A preview of music, film, theater, dance and more

New take on ancient tunes

Alla Boara will unleash its innovative approach to Italian folk music at a 7:30 p.m. concert on Feb. 28 at Hey Nonny in Arlington Heights. Led by drummer Anthony Taddeo and featuring vocalist Amanda Powell, the Cleveland-based group employs jazz arrangements to revitalize traditional Italian folk songs — some of them centuries old. Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Becca Stevens praised Alla Boara for “breathing new possibilities into timeless stories while weaving in limitless and unexpected musical flavors.” The band has also earned critical acclaim from NPR’s “Shuffle,” SWR2 radio station in Germany, the All About Jazz website, Jazz Weekly and Cleveland Magazine. For more, click here.

Gen Z troubadour

Folk singer Amanda Pascali will perform at Constellation in Chicago at 8:30 p.m. March 13. Born to a mother from Cairo who was raised in France and an Italian father who was raised in Romania, Pascali is a bilingual, mixed-race troubadour perpetually between worlds. Rather than lamenting this displacement, however, she has turned it into her artistic superpower. She began writing songs in her teenage bedroom, performing them at coffeehouses and underground bars. That curiosity eventually led her to Palermo on a Fulbright fellowship, where she developed “To Sing and Recount” (“Canta e Cunta”) — a digital storytelling project that translates and revitalizes Southern Italian folk songs, revealing their relevance to contemporary social issues. For more, click here.

East meets West

The upcoming Lyric Opera production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” offers a uniquely Eastern take on this timeless tragedy of a doomed geisha in love with a British Navy lieutenant. Starring Karah Son, one of the leading interpreters of Butterfly in our time, the opera will be directed by Matthew Ozawa, the son of a Caucasian mother and Japanese father. “This new production reclaims the opera’s narrative through the lens of an entirely Japanese and Japanese American creative team and amplifies the voices of an entirely female Japanese design collective,” Ozawa writes. The opera will run from March 14 to April 12. For more, click here.

Modern god

Artist Jyl Bonaguro recently unveiled her latest sculpture commission, a bust of “Zeus” in Italian marble. Standing 2 1/2 feet tall and weighing 750 pounds, it’s destined for a private collection in Canada. Bonaguro’s modern interpretation of the Greek deity is meant to be godlike but deeply human, caught not in anger but a state of reflection while remaining ready for action. The delicate gold veining subtly references Zeus’s thunderbolts. Bonaguro’s marble sculptures are hand carved and emphasize the “non finito” technique of leaving parts of the stone untouched. It’s one more step toward her goal of carving a female figure of Athena on the scale of Michelangelo’s David. For more, click here.

Sumptuous showcase

European history buffs will have a field day at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Deering Family Galleries of Medieval and Renaissance Art, Arms and Armor. Unveiled in 2017, the expansive exhibit showcases nearly 700 objects from the museum’s rich holdings of art from 1200 to 1600 as well as an extensive arms and armor collection. Among the Italian items on display are a terra-cotta altarpiece by Florentine Benedetto Buglioni, works of art for the bedchambers of Tuscany’s merchant elite, and a tempera-on-panel diptych of the Virgin and Child Enthroned and the Crucifixion (pictured). For more, click here.

Giving tree

A pair of Italian Americans teamed up with several other local artists to transform the remains of a 200-year-old elm tree into a work of art. Rising up from the grounds of Ragdale in Lake Forest, “Diversity of Birds” was created by Jyl Bonaguro and Mia Capodilupo and fellow artists Margot McMahon, Anthony Heinz May, Nicole Beck, Julia Sulmasy, and Fredy Hauman Mallqui. Located at 1260 N. Green Bay Road, Ragdale is an artist residency program and community (ragdale.org). The Ragdale Tree Project was spearheaded by Chicago Sculpture International (chicagosculpture.org). The CSI has collaborated with the Chicago Park District to create more than 50 public sculptures from dead and dying trees. For more about Chicago Sculpture International, click here. For more about The Ragdale Tree Project, click here.