Beck Hansen really doesn’t believe that a musician has the right to complain: It’s something of an occupational requirement. “Nobody wants to hear it,”he says. “That’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to play music and have a good time.” So it may come as a surprise to many fans that Hansen suffered a spinal injury that kept him from making music in the usual ways for a significant part of the past decade. He doesn’t talk about it a lot and certainly doesn’t seem to want to dwell. He found other ways to create as a producer and songwriter during this period, but he will admit he feels a great sense of release now that he’s putting out the album Morning Phase. “I was just waiting until I felt like I was able to do what I used to do,” the 43-year-old Hansen said. “There’s not anything particularly unique about it, but it’s something that I did learn from. It was a difficult experience, but in any kind of difficulty there are positives. And I think that’s particularly what the record is about: how to come out of some sort of travail and difficulty and find some sense of light again and life continuing. Once you’ve seen some things that are darker and you know that darkness is there, how do you embrace the other side of life?” He’s embracing it with a period of great creativity and will soon return to the studio to record a second album he plans to release later this year.

Filmmaker George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, are donating $25 million to a prestigious private school on Chicago’s South Side. The University of Chicago said Tuesday that the grant from The George Lucas Family Foundation will pay for a new arts hall at the university’s Laboratory Schools. The 86,000-square-foot building will open in 2015 and will be named after Gordon Parks, a photographer, musician and social-justice advocate. Hobson is president of Chicago-based Ariel Investments. She married the Star Wars filmmaker in 2013. Lucas said in a statement that art can “transform lives and communities” and he hopes Parks’ legacy will inspire future generations. The Hyde Park school has about 1,800 students in nursery school through 12th grade.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 02/26/2014