AUGUST
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The folks running the show at the Woodstock Mozart Festival are turning the spotlight on their own talent this final weekend of the annual event. Artistic adviser Mark Peskanov will conduct and play violin in tonight’s concert, which also features trumpeter Matthew Lee, flutist Robin Fellows, and oboist Deborah Stevenson. The program includes Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 2 and Mozart’s Diverti-mento no. 15 in B-flat. It’ll be repeated Saturday, August 16; both shows start at 8. Saturday afternoon at 4, Peskanov and festival general director and pianist Anita Whalen will present an all-Mozart chamber concert with members of the festival orchestra. Evening tickets range from $20 to $42; afternoon admission is $20. The festival is at the historic Woodstock Opera House, 121 Van Buren, on the Woodstock town square. Call 815-338-5300 for more information.
16 SATURDAY
18 MONDAY
When Jill Nelson needed a publisher for her first novel, Sexual Healing, she turned to local editor Doug Seibold, who last year founded the independent Agate Publishing. The sexually explicit tale of two successful African-American women in their 40s who open a brothel had been rejected by several editors before Nelson showed it to Seibold. But he’d edited her first book, a scabrous–and best-selling–memoir of her days as a reporter for the Washington Post, and after reading this one he signed it as the debut title for his fledgling press. Sexual Healing came out in June, and their second collaboration seems to have paid off–it’s “a post-feminist fable of sexual empowerment that’s smart, explicit, and side-splittingly funny,” raved a recent review in Ebony. Nelson will read from the book tonight at 7:30 at Barbara’s Bookstore, 1100 Lake in Oak Park (708-848-9140). She appears in Chicago Tuesday, August 19, at 7 at Mothaland, 1635 E. 55th (773-955-6969), and Thursday, August 21, at 7:30 at Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark (773-769-9299). All events are free.
