In November, The Rochester Latino Theatre Company teamed up with RAPA for a successful production of “West Side Story” at the Kodak Performing Arts Center. This month, the classic musical travels westward to Roberts Wesleyan College, where it is getting a bang-up production by the Roberts Wesleyan College Community Theatre. As the name of the […]
David Raymond
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THEATER | RCP 90th Anniversary
The Rochester Community Players first began to roar in the Roaring 20’s — on January 19, 1925, to be exact, when the group presented the farce “Wedding Bells” at the German House. (It received rather good reviews, too; one praised the cast’s “unmanicured high spirits.”) Ninety years and 647 plays, musicals, and other productions later, […]
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CLASSICAL | “Kaddish”
Allied Forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1945, and the world became aware of the full extent of the Holocaust. To commemorate that 70th anniversary, the Rochester Philharmonic and Rochester Oratorio Society are presenting Lawrence Siegel’s “Kaddish.” This cycle of 15 songs, first performed in 2008, is based on the testimonies of Holocaust survivors. […]
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THEATER | “Pippin”
Medieval history met jazz hands in “Pippin,” one of the longest-running Broadway musicals of the 1970’s. Its success was partly due to Stephen Schwartz’s tuneful score, but even more to Bob Fosse’s high-powered staging and choreography (and to one of the first TV commercials to promote a Broadway show). The story line deals with the growing-up of the young prince […]
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CLASSICAL | Concentus Women’s Chorus
If you can’t beat the winter cold, sing about it. That is the reasoning behind one of the first choral concerts of the new year, presented this weekend by Concentus Women’s Chorus. The program features what director Gwen Gassler describes as “seasonal choral music in a very broad sense.” It begins with the ancient chant […]
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Reserving judgment
When “Judgment at Nuremberg” opens this week at MuCCC, it will mark the last full production directed by Michael Arvé, a director and actor with a long history in Rochester community theater. Involved with theater since he was a high school student in Rochester, Arvé has taken part in a long list of plays — […]
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CLASSICAL | “The Music of Downton”
If you ever use the words “Anglophile” and “ubiquitous” in the same sentence, it will probably also include “Downton Abbey.” Everyone’s favorite British costume drama, and the show that taught Americans what a Dowager Countess is, begins its fifth season on January 5. WXXI is going all out to celebrate, with a swank New Year’s Eve event, a preview […]
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Fresh winds
A new wind symphony is making its debut performance in Rochester, a historic place for wind ensembles.
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CLASSICAL | Heinrich Schütz’s “Christmas Story”
About 80 years before Handel’s “Messiah,” there was Heinrich Schütz’s “Weihnachtshistorie (Historia der Geburt Jesu Christi),” or to put it simply, “Christmas Story of the Birth of Jesus Christ.” Written about 1660 (when Schütz was in his 70’s) and published in 1664, it is a modest but colorful retelling of the familiar biblical accounts — […]
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THEATER | “The Man Who Came to Dinner”
It definitely has one of the best-known titles in the repertory, but Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” a great hit of the 1940’s and 50’s, isn’t presented very often anymore, so it’s nice to see it returning for the holidays. This production is presented by Screen Plays (and […]
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CLASSICAL | RPO’s Gala Holiday Pops
The RPO describes its annual Gala Holiday Pops concert as “Rochester’s most popular holiday musical tradition,” and barring various “Messiahs” and “Nutcrackers,” they may be right. Certainly this concert has been a favorite for at least a couple of decades now. This year, Michael Butterman conducts the festivities instead of Jeff Tyzik, but the musical […]
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CLASSICAL | “Contemporary Vignettes”
The Society for Chamber Music’s smorgasbord approach to programming is yielding some tasty concerts, and this weekend’s “Contemporary Vignettes” is definitely appealing. It begins with an “Epitaph for Jean Harlow” by Charles Koechlin, the prolific 20th-century composer enamored of old-time Hollywood stars, and ends with the ubiquitous Astor Piazzolla’s “Libertango.” In between are up-to-the-minute works by John […]
