The RPO’s Conductor Laureate continues to earn his laurels. Christopher Seaman’s annual visits to the podium have already become highlights of each season. He has set an agreeable habit of programming the kinds of pieces he likes best, from Mozart to Brahms and a bit beyond. This week’s program was a generous serving in his […]
David Raymond
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CLASSICAL | Jon Nakamatsu
After he dashes off Saint-Saëns’s G Minor Concerto with the RPO on Thursday and Saturday, pianist Jon Nakamatsu will travel up East Avenue to Third Presbyterian Church, where he’ll join the Society for Chamber Music in Rochester in its final concert of the season. His repertoire on Sunday will change from a quintessentially French composer […]
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CLASSICAL | First Inversion
First Inversion, one of the newest of Rochester’s myriad choral groups, is already nearing the end of its first season. For the season finale this week, director Lee Wright will lead an evening of spirituals and folksongs — both of which have been fertile material for classical composers for centuries. Along with a survey of […]
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THEATER | “Richard II”
What’s a Shakespeare play without a flawed monarch? The problems that lay heavy on the head of a British king are the raisons d’etre for four of Shakespeare’s greatest history plays: “Richard II,” the two parts of “Henry IV,” and “Henry V,” collectively known as the Henriad. The Shakespeare Players will perform the whole cycle […]
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Virtuoso vespers
Deborah Fox, Pegasus Early Music’s artistic director, says it has long been a dream of hers that the organization perform Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, a work she has loved since she first encountered it a couple of decades or so ago as a lute student. This weekend, Fox’s dream comes true at the Hochstein […]
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THEATER | “Irene”
When the musical “Irene” opened on Broadway in 1919, Pultneyville’s Gates Hall was already well over half a century old. Now, almost a century after its premiere, “Irene” is coming to Gates Hall this weekend in a rare production by the Hall’s resident company, the Gatesingers. A nationwide hit in the 1920’s and revived on […]
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Same eggs, different spice
The Bronze Collective Theatre Festival is hoping to infuse different kinds of African-American arts — like theater, dance, and music — into Rochester’s theatrical scene this week. The festival brings together many accomplished local writers, actors, and other performers for “A Week’s Infusion of African-American Theatrical Arts.” The festival takes place at MuCCC from Tuesday, […]
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‘Pops’ and substance: the RPO’s balancing act
Eighteenth-century composers and writers on music used to differentiate between “music lovers” and “connoisseurs.” The music lovers, it was thought, went for the simple, tuneful, dance-y stuff; the connoisseurs liked more complicated, modern music. In their search for audiences, modern concert organizations tread a fine line between the two, trying to strike a balance that […]
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Beethoven in a blaze of glory
CONCERT REVIEW: Stephen Hough and the RPO.
Hough is a marvelous pianist in almost any repertoire you care to mention.
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CLASSICAL | RPO performs Beethoven’s Fifth
This week, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra presents Beethoven’s greatest hit. On Thursday and Saturday nights, guest conductor Marcelo Lehninger will bring down the baton to cue the most famous eight-note sequence in history — the motto that begins Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. This is one symphony everybody knows and every conductor has led: a current catalogue […]
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“Children of a Lesser God”
When Mark Medoff’s “Children of a Lesser God” was produced on Broadway in the early 1980’s it won a Tony Award for Best Play, and was made into a movie soon afterward. It was also a pioneering work of theater, presenting current issues in the deaf community and the nascent movement for deaf rights and […]
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THEATER | “Aria da Capo”
Edna St. Vincent Millay may be remembered as a poet, but her literary work includes several plays, including the one-act “Aria da Capo.” Written in 1919 for the Provincetown Players, this fanciful piece receives a rare revival this weekend at Writers & Books, directed by Melyssa Hall and Spencer Christiano. Despite its title, “Aria da Capo” has nothing […]
