Rochester sees quite a bit of Shakespeare in the course of a theater season, but almost nothing from his runner-up in the Greatest English Playwright sweepstakes (and match in productivity), George Bernard Shaw. Last year Rochester’s Black Sheep Theatre presented Shaw’s early play “Widowers’ Houses”; this month it is presenting “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” — another […]
David Raymond
Posted inMusic
CLASSICAL | Brass without Boundaries
Brass instruments usually don’t get much chance to shine on a chamber-music program, other than the occasional Hindemith sonata or (if you’re a trumpeter) the Saint-Saëns Sextet. The First Unitarian Church will rectify this with the first concert of the season in its chamber-music series, First Muse. The shining will be done by a trio […]
Posted inCulture
Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: “Oscar and I,” “Starting Here, Starting Now”
Yesterday was Show Tune Sunday at the Fringe Festival, at least for me. In the afternoon I attended “Oscar and I: A Rodgers and Hammerstein Sing-Along with Mrs. Anna” at MuCCC. Mrs. Anna, in case you didn’t know, is one of the great R&H characters — the “I” in “The King and I,” in fact […]
Posted inCulture
Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: “Almighty God Bierce,” “The Author’s Voice”
Ambrose Bierce’s (1842-1913?) death was enigmatic — a journalist who traveled to Mexico in 1913 to interview Pancho Villa, he simply vanished, hence the “?” — but his life was definitely a troubled one. Fighting in the Civil War, an unhappy marriage, and the death of his children helped add vitriol and disillusion to his […]
Posted inCulture
Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: Rochester Playwrights
Not all theater has to be Eugene O’Neill (not that you see much O’Neill around here, anyway). It is instructive to see how much can be said in a couple of pages of pointed dialogue. The Geriactors, “Rochester’s Traveling Senior Theatre Troupe”, is an ensemble of six vastly experienced local actors you’ve seen everywhere over […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
“Pump Boys and Dinettes”
Lightweight musical revues generally have short lives, but “Pump Boys and Dinettes” has proved surprisingly hardy. First produced in the early 1980’s as the off-est of Off Broadway shows, it eventually moved to the Big Street and ran for a year and a half. Thirty years later it is still going strong. Geva put on […]
Posted inSpecial Sections
THEATER: The trials of trying out
When depicted in the movies, theater auditions are usually fraught and drama-ridden. They can be that way in real life too, but most theater companies try to save the drama for the production, and to be as fair as possible. Different local community-theater groups do have different approaches to the all-important subject of auditioning, depending […]
Posted inSpecial Sections
THEATER: The next act
I’ve always heard Rochester described as a “theater town,” a distinction that seems like a rare one in the days of TV on demand, web series, and all the other performance media that keep a distance between you and the performers. Judging from a look at the Greater Rochester area’s 2013-2014 theater calendar, we’re still […]
Posted inMusic
CLASSICAL | Gateways Music Festival
Pianist and music educator Armenta Adams Hummings founded the Gateways Music Festival in 1993 to give performance and networking opportunities to students and professional musicians of African descent. Gateways’ home every other year since 1995 has been Rochester; the Eastman School of Music hosts the festival’s final concert, and throughout the course of the event […]
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CLASSICAL | Finger Lakes Opera
The Rochester area needs another opera company like it needs another…well, come to think of it, we could definitely use some additional operatic action here. The brand-new Finger Lakes Opera hopes to help fill the breach. The program for this inaugural concert, led by the company’s artistic director Gerard Floriano (pictured), includes Metropolitan Opera soprano […]
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CLASSICAL | Finger Lakes Chamber Music Festival
Two great writers get the musical treatment in the final concert of the 2013 Finger Lakes Chamber Music Festival. Mark Twain’s “War Prayer” pulls no punches in giving the business to sermons glorifying war and destruction, and has been set to music several times, most recently by the Festival’s music director Richard Auldon Clark. Premiered […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
“Rent”
As I imagine everybody knows by now, in the early 1990’s the composer-lyricist Jonathan Larson had the inspiration of reimagining Puccini’s “La Bohème” among the boho set in New York’s Alphabet City. The show, titled “Rent,” was a smash hit on Broadway, won every award imaginable (including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama), made a ton […]
