Concerts & Events in Chicago

If you're looking for a little roller rink excitement Chicago-style, go check out the Windy City Rollers, the city's premier all-female roller derby league. For just 14 bucks, this Groupon gets you into an action-packed battle between the Windy City Rollers and the Philly Roller Girls at the UIC Pavilion on Saturday, July 25, 7 p.m.

For just $25, today's Groupon gets you $50 toward a full range of adult art classes, workshops, events, or supplies at the River East Art Center. There you can awaken your latent Leonardo with painting and drawing classes, fulfill your need to throw things with ceramics and pottery lessons, say hello to soldering in the metals and jewelry studio, or follow Picasso and learn printmaking. Your work could fetch millions once you’re dead or presumed dead.

Originally part of architect Daniel Burnham's ambitious "Plan of Chicago" drafted in 1909, Navy Pier was designed to handle both recreational and freight traffic for the burgeoning metropolis. Its role quickly changed when it began serving as a barracks and training facility during two World Wars—it earned its nickname because of the more than 200 planes that littered the lake bottom around the pier, lost during exercises and sunk to intimidate fish with military technology. In the decades that followed, the pier was home to a University of Illinois campus, a convention center, and a venue for citywide festivals before falling into disuse. This ended in 1989, when the state moved to transform the venerable pier into one of Chicago's foremost tourist attractions.

Reopened in 1995, the revamped Navy Pier boasts 50 acres of parks, restaurants, shops, and entertainment, scenically located along Lake Michigan and the mouth of the Chicago River. The pier's most striking denizen is its 150-foot tall ferris wheel, whose glittering lights slowly rotate above the water and frame a beautiful view of the city's skyscrapers for riders. Other attractions include a towering IMAX screen that shows educational films and Hollywood blockbusters, and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, which treats audiences to bold stagings of the Bard's greatest hits.

Following the precise baton sweeps of maestro Michael Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco Symphony crashes through selections from its American Mavericks Festival, which showcases provocative pieces by iconoclastic composers. The evening opens with Henry Cowell's Synchrony, originally written to accompany a dance by famed choreographer Martha Graham. The composition anchors itself to contemplative trumpet solos intertwined with wistful piccolo before giving way to the discordant bombast of timpani, cymbals, and gong. Absolute Jest, composed by living legend John Adams, receives its Chicago premiere, combining the typhoon of a full symphony with the nimble unity of the St. Lawrence String Quartet. Like a DJ wearing a powdered wig, the piece splices together scherzos from Beethoven's late string quartets, building a new composition out of fragments from the master's work. Finally Charles Ives's Concord Symphony—orchestrated by Henry Brant—commemorates the New England transcendentalists, with each movement creating a tonal portrait of a different thinker's philosophy. The ominous swell of bassoon and violin in the first movement echoes Emerson's revelation of man knocking at destiny's door, and the majestic woodwinds and flute in the fifth movement's opening reflect nature, which had a heavy impact on Thoreau (himself a flutist).

Made possible by FamilyFarmed.org, an organization that forges bonds between locally grown food and the people who grow, sell, and eat it, the Good Food Festival & Conference lets Chicagoans participate in the locally driven Good Food movement. Coming from all over the Midwest, 150 farmers and artisans display their healthily unprocessed bounties while debunking widespread myths that the freshest fruit grows in cans, and chef demos from Frontera Grill’s Rick Bayless, Perennial Virant’s Paul Virant, and Naha’s Carrie Nahabedian celebrate the spectacle of cooking. Young chefs can exercise creative muscles and artsy tendons at the children’s corner, which features face painting, a scavenger hunt, and an arts and crafts session. Scheduled workshops, such as Organic vs. Conventional Food or Home Cheesemaking, teach casual eaters about their deep-seated connections to the things they chew (additional workshop fees apply).

In its 140th season, the 125 vocalists of the Apollo Chorus of Chicago make audiences swoon with Handel’s joyful baroque masterpiece at two of Chicago’s premier arts venues. On December 10, audiences can bask in Orchestra Hall’s National Historic Landmark confines, designed by Daniel Burnham and erected by synchronously singing construction workers. Conductor Stephen Alltop leads both world-class soloists and a complete orchestra through Messiah’s three movements. Award-winning vocalists Josefien and Charlotte Stoppelenburg belt their sisterly soprano and alto/mezzosoprano for a rare duet, "How Beautiful Are the Feet of Them" and its paired chorale, "Break Forth Into Joy." The wondrous confluence of men’s and women’s voices of all ages, races, and toe-tickle sensitivity flirt through the modern Harris Theater, which sits anchored on the northern edge of Millennium Park. Erected from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1871, the Apollo Chorus of Chicago commands a history of promoting both civic pride and not wearing sweatpants in public.