Just for fun!

Hi all,

In preparation for the 2011 ACDA National Conference I wrote a fun and slightly goofy blog as a lure for people to get over their hesitation and come to Chicago. Part of my motivation to get to work on this was also the fact that people were starting to talk about coming to "Chi-town" - this sparked me into action, as this "Chi-town" appellation might be something you might hear on a bad TV series but not a name for the city that someone in Chicago would ever utter.

So what you got from me was the unofficial, and quite loopy guide to Chicago, Paul Carey style, and here is what it looked like.

Google Analytics tells me this blog about Chicago was read by a whole lot of people, which is cool. But what is funny to me is that nobody challenged the rather ludicrous item I tossed in there (yes, I was amusing myself by messing with you), just to see if anyone was really playing attention on a critical level. Here's the text:

"If you go east, I would suggest swim trunks and a snorkel. However, if you stop short of falling into the chilly waters of Lake Michigan, you will find a great running and bike trail right near the lake which stretches many miles- also safe day and night. Just be careful crossing Lake Shore Drive to get there. By the way, if you head east straight over from Symphony Center, before you hit LSD (that's Lake Shore Drive, not a drug) you will come across Buckingham Fountain, a really cool large fountain which will probably not be turned on yet (sorry, come back in May or June!). It was a gift to the city from Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks back when they were flush with large amounts of Franklins."

Did you catch it now? The ridiculous statement about Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks was a plant of false info- like I said, just my devilish, late night at the keyboard way of messing with y'all.










Here is the real background re: Chicago's Buckingham Fountain. And I quote Wikipedia, the ultimate source of truth in our world in 2011;

The fountain is considered to be Chicago's front door, since it resides in Grant Park, the city's front yard. It is located near Columbus Drive and Congress Parkway. The fountain itself represents Lake Michigan, with each sea horse symbolizing the states of Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana, which border the lake. The fountain was designed by beaux arts architect Edward H. Bennett. The statues were created by the French sculptor Marcel F. Loyau. The design of the fountain was inspired by the Bassin de Latome and modeled after Latona Fountain at Versailles.

The fountain was donated to the city by Kate Buckingham in memory of her brother, Clarence Buckingham and was constructed at a cost of $750,000. The fountain official name is the Clarence Buckingham Memorial Fountain. Kate Buckingham also established the Buckingham Fountain Endowment Fund with an initial investment of $300,000 to pay for maintenance of the fountain.[1] Buckingham Fountain was dedicated on August 26, 1927.

Final thoughts on the ACDA 2011 National Conference

Here are some final thoughts on what was, to me, an extremely well-organized, highly ambitious, and well-received national conference.

Attendance was high- I believe final attendance topped ACDA's hopes by 400 or more.

There seemed to be a great positive energy all around. People were having a great time and you didn't hear anyone complaining about things.

The exhibitors seemed to have large amounts of merchandise stocked for the conference, especially compared to the very conservative approach they seemed to have at last year's division conferences. I think the exhibitors are feeling that we are coming out of this painful recession.

By far my favorite trend was the high number of younger people attending and their amazing enthusiasm. This is what I have been hoping to see- a youth movement blossoming within ACDA and a very bright, innovative future ahead for us all. I also have noticed how many university ACDA chapters seem to be really growing by leaps and bounds and how many students from these chapters were attending.

There were amazing performances by many choirs. I suppose I would single out, in no particular order; Anima, Brethren, Kamer, North Central High School from Indianapolis, University of St. Thomas, Millikin University, University of Kentucky men, Lawrence Conservatory Cantala-- with many other choirs being wonderful as well.

Interest sessions were hugely valuable and the session rooms were packed. ACDA R and S reading sessions were really well-organized and offered a lot of great material-- I didn't see any of the ho-hum deadwood that somehow happens to wind up on some reading session lists.

Th final Saturday was festive in the most interesting (and to some extent bizarre) way. ACDA folks were surrounded by Chicagoans clad in crazy Irish getups for the St. Paddy's Day parade and the Hilton lobbies were full of these folks. There was this festive fun in the streets sort of attached to our great ACDA music during the day, and then the electric performance of Elijah that evening. The CSO chorus and Markus Eiche as Elijah were spectacular.

Things that clicked for me personally:

I was greeted by many folks who said- Hey,I read your blog!". Some of them were "famous" choral directors and I was a bit shocked that folks of their stature paid any attention to these scribbles of mine. It felt weird and good at the same time.

I was also so happy to finally meet face to face a lot of conductors who have performed my music but with whom I have only had an email or FaceBook relationship with up until this conference. Getting to meet these people the old-fashioned way was really rewarding and fun.

Congratulations to Tim Sharp, Jo-Michael Scheibe, and all the fine people who helped them make this happen. We are in your debt for all the wonderful work you did. Bravo!

Coming Up: Meet Jerome the orange, and a discussion of the power of humor

Day Two: 2011 ACDA National Conference

My Thursday was a bit wacky at the national conference. Whereas I used to go to every concert on the program, I now know that some choir types just aren't going to wow me (like high school choirs in general) and that I really do have a lot of people I need to connect with for various reasons. One of these is of course trying to meet people who have been so kind as to program and conduct my music but we so far have only had an e-mail or FaceBook relationship. It's important to get to know people face to face and show my appreciation for what they do in the musical world. So my Thursday was about meeting wonderful musicians from all over the country and not much about concerts.

First off, it was important to visit my main publisher the Roger Dean Company and my editor there Scott Foss. Roger Dean is presenting three new releases for me this year and they are all in stock ready to ship (hint hint). Roger Dean (the fancy subsidiary of Lorenz) has been my most supportive publisher by far, and Scott was in fine humor the whole conference, cracking jokes, often at my expense! The Lorenz booth was large and they were giving people perusal scores, not charging folks a dollar a copy like most other booths.



My pal Sarah Graham (Illinois State U) and Scott Foss



So, after admitting above to, in general, dissing high school conference performances, I am forced to eat crow. A choir about to perform handed out their concert material and it sure looked like the group was show choir based. I was thinking this could be scary. Were we about to have some Glee moments? Or jazz hands? But...wow, they blew me away on so many levels-- this was "The Counterpoints" from Indiana directed by Patricia Wiehe. The school has a high standard of performance success both as a show choir and concert choir school. And what I saw was a choir that took the best elements from show choir and transferred them to a great concert presentation. Oh yeah, they could sing up a storm too, and all very healthy production- no tired voices here.

The program wound through Debussy, Bach/Nystedt's Come Sweet Death with an understated choreography of simple arm and hand motions, Memly's Ave Maria, and a folk song from earthsongs series . The two most stunning performances were on "Horizons", the Peter Louis van Dijk tune- I forgot what this title was until I saw the familiar first line "Come my springbok baby...". This was a wonderful performance of a very heartfelt piece, the text ending of which is heartbreaking. This performance stunned the audience in its beauty, depth, and sincerity.

The final piece was a gangbusters all-out wild performance of Ethan Sperry's arrangement of Jai Ho, sung in Spanish and Hindi. I think Ethan was in the room, and I think I heard he was thrilled with their choreography, which was all original. This group brought everyone to a rousing standing ovation, and they deserved every bit of applause and excitement in the room. Thank you Pat Wiehe and thank you to your students for showing that a great high school program, singing quality age appropriate music, can steal plenty of thunder away from the university choirs!

I then had lunch with a very cool, smart, funny, and talented composer- Joan Szymko, who grew up in Chicago-- I would imagine you all know her music. It's my opinion that Joan is writing the best music of her career right now, and we had a blast comparing notes and a bunch of things, and having a good laugh about this and that.



me and Joan


Following that I attempted to attend James Jordan's interest session on breath and center- oops, even thought the session had not yet started attendance was capped off and no more people were being allowed in. I was sorry to miss this, but glad to see that so many people were attending. I think it would be great if more directors would become far more breath conscious-- I saw too many choirs not breathing during the week. Well I guess they were breathing, but you couldn't tell it from their tight singing!

The rest of my evening was devoted to visiting receptions, especially those hosted by universities who have done my music over the past few years, or who are preforming a piece of mine very soon. So, as a bit of a whirlwind I hung out first with the University of Missouri at KC Conservatory people. Chuck Robinson was instrumental in my decision to put regular conducting off for awhile in order to compose more and he was happy to introduce me to Robert Bode who is a recent new addition to the faculty there. Reg Unterseher was with me, and of course he knew Dr. Bode from his years in the Pacific Northwest. After also running into Matt Harden there, I bounced over to the fun reception being held by the children's choir folks, and witnessed the larger than life Nick Page doing a sing along with Doreen Rao.






The photos I took of these two are hilarious.
I had never met Nick, so to get to talk to him for a few minutes and realize what a hoot of a guy he is was great fun. From there it was off to the Walton reception hosted by Gunilla Luboff. The usual suspects were in the room, but also some very interesting Northern European publishers who were manning booths at ACDA for, I believe, the first time. They were asking me all sorts of earnest questions about American composers and I did my best to inform them about a number of things from our perspective and to also tell them that, indeed, Virginia, there are more US composers than just Moses Hogan and Eric Whitacre.

Finally the evening finished up at Mike Scheibe's swanky USC reception where I got to meet a bunch of people including Buddy James, president of NCCO. Mike's receptions are always first class. Another fifteen hour day has flown by!

Further Day One experiences: ACDA National Conference

(Geoffrey Boers)





Here is what I did the rest of day one of the conference. This will be a bit of a mish-mosh entry but I think it can be fun to just follow someones day and it saves me from not having to slavishly post only concert reviews.

The early afternoon offered some great interest sessions and it was hard to make a choice- there were three that caught my eye. I finally settled on Weston Noble's and Geoffrey Boers' session on "Transforming Conducting". Boers did the heavy lifting with Weston providing some of the original ideas and inspiration. The final gist of things was that mirror neuron research tells us that conducting, whether examined on a macro or micro level, is not just a leadership role but also a facilitory role which must be collaborative and invitational.


In addition, I think the greatest benefit for me and many others was Boers' discussion of the sideways gesture, or looping gestures- he really didn't get fancy and call it anything more formal. The idea is simply that outward expanding motions, especially quite often displayed as graceful angles out from the body (in other words, not just an outward mirror motion perpendicular to the middle of the body) are very natural, highly efficient, and create some wonderful gestures/pictures for the choir to sing from. I have actually been doing this lately but not really analyzing it. I find it is very freeing and I also don't conduct everything the same way every time, especially in rehearsal. This might seem inconsistent for a choir to look at, but actually I think it keeps them engaged and fresh. After the session, I was able to have a short chat with James Jordan about this and he was in total agreement with Boers' ideas. In fact James said that much of his own new book talks about this. So for me this was a great session to attend.

After that I dropped in on the children's choir reading session, and was pleasantly surprised to see my wacky (and unexpected bestseller) "Peace on Earth...and lots of little crickets" on the session list. The session was full of great energy- and for any of you who don't travel in the children's choir circle- you don't know what you are missing! This dedicated group of people have great energy,and are constantly exploring all the wonderful new repertoire being written today for their genre. They even had a bit of a wild and wacky party Thursday night!I also got to meet promising young composer Andrea Ramsey at the reading session, and my friend Sydney Guillaume was present as well for a reading of one of his pieces. It's great to see these young composers in the room for a session- choral composers are becoming less shy about being present at conferences!

Next up for us gold track folks was the International Choir concert. Unfortunately this was a disappointment to me, especially after having witnessed such jaw dropping presentations by international choirs at the 2007 and 2009 national conferences. I felt that the only truly strong, innovative group was the Latvian choir "Kamer". They were quite excellent but not spectacular. The evening went downhill from there-- "musica intima" claimed out loud to be "Canada's most important choir" and then proceeded to give a completely flat, uninspired concert. The sound was thin, tight, and tired, and the Auditorium Theater did not give this small group any helping hand. The repertoire was tedious and repetitive and tiny reshuffling of the singer formations between selections seemed to make no difference to the sound that we could detect in the audience-- and honestly, the hooty or wooty approach to high soprano lines was something I also, unfortunately, began noticing in other groups during the week. Can we not do the hooty wooty thing up high- we're not really trying to sound like old, tired copper kettles on the cottage fire getting the water hot for teatime, are we? The Taipei Philharmonic Chamber Choir sang next, with at tines a full and vibrant sound, but then also often sounding hoarse and tired as well. The repertoire was full of Chinese music with the usual pentatonic melodies and occasional folk yelps. Sadly, zero fresh, exciting repertoire here.

The final group was Chanticleer. Now please don't be a hater,but I am not much of a fan anymore. I used to love them years ago, but I have grown weary of the warbly high soprano male voices. I also think they are nowhere near as good as they were in the 1990's.

(Miranda says don't hate on Paul for not liking Chanticleer anymore)


I just basically feel now that I want to hear a men's choir singing in men's voices, without going into warble land. My main reason to listen to Chanticleer for the umpteenth time was to hear my friend Steven Sametz' Brock commission piece,"Three Mystical Choruses" . In all honesty I need to hear this piece a few more times to really be a good critic or judge. Everyone though it was quite beautiful, but I think we really need to hear it more to get a handle on what Steven was aiming for and how the texts work with the music. The piece is in three movements which Steven believes can stand alone and is being sold that way by EC Schirmer. Many of us felt that the third movement, titled "I am Within you", which danced way more than the first two movements, was the most appealing on first listen. I hope some quality mixed SATB groups will sing this piece, and of course it will sound very much different with female sops and altos. All in all, I was proud of Steven, and a bunch of us fellow composers (we mostly go back to being part of the Oxford Institute sessions in the early 2-thousands) were able to have a very fun conversation with him late Saturday night as the whole conference was winding down in the Hilton lobby. Bravo Steven, for an enticingly beautiful and intelligent piece.

Finally, my evening ended with a visit to my pals at the Northern Arizona University reception at Kitty O'Shea's. There I got hang out with the folks who had hosted me in groovy Flagstaff in December when they sang my NAU Holiday Dinner commission: very cool and talented people like faculty Edie Copley, Ryan Holder, and recent grads and/or current students like Erica Kragness, Elliot Liles, and the uber-energetic Erin Tucker.











me, Edie Copley, Ryan Holder, Sydney Guillaume







Coming Up; Day Two, including an amazing HS performance, and lunch with the very fun Joan Szymko

Day One Concert Review: 2011 ACDA National Conference

Sorry for the delay in getting some new blog material up as I was in Hong Kong for a full week teaching and conducting a festival (yes, it went very well) and then straight back to Chicago for the ACDA conference. This was two weeks of little sleep, but it was well worth such a minor deprivation. I will blog about the Hong Kong experience later and now try to get at least a little about the ACDA conference posted for those of you who could not attend.

The opening concert included performances by Illinois choirs whose directors I know and admire– Anima, Young Singers of Greater Chicagoland (formerly the Glen Ellyn Children's Choir) led by Emily Ellsworth and the Millikin University Choir, directed by Brad Holmes.



Anima led the concert off, and they were in fine form. The group performs in outfits with delightfully lively colors and moves through various highly effective stage formations and movement during many of their pieces. Emily conducted from memory, thereby freeing herself from being being anchored to a podium/music stand - she even moved about the stage herself to some extent, a freeing you rarely see of conductor from being a static, deadening stage element. When I have felt like doing this lately I keep thinking it breaks too many so-called rules about what conductors should do or not do, yet I saw Emily making this subtle conductor freedom of movement really work.

Truly Anima is all about freedom of expression-- free singing, movement, joy, and a great celebration of singing. And, hello, they actually breathe (something many choirs later in the week weren't really doing)! In addition to older scores by Mendelssohn and Handel sung with great finesse, a major highlight was Rautavaara's “Suite de Lorca”, movements 1 and 2 (published by Walton). In Rautavarra's usual very personal style, the music and text are merged in a highly complementary and darkly expressive manner. This is music which advanced children's treble choirs on through more mature women's ensembles should know better, and Anima's dramatic performance proved that young choirs are quite quite capable of singing texts which are not all just sweetness and light. A great leader and mentor to many for years, bravo to Emily Ellsworth and her choir Anima, Also a round of applause for pianist William Buhr, whose playing, to me, has never sounded better than it did at this performance.

Millikin University Choir director Brad Holmes has developed a reputation for presenting ACDA performances showcasing highly artistic, unusual a cappella repertoire, dramatic stage movement and brilliant singing. Millikin's concert at ACDA 2007 Miami is still remembered for its brilliance, especially in the staging elements. The concert the Millikin choir presented this year was not so much about staging this time -instead Brad's programming expertise and his way of combining various pieces in novel ways was front and center.



The concert began with what Brad called “An Eclectic Singet dem Herrn” which presented, in seamless manner, the Distler “Singet dem Herrn”, which flowed directly into the Mendelssohn “Der Herr lässt sein Heil” (a further Psalm 98 text), which further flowed into the Bach final Singet fugue. This was all sung so beautifully with vocal substance AND bounce, not one without the other. I especially loved hearing someone present Distler at an ACDA conference since he is such a great composer and really underperformed.

Continuing the theme of creatively pairing or connecting music, the choir then sang Tallis' “Te lucis ante terminum” (“before the close of day”) and the same text as set in a lovely harmonic idiom by thirty-five year old Hungarian composer Gyöngyösi Levente. Subtle harmonic hints of Bartok, or even more accurately, the mature Kodaly (melodic cells of major floating at times over minor chords) made Levente's heritage apparent.

The next piece was Eriks Esenvalds “A Drop in the Ocean” (published by Musica Baltica) which I heard sung beautifully last year at ACDA Tucson by the University of Utah, directed at that time by Brady Allred. This is a wonderful piece to Mother Teresa texts which we would hear sung again the next night by the international choir “Kamer”. As Millikin concluded this piece you couldn't help but be amazed at the maturity of interpretation which comes from Brad's leadership and deep understanding of music. Millikin's performances are profound and it is always apparent that every member of the choir is “all in”. The tone is always gorgeous, never forced, the choir is always aware of the overall arc and shape of a phrase, a section or an entire piece, or even for that matter, the arc of their entire program. This is music making of the highest order, and the Millikin Choir continues to set the standard at virtually every ACDA event at which they perform. Even days later and after many concerts, interest sessions, receptions and so on which can really tire you and cause the memory to become momentarily foggy, people were still coming back to the topic of the brilliance of the Millikin choir.

To finish up the program Brad went off in a new direction, into the land of folk music in the form of a lively Shaker Dance he has arranged and J. David Moore's “Seinn O”. The staging of the Shaker Dance was hilarious, and even included moments when the choir seemed to have formed battle lines over the story, and even toward the end very pointedly took on Brad as musical adversary. This was all played up to great comedic effect. “Seinn O” was all drama and drive, mouthmusic drums and pipes, as a Scots lad dancingly defies anyone else who might want a piece of him. As they finished this piece, the audience roared with applause.

I talked to Brad a day or two afterward and he intimated that he was worried that the eclectic Singet dem Herrn would perhaps not work for the purists in the audience. I assured him that it was brilliantly conceived and presented and that, I think, virtually all of us truly appreciated his mixing and matching of music in these very creative ways. And really, when you think of it, why shouldn't a director let it all hang out and do innovative things- is there any true reward for just playing it safe?!

P.S. For any young people looking for a great university choral experience within an outstanding liberal arts environment,you should be looking at Millikin. You should also know that Brad's colleagues, Guy Forbes, Ted Hesse, Beth Holmes and Michael Engelhardt are also brilliant musicians and mentors.

For ACDA adventurers- Uncle Paul's Guide to Chicago

If you are cool at all, you WILL be coming here to Chicago for the ACDA national conference in a few weeks click here to register. As you will see from the ACDA website, there will be so much amazing music and fabulous interest sessions, and if you have never attended a national conference, believe me, it is something you will remember forever. I would also like you to know that the Chicago Symphony instrumentalists and chorus, who will be performing Mendelssohn's Elijah for you, are deliriously happy these days now that the boorish Daniel Barenboim is gone and Ricardo Muti has taken his place. This Elijah is going to be spectacular- don't miss being here for it--there is still time for you to register and make plans to attend. There will be so many musical experiences for you here, and also some pure Chicago delights waiting for you. So now that I have talked you into coming, who better to tell you what the heck to do with yourself when your ears need a short break from all that crazy ACDA singin' stuff than a loopy guy who has lived here for too long? With that said, I hereby give you:

Uncle Paul's ACDA Mini- Guide to Chicago (with mucho hyperlinks included, and many of my hyperlinks have hyperlinks of their own leading to good info):

Here I will give you some ideas of what to do, assuming you are based downtown in the conference area and you left your Maserati in Cleveland with the detailers-- I'm sorry that darned grease stain on the backseat from your kid's Happy Meal just isn't coming out with any chemicals you know how to use. So we'll talk about things within walking distance or a reasonable cab ride, bus ride, or excursion on the “el” (short for elevated- it's those trains up on stilts like you saw Popeye Doyle driving under in the French Connection). I won't send you to the 'burbs, even though Evanston to the north and my town of Oak Park to the west (birthplace of Hemingway, location of the Frank Lloyd Wright Studios as well as the birthplace of the Hostess Twinkie) offer a lot. And of course we are only touching the tip of the iceberg as far as things to do or see. But first let's get through a few damned important issues:

It's just Chicago. Reporters or folks from elsewhere might call it the Windy City but no matter what, that tag has little or nothing to do with weather type wind, but more to do with windbag politicians of yore (and maybe even currently, Chicago /Cook county politics are crazy). And please note: we never call ourselves “Chi-town”, that is just so stupid and all you will get are weird looks if you refer to Chicago that way. The actual native American word for the area was shikadwa, translated as “wild onion” or “wild garlic” and probably hinting at the somewhat low lying swampiness of the area. You might get an olfactory hint of swampiness if you were to drive out by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation Project, but thankfully for you, my friend, that's a hike from where you will be!

As far as weather is concerned, I am sure there will be weather in Chicago from March 9th through 12th.

Chicagoans are pretty okay. They're not rude but they're not ultra smiley either. Just kind of in between. They want to do their work and then go home and be with their fams- it's pretty simple. Don't overwhelm them with your encyclopedic knowledge of the complete Janequin chansons or your collection of framed musica ficta and you will get along fine with the locals. Also, we don't talk like the Super Fans from the old Saturday Night Live skits,
except for some pockets of population on the SW side (near where “Mare” Daley lives). And the downtown area where the conference is being held will be safe, don't worry about crime in this area.



Speaking of area, let's get a lay of the land. Downtown where you will be based is the "Loop" business district with some arts and museums thrown in. There is really no hip or wild nightlife in the central downtown area (sorry, it's not my fault). If you want to get a little crazy you need to head north. In fact, for the best restaurants, either fancy or cheap yet interesting, for clubs and shopping, etc. you want to head north. The first north location would be the Magnificent Mile or Mag Mile, a stretch of fancy hotels, restaurants and shops on (and radiating out from) North Michigan Avenue beginning from just over the crossing of the Chicago River (the Wrigley Building and the new Trump Tower) up to 1000 N. Michigan (Michigan at Oak). It's okay to just window shop in this area, that's what most non-rich people do, and it's a fun area to stroll when the weather is nice. From Symphony Center you could walk this with good shoes, or get up past the river via public transportation. You'll also see the historic old stone water tower and pumping station, one of the few buildings to survive the great fire of 1871. Anyway, the other area somewhat close is River North, full of high end art galleries but also some touristy stuff too- this is the area a bit west of Navy Pier (which juts out into the lake and is hard to miss as it has a ginormous Ferris wheel on it- more about Navy Pier later). If you really want to get to the cool and funky areas you need to get up a little further north to the neighborhoods called Lincoln Park, Bucktown and Wicker Park where you will find all manner of cool shops, funky little restaurants at all price levels serving all imaginable world cuisines, etc. If you are cool you will wind up there. If you are not cool, you will just sit in your hotel room watching Golden Girls re-runs or maybe Ice Road Tuckers, but who am I to judge?! A cab ride will get you up to these neighborhoods (which are also generally safe day and night) though you should try the “el”, the red line and brown line are the ones which will get you up that way.

So to recap, all the cool stuff, both very expensive and also cheap and trendy/funky is up north. If you were to go west you are going to sort of wind up in factory areas and weird parking lots-- it will remind you of New Jersey. If you are from New Jersey you may feel very at home here, and I am happy for you. If you head south, there won't be much going on, as sadly, efforts to rehab the South loop area were building steam until 2008 hit and all the banks stopped lending to rehabbers. If you go east, I would suggest swim trunks and a snorkel. However, if you stop short of falling into the chilly waters of Lake Michigan, you will find a great running and bike trail right near the lake which stretches many miles- also safe day and night. Just be careful crossing Lake Shore Drive to get there. By the way, if you head east straight over from Symphony Center, before you hit LSD (that's Lake Shore Drive, not a drug) you will come across Buckingham Fountain, a really cool large fountain which will probably not be turned on yet (sorry, come back in May or June!). It was a gift to the city from Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks back when they were flush with large amounts of Franklins.

Here is a great map of the Chicago neighborhoods

Regarding fancy restaurants, especially in the near north area, your best bet is to get a copy of Chicago Magazine and thumb through for ideas, or read what food critic Pat Bruno has to say recently. Just keep in mind that these fancy places will be booked heavily, so don't expect to just walk in and get a table in the evening.

Your fearless ACDA executive director, president, and other officers who have worked hard to make this conference happen seem quite smitten with the eats at Gioco (Italian), at 1312 S. Wabash, just a few blocks south of the Hilton. This would be considered “South Loop”, by the way. Actually inside the Hilton is Kitty O'Shea's casual Irish pub which serves a good fish and chips. Chicago composer/conductor Wayland Rogers recommends Russian Tea Time (often called the Russian Tea Room), which is super close to Symphony Center and the Art Institute. They serve delicious Russian, Slavic, and Jewish food, including vegetarian fare. Afternoon tea there is delightful and you may be treated to Balalaika music. Wayland also says to not forget to sample all the many vodka drinks (oh, those composers!).

So now let's talk about all the signature (cheap) Chicago food you have drooled over while perusing your Chicago guide book. But just remember, you shouldn't expect to fit in your skinny jeans if you eat this stuff every day:

Chicago deep dish pizza, also sometimes called stuffed pizza:
Well there are some pizza wars in Chicago. Lately they have been accusing each other of sneaking in cheaper ingredients. Maybe we need to give them all a time out. The usual heavy hitters are Lou Malnati's and Gino's East, but you also can't really go wrong with Pizzera Uno, Giordano's, Edwardos, or Nancy's. Most of these joints have near north locations (remember,“Go North”), and some just a bit south of downtown, and they all are going to deliver. For any of youse from the east coast, please don't order a Chicago pizza, deep dish or thin, and try to fold it in half and cram it down your throat, that's just disgusting.

Chicago style hot dogs: these are kosher all beef dogs steamed but not made into blecky mush and served on a poppy seed bun, The standard toppings are mustard, raw chopped onions, pickle relish with plenty of neon green dye (the rest of the planet's supply of neon green dye will go into the Chicago River for St. Paddy's Day), tomatoes, a dill spear, sport peppers, and celery salt. What you will pledge as a respectful visitor to Chicago is to NOT put ketchup on that dog. Step away from the ketchup and the catsup too. Put chocolate sauce and sprinkles on it if you want, but no ketchup. The best dogs will not be soggy, they'll have some plump to them. And you won't usually go wrong with joints like Hot Doug's, Portillo's and even the street vendors. If your dog is soggy and tasteless, ask for a replacement, as no self-respecting hot dog vendor here will want you to be unhappy with their product. There is a newcomer I haven't tried yet- Franks 'n' Dawgs, making upscale haute dogs from scratch.

Italian Beef: This is a bit tricky to advise on since Italian Beef sandwiches vary in quality a lot even from the same joint. Best places to try: Mr. Beef on Orleans (666 N Orleans- there's a devil of an address), Portillo's at 100 W. Ontario and the #1 Al's Beef at 16 W. Ontario. Some people love Al's, some think it's overrated - you decide. Oh, and if you order “juicy” or “dipped” you will need napkins, a whole bunch of them.

Btw, here in Chicago soda can be called pop, and pop can be called soda. You can even call it both at the same time. But if you want something stronger you wouldn't do too badly than to try some locally made suds from Goose Island Brewery. I am assured that no geese are harmed in the production of these ales, which I am sure will make you very hoppy. There are two brewpub locations, and the one on Clybourn is on the same block as Franks N' Dawg's, by the way.

If you haven't gotten your fill of music and you love jazz, you deviate, go to the Jazz Showcase which features national acts (real jazz, not dumbed down stuff) in its new location a bit west of the Hilton or the Green Mill up north which features strong progressive local talent,and also a no cover jam session from 1:30 to 4 AM Friday night (hmmm, you better be a real night owl for this one!). These are both great places to hear real jazz and where people actually shut the heck up and listen. As far as other arts events, you could check out what's going at the Harris Theater which is right downtown (actually underground at Millenium Park, cool huh?), plus all the usual theater joints like Steppenwolf, Goodman Theater, etc. If you want to check out a Chicago institution, head to the Old Town neighborhood (basically about North Ave. and Wells St) to visit The Second City, where a ton of folks like John Belushi, Alan Arkin, Bill Murray, Tina Fey and many others got their start in comedy. There's also a great flower shop in Old Town and a cool grocery store called Treasure Island. As a kid I had the good fortune to hear John Coltrane play a gig in Old Town shortly before his death.

Broadway in Chicago is thriving if you want to see a Broadway show and you might also want to visit the Biograph Theater in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, 2433 N. Lincoln, which is being redeveloped for live theater. Its claim to fame is for being the site where John Dillinger met his end, just after exiting the theater in 1934. The facade of the theater and adjoining business were redressed to appear as they did in 1934 when the Dillinger film Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp, was shot there in 2009. A movie theater still showing great art films and documentaries is the Music Box Theater at 3733 N. Southport . You could also check things out downtown at the Siskel Film Center for more interesting films and documentaries.

Not afraid of heights? Then the two places to see the city from up in the sky are the Skydeck Chicago at Willis- Sears Tower and The John Hancock Observatory. The Sears is usually preferred, I suppose because it is 353 higher, but check the websites out and decide yourself which one interests you. It's best to get tickets in advance via the internet to avoid standing in ticket lines. You can stretch your legs a bit and walk to the Sears from where our main venues are- head west on Adams, or head north on Michigan Ave to the Hancock.

Chicago is known for architecture- Mies van der Rohe, Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, Frank Lloyd Wright, Helmut Jahn, et all-- a whole bunch of important movements. You can learn about these via Chicago architecture bus and walking tours (the boat tours won't be running yet). What I would hope you don't do is ever get a true glimpse without sunglasses on of what Soldier Field has been turned into. It was a big old lakefront stadium with Roman columns and has hosted the Rolling Stones, popes, and is where the Chicago Bears play defense and pretend to play offense. When the city and the Bears wanted to modernize or should I say monetize (think fancy skyboxes for rich fans) the tired old place no politician or city mover and shaker would go on record as wanting to tear this historic place down. Yet they still wanted to create something glitzy and modern. Their regrettable solution was to build an alien space ship looking steel and glass thing and land it on top of the old stadium (Mars Attacks II- akk, akk). It's easily the ugliest thing in the whole city, the renovation caused it to lose its national landmark status, and I gag every time I see it- an example for us all of how compromise can often result in an enormous disaster.

Museums

There are plenty, but the one you really need to see is right across the street from Orchestra Hall/Symphony Center. It's the Art Institute, which houses, among other major holdings, an incredible collection of French impressionist art. In fact, many famous paintings you perhaps may have assumed to be in in the Louvre, are actually here in Chicago- the Seurat La Grande Jatte (dang, it's way bigger than you expect), six of the Monet haystacks, a whole slew of van Gogh's and so on.


There is also a wonderful display of Chinese ceramic art to die for, and also a great bookshop/gift shop and a pleasant cafeteria on the lowest level. If you only go one special place while in Chicago, this should be it! And, by the way, if you have already been to the Art Institute in the past, please know that in 2009 an entire new architecturally gorgeous addition was created to hold more modern art.

As far as the major museums I would rate them in this order:

1) Art Institute 2) Field Museum of Natural History (walk or short cab ride 3) Shedd Aquarium (moray eels are so cute, ya know) 4) Museum of Science and Industry (some great new interactive exhibits, but a bit of a haul from downtown) 5) Adler Planetarium.

Numbers 2, 3, and 5 are near each other in what is called the museum campus, near the dreaded Soldier Field.

Other very interesting museums but not big 'uns: Spertus Museum of Judaica, (right on Michigan Avenue near our venues), Museum of Contemporary Art (not too far away) and The Oriental Institute (down south near Rockefeller Chapel and the Museum of Science and Industry, it holds some amazing ancient Middle East artifacts, truly large sculptures, etc)

What else to do?


Walk north from the Art Institute just a bit (you will be on Michigan Ave on the east side of the street) and you will run into Millenium Park, with the new band shell (or shall we say orchestra shell, as its main summer group in residence is the Grant Park Symphony) designed by Frank Geary, the dude who designed Disney Hall in LA. You will also want to get up close and personal to admire Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate, but call it by its nickname “The Bean”.
Go ahead and touch it, walk through it, take pictures, it's an amazingly fun piece of shiny public art and it's impossible to go see the Bean and not smile (and have someone take your picture). Millenium Park is a very cool place to go wander through-- it's all free and will especially be fun for you if the weather is nice during the conference.

Well there you have it, my ACDA friend- please come to Chicago for some great music, eat some pizza, visit The Bean, visit the Art Institute, get out there and head north to the nightlife and whatever else you want to do. You can experience Chicago on the cheap or spend a ton of money at some very fancy restaurants or art galleries- it's up to you.

Final piece of advice: If you want to avoid icky touristy stiff- stay away from Navy Pier. I will bet that most of the kids singing at the conference will wind up there, but it's nothing special. We also have dopey stuff like a Rock n' Roll McDonald's and so on that kids seem to go crazy over, but I think you can do far better than that!Also, we have a Chinatown but it's kind of dying out- not much to see or do there. And Rush Street has lots of cheap bars, but they generally attract heavy partying young folk. Go if you like, but it will be a bit like a typical Florida spring break bar crawl atmosphere on Friday and Saturday night.

If you are truly adventurous here's the weird side of Chicago and the forgotten side of Chicago

Other random tidbits- did you know you can walk parts of the Loop underground? Click here for the Pedway

Also, you can get to and from downtown O'Hare or Midway airports via the blue line for O'Hare and the orange line for Midway. It's not glamorous, but it's way cheaper than a cab!

Hope to see you here soon,

Paul
Please visit my website at www.paulcarey.net