Results tagged “millenniumpark”

With the city hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, fewer police on the street to battle crime, and a transit system on the verge of another round of service cuts and fare hikes, the City Council is tackling the tough issue plaguing our city: suburbanites claiming the best seats at Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. During the Council's budget hearings yesterday, it was Ald. Eugene Schulter (47th) who spoke up, according to the Sun-Times. Said Ald. Schulter:

If you're jonesing for some opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago is your enabler. Maybe you can wait until the season preview concert on September 21. Maybe you can even hold out until the opening night gala on September 26. But if you need a taste of that sweet, sweet opera - and don't have the do-re-mi to be a subscriber (one of the requirements for the exclusive preview) or to afford a ticket to the premiere (still available for $260-$400) - then go to Millennium Park this Friday night when Lyric will be giving away the goods for free.

Hey, remember when you guys were making fun of the big Statue of Liberty replica that the city of Hammond, Indiana wanted to stick in the middle of Wolf Lake? Guess what, snobs, that 50,000 pound piece of foam just might make its way to Chicago if we win the bid to host the Olympic Games in 2016.

             

We are absolutely in love with Ed Anderson's vocals. They swoop and soar and have this timeless and liquid quality to them that entrances us. We loved his contributions to Plane when he was in that band, but in The 1900s he seems unable to replicate the excitement of pitting his voice against interesting or challenging arrangements. That said, the group proved a perfect fit with their surroundings during their lunchtime performance in Millennium Park yesterday. The space's pristine sonics picked up every flicker in The 1900s nuanced performance, and while we worried that thee band too often mirrored the sound of early Belle and Sebastian we were thrilled when they closed the set by tearing "Two Ways" absolutely apart and extending it into a spread out but never boring musical jam. We just wish they hadn't waited until the end of the set to show the crowd what they were truly capable of.

An abandoned and "mutilated" ATM machine was discovered some woods near Joliet. Authorities have not determined - but are investigating the possibility - that it might be the ATM machine stolen with ninja-like stealth from Millennium Park last week. Officer Robert Perez of the Chicago Police Department News Affairs Office told the Sun-Times, "We don't know if this is connected to the one they found." Honestly, we hope this ATM machine - which was "cut open with a cutting torch and was in several pieces," according to police - isn't the Millennium Park one. It'd be such an amateurish, disappointing conclusion to a pretty nifty heist (again, not that we condone stealing an ATM machine).

An entire ATM machine was stolen Millennium Park sometime early this morning. Someone used an ATM card to access the vestibule at 11 N. Michigan Ave and make off with ATM machine from the Park Grill. No signs of forced entry were seen and police are checking surveillance tapes to see if they can find any clues. A Central District police lieutenant told CBS 2, "They took the entire machine." You know what? We do not condone theft in the least but if you can manage to steal an entire ATM machine and leave no trace of how it was done, kudos to you; you deserve to keep it.

Even if you've never been to a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, you're familiar with the piece. At some point, and probably recently, you've heard the finale's "Ode to Joy" theme, the initial fragment from which Beethoven developed his last symphony. It's been used everywhere from the Olympics (performed at most Games since 1956, including as the temporary national anthem of the unified German teams of the 1950s and 1960s, the unified post-USSR team in 1992, and, for a half dozen years, of Rhodesia, until it became Zimbabwe in 1980); to church services (the hymn "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee"); to movies ("A Clockwork Orange," "Help!," and "Die Hard," to name a few). Parts of the rest of the symphony pop up in similarly varying locations; samples from the Scherzo appear as a stock sound in Microsoft XP and as introductory music in "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" (which itself is a tribute to the excerpt's use in "The Huntley-Brinkley Report").

       

There was no time for a music hangover from Lollapalooza as the latest edition of the free concert series at Millennium Park's J. Prtizker Pavilion featured local minimalist rockers Shellac and a few readers were on-hand to catch the band in action.

       

One of the Burnham Pavilions we mentioned a few months back has finally opened in Millennium Park - seven weeks late - in honor of this year's centennial of the Burnham Plan. The Trib's Blair Kamin has more info on the project, designed by London's Zaha Hadid. The pavilion will remain open through October 31 and feature a nightly showing of Thomas Gray's film "Chicago: Past, Present and Future," at 6:30 p.m. The UNStudio pavilion by Ben van Berkel, also pictured above, has been open since June and is still on display at the park.

Success has come in a torrent for Rudresh Mahanthappa since he released "Kinsmen" almost a year ago. The album was declared one of the best of 2008 by folks from the New York Times, NPR, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, the Boston Globe...well, you get the idea.

The Fiery Furnaces may now hail from Brooklyn but they were born in Oak Park, sprouting from the fertile crowns of brother and sister team Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger. They've made their name creating markedly disjointed music, only recently cutting the artifice with steadier and more traditional drumming alongside the occasional glam chord. Their last album, Widow City, found the band finally channeling their weirdness through undeniable pop structures pocked with indelible melodies. To be honest, it was the first Fiery Furnaces album we honestly liked from start to finish.

The Grant Park Orchestra has performed for the City's Independence Eve celebration every year since the Petrillo Music Shell opened in 1978, a tradition that is changing this Friday when the 85th Army Band takes over the pre-fireworks concert. The GPO will instead perform a daytime concert on July 4 in the Pritzker Pavilion, an event the Grant Park Music Festival and Millennium Park are characterizing as a new tradition, indicating that this change is a permanent one.

The Dirty Projectors' new album Bitte Orca is already popping up on "album of the year" lists, and while we find such evaluation to be criminally premature, the disc is certainly one of the most arresting listens we've recently encountered. Usually when one bandies about the "difficult to categorize" terminology in music reviews it means the reviewer thinks the tunes are simply weird but is afraid to make a judgment based on that for fear of looking out of touch. In the case of The Dirty Projectors, it's an excellent description though if you pressed us we'd describe it as ethereal indie funk.

Chicago's snowballing new music scene won't let summer - the usual downtime for musicians - slow it down. Tonight is the premiere of Dusk Variations, a new series of four free contemporary music concerts at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.

Whack-ass weather be damned, it's summer, and Millennium Park is plowing ahead like we aren't in the middle of the lousiest warm season in twelve years. The gems continue Thursday evening with a free taping of "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!"

The Grant Park Music Festival's 75th season gets started tomorrow evening at 6:30 p.m. at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. The anniversary celebration kicks off with concerts on Wednesday and Friday at the Pritzker Pavilion and on Saturday in the Harris Theater.

       

We're keyed up about Saturday's grand opening of the AIC's new Modern Wing. As the largest expansion in the museum’s history (with a price tag of - holy shit - about $290 million), this new three-floor facility offers 65,000 feet of new galleries that will house both modern and contemporary works, photography, as well as architecture and design collections. It's sheer magnitude will make the Art Institute the second largest museum in the United States. And perhaps we should mention that the New York Times has given the Modern Wing an absolutely glowing review. (For a peep at their lovely photo slideshow, click here.)

Unlike Navy Pier, which functions happily as a tourist magnet, Millennium Park welcomes as many real live Chicagoans to its green spaces and promenades as it does out-of-towners. It's as much ours as it is the visitors', a gathering place for everyone, and it doesn't need a Bubba Gump Shrimp outlet to entice. And while the imminent opening of the Art Institute's Modern Wing at its south end is certainly the biggest park news, the lineup for summer 2009's Edible Audible Picnic series sounds pretty awesome, too. Get ready to grab a sack lunch and check out some jams under Frank Ghery's trellis.

Estera Bulbucan is learning the hard way you can't just take an ambulance. The Des Plaines woman allegedly swiped an ambulance from Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge yesterday evening and went cruising, winding up at Millennium Park where things got even more fun. According to CBS 2:

     

How much huge, interactive, contemporary art is too much? Millennium Park is trying to find out. Besides the four large Chinese sculptures on display starting tomorrow, two temporary pavilions will also be joining the cavalcade of spectacle in the park this June. The "Burnham Pavilions" are being installed by The Burnham Plan Centennial, a group who, as the name obviously implies, is celebrating the 100 year anniversary of architect Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago. The pavilions are "intended to echo the audacity of the 1909 Burnham Plan, which proclaimed, 'What we as a people decide to do in the public interest we can and surely will bring to pass.'"

In the battle of outdoor music venues, Millennium Park holds a commanding lead: it's free, the overhead weave of speakers ensures even sound throughout the lawn area, and the sightlines are good. It's on this last point that Ravinia was particularly lacking. We've spent more than one cabernet-addled evening facing the wrong direction or immersed in shrubs, having given up on trying to be involved with the performance.

Gorilla Tango Theatre, 1919 N. Milwaukee Ave., Fridays and Saturdays through 12/20, 11:30 p.m., $16

Ah, Mother Nature, you fickle beast! Even as we prepare for a return to chilly weather this weekend, the recent warm spell has claimed at least one casualty: the opening of the Millennium Park's McCormick Tribune Ice Rink. Due to the warm weather and a current forecast for rain, the rink's opening, originally scheduled for Wednesday, November 12, has been delayed; it's now tentatively scheduled to reopen on Wednesday, November 19 and will remain open through Sunday, March 15, 2009 (again, weather permitting).

surprising. Hell, they probably spend $1 million just on Windex for the Bean. The real shocker probably unknown to most Chicagoans is that it wasn't supposed to cost anything at all. Similar to the Buckingham Fountain Endowment Fund, Millennium Park maintenance was supposed to be funded by a conservancy paid for by private donors. But unlike Buckingham Fountain, the conservancy was not backed by any real dollars, but rather empty pledges. And once donors learned that keeping Millennium Park looking spiffy involved just a bit more than cutting the grass, they bailed:

            

The weather couldn't have been any better yesterday as Chicago Gourmet officially kicked off at Millennium Park. A press release sent to us shortly after 9 p.m. last night announced that over 3,000 visitors attended the event, with last night's Grand Cru wine tasting selling out completely.

After months of buildup and debate, the inaugural Chicago Gourmet festival of food and wine kicks off this evening with a gala reception at the Harris Theatre in Millennium Park. You just know that Mayor Daley is eager to showcase the rarefied air of the Chicago restaurant industry mere months before the IOC makes its final decision on the host city for the 2016 Summer Games. He tried to sell the sizzle in this week's edition of Time Out Chicago:

It's been a season of milestones for the city-sponsored music festivals. Today marks the 10th anniversary of the World Music Festival. What started out as a small festival centered in Chicago's notable places for international music has evolved into a city-wide event, with artists performing throughout the city limits. WMF highlights Chicago's reputation as a city of neighborhoods. In incorporating most of the major club venues, WMF also does more to shine a positive spotlight on our vibrant music club scene in one week than venue owners often do themselves. Only the ongoing resistance to the promoters ordinance can unite club owners as well.

In the last decade, the Chicago World Music Festival has gone from an nascent underfunded gathering of a few groups from around the world, to a huge, weeklong celebration of global sound featuring dozens of venues and group after group of performers and musicians...and though it's still underfunded, the city and sponsors have come together once again to put on a tour de force of world music.

The long-anticipated and much-discussed Chicago Gourmet festival at Millennium Park is just over a week away. It's no secret that entrance to the event itself will cost some their entire month's rent, and then some.

This month, you don’t have to be among the well-heeled to afford a ticket to the ballet. Quality ballet performances can be pretty gosh-durn expensive; don’t miss these chances to experience one of the most beautiful forms of dance for a relative steal.