Cover Story
Generating beauty from busy lives
Each year, City Newspaper highlights four Rochester artists who are not yet household names, but are creating engaging work that’s been garnering attention. The following four emerging artists — Holly B. Heckler, Athesia Benjamin, Melissa Huang, and Marissa Kalen — come from diverse backgrounds, are at different points in their career paths, and pursue different…
Week ahead: Events for the week of Monday, October 17
The League of Women Voters and WROC-TV will co-sponsor a debate between Representative Louise Slaughter and Gates Town Supervisor Mark Assini, candidates for the 25th U.S. Congressional District. The debate will be held at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, October 18, at WROC studios, 201 Humboldt Street, and will be broadcast live. Local clergy and Rochester…
Rochester Chamber Orchestra rediscovers Louise Farrenc
Women composers have hardly had their fair shakes. But I’d venture to say that in Rochester, at least, their situation is looking up just a bit this fall. Last month, a spectacular Pegasus Early Music concert featured remarkable vocal music by the 17th century composer Barbara Strozzi; in a couple of weeks the RPO will…
Flower City Pottery Invitational fills the weekend
The second annual Flower City Pottery Invitational, hosted by the Genesee Center for the Arts and Education, kicked off Thursday morning with (many sold out) classes offered by some of the exhibiting artists. The event, which last year drew nearly 1,000 visitors to the center, continues through Sunday, October 16, with an opening reception Friday,…
Task force releases zombie properties report
The Monroe County task force on zombie properties issued its first round of recommendations for local, state, and federal governments and agencies today. Members of the Task Force on Vacant and Abandoned Properties laid out the recommendations during a press conference. The suggestions focus on three areas: Prevention of vacancies; Identification and maintenance of vacant…
Borinquen Dance Theatre highlights Hispanic Heritage Month
Feet stomping and drums playing to the Latin beats ringing out of the speakers as colorful skirts drift across the floor are common sights and sounds to the students who have become an integral part of Borinquen Dance Theatre as they prepare for performances during Hispanic Heritage Month. Over the last month — National Hispanic…
Fringe 2016: What we want to see again
The First Niagara Rochester Fringe Festival — well, now known as the KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival — ended its record-setting fifth year on September 24, and our staff has just about recovered from the arts overload. The 10-day festival had around 67,000 attendees this year, and sold out 115 shows — from theater, dance, and…
Poison rhetoric trickles down
In Donald Trump, America has a presidential candidate who’s called Mexican immigrants rapists who bring drugs and crime into the country. He talks about Islam only in the context of terrorism. And he once said that Muslim refugees or immigrants should be blocked from entering the US; now he says that they should undergo “extreme…
Frontier prepares to take on Time Warner
Local cable subscribers can access a multitude of channels at the push of a button, and they have on-demand access to many popular shows and movies. But many customers still complain about the service: they have picture quality problems, their feed cuts out too often, they’re forced to pay for channels they don’t want, and…
After beer release, Rochester brewers continue to build collaborative
It almost reads like a recipe. Combine 10 Rochester breweries, various hops, yeast, and some collaboration. Brew and let ferment. Yields 20 barrels of India Pale Lager. In August, 10 local breweries — Roc Brewing, Stoneyard, Swiftwater, Naked Dove, Knucklehead, Rohrbach, CB Craft Brewers, The Lost Borough, Three Heads, and Genesee Brew House Pilot Batch…
CLASSICAL | RPO with Christopher Seaman
The direction “nobilmente” appears often in the scores of Edward Elgar. If you wanted to list the “noblest” of this British composer’s works, you’d have to put his magnificent Second Symphony near the top. It is passionate, elegiac, lavish in themes and orchestration; it’s absolutely one of the finest late-Romantic symphonies — and, since it’s…
THEATER | Festival of New Theatre
What’s new in local and national theater? Geva has several answers to that question in its annual Festival of New Theatre, beginning Wednesday night and running through October 23. Highlights include the reading of a new play about two great Rochesterians, Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, and the opportunity to discuss the plays with…
COUNTRY | Brothers Osborne
If it weren’t for this duo’s deep Southern drawl, guitar twang, mandolin sprinkle, and easy going lope, you might call the Brothers Osborne a pop duo. The harmony between brothers John and T.J. Osborne is infectious and downright pretty, and it’s enough for the boys to get several nods from the Country Music Association and…
SPECIAL EVENT | Upstate Social Sessions
Upstate Social Sessions is helping teach professionals to keep up with the ever-growing presence of social media. The day-long conference will host national and local social media gurus, like New York Times’s Neeti Upadhye, multimedia producer Corey Takahashi, and WXXI’s Helene Biandudi Hofer, to help guide attendees through personal and professional skills for the web,…
FOLK | John McCutcheon
In the true spirit of folk music, singer and multi-instrumentalist John McCutcheon is more of a storyteller than straight-up musician — even though the man is a master of anything with strings. I mean, he could get a beautiful sound out of a yo-yo. With more than 30 albums to his credit, ranging from stuff…
DANCE | “Alice in Wonderland”
The dancers of New York State Ballet are preparing for their next adventure down the rabbit hole with “Alice in Wonderland.” Following the classic story by Lewis Carroll, a young woman named Alice finds herself in a tea party with a Caterpillar, the Mad Hatter, and the Cheshire Cat, as well as playing croquet with…
FOLK | Patty Larkin
There’s something awe-inspiring about watching a musician who can play their instrument with such virtuosic intensity. You can’t turn your eyes away, and your ears are transfixed. Such is the case with guitarist, soundscape artist, and experimental folk musician Patty Larkin. Already on her 13th album, Larkin’s guitar and songwriting skills have been praised everywhere…
SPECIAL EVENT | “Wings” with Live Organ Accompaniment
“Wings” is a landmark movie of its time, breaking barriers for on-screen nudity, intense shooting conditions, realistic air-combat scenes, and men kissing. The 1927 silent war film, which captured Air Force pilots and actual infantrymen on camera to ensure the production’s authenticity, earned preservation in the US Library of Congress for its cultural and historical…
ROCK | Brand New
There is perhaps no band more seminal in the formation and influence of modern alt-punk than Brand New. The quartet from Long Island has been a mainstay of the scene since the early 2000’s. But the band’s recent headlines have been a little tumultuous. There’s been new singles, rumors of a new album which has…
THEATER | “My Fair Lady”
To say “My Fair Lady” is a stage classic might sell it short. The musical — about a phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, who takes a bet to transform a Cockney working-class woman, Eliza Doolittle, into a high society lady — premiered on Broadway in 1956, winning several Tony Awards (including for Best Musical), and set…
Eastman Audio Research Studio merges expression with technology
Oliver Schneller can smell fear. As an Eastman School of Music professor of composition and the director of the Computer Music Center, Schneller aims to alleviate this dread by extolling the virtues of electronic music and its place in the acoustic music realm via EARS — the Eastman Audio Research Studio. EARS embraces electronic music…
SPECIAL EVENT | The Spectral Carnival
This weekend, the 5th annual Spectral Carnival returns to the spooky setting of St. Joseph’s Park (118 Pleasant Street). Each fall, the gothic stone bones of the 19th century church — all that remains from a 1974 fire — are transformed from a quiet-as-the-grave space filled with sylvan overgrowtn and birdsong, to the site of…
Album review: “Way Back Home”
Steve Gadd Band BFM Jazz drstevegadd.com Near the end of the title track of the new album by the Steve Gadd Band, Gadd takes a knock-your-socks-off drum solo that brings the house down. The album, subtitled “Live from Rochester, NY,” was recorded at the 2015 Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival, and it’s far more than…
Humans of New York comes to Rochester
When Brandon Stanton moved to New York City in 2010, he planned to embark on a photography project to document 10,000 people on the streets. Since then, he’s added a powerful interview component, pairing each photo with quotes from that pictured individual. These stories vary from sweet accounts of how couples got together to anecdotes…
Album review: “Spirit Forward”
Michael Blanco Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records blancobass.com Bassists don’t always get to step into the spotlight, so you may not have heard of Michael Blanco. Since moving to New York in 2000, he has performed with dozens of top jazz musicians, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Blanco has been in the pit…
JAZZ | Eastman Jazz Ensemble and New Jazz Ensemble
If you want to preview the jazz stars of the future, there is no better place than Kilbourn Hall when the Eastman School of Music’s top ensembles play. Director Bill Dobbins will lead the Eastman Jazz Ensemble in a performance of tunes by Thad Jones, Fats Waller, and others, not to mention original tunes and…
Feedback 10/12
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. Wrong messages…
JAZZ | Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri
Transylvania may be etched into our collective memory because of a famous vampire novel, but it’s a real place with fascinating musical roots. Romanian pianist Lucian Ban was born there, and when he teams up with violist and violinist Mat Maneri, get ready for an evening of Transylvanian doinas, re-interpretations of works by Enesco and…
Urban Action 10/12
This week’s calls to action include the following events and activities. All are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Activist discusses book on housing crisis Friends and Foundation of the Rochester Public Library will present “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” a review of the Matthew Desmond book, on Tuesday,…
PSYCHEDELIC | Quintron and Miss Pussycat
When attempting to describe the true musical anomaly that is Quintron, it can be hard to find a place to start. You could just dive right in and examine his beautifully preposterous backstory, which tells of a German-born synthwave musician who found his home in New Orleans and loved it so much that he established…
Irondequoit battles emerald ash borer
Irondequoit is the latest Monroe County community to confirm the presence of emerald ash borer infestations. Town officials say the insects have been found in several locations around Irondequoit, and they plan to remove infested trees in public rights-of-way and plant new trees in their place. The town won’t immediately remove healthy ash trees, they…
Future of Warren’s traffic court uncertain
People in poverty often live on the edge of a cliff. One misstep can set off a chain of events that makes it hard to stop the downward slide, much less better their lives. A prime example in the City of Rochester involves transportation and fines. Many residents can’t afford to pay their traffic fines,…
Film review: “The Girl on the Train”
Based on the novel by Paula Hawkins, “The Girl on the Train” is a whodunit in the vein of “Gone Girl.” Maybe it’s unfair to juxtapose the two stories, but the makers of this film are so clearly hoping to recapture the success of David Fincher and Gillian Flynn’s viciously clever mystery that the comparisons…
Trump’s assault ‘banter’: democracy’s latest hit
We’ve moved way beyond Trump calling women ‘pigs’ and ridiculing their looks. Now we’ve heard him brag about his sexual-assault prowess.
Something for everyone
Geva opened its 2016-17 season with the comedy.
