CITY Magazine. Arts. Music. Culture.
Rochester, New York's source for arts, music, events listings and culture, on the web and in print every month. Offering alternative news since 1971.
“Parfumerie”
By Screen Plays
Through December 21
MuCCC, 142 Atlantic Ave.
$15-$20, muccc.org
Handel’s “Messiah” is definitely a Christmas music staple, but only the first part of this great oratorio is about Christ’s birth; the second and third parts delve into other aspects of Christian belief. However, they also contain dandy music (including the “Hallelujah Chorus”), so no holiday concert seems complete without them. The Roberts Wesleyan College […]
There’s more to holiday-time entertainment than Hallmark Channel movies and antique animated specials. Instead of watching another Christmas movie marathon, why not get out of the house and see a holiday-themed play? The Rochester theater calendar is full of them this month, from old favorites like “A Christmas Carol” and “It’s A Wonderful Life” to […]
The character of the funny nun has been around at least since Chaucer, and is here to stay as a staple of pop culture. You’ve seen her in “The Sound of Music,” “The Flying Nun,” numerous variations on “Nunsense”, etc., etc. My own upbringing was about as un-Roman Catholic as can be imagined, so I […]
Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays with Morrie” may have been a pop-culture juggernaut as a book; as a play it is pretty much Lifetime for guys. Albom’s memoir of afternoons spent in the company of a college professor he remembered fondly, during the professor’s last days, and the life lessons that resulted, was on the bestseller list […]
When Deborah Fox first decided to study lute in Rochester in the 1980’s, she had a tough time of it and ended up studying privately. Fast forward a couple of decades or so, and Deborah Fox is pleasantly surprised to find herself not only a busy professional lutenist, but also the director of a very […]
The touring production of “War Horse,” which runs through Sunday at the Auditorium Theatre, brings one of the most distinctive Broadway events of recent years to Rochester. “War Horse” started as a popular young people’s book by Michael Morpurgo, then became a play by Nick Stafford for the National Theatre of Great Britain, which produced […]
When you walk into the house for Geva’s current production of “The 39 Steps,” the first thing you see is a good, old-fashioned proscenium framing a good, old-fashioned red curtain. That’s a pretty retro visual for a modern theater production, but it turns out to be a perfect visual introduction for this one. If you […]
Is “Fantasia” sheer genius or total kitsch? Critics will always be deliberating on that one, but it is true that since its premiere in 1940, Walt Disney’s animated feature, meant to introduce mass audiences to that scary thing called Classical Music, has become a classic itself. Some among us will never hear Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s […]
Turns out Rochester has its own gospel super group: Judah. The group is celebrating its fourth anniversary and its new CD release with a blockbuster gospel music event this Saturday. The lineup also includes comedian Les Long as the MC, Jason Monroe and the Elim Christian Fellowship Choir, Chosen Generation, Shawn Brown and Da Boyz […]
Jonathan Biss handily disproves the notion that a pianist needs to be old and grizzled before tackling the core Germanic repertoire of Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms. At 33, Biss is a highly regarded interpreter of all three in performance and in words. For his appearances with the Rochester Philharmonic, Biss will play Brahms’s “Piano Concerto […]
The violinist Richard Luby (1945-2013) co-founded the Society for Chamber Music in Rochester in 1976. He served as its music director and performed with it frequently during his years in Rochester, where he also played with the second violins of the RPO. He had a wide repertoire, but was most associated with the sonatas and […]
