Artist Khaaliq Haneef closes out his debut solo show, “The Devious Mind of Khaaliq Haneef” with Sounds & S’mores, an open mike at the Lawndale Pop-Up Spot (1408 S. Central Park). Hip-hop and R&B artist Khing Kwon will be master of ceremonies, and DJ Ramiro, who has a monthly night at Osito’s Tap in Little Village, will be performing his blend of house, disco, funk, and hip-hop. Haneef’s work is informed by graffiti and muralism, and he handles Khing Kwon’s branding. This will be a night of collaboration and joy in Lawndale. Prepare to share your talents from 7-11 PM. (MC)

September marks Quimby’s (1854 W. North) 31st anniversary, and what better way to celebrate than with the store’s first in-person event since the pandemic. Join Quimby’s alumni Corinne Halbert and Caroline Cash as they discuss Halbert’s new graphic novel Acid Nun, which sees its protagonists turn a bad acid trip into a journey of self discovery. Cash, an Ignatz Award winner, will also talk about her debut graphic novel, Girl in the World, which follows a group of girls through a chaotic 24 hours that starts with some, ahem, interesting Facebook events. The talk runs from 7-9 PM. It’s free and open to everyone, but masks are required. (MC)

The Crooked Mouth, a folk cabaret musical offshoot of sorts of Curious Theatre Branch (Curious cofounders Jenny Magnus and Beau O’Reilly are two of the band members) performs tonight at Constellation (3111 N. Western), alongside a new “very short” play by Theater Oobleck cofounder Mickle Maher entitled John Keats on Cats. (If you saw Maher’s brilliant William Blake-inspired There Is a Happiness That Morning Isduring one of its several iterations a few years ago, then you know already about his affection for 19th-century British poets.) The show starts at 8:30 PM, and there is also a livestream available. Tickets are $15 ($5 livestream) at constellation-chicago.com. (KR)

More music options for tonight: the sprawling, multi-venue, nine day World Music Festival opens tonight with “Ragamala: A Celebration of Indian Classical Music.” This 14-hour series of performances (don’t worry, you can drop in or out anytime) scheduled from 6 PM tonight until 8 AM Saturday at Preston Bradley Hall inside the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington, third floor) is a bit of a reflection of what to expect from the World Music Festival: incredible musicians informed by global traditions, some playing Chicago for the very first time, and it’s all for free! Read more about the festival and see the full schedule here. Prefer some punk for your Friday? This week, Gossip Wolf tipped us off to tonight’s Nora Marks record release show at Gman Tavern (3740 N. Clark). Cut Your Losses, OK Cool, and Pinksqueeze round out the bill and the 21+ show starts at 9 PM (tickets are here). (SCJ)

It’s not quite October as I’m writing this, but there is certainly an autumn chill in the air in Chicago, which leads thoughts to the best part of the year: spooky season! Kick it off along with a group of writers, podcasters, occultists, and other individuals interested in the paranormal by attending the all-online PanParacon 2022. The “pan” in the name stands for a few things including the pandemic (organizers strove to create a fully online experience in order to accommodate for community members who are not able to travel right now), and also the god Pan (many of the organizers and participants found each other online after watching the Planet Weird series Hellier which covers Pan extensively in the show’s second season). Tonight, you can tune in at 5 PM for a panel discussion on “Identity and the Otherworldly” featuring artist Leslie Hornsberry, DEI practitioner and blogger Nick Hornsberry, Kaj Jensen, podcaster Dash Kwiatkowski, and Mortellus, the High Priestess of the Coven of the Leaves. The convention continues through Sunday and a full schedule with more information is available here. (SCJ)

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Born in Pennsylvania, Ben Zucker lived in Berkeley, New England, and London before moving to Chicago for a graduate composition program at Northwestern University. He was excited to come here to study because he’d been a longtime fan of the city’s rich, varied musical scenes, including the jazz stalwarts in the AACM and the adventurous rock bands that have defined Chicago indie labels Thrill Jockey and Drag City. Zucker’s music has a similarly ambitious spirit. In 2017 he composed a work for cello and objects titled QOWOOOPO, inspired by the browser game QWOP; in 2019 he released a vocal piece titled Semiramide Riconosciuta (An Archaeology), inspired by queen Shammuramat of the Neo-Assyrian Empire; and earlier this year he wrote music for a puppet show by Chicago-based director and puppet artist Jaerin Son titled Dogs or Cats; Augmented Body.

On his 2021 album Demiurgent (on local label Fallen Moon), Zucker adds studio manipulations to material culled from live improvisations and field recordings. The title’s reference to a “demiurge”—a term ancient Greek philosophers used to describe the creator of the world—foreshadows the spectacle of the music. In “Cereltan,” soft percussive tones appear amid shapeshifting ambience like stars glistening in a night sky; in the pensive, brooding “Edicroes,” the way electric noise and wavering electronics feed off each other feels like a cycling of life and death. Zucker’s most recent studio release, this spring’s Having Becames, is centered on meditative drones built from single-take vibraphone recordings, and on a couple tracks he placed tack and modeling clay on the tone bars to alter their sound, creating something subdued and graceful.

On September 30, Zucker releases Semiterritory (Ears & Eyes), a stirring live recording by his experimental jazz quartet, Fifth Season, but that won’t affect his performance at Constellation. He’s presenting a doctoral recital showcasing four different works based on his dissertation, joined by ten musicians—including vocalist Julian Otis, clarinetist Jeff Kimmel, and violist Johanna Brock—and adding his own trumpet, vibraphone, and electronics. Zucker’s dissertation interrogates the idea of “openness” involved in compositions featuring indeterminacy and improvisation. Two of the pieces he’ll present are larger ensemble works where the music will change based on performers’ observations of their own and others’ playing. The other two are part of a new series in which notation will be read and then reread with what he calls “changing conditions of interpretation.” That open structure speaks to Zucker’s curiosity, which will be on full display at this vital concert.

Ben Zucker Sun 10/9 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, 18+

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Now celebrating its 45th anniversary, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago presents Refraction, a mixed bill of contemporary works consisting of the world premiere of Chicago choreographer Randy Duncan’s Love Infinite, The Windless Hold by Osnel Delgado, and Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Dichotomy of a Journey—for one weekend only at the Harris Theater. With a program composed of works created in the past three years, the company under the leadership of artistic director Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell seems to be evolving away from the cut-glass precision and Eurocentricity that has for many years been its signature and toward a commitment to the legacy and the here-and-now of Chicago and American dance. 

Refraction Through 10/2: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, 312-334-7777, harristheaterchicago.org, $15-$110

Stripes of light form a diagonal passage within which two figures begin in The Windless Hold, as if to visualize vibrations emanating from their journey or barriers to it, a glimpse of a story that rapidly yields as the ensemble enters the stage, and dancers clothed in velour move sculpturally to arrive in shapely embraces that form and disintegrate. A solo danced by Jacqueline Burnett acts as a fulcrum in the work—within a circle of light, she becomes the center of gravity for the roil of others who circulate but do not touch her. A duet with Jack Henderson is punctuated by light (designed by Manuel Da Silva), a rapid lift into a briefly intensifying gleam is breathtaking in its simplicity, a reach from one to the other as the light falls makes an otherwise abstract work into an essay on yearning. 

Jack Henderson and Jacqueline Burnett in Osnel Delgado’s The Windless Hold Credit: Michelle Reid

Love Infinite, Duncan’s first work for Hubbard Street, opens with a focus on new HSDC dancer Shota Miyoshi, moving in an urgent solo in front of a horizon of standing dancers within a mist of light as if refracted through a waterfall. Miyoshi is magnetic, the generous pulse of this work—as the others join his energetic field, the stage becomes alive with the action that so characterizes Duncan’s work, in which masses of bodies animate and indicate an environment, simultaneously an ocean filled with schools of fish and the whirl and swirl of urban life, athletic and balletic and crowd-pleasing. Within a work that could render an individual anonymous, whether by himself or in a crowd, radiant Miyoshi has the time of his life, and we can’t help but get ours with him. There is no subtlety about Love Infinite; it is designed to dazzle, and it does.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago performs Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Dichotomy of a Journey as part of the Refraction program at Harris Theater. Credit: Michelle Reid

The most mature work on the program, Dichotomy of a Journey appeals visually and viscerally, moving dancers in vermilion through a transformative arc from isolation to collective liberation by episodes. “Connection” brings a couple (Burnett and David Schultz) to touch at the elbow, a joint that can’t grasp or hold, a closeness from which they sometimes recoil, sometimes effloresce, illustrating the range of tenderness and its relationship to consent. “Vision,” the central solo (danced at opening by Elliot Hammans), embodies hope as a form of abjection, an isolated body contorted with the reception of an intuition or emotion heavy with greatness. And “Resilience” brings four individuals (Alexandria Best, Aaron Choate, Henderson, and Miyoshi) to lead a movement into joy—with breathtaking virtuosity affirming and never overwhelming the human spirit.

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Now celebrating its 45th anniversary, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago presents Refraction, a mixed bill of contemporary works consisting of the world premiere of Chicago choreographer Randy Duncan’s Love Infinite, The Windless Hold by Osnel Delgado, and Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Dichotomy of a Journey—for one weekend only at the Harris Theater. With a program composed of works created in the past three years, the company under the leadership of artistic director Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell seems to be evolving away from the cut-glass precision and Eurocentricity that has for many years been its signature and toward a commitment to the legacy and the here-and-now of Chicago and American dance. 

Refraction Through 10/2: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, 312-334-7777, harristheaterchicago.org, $15-$110

Stripes of light form a diagonal passage within which two figures begin in The Windless Hold, as if to visualize vibrations emanating from their journey or barriers to it, a glimpse of a story that rapidly yields as the ensemble enters the stage, and dancers clothed in velour move sculpturally to arrive in shapely embraces that form and disintegrate. A solo danced by Jacqueline Burnett acts as a fulcrum in the work—within a circle of light, she becomes the center of gravity for the roil of others who circulate but do not touch her. A duet with Jack Henderson is punctuated by light (designed by Manuel Da Silva), a rapid lift into a briefly intensifying gleam is breathtaking in its simplicity, a reach from one to the other as the light falls makes an otherwise abstract work into an essay on yearning. 

Jack Henderson and Jacqueline Burnett in Osnel Delgado’s The Windless Hold Credit: Michelle Reid

Love Infinite, Duncan’s first work for Hubbard Street, opens with a focus on new HSDC dancer Shota Miyoshi, moving in an urgent solo in front of a horizon of standing dancers within a mist of light as if refracted through a waterfall. Miyoshi is magnetic, the generous pulse of this work—as the others join his energetic field, the stage becomes alive with the action that so characterizes Duncan’s work, in which masses of bodies animate and indicate an environment, simultaneously an ocean filled with schools of fish and the whirl and swirl of urban life, athletic and balletic and crowd-pleasing. Within a work that could render an individual anonymous, whether by himself or in a crowd, radiant Miyoshi has the time of his life, and we can’t help but get ours with him. There is no subtlety about Love Infinite; it is designed to dazzle, and it does.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago performs Darrell Grand Moultrie’s Dichotomy of a Journey as part of the Refraction program at Harris Theater. Credit: Michelle Reid

The most mature work on the program, Dichotomy of a Journey appeals visually and viscerally, moving dancers in vermilion through a transformative arc from isolation to collective liberation by episodes. “Connection” brings a couple (Burnett and David Schultz) to touch at the elbow, a joint that can’t grasp or hold, a closeness from which they sometimes recoil, sometimes effloresce, illustrating the range of tenderness and its relationship to consent. “Vision,” the central solo (danced at opening by Elliot Hammans), embodies hope as a form of abjection, an isolated body contorted with the reception of an intuition or emotion heavy with greatness. And “Resilience” brings four individuals (Alexandria Best, Aaron Choate, Henderson, and Miyoshi) to lead a movement into joy—with breathtaking virtuosity affirming and never overwhelming the human spirit.

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