The Society for Chamber Music in Rochester on Friday ended its season in satisfying style. The organization celebrated its 40th anniversary, and pianist Jon Nakamatsu celebrated the end of his season as SCMR’s first artist-in-residence. Friday’s concert itself began with something worth celebrating: the opening movement of Mendelssohn’s D Minor Trio, performed by the Hochstein […]
David Raymond
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CLASSICAL | Madrigalia
Charles Ives’s choral works are not as well-known as his orchestral and chamber music, but they offer just as many challenges and delights to attentive listeners. His setting of Psalm 90, for example, is quintessential Ives in its pairing of hymn-tune simplicity (including the sounds of organ and church bells) and harmonic audacity. It is […]
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CLASSICAL | SCMR with Jon Nakamatsu
The Society for Chamber Music in Rochester concludes its 40th season with a concert featuring its artist-in-residence, pianist Jon Nakamatsu, a Rochester favorite. In the first half, Nakamatsu will take part in two works which, though not exactly new, have never been performed at SCMR concerts: “Morceau de Salon” for oboe and piano by 19th […]
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THEATER | “Den Mother”
Betty Parsons (1900-1982) was at the center of the mid-century American art world — as a painter and sculptor, but also as a New York City gallery owner. Her encouragement of such artists as Rauschenberg, Pollock, Rothko, and Saul Steinberg led her to be called “the den mother of Abstract Expressionism.” The elements of Parsons’ […]
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THEATER | Acting Irish Theater Festival
Rochester this weekend will host the 24th Annual Acting Irish International Theatre Festival at Geva Theatre’s Fielding Stage (75 Woodbury Boulevard). The festival, which brings together members of Irish theater companies from the United States and Canada, is sponsored by The Irish Players of Rochester, a program of the Rochester Community Players. Our Irish Players […]
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THEATER | An Evening of One Acts
Everyone’s Theater Company will give one of its signature presentations this weekend at MuCCC: an evening of original, one-act plays, from serious to highly amusing, written, directed, and acted by local artists. For many years now, ETC has presented a chance to cheer on local theater creators, and it’s an opportunity to see a lot […]
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CLASSICAL | “Paris Salon”
Paris in the pre-guillotine 18th century was a European center of arts, ideas, and fashion, which were often discussed and created in salons. The fashions included music, and chamber music in the French style — tuneful, light-textured, and highly agreeable — accompanied many of these high-toned get-togethers. For its concerts this weekend, Publick Musick will […]
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CLASSICAL | “Just the Two of Us”
For the final concert in a season, concert organizations will often go for a big event. For its final concert, though, Pegasus Early Music is going back to basics — but still going out in style. “Just the Two of Us” simply consists of Deborah Fox and Lisa Terry, friends and musical partners (and Pegasus […]
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FOLK | Reggie Harris
Reggie Harris is a songwriter, singer, and educator known for his more than 40 years as half of the duo Kim and Reggie Harris. He is also a well-traveled solo performer throughout the world. In the spirit of Pete Seeger, Harry Belafonte and Bernice Johnson Reagon, Harris combines spirituals and roots music, historic inspiration, and […]
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Classical review: RPO performs Mahler’s Fifth
Mahler once claimed that “the symphony should contain the world.” His Fifth seems to contain a bit more of everything than the rest of his symphonies: austere funeral marches, bad-tempered jokes, over-the-top waltzes, a breathtakingly delicate love song, and a finale that exudes manic energy and contrapuntal wizardry. A modern therapist might express some worry […]
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CLASSICAL | SCMR plays Mozart
The next concert by the Society for Chamber Music in Rochester is titled “Mozart and a Guggenheim Fellow.” Mozart is, well, Mozart, and the Guggenheim Fellow is contemporary composer Adam Roberts; both are represented by quartets for oboe and strings. Roberts’s music has been widely performed and praised, and he was indeed named a Guggenheim […]
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CLASSICAL | RPO plays Mahler’s Fifth
Not all that long ago, the symphonies of Gustav Mahler were considered impossibly long, tumultuous, and neurotic; now they are audience favorites, right up there with the symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms. That said, Mahler has not been in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra’s repertoire all that much in recent years. Perhaps that is changing: for […]
