Rochester

Wake up with music, a little news, the arts calendar, and – possibly - your chance to win free tickets to a live performance. 

At 6:40 a.m., hear a daily Mystery piece.

The theme?  Rochester’s great concert halls!  We’ll hear recordings made in historic and wonderful acoustic spaces in and around the Flower City.

Monday, October 8

John Andres hosts.

Tuesday, October 9

After more than a year of construction, Nazareth College is getting ready to take the wraps of its new Jane and Laurence Glazer Music Performance Center.

The $15.5 million facility is located adjacent to the Nazareth College Arts Center, and it includes a 550-seat venue designed specifically for the acoustics of large instrumental ensembles.

Rita Mannelli is the Executive Director for the Arts Center.  She says having the new building is important because nearly 20 percent of the Nazareth College student body are in the Department of Music.

Eight years ago, Jessica Marten – Curator in Charge/Curator of American Art at Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery – was poking around among the paintings in a museum storage space when a small piece caught her eye.

It was many things. The artist’s medium, egg tempera and gold leaf, suggested medieval paintings, and the illuminated manuscripts of monks. The extensive use of borders is what might be seen on a tapestry. And the central figure looked like an image from Frida Kahlo: A woman in pain, clutching her head. Her eyes are bleeding.

Producers of the KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival call it the "Big Reveal," a rundown of the many performers and venues at the annual event, now entering its seventh year.

"Our Fringe will be different from last year because we have so much new talent, so many new ideas. It's going to be fresh, topical and lots of fun," says producer Erica Fee, noting that there are over 500 performances at more than 30 venues in the downtown area.

It's now the largest multi-genre arts festival in the state.

The Corn Hill Arts Festival is this coming weekend and it marks a milestone. 

It's the 50th year of the event.

Its humble beginning was August 23, 1969. The neighborhood wasn't even known as Corn Hill back then; it was Rochester's Old Third Ward, once one of the city's wealthiest neighborhoods.

In the summer of 1969, it was the target of Urban Renewal efforts. Nine hundred homes had already been demolished.

https://youtu.be/z6yNSIwM1WI

Re-energizing the indomitable Frederick Douglass. That’s what’s happening right now in our community in commemoration of the famed abolitionist’s bicentennial. Two hundred years after his birth, the work done by Douglass in Rochester, both the famous and the lesser-known, remains relevant. Reminders from Douglass that: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men” continue to challenge us in our schools, churches, and households. On this edition of Need to Know, what it means to celebrate this living legacy in Rochester.

One of my favorite little things about Rochester that I discovered after moving here is that we had busts of Goethe and Schiller around town.  Sadly, Goethe was stolen a few years ago from Highland Park, never to be seen again. But we still have Friedrich Schiller, best known to music fans as the writer of the words to the Ode to Joy, used by Beethoven in the finale of his ninth symphony.

Joy, beautiful spark of the gods,
Daughter from Elysium,
We enter, drunk with fire,
Heavenly One, thy sanctuary!
Your magic binds again
What convention strictly divides;
All people become brothers,
Where your gentle wing abides.

Today, as I biked by, I had to stop – because Schiller had some artistic company, right next to his little park on Andrews Street. Fiber art (yarnbombing?) by someone who knew his musical connections. The lighting was a little blah this morning, but still – hope these make you smile too. 
 

The Rochester Music Hall of Fame is hoping its new brick and mortar space will be open in time for the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival in June.

The Hall, which just officially welcomed its seventh class of inductees, is planning to take over a now-vacant, 1,300 square foot space at the corner of Gibbs Street and East Avenue this summer.

In recognition of the significant classical music riches in Rochester, WXXI Classical 91.5 will be presenting live performances from concert halls in and around Rochester throughout April 2018.

As the recent mass shooting at a Florida high school re-energizes the national gun violence debate, a local composer has turned to music to reflect on a tragedy that shook America to its core just over five years ago.

Eastman School of Music instructor Steve Danyew once attended Sandy Hook Elementary in  Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were killed by a mass shooter on December 14, 2012.

Danyew's piece "Into the Silent Land" blends elements of a funeral march and a lament.  Near the end, a poem is read over the music by a narrator.