CLASSICAL
CHRISTOPH ESCHENBACH
Ravinia’s former music director conducts his first Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts of the Ravinia season next weekend. His program at 8 p.m. Friday holds the Brahms Double Concerto and Beethoven Triple Concerto, featuring as soloists pianist Tzimon Barto, violinist Julia Fischer and cellist Claudio Bohorquez. The indefatigable Barto returns at 8 p.m. Saturday to perform a clutch of concertante works by Dvorak, Grieg and Chopin. There will be more Dvorak — the Violin Concerto, played by rising star Erik Schumann — on Eschenbach’s CSO concert at 7 p.m. July 18. On the same program, Dimitri Maslennikovsolos in the First Shostakovich Cello Concerto, with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 completing the bill; Ravinia Festival, Lake Cook and Green Bay Roads, Highland Park; $20-$40; $10 lawn; 847-266-5100.
DUO-PIANO FESTIVAL
The Music Institute of Chicago’s annual summer concert series gets under way with “A Trio of Duos” at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston. The husband-and-wife team of Claire Aebersold and Ralph Neiweem will perform music of Mozart, Liszt, Respighi, Debussy and Johann Strauss Jr. $10-$15; 847-905-1500.
GRANT PARK FESTIVAL
The festival will inaugurate the new Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park with a gala concert featuring the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus, Carlos Kalmar conducting, at 7:30 p.m. Friday. The festival’s new home will play host to popular classical fare of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Copland, along with the world premiere of resident composer John Corigliano’s “Midsummer Fanfare,” commissioned for the opening. The Pritzker’s opening weekend continues at 7:30 p.m. Saturday with Mahler’s “Ruckert Lieder” as sung by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore. Kalmar wraps up the weekend with works by Elgar, Shostakovich and Corigliano, at 6:30 p.m. July 18; all three concerts are free; 205 E. Randolph Drive; 312-742-4763.
— John von Rhein
DANCE
AMERICAN SPANISH DANCE FESTIVAL
Libby Komaiko’s acclaimed Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theater presents “Flamenco Passion,” the 28th annual festival, with music, poetry, songs and dance, performed by the full 40-member troupe, Friday through July 18 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, Skokie; $18-$35. 847-673-6300.
— Sid Smith
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JAZZ
BOBBI WILSYN
Vocal jazz in Chicago is almost inconceivable without Wilsyn, who shares a double-bill with singer Eddie Chapell; 7 p.m. Friday in the Columbus Park Refectory, 5701 W. Jackson Blvd.; free; 312-427-1676.
PONCHO SANCHEZ
The indefatigable conguero leads the most persuasive midsize ensemble in Latin jazz; 9 and 11:59 p.m. Saturday at HotHouse, 31 E. Balbo Drive; $30; 312-362-9707.
— Howard Reich
MOVIES
BLISS FROM THAILAND
One of the biggest critical hits at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival — winner of the “Un Certain Regard” first prize — was “Blissfully Yours,” a simple, lyrical, highly sensual Thai film about an afternoon of love between an illegal Burmese immigrant and his Thai girlfriend, made by the remarkable young Thai director and School of the Art Institute filmmaking graduate Apichatpong Weerasethakulcq (“Call Me Joe”). Premiering at Facets, “Blissfully Yours” fuses rhapsodic Asian visual styles with the funkier techniques of the American experimental filmmakers (such as Andy Warhol) Joe discovered here in Chicago. In Thai with English subtitles; 1517 W. Fullerton Ave.; 773-281-9075.
MAX AND MARIA
“My Sister Maria” is Maximilian Schell’s loving tribute to his older sister, Maria Schell: The glories she once knew, the sad fate that befell her. Schell charts his sister’s rise to fame as a vulnerable blond beauty and one of the top ’50s art-house movie stars (“Gervaise,” “White Nights”) and her fall, as her mind goes and life disintegrates. A compassionate look at film fame and beauty, and how they fade. In English and German with English subtitles. Landmark Century Centre Cinema, 2828 N. Clark St. 773-509-4949.
SPRING IN CHINA
Tian Zhuangzhuang’s “Springtime in a Small Town” is a moving period romance, a brilliant evocation of post-war China in the late ’40s and a penetrating analysis of old and new Chinese cultures after World War II. Set in a South Chinese town in post-war 1946, it’s about the friendship of a good-hearted but weak aristocrat (Wu Jun), and his newly arrived ex-college chum (Xin Bai Qing), now a successful doctor whose one-time love for the aristocrat’s wife (Hu Jingfan) quietly and dangerously resurfaces. Subtle and Chekhovian, beautifully filmed and acted, “Springtime” — which won the Golden Lion of the 2002 Venice Film Festival — is both a remake of Fei Mu’s well-loved 1948 film classic and one of the best new Chinese films of the last decade. In Mandarin with English subtitles; The Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute, 164 N. State St.; 312-846-2600.
— Michael Wilmington
THEATER
`THE DOCTOR’S DILEMMA’
Bernard Shaw’s 1906 comedy, too rarely revived, is a fascinating corkscrew set in early 20th Century London, among a cadre of London medical experts and demi-quacks. The recently knighted Colenso Ridgeon has a literal life-and-death choice to make: Should he save a poor, deserving medical colleague, or a wastrel of an artist, whose charming wife tickles Ridgeon’s various fancies and calls into question oaths both Hippocratic and hypocritic. It’s a very satisfying production directed by Michael Halberstam, with especially nuanced work from Karen Janes Woditsch, stalwart anchoring from Kevin Gudahl as Ridgeon and a ham-with-relish turn from Bradley Mott; through July 18 at Writers’ Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe; $45-$50; 847-242-6000.
— Michael Phillips
`DOORS OPEN ON THE RIGHT’
Joshua Funk’s stellar, daring and frequently hilarious new revue on the Second City mainstage blames poor Steve Bartman (of Cubs’ choke infamy) for everything from fire to the lack of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The cast is young but the material is hot, and Funk’s formative mastery of the Second City genre without recent peer; open run at Second City, 1616 N. Wells St.; $17-$19; 312-337-3992.
`FUDDY MEERS’
David Lindsay-Abaire’s strange satire of marriage and family life is one of those darkly satirical plays destined always to teeter on the theatrical knife-edge between yucks and yuck. Yet the very capable young Chicago director Kimberly Senior does her considerable best to give this hybrid play a Strawdog Theatre production that’s sufficiently credible that we stay with the characters throughout, and sufficiently funny that all the bizarre people on stage don’t begin to cloy; through July 31 at Strawdog Theatre, 3829 N. Broadway; $10-$18; 773-528-9696.
`A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE’
A largely unfamiliar contemporary musical from Terrence McNally and the “Ragtime” duo of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, “A Man of No Importance” recounts the 1960s travails of a repressed gay Dublin bus conductor named Alfie for whom community theater is the only means of escape from a bland, existential hell of self-denial. A tad over-emotional but replete with a gorgeous score, this is a quiet, self-reflective little show about people fighting for color and self-realization amid their gray lives. In the lead role, Ross Lehman does some of the best work of his career; through July 18 at the Apple Tree Theatre, 595 Elm Place, Highland Park; $27-38; 846-432-4335.
— Chris Jones
ART
CHICAGO’S GOLDEN AGE
“Chicago Modern, 1893-1945: Pursuit of the New,” the first survey of the work of Chicago artists during the city’s “golden age” of artistic life, is the final show at the Terra; opens SaturdayFriday, Terra Museum of American Art, 664 N. Michigan Ave.; free; 312-664-3939.
MOVING IMAGES
“Persistence of Vision: The Evolution of the Moving Image,” the art and technology of pre-cinema and early film; opens Wednesday, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston; free; 847-491-4000.
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UNFINISHED WORKS
Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” and Jaume Plensa’s “Crown Fountain” — both unfinished works of public art — get their first official public exposure at Friday’s grand opening of Millennium Park; free; 312-744-6630.
— Alan G. Artner