Don’t-miss picks for February 15 through February 21, 2018

1 Valerie June

Folk:“I don’t think about songs,” June told Rolling Stone last year. “I just get ’em.” The folksinger and songwriter says tunes come to her through something like a spiritual connection. She then renders them in childlike whispers and gravelly, low-register belting. Here, she tours behind The Order of Time, her latest and most sonically complex record yet.
2/15 at 7:30 p.m. $25. Vic Theatre. ticketfly.com

2 Amanda Lucidon

Photography:This White House photographer spent four years documenting Michelle Obama, along the way learning about “the life I wanted to create for myself and the person I wanted to be.” Here, Lucidon presents photos from her recently published book, Chasing Light: Michelle Obama Through the Lens of a White House Photographer. She’ll also take questions about life with the former first lady and sign copies of the collection.
FREE 2/15 at 6 p.m. Harold Washington Library. chipublib.org

3 Co-Missions Fellowship Showcase

Dance:Over the course of two weekends, Links Hall fellows Ayako Kato and J’Sun Howard will mark the culmination of their residencies. Kato presents a dance/movement piece inspired by Swiss composer Manfred Werder’s Stück 1998. Howard mounts Working on Better Versions of Prayers, a look at different types of intimacy between men of color—one of the choreographer’s best works to date.
2/15–25. $12–$25. Links Hall. linkshall.org

4 Some Like It Red

Theater:Here’s an innovative mash-up: the 1950s rom-com film Some Like It Hot and Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night, colored by ’80s music and a few explosions. So goes Gregory Peters’s fresh spin on the Bard’s tale of shipwreck survivors. In this version, a luxury liner goes down, leaving a trio of castaways washed ashore in a land ruled by totalitarian tyrants. Jack Dugan Carpenter directs.
2/15–3/17. $15–$20. Plagiarists at Berger Park Coach House. theplagiarists.org

5 Dvsn

R&B:This dreamy, Drake-adjacent Canadian duo (Daniel Daley and Nineteen85) made a splash in 2015 when some of their first singles surfaced anonymously on the internet. The two eventually revealed their identities, but it did little to quell the air of mystery surrounding them—likely because the songs themselves are so haunting.
2/16 at 6:30 p.m. $49–$65. House of Blues. livenation.com

6 Third Coast Percussion and Rachel Calloway

New Music:This season, the University of Chicago Presents concert series shines a light on György Ligeti, the Hungarian composer most famous for Stanley Kubrick’s use of his music in several films. The 20th-century instrumentalists in the quartet Third Coast Percussion spearhead three Ligeti works here: one with an insistent, minimalist harpsichord solo, one notorious for its 100 metronomes, and one a song cycle for mezzo soprano. A Ligeti-inspired piece by the composer Christopher Cerrone completes the program.
2/16 at 7:30 p.m. $10–$38. Logan Center, University of Chicago. chicagopresents.uchicago.edu

7 Lise de la Salle

Classical:Already more than a decade in the public eye and not yet 30, de la Salle has organized a thoughtful program around Bach—both the composer and the letters of his name. In German parlance, B is what Americans call B-flat and H is B, so B-A-C-H becomes a four-note motif that composers such as Liszt, Francis Poulenc, and J.S. Bach himself encoded in their compositions. De la Salle plays solo keyboard works by all of them, as well as by the contemporary French composer Thomas Enhco, who is as young as she is.
2/17 at 7:30 p.m. $10–$30. Galvin Recital Hall, Northwestern University. northwestern.edu/music

8 Unthought Environments

Art:This group exhibit focuses on how the natural world acts as an infrastructure—and how its elements end up in human-made technology. One highlight: an installation of large-scale images rendered on banners by London artists Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen, who turn their lenses to rare Congolese earth mines.
FREE 2/17–4/8. Renaissance Society. renaissancesociety.org

9 Orkesta Mendoza

Latin:This Tucson, Arizona, sextet is one of the newcomers blending ranchera, cumbia, and other Latin genres with indie rock. Here, the self-described “indie mambo” act performs as part of a tour called the New Golden Age of Latin Music, which celebrates the progressive, wide-ranging Latin music coming from California and Arizona.
2/18 at 8 p.m. $18–$35. Thalia Hall. eventbrite.com

10 Chicago Public League Playoffs Final Four

High School Hoops:How strong is this year’s field of semifinalists? Consider that it includes the defending 2A (Orr) and 4A (Whitney Young) state champs—and yet neither is considered the favorite to win the city title. That would be a loaded Simeon squad that features Iowa State-bound Talen Horton-Tucker and Missouri recruit Xavier Pinson. Add Curie to the mix and you have arguably the best four teams in Illinois—all battling it out this weekend in Chicago.
2/16 at 5:30 p.m. (semifinals) and 2/18 at 4 p.m. (championship). $10 per day. Jones Convocation Center, Chicago State.