Cover Story
Part Four: Keeping the growth going
The resurgence feels real. What needs to happen to keep the momentum going?
Lilac Fest announces full music lineup
The Lilac Festival today announced the rest of its 2016 music lineup. This year’s Lilac Festival will take place Friday, May 6, through Sunday, May 15, in Highland Park. Music begins daily at 10:30 a.m. (12:30 p.m. on the weekends) and runs through 8:30 p.m. All shows are free to the public. It just got…
![[UPDATED] Week Ahead: Events for the week of Monday, April 4](https://i0.wp.com/www.roccitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1346967710-clintonbill01_sidebar-e1755018052210.webp?resize=250%2C250&ssl=1)
[UPDATED] Week Ahead: Events for the week of Monday, April 4
Former President Bill Clinton will headline a Rochester rally for his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 5, ahead of New York’s April 19 primary. The event will be held at the Laborers Union Local 435, 20 Fourth Street. Clinton will lead several rallies across New York on Tuesday,…
Water Street issued a conditional entertainment license
Water Street Music Hall on Friday was issued a conditional entertainment center license from the city, and may start hosting events again. The music venue, at 204 North Water Street, was denied renewal of its license at the beginning of March due to eight violations of the City Code and the police chief’s Rules and…
Reilich addresses I-Square remarks, again
County GOP chair Bill Reilich clearly wants to kill off the controversy he started by dragging I-Square into some routine political posturing. And he’s joined County Executive Cheryl Dinolfo in blaming the spat on Justin Roj, who yesterday resigned as deputy county executive at Dinolfo’s insistence. Reilich issued a statement this afternoon, which he said…
Blackfriars Theatre announces 2016-17 season
The company announced seven new shows, and unveiled a new logo, website, and seat campaign.
Film review: “I Saw the Light”
The music biopic is a genre filled with cliches. “I Saw the Light” does nothing to avoid them.
Top county official resigns over I-Square flap
Justin Roj, assistant Monroe County executive, has resigned at the request of his boss, County Executive Cheryl Dinolfo. The reason? I-Square. In a statement sent to media tonight, Dinolfo admitted that Roj contacted the county Industrial Development Agency’s counsel over the Irondequoit project. That’s not what Dinolfo told reporters earlier this week, when she said…
Clover Lanes could be headed to North Winton Village
Today is the last day of operation for the Clover Lanes bowling alley on Monroe Avenue in Brighton. The 50-lane alley and the former Mario’s Italian Restaurant are being torn down to make room for Palazzo Plaza, a high-end retail development. The plaza would be anchored by a Whole Foods store. Clover Lanes is moving…
FILM | 90-Second Newbery Film Festival
The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival, now in its fifth year, lets young filmmakers take a shot behind the camera to adapt or interpret a Newbery-winning book. But they only get 90 seconds to tell the story. From dramas and musicals to stop-motion, puppet shows, and even Minecraft recordings, the submissions are quite impressive. The best…
Volunteers needed to save Eastern hemlocks
Though generally hardy, Eastern hemlocks are under attack by the tiny woolly adelgid, an invasive insect that has decimated hemlocks from Pennsylvania to Georgia. The insects have now been spotted on hemlocks around the Canandaigua Lake area and in Rochester. The Finger Lakes Hemlock Initiative says that a network of volunteers is needed to learn…
Teamwork is the foundation of Scratch Bakeshop
On Thanksgiving eve 2014, Scratch Bakeshop Owners and Operators Kate Cassels and Molly Hartley were working feverishly in their bakery’s small kitchen. Though the rest of the space was undergoing renovation and the bakery had yet to officially open, the kitchen was ready and in action. Cassels and Hartley were to deliver 20 custom order…
JAZZ | Michael Vlatkovich Quartet
He is an experimental composer who has owned his a record company since 1981, but Michael Vlatkovich is best known as one of the most creative trombonists working today. A long-time presence on the West Coast new jazz scene, Vlatkovich is versatile enough to have played with acts ranging from Peggy Lee and Mel Tormé…
JAZZ | Rich Thompson and George Caldwell
Eastman School of Music professor and drummer Rich Thompson has played with jazz luminaries like Marian McPartland, Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, and Clark Terry. His past work also includes a stint with the Count Basie Orchestra where he played with pianist George Caldwell. Caldwell has also worked with a host of greats, including Cab Calloway,…
JAZZ | Eastman Jazz Café with Scott Colley
Having contributed his solid bass skills to albums by greats like Carmen McRae, Jim Hall, Bill Charlap, and many others in the top echelon of jazz, Scott Colley was ready to make his mark as a leader in the mid-1990’s. Since then he has released nine albums of his own work while increasing his reputation…
ROCK | Laura Stevenson
Touring in support of her 2015 album, “Cocksure,” Brooklyn singer-songwriter Laura Stevenson brings her brand of bouncy indie rock to the Bug Jar on Friday. If you like your tunes catchy and hook-laden, look no further: Stevenson’s music is replete with jangly guitars, crunchy choruses chock-full of power chords, honeyed vocals, and a healthy amount…
Feedback 3/30
We welcome your comments. Send them to themail@rochester-citynews.com, or post them on our website, rochestercitynewspaper.com, our Facebook page, or our Twitter feed, @roccitynews. Comments of fewer than 350 words have a greater chance of being published, and we do edit selections for publication in print. We don’t publish comments sent to other media. Trump has…
CLASSICAL | “From Death to Life”
Fans of the weekly a cappella Compline service at Christ Church might want to show up early this Sunday for even more sacred music. Presented by the Eastman School of Music, the concert “From Death to Life: Organ and Choral Music From St. Mary’s in Lübeck” is a veritable smorgasbord of seminal Renaissance and Baroque…
Urban Action 3/30
This week’s calls to action include the following events and activities. All are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted. Former NYT’s journalist to talk equal pay The Greater Rochester National Organization for Women will present a talk by David Cay Johnston at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 12. Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning…
SINGER-SONGWRITER | Brother Sun
Over a well-made bed of guitar, slide guitar, ukulele, and bouzouki, Brother Sun lays down some rich, three-part harmony. The band’s convergence from Boston, New York, and Chicago brings the melding of the trio’s three pleasant voices. The sound is seamless and sincere as it spans across folk, rock, jazz, blues, and Americana. What’s left?…
Breathing cityscapes fill AXOM Gallery
I come away from some shows with a song mysteriously buzzing at my brain, implanted by associations with the imagery. While immersing in the gritty, dream-like urban realms of Isaac Payne’s “Rose-Colored Glasses,” currently on view at AXOM Gallery, my inner antenna picked Black Star’s “Respiration” out of the ether. Payne’s recent mixed-media paintings on…
METAL | Metal Allegiance
I’m surprised other genres haven’t pursued a touring super group like metal has with Metal Allegiance. This band, founded by Mark Menghi, is like an all-star game starring members from Lamb of God, Exodus, Mastodon, Slayer, Pantera, King’s X, Hatebreed, and Lacuna Coil. Mike Portnoy, Mark Osegueda, Chuck Billy, Ron Thal, Alex Scholnick, and Mark…
Pegasus Early Music sets sights on Vivaldi
If you attended the RPO’s performance of Richard Strauss’s “Ein Heldenleben” last month, you heard one of the late-Romantic era’s biggest pieces of program music — music that paints pictures or tells a story. Strauss wrote plenty of these pieces, as did such 19th-century composers as Liszt and Tchaikovsky. But if you think program music…
FOLK POP | Brett Harris
North Carolina singer-songwriter Brett Harris croons classic pop, and coaxes it mature, mellow, and inviting. Whether solo or as part of his band, Harris’ vocal musings and hooky guitar melodies are at the fore. Out earlier this month, “Up In the Air” is his junior album. He wraps any hard edges in a soft optimism,…
ART | “Through the Student Lens 2016”
Each year, Image City Photography Gallery (722 University Avenue) showcases the work of photography students from local high schools, and this show will also include photographs from the students at Wilson Foundation Academy’s Studio 678, a program of the Genesee Center for the Arts and Education. Additionally, award-winning photographs from Camera Rochester competitions and work…
Dancing with the devil J.D. Wilkes
Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers are a Southern Gothic flirtation between heaven and hell that spills over the stage to engulf the faithful. But this ain’t that hokey can-I-get-an-amen bullshit. It truly is a religious experience … a rock ‘n’ roll experience. There may not be a God, but there certainly is a devil, and his…
ART | “VOID”
Choreographer and artist Eran Hanlon’s minimalist, otherworldly photography will be exhibited at Nu Movement (716 University Avenue) from April 1 through May 7. “VOID” is one stem of Hanlon’s on-going research into body as art; the other branch of his work is live performance that incorporates theatre, visual art, sound, video, and digital imagery. Hanlon…
ALBUM REVIEW: “Orion”
King Buffalo “Orion” Self-released Kingbuffalo.bandcamp.com Holy shit … I hope this means there’s a heavy rock movement in our future. Hard and heavy has gotten played out to the point of parody; it’s time for some dimension, some depth — the kind you get out of Rochester’s King Buffalo, and more specifically on “Orion,” its…
COMEDY | “The Three Tenors (Who Can’t Sing)”
Three Italian-American stand-up comedians — all heavyweight touring comics in their own right — are out on the road together for a powerhouse night of storytelling. Vic DiBitetto, Richie Minervini, and Fred Rubino will each perform a set, and then sit down together to close the night out with improv and audience talkback. “The Three…
ALBUM REVIEW: “Hold On”
James Hunter Six “Hold On” Daptone Records jameshuntermusic.com Over the groovy, ridiculously tight rhythm section’s boom-chicka-boom, soul sensation James Hunter and his aptly named James Hunter Six deliver his fourth album, and his first for the incredible Daptone imprint. Terms, like “yesterday” and “retro” get bandied about when the conversation comes to Hunter, his voice…
THEATER | “A Moon for the Misbegotten”
In this four-time Tony Award-winning play, two lonely hearts meet on a moonlit night in 1920’s Connecticut and learn about each another’s past — while also charting a course for the future. “A Moon for the Misbegotten” is the last play written by America’s only Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O’Neill, and has been produced all…
Film review: “Hello, My Name is Doris”
Built from a 2011 “Funny or Die” short by Laura Terruso about a lonely older woman smitten with a hot young male intern at her office, “Hello, My Name Is Doris” keeps the basic concept but adds some crucial depth, investing the lead character with enough shading that we’re allowed to sympathize with her instead…
Film review: “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”
I can’t help feeling as though I should shake Zack Snyder’s hand. For a man with little to no apparent interest in Batman or Superman as characters, it’s impressive that he’s somehow managed to convince the suits at Warner Bros. that he’s the right guy to be in charge of establishing the cinematic universe for…
Downtown and its future
Right now, downtown is just one community center among many, and it’s in competition with its suburban neighbors.
