WALLTHERAPY 2017: Todd Stahl takes a focus on Syria
Although WALL\THERAPY organizers set a theme of arts and activism for this year’s festival, they left the specifics up to the individual artists. Todd Stahl, a teacher at Webster Thomas High School, began working Sunday at 59 Pennsylvania Avenue, assisted by a few of his students. His mural features an oversize portrait of a young…
WALLTHERAPY 2017: Notes from the weekend
WALL\THERAPY over the weekend announced its 2017 mural locations, which span a swath of Rochester on both sides of the river. A brief recap of the weekend’s progress follows, and stay tuned for individual artist spotlights and interviews coming this week. See the slideshow below for some visuals, and follow CITY on Instagram @roccitynews for…
Film review: ‘Dunkirk’
Christopher Nolan is sometimes accused of being a cold filmmaker. It’s a side effect of his chilly aesthetic, although anyone who’s seen “Interstellar” knows Nolan can crank up the emotion when he wants to. But a lack of sentimentality serves him well in “Dunkirk,” the British director’s stunningly visceral World War II epic. The film…
WALLTHERAPY 2017 Coverage
The popular mural festival takes place Friday, July 21, through Sunday, July 30, and features a new arts and activism conference and a block party
THEATER | Big Wigs
Dynamic duo Mrs. Kasha Davis and Aggy Dune take a step back into the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s with their upcoming drag show “Big Wigs: Big Rewind,” this weekend at Blackfriars Theatre. Known as the Big Wigs, this will be Davis and Dune’s first show in a new full-year residency at Blackfriars Theatre. Mrs. Kasha…
Album review: ‘Horizonte’
David Feldman “Horizonte” Self-released davidfeldmanmusic.com He may have an American sounding name, but pianist David Feldman was born in Rio de Janeiro and is a vital member of the current Brazilian music scene. “Horizonte,” his third album as a leader, is a wonderful excursion into this great musical culture. Feldman is joined here by members…
COMEDY | John Henton
John Henton was a computer science student by night, and spent his days working. He didn’t entertain the idea of becoming a comedian until 1982, when his coworker suggested he try some of his jokes at a local comedy club in Ohio. He won the amateur night contest on his second night there, and within…
Urban Action 7/19
This week’s calls to action include the following events and activities. (All are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted.) Forum features candidates for mayor The United Christian Leadership Ministry of Western New York will hold a Mayoral Candidates Forum, moderated by the Rev. Dwight Fowler, on Thursday, July 20. Participants will be…
THEATER | ‘Bring It On, The Musical’
Part of the JCC SummerStage, casting high school and college students, “Bring It On, The Musical” is loosely based on the original movie released by Universal Pictures. From the composers of “Hamilton” and “Next to Normal,” with music by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tom Kitt, and Amanda Green, the musical takes you through the life of Campbell,…
ART | ‘Credences of Summer’
“Credences of Summer” is an art exhibition at the Oxford Gallery (267 Oxford Street) celebrating the warm season. Continuing through Saturday, August 19, the display will feature work in various media — watercolor, acrylic, and oil paint — including noteworthy pieces by local watercolorist Darryl Abraham depicting the joy of summer in the Finger Lakes.…
FESTIVAL | Native American Dance & Music Festival
Ganondagan will host headliners Bear Fox, a singer-songwriter; the Akwesasne Women Singers; and Kevin Locke, a Hoop Dancer and preeminent player of the Indigenous Northern Plains flute for its 26th Annual Native American Dance & Music Festival. New this year is a juried art show featuring talented Haudenosaunee artists. The festival will take place Saturday,…
FESTIVAL | This is Our Youth
This is Our Youth is a week-long celebration of Rochester’s young talent in the performing arts. From Sunday, July 23, through Saturday, July 29, the festival will feature theater, dance, music, and poetry at MuCCC (142 Atlantic Avenue). The performers are from all over the city, and they represent various groups, such as the Gantt…
Feedback 7/19
We welcome your comments. Send them to themail@rochester-citynews.com, or post them on our website, rochestercitynewspaper.com, our Facebook page, or our Twitter feed, @roccitynews. For our print edition, we select comments from all three sources; those of fewer than 350 words have a greater chance of being published, and we do edit selections for publication in…
The state of the union in the age of Trump
Day after day, the bad news spills out: During last year’s presidential campaign, the Russians not only hacked into the Democrats’ e-mail system but also proposed a meeting with Donald Trump’s son, on at least the pretext that they had incriminating evidence about Hillary Clinton. A gleeful Donald Trump Jr. agreed to the meeting, and,…
For Dems, a wealth of candidates
This year is a particularly significant election year for the City of Rochester, with the mayor’s office, more than half the seats on City Council, and three of the seven school board seats on the ballot. This year is also significant because of the large number of candidates: three for mayor, 13 for City Council,…
ROCK | Primus
You know a player is a big deal when his name becomes an adjective. “Put a little Les Claypool on it,” they’d say. Claypool is a machine on the electric bass, emitting sounds from his instrument that are something like tap dancing elephants or a dinosaur with gas. Primus is all musically tight and genius…
Zoo’s finds may help protect forests
Madagascar, the island country off the coast of Africa that many people associate with lemurs, is a hotbed of biodiversity. According to the World Wildlife Fund, scientists discovered 615 new species there – including 41 mammals and 61 reptiles – between 1999 and 2010. WWF says 95 percent of the island’s reptiles, as well as…
CLASSICAL | ‘When Love Goes Wrong’
The Finger Lakes Choral Festival is best-known for its summertime presentations of choral blockbusters, like the Berlioz and Verdi Requiems. The chorus, and its imaginative director Adrian Horn, will present something a bit different for their 2017 summer concert this Sunday at Hochstein Performance Hall. “When Love Goes Wrong” is a bouquet of fervent scenes devoted to…
Frustrated board wrestles with special ed
Rochester school board member Malik Evans isn’t known for theatrics or public outbursts, but at a recent board meeting, Evans had enough. Special education consultant Judy Elliott was bluntly describing a broken system. But she wasn’t more than 15 minutes into her presentation when Evans began fidgeting in his seat and interrupting her with questions.…
PUNK | Pizza Face
Philly punks Pizza Face are a food-centric — guess what the band’s favorite is — that’s just a couple of clicks shy of being a metal band. There’s plenty of guitar-borne chugga-chugga-wee, but it stops there as the band opts for a rapid-fire and loose punk attack. It’s sloppy fun. Pizza Face plays with The…
Affording the arts
The Trump Administration’s 2018 federal budget proposal cuts arts funding. How would that affect Rochester’s scene?
VARIOUS | ROC Women’s Music Fest
The importance of women in music has always been monumental — from Hildegard von Bingen and Francesca Caccini to Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Joni Mitchell. On Friday, the City of Rochester will pay tribute in a big way with the first-ever ROC Women’s Music Fest, coinciding with the centennial of women’s suffrage in New York…
EXPERIMENTAL | Cyrus Pireh
Electric guitarist and composer Cyrus Pireh is a different sort of animal. An artist unrelentingly focused on ambient and drone elements, Pireh makes the kind of music that has no beginning and no end, but invites you to immerse yourself in the sound. With compositions that can easily last more than 20 minutes, the Duluth,…
AMERICANA | Swamp Rats
One genre couldn’t even begin to describe Florida-based trio Swamp Rats. The style contains bits of modern train-hopping punk yet is heavily influenced by traditional bluegrass with folk underpinnings — uniquely blended with metal riffs and mucky Southern blues. Each musician plays multiple instruments, so you’ll hear specks of acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, stomp box,…
Finding a coastal tavern on University Ave
Trey Yager, owner and executive chef at the new Seven Seas Tavern (58 University Avenue), grew up on the coast of Florida and made his mark there in the restaurant and seafood industry. “I’ve made my whole career in seafood,” he says. Yager relocated to Rochester, and opened Havana Cabana five years ago, which he…
FUNK/SOUL | Lost Wax
What’s better than a mundane, brownbag lunch break in the dull office break room? Definitely a euphonic, polyrhythmic, nine-piece experimental Afrobeat-jazz-funk fusion group with soulful, entrancing vocals and a small brass fanfare. Especially if that group performed at noontime as a chance to break away from the monotony of the work day. Lost Wax is…
Gaelynn Lea hears harmonies where most don’t
Before she was born, Gaelynn Lea had experienced more than 40 bone beaks in utero. This Duluth, Minnesota, musician has a congenital disability called Osteogenesis Imperfecta, or Brittle Bones Disease. Her arms and legs are shortened and she uses an electric wheelchair to get around. Lea had never considered pursuing music during her childhood until…
WALLTHERAPY focuses on activism in 2017 festival
Rochester’s mural festival, WALL\THERAPY, returns Friday, July 21, through Sunday, July 30, presenting a theme of arts, activism, and community. The festival has been held each July since 2011, except for 2016 when the organization participated in an artist exchange with a Berlin-based arts group. The organizers originally had “storytelling” as a loose theme for…
Album review: ‘Round Trip’
Anne Mette Iversen “Round Trip” bjurecords annemetteiversen.com It may be an unfair musical prejudice, but a lot of people hearing a jazz band think of the bassist as functional, as opposed to the pianist, saxophonist, or trumpeter, who usually take the spotlight. But bassist Anne Mette Iversen is far more than functional as evidenced by…
Theater review: WallByrd’s ‘Macbeth’
It takes all of five minutes for a fight to break out. As the lights dim in the grand Lyric Theatre, a bass-driven rock song blares and cast members in dystopian military garb rush the stage. A battle ensues, and only the strong survive. Such a violent beginning for WallByrd’s latest show, “Macbeth,” establishes two…
Film review: ‘War for the Planet of the Apes’
It seems appropriate that I heard news of director George Romero’s passing while leaving a showing of “War for the Planet of the Apes.” Romero was a master at using genre filmmaking as a lens through which to explore social issues like civil rights, consumerism, militarism, and xenophobia. The messages in Romero’s films were rarely…
Film review: ‘Maudie’
Wonderful performances from Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke distract from some storytelling shortcomings in “Maudie,” a gentle biopic of Nova Scotian folk artist Maud Lewis. The film opens in the 1930’s rural village where Maud (Hawkins) lives with an overbearing aunt, after her family decided the arthritic Maud would be unable to take care of…
Director David Lowery tells a new kind of ghost story
Writer and director David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story” is bound to be one of the more divisive films to be released this year. It tells the melancholy tale of life and death, as experienced by a married couple played by Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara. When Affleck’s character unexpectedly passes away, he returns in the…
