Inbox 6.1.05
Remarkable correspondence from the consistently unremarkable world of email
The game behind bars
Despite the arrant absurdity of starring the diminutive Adam Sandler as an actual professional football player, the makers (remakers) of The Longest Yard apparently perceived the wisdom in (and potential profit of) combining those blood cousins, the prison movie and the football movie. Both forms employ a large ensemble cast, rivaling the Hollywood platoon of…
The difference between gangsters and gangstas
Character actor (n.): An actor who specializes in playing the roles of unusual or distinctive characters. That barebones definition comes courtesy of my late ’90s Powerbook. I would also add that a character actor almost always boasts a mug instead of a puss, and many leading men (i.e. Pitt and DiCaprio) regret not being ugly…
Still humpin’ after all these years
When I spoke with The Invictas’ frontman Herb Gross in 2001, he nixed the idea of a band reunion. “It would be pretty tough to re-create that time,” he said. “But it was a blast.” From 1964 to 1968 The Invictas — Herb Gross (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Dave Hickey (drums), Mark “Max” Blumenfeld (lead…
The XX Files
It’s hard to be a liquored-up fornicator, but someone has to do it. In an era when conservative policymakers promote abstinence and substance abuse programs that are ineffectual at best and dangerous at worst, someone has to stand up for the truth. Of course, suggesting we need to return to a more honest, tolerant approach…
Bass ambitions
Jay Leonhart strokes at Swing ‘n Jazz
America, America…
We’ll work it all out, one of these days, and the country will seem like the one we say we want. Maybe we’ll even resurrect civil discourse. But not, I’m afraid, before we regress dangerously into the past, to a time when myth held sway over science, abortions were available only through back-alley practitioners, workers’…
Rochester International Jazz Festival 2005
500 musicians. 100 acts. Nine days. Feel confused? You’re far from alone. It actually struck us last year, as we wandered between sets from Max of Eastman Place to Montage Grille while distant brass and percussion bounced off the Eastman Theatre and down Gibbs Street: The Rochester International Jazz Festival, now in its fourth year,…
Revolving chair
For Joe Morelle to assume the Democratic Party’s reins is either its death knell or the first step toward recovery. The state assemblymember from Irondequoit is next in line to brave the revolving door that is the party’s top job. Molly Clifford resigned as Monroe County Democratic Party chair three months ago, and two weeks…
On screen: ‘Miles Electric’
The jazz film makes a welcome reappearance in the RIJF lineup this year. On Wednesday, June 15, at the Eastman Theatre, you can relive the great plugged-in controversy as it related to Davis, not Dylan, during a free 8 p.m. screening of Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue. The history books tend to throw…
Renaissance man
It’s not every day you get to have lunch with an internationally respected architect. Nonetheless, Moshe Safdie expressed surprise that a crowd of nearly 900 turned out to see him over the noon hour last Thursday. The lead architect for the Renaissance Square Project said the crowd at the Rochester Downtown Development Corporation’s luncheon was…
Get your jazz on
The Rochester International Jazz Festival’s fourth year is its biggest so far, and seeing your favorite acts may take a little planning. Three concert series Eastman Theatre Series: Headliner shows are held in the Eastman Theatre (60 Gibbs Street). These are ticketed shows; a Club Pass doesn’t work here. All shows are at 8 p.m.…
Reader feedback 6.1.05
Critiquing the D&C, dreaming of monorails
Bending chords
Bill Frisell re-invents the jazz guitar
Body count 6.1.05
The totals: 1,643 American soldiers, 180 Coalition soldiers, and approximately 21,795 to24,735 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq from the beginning of the war and occupation to May 25. American soldiers killed from May 20-25: Sergeant Brad A. Wentz, 21; Gladwin, Michigan | First Lieutenant Aaron N. Seesan, 25; Ohio | Specialist Tyler L.…
Music from the first voice
Kahil El’Zabar takes percussion from Africa to America
Costs, effects, and a medical impasse
Denise Speicher, a fair-skinned, middle-aged woman with a big smile, seems sturdy and healthy. But three times a week, she makes a 20-minute trip to HighlandHospital, where she receives 3 1/2 hours of hemodialysis. The process cleans the toxins from her blood. Without it, Speicher would die within a couple of weeks. Speicher was born…
Roll call
To take full advantage of all RIJF has to offer, you have some planning to do. Read this section for short descriptions of almost every act in the festival. Our critics — Frank De Blase, Ron Netsky, Chad Oliveiri, and Saby Reyes-Kulkarni — have tried to give you the information you need to decide which…
Family valued 2005
‘Madagascar’ Madagascar, from Dreamworks Animation (Shrek, Shark Tale), is about a lion, a zebra, a hippo, and a giraffe from the Central Park Zoo who find themselves in the “wilds” of Madagascar. After they fall off a boat and wash ashore, four penguins hijack the boat to Antarctica, pronounce that it “sucks,” and go back…
Giant footsteps
Ravi Coltrane forges his own path on the saxophone
In her dreams
Juana Molina’s nighttime missives have been keeping us happily awake
Alive
500 musicians. 100 acts. Nine days. Feel confused? You’re far from alone. It actually struck us last year, as we wandered between sets from Max of Eastman Place to Montage Grille while distant brass and percussion bounced off the Eastman Theatre and down Gibbs Street: The Rochester International Jazz Festival, now in its fourth year,…
The new pilgrims
After the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act mandated an end to discriminatory immigration policies that favored white Western Europeans, the phrase “Give us your poor, your hungry, your huddled masses” began to take on new meaning. A local exhibit, Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America, presents a kaleidoscopic INA update (of…
