Spektral Quartet
Take a study break this Sunday afternoon with beautiful, intriguing music and a dramatic view. Despite still being quite young, Spektral Quartet grabbed attention and good reviews right from the start. The group was founded in 2010 and is an ensemble-in-residence at UChicago. They’re known for presenting traditional and well-loved works as well as pieces that are fresh and more recently composed. They even went one step further last year by enlisting 40 talented musicians to compose ringtones as re-imagined by classical artists, which they recorded and offered to the public. This year they will be unveiling four large-scale commissioned pieces, one of which requires the string players to sing as they play. They will be performing Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 132, Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 2, and Stravinsky’s Concertino for String Quartet this weekend.
November 9, Logan Center Performance Penthouse, 3 p.m., free with UCID
Tafelmusik
This Friday night, Tafelmusik, an award-winning period-instrument orchestra from Canada, will be celebrating the 400th anniversary of the birth of the telescope with a unique performance that promises to be entertaining and memorable. “[Tafelmusik] is really super creative about putting together content. This is not just a straight concert,” UChicago Presents’ Executive Director Amy Iwano explained. The show will include poetic narration, music from Galileo’s time period—Handel, Vivaldi, Bach, and Monteverdi—and a backdrop of mind-blowing celestial images taken by the Hubble telescope. before their show the group will give a lecture on the project. This show is the perfect UChicago blend of entertainment and academics. You can’t miss it.
November 7, Logan Center Performance Hall, 6:30 p.m. pre-concert lecture with 7:30 p.m. show, $35 or $5 with UCID
Dan Pashman Reading
Dan Pashman knows how to eat, but not in the way you’d expect. He’s not an expert chef or a metabolism manipulation expert. He’s just here to help out the common person with incredibly important things, like how to perfect a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. (The secret is to layer jelly on both sides of the peanut butter to avoid that peanut-butter-meets-roof-of-mouth dilemma.) He will be speaking at 57th Street Books on Saturday to promote his aptly named new pseudo-textbook, “Eat More Better,” which features plenty of food hacks and an equal serving of humor. Pashman gained some attention for hosting the Cooking Channel web series You’re Eating It Wrong and is the creator of The Sporkful, a podcast series with the motto, “It’s not for the foodies; it’s for the eaters.” This is your chance to meet this cool guy and hear some of his insider insights without having to buy the book. As a guy who is clearly still a college student at heart, he will definitely understand.
November 8, 57th Street Bookstore, 3 p.m., free
–Evangeline Reid
