, the ensemble added visual flair and the soul rattling urgency of rolling drums to an exhilarating and memorable celebration of musical heritage.

Two Wings:  The Music of Black America in Migration

Symphony Center

May 24, 2019

220 S. Michigan Ave.

Chicago, IL   60604

https://cso.org/

Even though describing Lizz Wright as a soul and gospel singer hit the mark, leaving it there would be much too narrow.  Her style and the music she chooses to sing come through in her conversation which invariably remains grounded in a spirituality that straddles the religious and the secular.  It’s an awareness and understanding the pierces through and tames doubt; finally settling on a steady equilibrium.  This gift gives her the ability to be an accomplished shape shifter blending into many musical worlds that absorb both jazz and folk.

Wright’s Tuesday night concert at City Winery drew a big crowd that also defied easy labels. Many carried an air of loose fitting sophistication that looked as unconscious as it was natural.  When she stepped onto the frugal stage, their shared passion for the singer flashed like fire in a gust of wind.   It’s intensity and heat seemed to surprise even her.

Rising to prominence with her first album Salt when it climbed to #2 on Billboard’s jazz ratings in 2003, Wright has settled into a career and success that allows her to define how she plies craft from her home in rural North Carolina.  Opening the evening with a soft contemplative hymn, turning it up to a casual simmer with Allan Toussaint’s Southern Nights and stroking a solid groove by the time she and her band did Sparrow, Wright seemed to be doing exactly what she does interviews; step back and let the music lead her voice to a place of enchantment.  

Talking easily and comfortably with the audience between songs, you gain a greater appreciation of the person inside the entertainer; marveling slightly at the internalized peace resting at her core. 

With Aretha still very much on many of our minds, a tribute to her greatness seemed perfectly appropriate even though Wright demurred about covering such a colossus.  Her beautifully personalized renditions of Natural Woman and Knew You Were Waiting helped propel the audience to insist on an encore at show’s end and cement its esteem for a wonderfully gifted and intriguing vocalist.

Lizz Wright

May, 14 2019

8:00pm

City Winery

1200 W. Randolph St.

Chicago, IL   60607

https://citywinery.com/chicago/