Herbie Hancock landed in Chicago for his fifth appearance in a Symphony Center Presents Jazz performance. His band included another jazz master, Terence Blanchard on the trumpet, James Genus on […]

Champion is the story of welterweight boxer Emile Griffith’s career in boxing with a life-defining fatal bout in 1962 against Benny “Kid” Paret. I believe that an opera in jazz […]

I gave high praise to Terence Blanchard’s opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones. The opening night performance at the Lyric was filled with excitement and local luminaries. The following […]

My first opera was at age 10 when our parish priest took us to see La Boheme at the Lyric Opera House. I always thought that opera was sung in […]

Subtitled New Orleans: The City of Music, Up From the Streets is a documentary from Michael Murphy (Make It Funky!) that attempts nothing short of giving a primer on the entire […]