An eminent trombonist and composer, appearing on more than 140 recordings alongside the likes of John Zorn and Bill Frisell in addition to his solo work, trombonist George Lewis is also vice chair of the Department of Music at Columbia University. There, his advocacy on behalf of young composers is legend. “I see him as one of the bright lights of our time. [He’s] a huge supporter of other composers’ work, an unusual quality in a crowded and competitive field, and a kind of father figure for many,” says Claire Chase, founder of the International Contemporary Ensemble, which will perform Lewis’s work at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Craig Trompeter is to baroque cello and gamba as Hot Doug’s Doug Sohn is to encased meats. The early-music specialist is about to significantly elevate the city’s operatic street cred with the imminent launch of the Haymarket Opera Company, named after the 1886 riot in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, as well as Handel’s primary opera venue in London.

The first things one notices when chatting with Deborah Sobol are her irrepressible love of music and a big-sisterly affection for those listening to it. It should come as no surprise then that the series she founded, Rush Hour Concerts, is the aural equivalent of a hug. Since 1999, Sobol has been welcoming the 9-to-5 crowd as well as pensioners and students into the Loop’s St. James Cathedral for 30 minutes of libations followed by 30 minutes of top-shelf performances by local and visiting artists. Brief, certainly, but a more alluring cool-down than a four-plus-hour opera to those who have marathoned through a day behind a desk.

After she codirected the Marlboro Festival in Vermont this past summer, we briefly chatted with Mitsuko Uchida. The extraordinary and intensely private pianist agreed to a rare interview. Finally, two weeks ago, following some lo-fi communication with fax machines, we again made contact with the 62-year-old, who spoke to us over the phone from London. The world-renowned performer opened up about her diplomat father, a sublime Schumann album she recently recorded for Decca and her admiration for the CSO, with whom she will be performing two of Mozart’s greatest hits this week, the Concerti Nos. 11 and 21.

After being knighted by the Queen of England, after having been ordained Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France, after winning more Gramophone Awards than anyone else, there are few challenges left to a musician. But endeavoring to perform the entirety of Bach’s nearly 200 church cantatas—all in just one year—is an audacious next step. This is what Sir John Eliot Gardiner did in 2000. Fortunately for those not present to witness it, the quixotic project was painstakingly documented.

Before each of her performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, cellist Katinka Kleijn applies makeup. A good amount, as it is for the stage. In February, the South Loop resident, overwhelmed by the growing number of friends being diagnosed with cancer, began researching cosmetic ingredients on a database from the Environmental Working Group. “On the EWG website, I found an oil-free blush I had been using for ten years,” Kleijn says. “It was rated a nine out of ten for most hazardous.”

The name Seraphic Fire was likely new to most outside of southern Florida, when, on August 23, the choir shot to the top of the iTunes classical charts with Claudio Monteverdi: Vespers of the Blessed Virgin 1610. The collection of 17th-century sacred work even unseated Lady Gaga, if temporarily, at position No. 27 in the overall iTunes sales rankings.

Ensemble dal niente has made its mark in Chicago’s thriving new-music scene by refusing to retreat from even the gnarliest contemporary music while remaining unafraid to tackle the occasional pop tune. “We play Radiohead arrangements, music by crazy Italian hippies like Scelsi and Chicago Symphony composers in residence like [Augusta Read] Thomas and [Mark-Anthony] Turnage,” says ensemble conductor Michael Lewanski, who also leads DePaul University’s Chamber Orchestra and Contemporary Music Ensemble. The Ravenswood resident credits the twenty- to thirtysomething musicians’ energy and their lack of egos for digesting what he calls an “OMG-hard” repertoire. “Given that most of the music we play is extremely demanding, stressful and technically challenging, we really can’t do anything other than just be humble and have fun with it. I’d say the most frequently heard question at a dal niente rehearsal is, ‘Who screwed that up? Me or you?’”

The four members of Third Coast Percussion have resorted to Dumpster diving. Mallet-slingers Owen Clayton Condon, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and David Skidmore aren’t freegans or recent victims of the recession. They’re merely on a quest to find new sources of percussive possibility, some of which can be had only in an alley.

For a sport in which men routinely pound each other’s faces into raspberry cobbler, a crushing stomp of a 2008 theme song by Ministry frontman and lifelong Blackhawks fan Al Jourgensen gets the requisite adrenaline pumping for Toews, Kane and co. But for generations of Red, White and Black supporters, there’s only one Chicago hockey battle cry: “Here Come the Hawks!” Chicagoan Dick Marx’s commercial music studios wrote and recorded that adorably perky, swingin’ anthem as well as many of the advertising industry’s most familiar tunes of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.

Opera Cabal is rapidly depleting IKEA’s inventory of straight-back kitchen chairs. As part of its Chicago premiere of USW, a bold sensory exploration of Polish-German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, the progressive company is smashing prefab furniture. A 19th-century cello and 21st-century MacBook Pro have also been victims of the fledgling opera company’s production—the former courtesy of American Airlines baggage handlers, the latter stolen by an “anonymous jerk,” according to music director and cofounder Nicholas DeMaison.