Latest news with #UnionStationMusic
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Afternoon Briefing: Rev. Michael Pfleger reflects on 50 years as a priest
Good afternoon, Chicago. The Chicago Bears are shifting their focus to a new stadium in Arlington Heights, a project that would depend on state legislation allowing for negotiated financing of large-scale development projects. 'Over the last few months, we have made significant progress with the leaders in Arlington Heights, and look forward to continuing to work with state and local leaders on making a transformative economic development project for the region a reality,' the team said in a statement to the Tribune on Friday. Here's what to know about the Bears' new era since the team purchased the Arlington Heights site in 2023. And here's what else is happening today. And remember, for the latest breaking news in Chicago, visit and sign up to get our alerts on all your devices. Subscribe to more newsletters | Asking Eric | Horoscopes | Puzzles & Games | Today in History The Chicago-born priest has been a fixture at the predominantly Black St. Sabina Church — and in the Auburn Gresham community — since being assigned to the parish more than 40 years ago. Read more here. More top news stories: Mayor Brandon Johnson's team defended failed property tax hike plan to investors Suburban accountant accused in $10 million COVID-19 unemployment fraud scheme Investigation 'ongoing' after man shot outside popular Wrigleyville bar, police say Homer Glen-based home rehabber Pawel Radzik paid $66,000 last year for the modest, three-bedroom ranch-style brick house on 141st Place. Read more here. More top business stories: These retailers have announced higher prices amid President Trump's tariffs Will County Board rejects solar facilities near New Lenox, Wilmington For many prospects, combine week can be a reminder of the work left to do before they can become truly competitive NBA players. Kasparas Jakučionis was no exception. Read more here. More top sports stories: Chicago Sky's 2025 season is all about change and growth — 'but the goal is to make the playoffs' Julius 'Dr. J' Erving will coach Chicago Triplets, the BIG3's 3-on-3 team where trash-talking is encouraged Turns out one thing remains outside of Beyoncé's superhuman control: The weather. Threats of severe storms that failed to fully materialize in the South Loop, apart from wind and rain, delayed the start of the first of the megastar's three-night residency Thursday at Soldier Field. Read more here. More top Eat. Watch. Do. stories: Photos: 'Union Station Music' takes over the Great Hall at Chicago's Union Station Sandburg High School freshman is youngest nominated filmmaker in Chicago Horror Film Festival In a massive setback, House Republicans failed to push their big package of tax breaks and spending cuts through the Budget Committee, as a handful of conservatives joined all Democrats in a stunning vote against it. Read more here. More top stories from around the world: Wisconsin judge accused of helping a man dodge immigration agents seeks donations for attorneys Kid Rock's Nashville restaurant sends staff home to avoid ICE raid, according to report
Chicago Tribune
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Photos: ‘Union Station Music' takes over the Great Hall at Chicago's Union Station
'Union Station Music,' a onetime performance of ten musicians inside Union Station's Great Hall is led by cellist/composer Lia Kohl. Kohl makes music out of noise others might wish to tune out: turn-signal clicks, a far-off tornado siren test, the hums of refrigerators. After noticing the music piped into the hall, she reached out to both Union Station and musical incubator Experimental Sound Studio to propose composing her own.
Chicago Tribune
12-05-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Afternoon Briefing: Piping plover Searocket returns to Chicago
Good afternoon, Chicago. On March 12, 2024, Laterria Smith's phone buzzed with a text that was, according to Cook County prosecutors, like 'something out of a horror movie.' It was an automated message from the Illinois Department of Corrections informing her that the man who had terrorized her since high school would be released from prison shortly after threatening her life, Cook County prosecutors said Monday at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. One day later, they said, he barged into her Edgewater apartment, stabbed her 11 times and more tragically still, fatally stabbed her 11-year-old son, Jayden Perkins. The prosecutors opened their case today in the trial of the alleged attacker, Crosetti Brand, 39, who is facing felony charges of murder, attempted murder, home invasion and aggravated domestic battery in slaying on March 13 of last year. Here's what else is happening today. And remember, for the latest breaking news in Chicago, visit and sign up to get our alerts on all your devices. Subscribe to more newsletters | Asking Eric | Horoscopes | Puzzles & Games | Today in History A beloved Chicago mom celebrated a special day over the weekend with a return to Montrose Beach. Her name is Searocket and she is partner to Imani, the piping plover son of local celebrity pair Monty and Rose. Read more here. More top news stories: Tim Anderson had been one of the few Sox players in recent years to own a Chicago-area home. In Flossmoor, he and his wife paid $450,000 in 2017 for the home. Read more here. More top business stories: The Chicago Sky made their last three roster cuts yesterday, finalizing the 2025 roster less than a week ahead of the team's season opener against the Indiana Fever. Read more here. More top sports stories: 'Union Station Music,' takes over the Great Hall in a onetime performance on May 15, during rush hour. Read more here. More top Eat. Watch. Do. stories: While Republicans insist they are simply rooting out 'waste, fraud and abuse' to generate savings with new work and eligibility requirements, Democrats warn that millions of Americans will lose coverage. Read more here. More top stories from around the world:
Chicago Tribune
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Cellist Lia Kohl finds music in the everyday. She'll soon take a Union Station rush hour by surprise.
While waiting for a train at Union Station recently, Lia Kohl noticed an unexpected sound echoing delicately above the din of commuters and travelers. The station's grand, high-ceilinged Great Hall was playing background music — not exactly Muzak, but about as tame, most of it sugary pop from the 2000s and 2010s. 'I'm really interested in this idea of background music. Like, what is that music for? Is it to make people happy, or calm? Is it just to fill up space? Is it a Spotify playlist?' Kohl wonders. 'For me, it's more of a spiritual question: Why is this here?' Kohl is exactly the kind of listener to home in on sounds like these. The cellist and composer, 36, makes music out of noise others might wish to tune out: turn-signal clicks, a far-off tornado siren test, the hums of refrigerators. After noticing the music piped into the hall, she reached out to both Union Station and musical incubator Experimental Sound Studio to propose composing her own, performed live by herself and nine other roving musicians. That project, 'Union Station Music,' takes over the Great Hall in a onetime performance on May 15, during rush hour. Kohl isn't expecting a rapt audience — that's not really the point, she says. The composition will be open-ended enough for commuters to catch just a snippet before rushing off to their trains. Modeled on the same resonances and sound profile as the station's generic pop playlist, it could even be tuned out entirely. The sounds of a busy Union Station? Kohl considers them just as much a part of 'Union Station Music' as the score itself. 'Someone from the station very apologetically told me, 'I'm really sorry, but the one thing we can't do is cut out the train announcements.' And I was like, 'No, no, you don't understand; I love train announcements,'' she says, gleefully. Kohl's current experimental mode may seem like a far cry from her classical training. In retrospect, though, there were always hints she would pursue the collaborative improvisational work for which she's become known. After picking up the cello in grade school, in San Francisco, Kohl followed all the typical beats of someone destined for a classical career: She enrolled in Indiana University's prestigious cello program and moved to New York, then Chicago, to pursue her studies further. (For a time, she even studied with John Sharp, the Chicago Symphony's principal cellist.) Throughout, Kohl was drawn to the chamber repertoire above all else, despite a nagging feeling that she never quite fit in with her peers. 'I need some kind of collaborator, something where I don't know what's going to happen,' Kohl says. 'Even as a quote-unquote 'solo artist,' I love the feeling of responding to something. I think that I need it.' Kohl got her start doing just that with dancers from the soon-to-be-shuttered Links Hall. That grew into ever more venturesome collaborations: with the puppet company Manual Cinema, performance-art collective Mocrep, drummer Makaya McCraven, Finom's Macie Stewart and fellow avant-garde cellist Katinka Kleijn, to name a few. Among her beloved colleagues was Mars Williams, the prolific Chicago saxophonist who died in 2023. Later this month, Kohl will take part in two performances commemorating what would have been Williams' 70th birthday and the opening of his archive, held in perpetuity at Experimental Sound Studio: a remount of Williams' epic music-and-dance piece 'The Devil's Whistle,' on May 24, and a brand-new tribute of her own, 'Mars Williams' Toy Story,' on May 25. The latter will use Williams' own massive toy collection, which he scavenged from trinket and pawn shops around the world. The toys now reside at ESS, in the Williams archive; when Kohl met up to chat at a North Side café, she arrived with an empty suitcase to cart more of them home. 'I got to spend a lot more time with Mars in New Orleans for the premiere of 'Devil's Whistle,' just hearing about his life story,' Kohl says. 'I think it's very easy for someone of that generation to think, 'I've established myself, and you're nobody. Why should I talk to you?' But he was always very interested in everyone else and what they were doing.' Kohl was bracing for the experience of rummaging through Williams' toys to be emotional. It has been — but not in the way one might expect. More often than not, on visits to the archive, she's found herself giggling uncontrollably, taking the same delight in the toys' goofy sounds as Williams once did. 'Some of them have price tags on them in Euros. Some are obviously old, made with that kind of old plastic that they don't make anymore,' she says, with obvious delight. 'I can feel his decisions; I can feel his humor. It feels like a collaboration between me and his brain. … I get to interact with my friend again.' Like so many social musicians, Kohl struggled with introducing a feeling of collaboration — and the spontaneity it brings — while sequestered away during the pandemic. To replicate that, she began playing alongside staticky, portable radios. The radios pick up random snippets from live broadcasts, giving Kohl a broad and unpredictable palette to work with. The concept became the basis of her 2022 album 'Too Small to Be a Plain' and many live performances since, both solo and ensemble. She's performed with radios all over Western Europe, Scandinavia, the U.K. and Chile (which, she adds, 'has amazing radio'). 'I didn't think about this when I was starting to make work with radio, but every new city that I go to is a new landscape,' she says. 'It's always fun to be in a place where I don't speak the language. I'll have moments at shows where audiences will laugh, because I catch something on the radio that they think is funny. It makes me feel like a ventriloquist.' 'Union Station Music' and 'Mars Williams' Toy Story' won't use live radio, but her forthcoming duo record with Chicago artist and synth player Zander Raymond, releasing next month, does. So does a new work Kohl will present alongside art by Ximena Garrido-Lecca on July 13, at the University of Chicago's Renaissance Society. Meanwhile, Kohl will be in residence at the Hungry Brain every Thursday in July, allowing audiences to take in the variegated facets of her music. What it might sound like? If Kohl's work so far is any indication, the whole world is on the table.
