OCTOBER
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You could spend Halloween getting shit faced at a club. Again. But why spend ghouldom’s night of nights too numb to feel a shiver? (Anyway, bars are nicer on All Souls’ Day, when the other drunks are in bed sleeping it off.) Instead you could wallow in the roar and creep of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette, and Bach’s Toccato in D Minor, all played on the Music Institute of Chicago’s 1913 Skinner organ. The concert begins tonight at 10:30 PM in Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago in Evanston. Featured organists are James Russell Brown, Richard Barrick Hoskins, David Schrader, and L. Richard Sobak. Tickets are $25, $15 if you come in costume, and proceeds go toward restoring the Skinner. Call 847-905-1500.
Meanwhile, down in Hyde Park, the Academy of Ancient Music presents Bach-analia, an all-Bach program that includes the Suite no. 2 in B Minor and the Brandenberg Con-certo no. 5 in D Major. It’s at 8 PM in the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall, 1131 E. 57th in Chicago. Tickets are $30, $11 for students; call 773-702-8068.
When you say Nighties at the Bottle Top, the first thing I think is “I can’t afford that kind of dominatrix,” but the phrase is really just the name given to a new series of art exhibits in the space above the Empty Bottle. Organized by an as yet unnamed collective of artists, “Nighties” will run the first Saturday of every month for one night only. Tonight’s show, a “free-for-all” curated by Thea Liberty, includes photography, prints, drawings, paintings, and 3-D paper dolls by a dozen or so contributors. Upcoming months will feature shows with themes like “portraits of women by women” and “memory against history.” Shows open at 8 and run until the bar downstairs closes; they’re free with admission to the club, though donations will be accepted. Tonight’s lineup downstairs includes Stones Throw hip-hop artists Peanut Butter Wolf, Wildchild, Dudley Perkins, and DJ Romes; tickets are $15, $12 in advance. The Empty Bottle is at 1035 N. Western in Chicago; call 773-276-3600.
4 TUESDAY
Poor superfans–your Chicago Bears are already waiting for next year. But there’s always memory lane: tonight local sports talk radio heroes the Wise Guys (aka Mike North and Doug Buffone, who broadcast on the Score, 670 AM, every weekday afternoon from 2 to 6:30) continue the Mike Ditka Dinner Series, their Thursday night on-air parties held with da coach at the Chicago location of his namesake restaurant, wine bar, and cigar shop. The series began October 23 and will continue through the NFL season. Ditka will be on hand from 5 to 6:30. Listening to the broadcast costs only your tolerance for umpteen used-car and diet commercials, and there’s no cover to attend the event at the restaurant, 100 E. Chestnut in Chicago–but dishes like the Kick-Ass Paddle Steak will set you back more than $30. Reservations are required; call 312-587-8989.
