OK, the blog post title is a little cute-sy and Marx Brother-ish. On Friday night, I attended the opening night of
It was cold, icy, and grey last weekend in Chicago and I could have just curled up indoors and watched “Project Runaway” over and over again (plus it was the first weekend right after the 30-xxx birthday, which was cause enough for a solitary meditation on one’s inevitable need for Botox injections and tummy tucks all in itself). However, between Edward Albee, taiko drumming, and a Sunday dinner club dinner (not to mention the incomprehensible, and frankly alarming, sight of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s bare derriere on film), there was absolutely no reason to stay home and stew.
I seem to be on the mailing list of all arts organizations in Chicago, so I get a lot of invitations to benefits and special events, subscription offers, ticket discount codes, donation and gift-giving requests, solicitations to be on a kidney donor list, etc. etc. Both my mailbox at home and my email inbox are filled to the brim with mailings from a variety of arts groups, which is terrific since I get to see what are coming up in the very dynamic, very busy Chicago cultural calendar. I was particularly thrilled to get the attractive glossy brochures for the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre’s World Stage Series, beginning November 21 and Chicago Opera Theater’s 2008 spring season, beginning April 30, 2008. These two companies have delivered knock-out, brilliant, world-class productions in the past so that I was reaching for the phone and my credit card even as I was thumbing through the marketing materials.
I’ve been trying to go to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNow series for a while, and I especially wanted to see Dawn Upshaw’s soldout, acclaimed performance of Oswaldo Golijov’s song cycle “Ayre” last spring. I finally made it last Monday for the 10th anniversary season opener, and I have been kicking myself for waiting this long. I think MusicNow is one of those precious gems that make Chicago truly an indisputable world-class cultural community - it promotes new work by exceptional musical artists performed by the acclaimed CSO members, makes these performances available to a wider range of audiences by pricing tickets at a reasonable level (who can beat 20 bucks for the symphony, 15 if you have the TimeOut Chicago discount), and provides a channel for social interaction among the audience members after the concert with its beer-and-pizza reception (think a really cultured frat party where people are talking about the Nietzschean undertones of Philip Glass’s oeuvre instead of say college basketball).




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