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COMMENTARY: BRUCE JACKSON ON NETANYAHU AND HIS ALLIES
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RUST BELT BOOKS
Everyone knows a bookstore is much more than a place to buy books—used bookstores, especially. You go to soak up the atmosphere as much as the knowledge lodged between covers. Rust Belt Books, as every visitor knows, is a special location in the universe. Soon, the store will open in its third incarnation in 20 years, this deep in Buffalo’s West Side, at Grant Street and Bird Avenue. In that time, it has served the community as meeting place, theater, safe haven, and cultural incubator.
415 GRANT ST (NEAR BIRD) / 885-9535
Rust Belt Books founder Brian Lampkin started the first store on Lexington and Ashland in 1995, because “the store I needed wasn’t in Buffalo yet.” It was a solo venture, staffed by Lampkin and his wife, begun with used books sourced locally and wherever Lampkin happened to travel. Though tiny, the store attracted readers and writers alike, and poetry readings stuffed the place to capacity. In 2000, Lampkin was invited to move to Allentown by Rick Smith, CEO of Rigidized Metals, who was renovating a large space with KEPA3 gallery owner and artist Peter Fowler. The adjacency to Cybele’s Cafe, Nietzsche’s, Theatre of Youth, and the College Street Gallery sparked a creative community at once. “It was a perfect time to move to Allen Street, and a whole scene began to coalesce there.” The bookstore hosted art shows, literary events, and happenings such as the Royal Flush Casino night (a response to the casino controversy in the city) and became a home to the Real Dream Cabaret, which ran oddball variety shows a few times a year, and special events like the Election Night Show. “It was great to bring life to the store, and to do crazy things together for no monetary value,” says Lampkin. Rust Belt Books came under the stewardship of Kristi Meal in 2005, when Lampkin and his family moved to North Carolina. Lampkin states, “Because I knew it was in such great hands, I knew that anything that happened next would be good.” Lampkin opened a new bookstore/wine bar, Scuppernong Books, in December 2013, in Greensboro, North Carolina. This January, Rust Belt Books made another significant move, relocating to its own building at 415 Grant Street, near Bird Avenue. “The bookstore couldn’t remain the same where it
HOURS: MON 12-6PM TUE-WED: 10:30AM-6PM THU-SAT: 10:30AM-8PM / SUN: 11AM-5PM
had been, so I had to ask myself, what do I want to do?” Kristi Meal explains. “Continuing to rent seemed untenable, and we had zero budget. We also had no idea where to go. But, I believe in destiny. ‘A building will emerge.’” Meal considers the bookstore its own entity, noting, “She is her own organism,” and affirms, “She told us what she wanted.” Regarding the trend of digital books, Meal is unconcerned: “I totally believe in printed matter and it has a brilliant future and digitalia is the means to make it remember itself and be even more better and reassume its position of unbridled transmission.” 415 Grant had been an antique store for many years, owned by the woman who lived in the apartment upstairs. Kristi Meal and Erin Verhoef (they prefer the term “stewards” to “owners”) purchased the building, and created a new interior space appropriate for displaying books. The store will also have a space for performance, as Allen Street did for the Cabaret and many runs of plays performed by the Brazen-Faced Varlets. Meal and Verhoef have already begun to engage with neighbors and neighboring businesses: Gypsy Parlor and Zip’s Pizza. “Grant Street reminds us of Allen Street when we first opened. We’re ready to be in a place like that.” Westside Stories Used Books owner Jeanenne Petri welcomes Rust Belt, not seeing them as competition at all. “I think they’ll be a great addition to the neighborhood. As residents of the West Side, I’m happy to see more locally owned, independent businesses opening up on Grant Street. It helps to add so much vibrancy to an already dynamic neighborhood. The more access people have to affordable books, the better!” Rust Belt Books is now open, offering a “Thanks for Waiting” special: 20 percent off P everything until the Ides of March!
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THIS IN T
NEWS COMMENTARY
USING ISRAEL Netanyahu and the Republican Congress BY BRUCE JACKSON
There are three things, in the interest of full disclosure, I should note at the beginning of this: I’m a Brooklyn Jew. I’m a contributor to J-Street because I think they represent the sanest position on Middle East issues of any American organization engaged with these issues. And I’ve been writing about Alan Dershowitz for years, and he about me—mostly in the New York Times and Counterpunch. These exchanges have been about our different positions on Israel and on ethical, political and torture issues.
NETANYAHU’S MISSION There has been a huge PR war going on about this week’s speech by Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, before the US Congress. The speech was arranged by House Speaker John Boehner and Ron Dermer, an American who worked for New Gingrich on the Contract with America and who arranged Mitt Romney’s Jerusalem trip in 2012, when Romney was cozying up to American Jews during his failed run for the presidency. Dermer moved to Israel, became a political operative there, and is probably the person closest to Netanyahu. When he became an official in the Israeli government, he took up Israeli citizenship. He has been Israel’s Ambassador to the US since September 2013. In a 2002 column in the Jerusalem Post, Dermer said Israeli doves were “the self-haters and the census takers.” According to Haaretz, “Last year, he spoke alongside Dick Cheney, Chris Christie and Scott Walker at a Republican Jewish Coalition event hosted by Sheldon Adelson” (February 4, 2015). This visit by Netanyahu is entirely political. Not “political” in the good sense—we work together to get things done—but rather in the cynical sense—we work together to advance our own positions. Boehner is on record as saying he would do anything to make the Obama administration fail at anything it tries. Netanyahu is in a tight election at home. This trip increases Bibi’s attractiveness to the right-wing coalition his Likud party needs to stay in power. And it advances his determination to scuttle the negotiations now going on between Iran, the US, and several other countries. He would much prefer that the negotiations fail and that we opt for a military solution instead. The Republicans in Congress are very close to Netanyahu and Likud, far closer than they are to any of the non-militant parties in Israel. So this visit serves Boehner’s mission of screwing Obama and Netanyahu’s purpose of scuttling successful negotiations with Iran and propping up his own election campaign. It does not serve the long- or short-term political interests of either the US or Israel, but that is of no concern to Bibi or Boehner. It’s all about personal ambition, and money.
PR There has been a huge PR campaign around this visit. I’m writing this on Sunday, March 1. On Monday, Netanyahu was scheduled to speak at the AIPAC conference, along with Eric Cantor, Barney Frank, William Kristol (editor of The Weekly Standard, who tweeted that it wouldn’t be amiss if everybody walked out when members of the Obama administration spoke), Ralph Reed
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(founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition), David Siegel (consul general of Israel, LA), and many others. They are pulling out the big guns to lean on Congress to block Obama’s negotiations with Iran and to promote the Tuesday performance by Netanyahu before the Republican Congress. The Times of Israel reported as news a full-page ad in which “Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel announced his support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Congressional address in March on Iran’s nuclear program, and said he plans to attend the event.” The one thing nobody is talking about is the worst-kept secret in the Middle East. There is only one nuclear power in the entire region: Israel. It has been one since 1966.
NETANYAHU AND POSNER Netanyahu was popular in America when he was Israeli representative to the UN (1984-1988) for exactly the same reason Americans liked Soviet spokesman Vladimir Posner. They both spoke perfect American English, Posner with a Manhattan accent and Netanyahu with a Philadelphia mainline accent. Americans, who speak fewer other languages than almost anyone else, tend to like foreigners who talk pretty much the way they do. The content recedes. We forgot who Posner was mouthpiece for; we didn’t notice what a dedicated militarist Netanyahu always was.
and when he ran for prime minister in 1996, he hired American Republican political operative Arthur Finkelstein to run his campaign. I remember him well during the years he was at the UN. I, as many of my friends, took him as a moderate, a man seeking a solution. We were misled by the language. We should have been looking at his military record, not his vowels. His game was hardball, not negotiation.
THIS WEEK’S POLITICAL GAME The Obama administration did everything it could to keep Netanyahu from doing a performance before Congress this week. The administration is trying to negotiate with Iran; Netanyahu is trying to blow those negotiations up; the Republicans want to screw Obama however they can. None of this is new. We’ve seen the Republicans working to kill everything coming out of the White House for the past six years. Obama and Netanyahu have disagreed about new settlements and a two-state solution since Obama took office. The only thing that’s new is the ferocity of the PR, and the openness with which Boehner and Netanyahu are willing to blow off the White House and the State Department on a major issue of foreign policy. Traditionally in American government, foreign policy is managed by the Executive (which is why we have State Department) and approved or not by the Congress (checks and balances). What’s going on this time is an end-run around the White House: Netanyahu can’t manipulate Obama, and Boehner wants (in his own words) to block him “tooth and nail.” In addition to that, the Republicans in Congress are very close to the Likud Party in Israel, probably closer than they are to the Democrats or the White House.
Posner grew up in the US and attended Stuyvesant High School, a few years ahead of me. During the 1970s and 1980s, we were still in a Cold War with the evil Commie empire, but he was a frequent guest on American TV shows such as Ted Koppel’s Nightline and The Phil Donahue Show. For three years, he and Donahue did a TV show together. They spoke the same language.
It is what has now become a cliché: Those guys can use this perfect political storm to serve their own purposes while ignoring the needs, values and desires of the countries they presume to serve.
Posner was never in the military, but Netanyahu grew up in it. He fought in the Six-Day War (1967), the Yom Kippur War (1973), and several Special Forces actions in between.
On February 26 the organization J-Street (two-state, stop settlements, seek peace, negotiate settlements) had a full-page ad in the front section of the New York Times: a photo of Bibi with the US Capitol behind him. The first part of the text said, “Prime Minister Netanyahu: Congress isn’t a prop for your election campaign.” It went on to say, “The last time you addressed the U.S. Congress you turned the speech into a campaign ad. The presidents of Israel and the United States, Five of Israel’s former ambassadors to the United States, Dozens of American Elected Officials and major American Jewish leaders all said: Postpone the speech.”
He is only the second person to be elected Israeli prime minister for a third term (the other was David Ben-Gurion), mainly because of his willingness to ally the Likud Party with right-wing parties. He was born and spent most of his life in Israel, but in his high school years, his family lived in a Philadelphia suburb. He got an architecture degree from MIT in 1975 and a master’s from MIT’s Sloan School of Management in 1977. While at Sloan he took political science courses at Harvard. During that time in the US, he used the name “Ben Nitai.” His older brother, Yonatan, was commander of, and was killed in, the rescue raid on Entebbe in 1976. He worked for a while in a firm with Mitt Romney,
USING THE PRESS
Two days later, a Zionist organization based in Englewood, New Jersey, This World: The Values Network (which seems wholly to me like an AIPAC front, but I haven’t found a link), published a full-page response, almost all text. At the top in big type, “Susan
COMMENTARY NEWS
PIN THE PAST, ALAN DERSHOWITZ HAS BEEN A CONSTANT DEFENDER OF ANYTHING ISRAEL AND A SUPPORTER OF TORTURE AS AN INTERROGATION TECHNIQUE, BUT IN A RECENT ARTICLE DESCRIBES HIMSELF “AS A LIBERAL DEMOCRAT WHO TWICE CAMPAIGNED FOR PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA.” THEN HE IMMEDIATELY SIDES WITH THE REPUBLICANS. Rice has a blind spot: Genocide.” Below that is a photo of a lot of skulls in boxes, to the right of which is a photo of US National Security Advisor Susan Rice. On Sunday there was another full-page ad in the Times, this one from the Republican Jewish Coalition. Most of the top half of the page was black, with three photographs, three one-liners (all in caps), and three names (in upper- and lower-case): “DEATH TO AMERICA” —Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini ISRAEL MUST BE “WIPED OUT”— Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ISRAEL SHOULD BE “ANNIHILATED”—Ayatollah Ali Khameni The first two lines of the text are “NUCLEAR IRAN IS UNTHINKABLE. THE TIME FOR DEBATE IS NOW, NOT AFTER IRAN GETS NUCLEAR WEAPONS.” The executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition is Howard Kohr, who previously worked for AIPAC. AIPAC is Israel’s premier lobbying organization in the US: It engages in political campaigns and goes after people it thinks are saying bad things about Israel. It has been hugely influential in American politics over the past 30 years, much like the NRA. Full-page ads in the front section of the New York Times cost about $150,000. Full-page ads in the Sunday edition cost considerably more. (There is a superb article about AIPAC by Connie Buck in the September 1, 2014 New Yorker: “Friends of Israel: The lobbying group AIPAC has consistently fought the Obama Administration on policy. Is it now losing influence?” )
DERSHOWITZ I pretty much expect AIPAC to endorse anything the Israeli prime minister tells it to do, and This World and the Republican Jewish Coalition to do the same. It is not a surprise that Elie Wiesel’s letter on This World’s website was immediately disseminated by AIPAC on its website. Elie Wiesel has had one message for 40 years, and so has AIPAC. What did surprise me in this noise attacking the White House’s attempt to move toward a normalized relationship with Iran (every major treaty is a major move) was former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz’s screed in the February 23 Wall Street Journal defending the diplomacy runaround by the Republicans in Congress and Netanyahu. In the past, Dershowitz has been a constant defender of anything Israel and a supporter of torture as an interrogation technique, but in this article he describes himself “as a liberal Democrat who twice campaigned for President Barack Obama.” Then he immediately sides with the Republicans in Congress and Netanyahu’s Likud coalition, which wants to blow up the current US negotiations with Iran: “I am appalled that some Democratic
members of Congress are planning to boycott the speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 3 to a joint session of Congress,” he writes. “At bottom, this controversy is not mainly about protocol and politics—it is about the constitutional system of checks and balances and the separation of powers.” That is total nonsense. Netanyahu isn’t here to maintain our checks and balances. He is here to do what he can to wreck the potential nuclear containment treaty with Iran and to pump up his own political standing back home and to help Boehner screw Obama. “Under the Constitution,” Dershowitz writes, “the executive and legislative branches share responsibility for making and implementing important foreign-policy decisions. Congress has a critical role to play in scrutinizing the decisions of the president when these decisions involve national security, relationships with allies and the threat of nuclear proliferation.” All true, but it is just pettifoggery. No decisions have been made yet. The negotiations are still going on. Should the White House and State Department come up with a potential treaty, the text will go before Congress. Dershowitz is a Constitutional lawyer. He knows that. He goes on to write, “Congress has every right to invite, even over the president’s strong objection, any world leader or international expert who can assist its members in formulating appropriate responses to the current deal being considered with Iran regarding its nuclear-weapons program. Indeed, it is the responsibility of every member of Congress to listen to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who probably knows more about this issue than any world leader, because it threatens the very existence of the nation state of the Jewish people.” Congress can, if it wishes, invite ballet dancers, basso profundos, and NFL quarterbacks. It can come to work bare-ass naked. But it is not good politics to provide a bully pulpit to a prime minister of a nation opposed to US policy, a nation that spends a huge amount of money influencing US policy, a prime minister who will surely use this presentation in his election campaign at home (as he did last time). And what evidence is there that Netanyahu knows more about this than Obama? “The idea,” Dershowitz writes, “that some members of Congress will not give him the courtesy of listening violates protocol and basic decency to a far greater extent than anything Mr. Netanyahu is accused of doing for having accepted an invitation from Congress.” Why? Where does this come from? Netanyahu has for years told us he’d curtail the expansion of the settlements. He always lied. He expanded the settlements, hugely. All the settlements were places where Arabs were pushed out of their homes so new settlers could have nice houses and swimming pools. In the past two months Netanyahu urged the Jews of France, then of the world, to move to Israel. Should those people come, whose space will they occupy? “One should walk out on tyrants, bigots and radical extremists,” Dershowitz writes, “as the United States did when Iran’s Mah-
moud Ahmadinejad denied the Holocaust and called for Israel’s destruction at the United Nations. To use such an extreme tactic against our closest ally, and the Middle East’s only vibrant democracy, is not only to insult Israel’s prime minister but to put Israel in a category in which it does not belong. “So let members of Congress who disagree with the prime minister’s decision to accept Speaker Boehner’s invitation express that disagreement privately and even publicly, but let them not walk out on a speech from which they may learn a great deal and which may help them prevent the president from making a disastrous foreign-policy mistake. Inviting a prime minister of an ally to educate Congress about a pressing foreign-policy decision is in the highest tradition of our democratic system of separation of powers and checks and balances.” More nonsense and pettifoggery. This is not a law school seminar in which members of Congress “may learn a great deal.” They could “learn” what Netanyahu has to say in a memo. It is a political event, in which a Republican Congress is trying to screw a Democrat president one more time, and a foreign politician is trying to use prime-time American TV to bolster his ratings at home and scuttle a potential peace move that will make his militant stand less tenable. And, finally, it is a cruel lie that Israel is “the Middle East’s only vibrant democracy.” It’s only a democracy if you’re a Jew. If you’re a Palestinian it is an apartheid state. It is the bombing of schools and hospitals in Gaza. It is the water the settlements get that your village does not get. It is the apartheid wall. It is the schools their kids get into that yours do not. That’s not a democracy. Netanyahu’s visit is not a civics lesson. If Dershowitz can’t see that, it was indeed time for him to retire. Or he’s part of the AIPAC machinery which now does Israel no more good than it does us, and should be retired as well. (I am writing this, as I said earlier, two days before Netanyahu’s Congressional performance. This article will be published online the day of that performance and in print the day after. I very much doubt that anything happening between this Sunday afternoon and next Wednesday morning will surprise me, or change anything I’ve written here. It’s just a matter of verb tense. I depended on Wikipedia, and to a lesser extent the New York Times online and The New Yorker for much of the biographical information and major dates.) Bruce Jackson has written on social and political issues for the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, New Republic, Counterpunch, and other periodicals. He is the author or editor of 33 books. In 2002, the French government appointed him Chevalier in the Ordre national des Arts et des Lettres, and in 2012, the president of France appointed him Chevalier in the Ordre national du Mérite. He teaches at UB.
LOOKING BACKWARD: THE SKYWAY “It’s not only the best free joyride in town and a special pleasure to anyone who ever got tangled up in any of the traffic jams below—but also gives a completely new and breathtakingly sweeping panoramic view of what somehow seems a much greater city from ‘way up there.’” – Buffalo Evening News, October 20, 1955
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BUFFALO HISTORY MUSEUM.
The Buffalo Skyway was well on its way to completion when this photograph was taken by the New York State Department of Public Works in 1954, after four years of construction. Here, looking south from Kelly Island, a derrick-traveler crane—visible at the time to every Main Streeter looking south toward the waterfront—is staged for lifting a 202-foot girder that would span the City Ship Canal. The reinforced concrete piers—with engineer Edward P. Lupfer’s stepbacks, recalling a Hugh Ferriss sketch—already give an indication of the bridge’s soaring, vertical quality. More than a mile long and 110 feet tall at its highest point, the Skyway cost $12 million to build, with more than 22,000 tons of steel and 10,000 cubic yards of concrete going into its construction. Its opening on October 19, 1955, was described by the Buffalo Courier Express as the “grand dream of a progressive, utilitarian, and lovely community here at the foot of the Great Lakes.” It was also the forerunner of a vast network of expressways that would cut through—and help destroy—Buffalo neighborhoods. Today, the Skyway is likely the region’s best landmark of the monumental high-modernism of the 1950s. The P bridge turns 60 later this year. -THE PUBLIC STAFF DAILYPUBLIC.COM / MARCH 4, 2015 / THE PUBLIC
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NEWS PROFILE
A LIFE, TRANSLATED K2’S JOURNEY FROM AFGHANISTAN TO BUFFALO BY JUSTIN SONDEL PHOTOS BY BRENDAN BANNON
A TALL AFGHAN MAN WEAVES BETWEEN TABLES COVERED IN WHITE LINENS AND TOPPED WITH FINE GLASSWARE, OCCUPIED BY MIDDLE-AGED MEN IN PINSTRIPE SUITS, WELL TAILORED TO THEIR SOFT, CONTENT FIGURES. THEIR FEMALE COMPANIONS WEAR DESIGNER DRESSES IN SOLID COLORS IN THE SOFTLY LIT, CENTURY-OLD, EXPOSED-BRICK INTERIOR OF ONE OF BUFFALO’S HIGH-END STEAKHOUSES.
He rushes from table to table with an almost permanent grin, wide and excited. He leans in lightly to ask his guests if they have enough water, would they like some more bread, can he take their plate, issuing exaggerated nods as he takes in their directives. This is K2. Less than two years ago he was helping the US Army interact with his countrymen, intercepting enemy communications, and generally doing anything he could to assist the soldiers he worked for. K2—we will use only his military nickname to avoid causing trouble for family members still living outside of Kabul—worked as an interpreter for the Army from 2010 to 2013. He was detailed to the 10th Mountain Division and the 101st Airborne Division. He came to Buffalo in May of last year on a Special Immigrant Visa, or SIV, a designation reserved for immigrants who have worked in support of US military operations. Soft-spoken with an athletic build, the 27-yearold K2 often talks about how fortunate he feels to be living in America after fighting through some of the bloodiest battles of the Afghan war—the Arghandab River Valley, Kandahar, Maiwand—knowing that he lived for years just steps, sometimes inches, from death. During his service K2 saw countless people crippled or killed. “We pretty much lost a whole platoon,” K2 said during an interview in a coffee shop around the corner from his Allentown apartment on a snowy morning last fall. K2 has endless war stories, each approximately as horrific as the next. He often starts them with his familiar grin, beaming at the memory of one of the staff sergeants, privates, or corporals he came to call friends. As he moves through the memory toward the blood, the end, his grin changes. It becomes more tense. His eyebrows twist up a bit and his gaze falls off to some distant point. K2’s platoon took part in the campaign to secure Kandahar province in 2010, successfully shutting down a major supply route through the province. The chaos began on the first day, a trial by fire. “I didn’t train for this,” K2 said. “No training, no nothing. They just tell me to go out.”
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While advancing through the Arghandab River Valley on their first day in the province, K2’s unit came under fire. As they moved forward, a young sergeant named Stout triggered a mine. All of his limbs were torn off, K2 said. Crying, several soldiers dragged the sergeant under a tree. Stout was the first in what would be months on end of daily casualties. In his last moments the sergeant wanted a cigarette, K2 said. Someone gave him one. He died before the medic helicopter arrived. All the fighting, the loss, was not in vain. Coalition forces were able to cut of the supply route through the river valley, effectively disrupting one of the most important paths through the province for opposition fighters and making it nearly impossible for them to carry on. Not long after, most of the Taliban fighters returned to Pakistan to regroup, K2 said. “We blocked that. We put our blood on that,” K2 said. “We lost lots of friends.”
THE BEGINNING K2’s earliest memories are of conflict and deprivation. He remembers a bomb landing on his neighbor’s house when he was a boy. He remembers his family going for weeks with almost no food. His brother would sometimes steal bait out of mouse traps. Once they stole a car tires and sold them so they could buy flour, he said. “Pretty much, my life started with a really difficult situation of life,” K2 said. “Fighting, blood. That I started with.” He has lived most of his life in a state of anxiety, knowing the next shelling or car bomb or random murder was not far off. Here in Buffalo he has no fear that he will be shot while going out for groceries. He sleeps more easily. “You are very far away from that worry,” he said. Shortly after arriving in May, K2 landed a job as a bus boy at the steakhouse where he works about four days a week. He also works as an interpreter for Journey’s End, the refugee resettlement agency that helped him get established when he arrived. In his spare time he works out at the Jewish Community Center, hangs out with friends from work, and keeps in touch with
people back home through internet chat services like Viber. He cooks Afghan dishes in his apartment, but has indulged in all the foods the city offers, from a taste of a crab cakes at work or the fare at any number of chow joints in his Allentown neighborhood. Jim’s Steakout is one of his favorites. “At first I spent all of my money on food,” K2 said. Back in Kabul it is common for children to be missing limbs, the result, in many cases, of happening upon land mines left from one of the conflicts the region has endured. Often these mines are detonated by kids kicking a makeshift soccer ball around an open field. Last summer K2 was invited to a game of pickup soccer at LaSalle Park with some neighbors, all of them from African nations. At one point during the game, the ball was kicked well past the goal line and K2 began to run after it. “When I grabbed the ball I shocked. I was, like, ‘Watch out,’” he said. “And then I was, like, ‘Dude, don’t worry. It’s United States. There’s not going to be bombs around.’”
GETTING HERE K2 will tell you that he’s lucky. He’s lucky to have avoided calamity, suffering no serious injury during his time with the Army, even as he witnessed soldiers mangled or struck down, sometimes just a few feet away. He’s lucky to have avoided being detected by the Taliban as he waited for his visa to clear. At one point Taliban fighters shot and killed three men standing right beside K2 and announced that they’d been helping the Americans. Then they sped off, leaving the men bleeding in the street. Even in getting his paperwork cleared to come to the US, K2 was lucky. His application went through in about a year, lightning speed compared to the three-, four-, sometimes five-year waits that many interpreters have faced as they try to avoid being found out as American sympathizers, an almost guaranteed death sentence. K2 guesses that he filled out his paperwork properly and triggered no red flags during background checks by the US Department of State and other agencies. “I don’t know why I got my visa so fast,” K2 said.
PROFILE NEWS It certainly didn’t hurt that he had sparkling reviews for his work with the Army, detailed in letters of recommendation from his bosses. The words “exemplary” and “invaluable” were often deployed to descRibe his job performance.
children who were ultimately used to carry out suicide bombings. To K2 the connection between Islam and those actions is fantasy, drummed up by maniacs wishing to control people.
K2 first heard about the Special Immigrant Visa program in the summer of 2012 and began to think that it might be a good idea to enroll.
“I think they are alien,” K2 said. “They are not from this world.” K2 said there is nothing in the Quran that would justify those actions.
Sitting at an oak desk, polished and clean, though well used with light marks carved into the surface, the edges of the drawers showing wear, K2 shuffled through myriad papers that he had submitted, which had been returned to him by government agencies and contractors. Resting in the corner of the desk was a lamp of bamboo reeds with the bulb suspended in the center. An American flag, which he purchased at Tops International on Niagara Street the week that he arrived, hung above the light, its white plastic handle wedged between two of the reeds.
“You find something and I’ll quit today,” he said of his religion. “[They] made a peaceful religion a terrible religion, a really ugly religion.” The men who carry out these atrocities should not be described as Muslims, he said. And in the end, K2 believes, they will not be rewarded. “The god I believe in is not going to forgive [them],” K2 said.
The process has not gone so smoothly for many of K2’s friends. He stays in touch with other interpreters who have had their visas delayed for years now. Some of them have become fed up with the process and are returning to the streets in search of work to provide for their families. One friend recently began selling fish in the market of his town, leaving himself vulnerable to the Taliban.
VISA PROBLEMS The story of interpreters like K2 waiting for visas is has been told many times by Western news outlets—the Washington Post, the New York Times, Vice News. It has even attracted the attention of comedian John Oliver, who last fall dedicated more than 15 minutes of his halfhour HBO program, Last Week Tonight, to the problems the state department and other federal agencies were having processing the thousands of applications from Afghans seeking Special Immigrant Visas.
“He said, ‘I don’t have income. I don’t care if they kill me,’” K2 said. “He is working like a regular guy and he don’t care.”
THEY’RE NOT FROM THIS WORLD For K2, a proud Muslim, the actions of the Taliban, Islamic extremists, terrorists, or whatever descriptor one might use to label people carrying out violence in the name of Islam, are the twisted perversions of inhuman beings. They desecrate a beautiful religion that teaches love and compassion for all creatures. In his interviews, K2 described a multitude of heinous acts carried out by Taliban fighters, including the abduction, drugging, and rape of
K2 REMEMBERS A BOMB LANDING ON HIS NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE WHEN HE WAS A BOY. HE REMEMBERS HIS FAMILY GOING FOR WEEKS WITH ALMOST NO FOOD.
Overtime: The Art of Work March 8–May 17, 2015
As public pressure has mounted, the process has undergone some drastic changes and Afghans have been getting as many as 400 visas a month processed in the last year. By comparison only three of the visas were granted in the fiscal year 2011. Katherine Reisner is the national policy director for the Iraq Refugee Assistance Project, or IRAP, a nonprofit comprising a small staff of attorneys and other immigration experts repre
CONTINUED ON PAGE 8
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 7 senting individual refugees in their struggle to get on a path toward citizenship, with a particular focus on those displaced by the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Her group has represented many interpreters who, despite putting their lives on the line to help the US military, remain in their countries, now hostile, potentially deadly places for them. As the war in Afghanistan winds down, life for former interpreters becomes ever more dangerous, as the US bases that were their safe zones have been packed up and shipped home. “As the bases begin to close that’s when a tremendous amount of danger begins to befall the Afghans,” Reisner said. In March 2013, a bipartisan group of 19 members of Congress sent a letter to President Barack Obama expressing concern about the visa program. The legislators said the US needed to follow through on its promise to protect those who aided America in its mission, not only because it was the right thing to do, but because failure to do so could jeopardize the ability of the military to gain in-country cooperation in future conflicts.
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“The US has a responsibility to follow through on our promise to protect those Iraqis and Afghans who have risked their lives to aid our troops. The extension and reform of these programs is a matter of national security,” the representatives wrote. Reisner said her group often used a similar argument when working with the various government agencies. “What kind of message is that going to send if the folks who work for us come under attack?” She said. Reisner said the state department has worked to reduce redundancies and clear the way for more visas to be issued and that they have drastically improved the speed with which interpreters and others who worked for the US can be processed. “Any time you’re administering a program that has the input of multiple, very large agencies, you run into problems with coordination, of communication, streamlining,” Reisner said. “Just standard bureaucratic problems.” Reisner says the state department fixes have not completely solved the issue, but have made a significant difference. “They were able to really get those [issues] ironed out, such that the process took much less work and time,” Reisner said. “It made much more sense.” Since 2011, when just three visas were issued, the number has risen steadily: More than 3,400 Afghan interpreters and more than 5,600 of
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their dependents gained clearance in 2014, ac-
cording to statistics listed on the state depart____________________________ ment’s website.
Date Now_______________________ a new problem has manifested. As
it began to issue visas at a more rapid pace, the state deY15W9 Issue: ______________________ partment “became a victim of their own success,” running out of visas more quickly than they THIS PROOF MAY ONLY BE USED FOR PUBLICATION could get them approved by Congress, Reisner SoPUBLIC. last year Congress allowed for the issuINsaid. THE ance of an additional 4,000 Special Immigrant Visas. That legislation, which also extended the deadline for applying to the program through the end of 2015, was passed by one of the most divisive Congresses in history, a fact that Reisner says should not be overlooked. “At the end of the day, it gives applicants another life-line,” Reisner said. Still, she believes more can be done. While the additional 4,000 visas approved last year give the state department more to work with, almost 12,000 Afghan applicants are waiting for approval. In addition, background checks need to be sped up in order to reduce redundancies that prolong the wait for interpreters ands cost the taxpayers money, Reisner said. “No one is arguing that there should be any less of a rigorous security check process,” she said. “The security check process really needs to be kind of examined in a way that might really make more sense.”
CULTURAL GUIDES Matthew Zeller has been a CIA analyst, a captain in the US Army who served in Afghanistan, and a candidate for the US House of Representatives. These days he is the president and co-founder of No One Left Behind, a nonprofit started in 2013 to help Afghan interpreters get Special Immigrant Visas and establish themselves here in the US. Zeller became invested in the issue after his interpreter, who he credits with saving his life during a firefight in 2008, struggled to gain his visa, even as the Taliban was closing in on him. Mohammad Janis Shinwari shot two Taliban fighters who were firing on Zeller as his unit was pinned back fighting off an attack. The next day Zeller requested that Shinwari become his personal interpreter. Interpreters, who are also referred to as “terps” or translators by military personnel, are valuable for obvious reasons. They allow troops and contractors to interact with people they encounter and glean valuable, sometimes life-saving information.
But, Zeller explained, they are also able to prevent officers from engaging in offensive behavior, pick up on social cues that might be overlooked by someone who knows the language but not the culture, and can otherwise identify Taliban and other possibly threatening people amongst the regular citizenry. “I would argue that my translator was more important to my survival than my weapon,” Zeller said. Zeller was on a mission that had him staying at an Afghan base, with very little interaction with Americans outside of his own unit, making a skilled interpreter particularly valuable. “Our translators were our cultural ambassadors,” Zeller said. “They were more attuned to what was going on at any one time than we would ever be able to be.” A good interpreter is able to bend words in such a way that he can soften the tone of a military officer, who is trained to be direct when communicating, altering the manner in which the message is delivered and preventing tense situations from getting out of control, Zeller said. “The message that’s brought across is the same,” Zeller said. “‘I need you to go do this.’ But it’s delivered in such a way that it does nothing to inflame tensions.” Zeller said that as part of his mission he would always do his best to avoid violence. The objective was to “win the hearts and minds of Afhganis,” and so it was always best to try to come to an understanding with the citizens. “From my perspective any time I could peacefully negotiate my way out of a situation and try to build upon relations with that person across the rug from me and win over friends and allies I was accomplishing our mission,” Zeller said. Days before Shinwari was scheduled to come to the US, the state department put a hold on his visa, citing concerns raised by anonymous tips that he had links to terrorist organizations. Zeller has no doubt that the calls came from Taliban, or people working in league with the Taliban, attempting to hold Shinwari in the country long enough to kill him. Shinwari has been in the US since October 2013. Zeller said he has seen Taliban kill lists that pegged Shinwari as a top target in his region, likely due to the attention he received from the Western media before making it out of Afghanistan. “They realized this was their one chance,” Zeller said. “Get his visa revoked, keep him in the country and they have a chance to make an example out of him.”
PROFILE NEWS
K2 DIDN’T FEEL THAT HE COULD EXPECT HIS FAMILY TO PROTECT HIM IF TALIBAN CAME SEARCHING FOR HIM. IF THEY TRIED TO HIDE HIM, THEY WOULD LIKELY BE KILLED AS WELL, HE SAID. Zeller said that none of the interpreters he has come to know, including Shinwari, joined the military as some type of golden ticket to US citizenship. They all believed, to some degree or another, that they would help the US and coalition forces expel the Taliban, establish a democracy, and would then continue living there. “I never once heard a translator say, ‘Oh I’m doing this so I can get my US visa,’” Zeller said. In fact, the last day Zeller spoke with Shinwari in Afghanistan, he told his interpreter that if he ever needed help to just call and he would do everything in his power to assist him. Shinwari told him that would not be necessary; instead, he said, Zeller should return to Afghanistan on vacation and stay as a guest in his house. “There was never this idea that there would have to be this massive life line for these people,” Zeller said. Only as the war went on and more and more interpreters were killed did the rush for visas begin.
STATE DEPARTMENT RESPONSE The state department responded to a request for an interview from The Public, but would not allow its spokesperson to be identified for the record. Secretary of State John Kerry and state department spokeswoman Marie Harf have both commented on the situation for other publications. The spokesperson, like Kerry and Harf, said that the department has been able to increase processing times, has pushed to continue improving the processing time and noted that the amount of visas available is limited by congressional approval. “The secretary ordered a review, that review took place, and we identified the areas where we could be more efficient in the process and those changes were implemented,” the spokesperson said. “The results are, have been, fairly positive.” The spokesperson said that processing time had always been a focus of the program. “We’re committed to this program,” the spokesperson said. “We’re committed to supporting those people. They put themselves at great personal risk to help us and we’re committed to supporting them.” The state department has made the application process easier to understand in order avoid clerical errors that have held up the process for some Afghans seeking visas, the spokesperson said. “We’ve made the system much easier for Afghans to use, we’ve conducted outreach towards them around the country, we’ve explained the policies and procedures to applicants,” the spokesperson said. “We recognize that the process is challenging. Some applicants still require extensive time to complete the application. We’re looking for ways to make this process more clear, to improve this process for applicants. It’s complex.”
SHAME When K2 signed up to be an interpreter, he thought he was doing the right thing. He imagined that he would help the Americans rid Afghanistan of the nefarious forces holding the country hostage and living out his days in a democracy. Growing up on a livestock farm about an hour outside of the city, K2 didn’t go to school un-
til he was nine years old. He would hitch rides into Kabul with other farmers going to market, riding in the back of a truck with their animals.
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At school K2 excelled, taking a particular interest in languages and computer programming. He speaks seven languages: Dari, Pashto, Farsi, Urdu, Hindi, Zargari, and English. After high school most of K2’s friends went to university, but his family had money issues and so he decided to become an interpreter.
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His English skills made him eligible for a position that paid more than $700 a month, a great living in Afghanistan where the average person doesn’t make that in a year. “I was thinking that I was going to help my country,” K2 said. “In the meantime you make money. In the meantime you are working with United States Army.” As the war dragged on and insurgents were able to keep a foothold in the country, those working with the US and coalition forces—particularly those working directly for Americans like interpreters—came to be despised, not only by the Taliban but by many regular folks. While Afghan police and soldiers are sometimes targeted by the Taliban, the general populace tends to view them favorably. Not so for interpreters, K2 said. If a policeman or a soldier is killed they are honored with grand parties and big turnouts for their funerals. If an interpreter is killed they are quietly buried with no party, no food, no celebration, K2 said. “This is something that I hate,” he said. “People in Afghanistan think that United States Army are infidel and it’s a big shame for your son to die with United States Army.” After his time with the Army, K2 hid out in his parents’ village outside of Kabul for about a year. He spent most of his time indoors, only leaving to take a cab to the gym and back for his workouts. While his parents offered him refuge, they were not particularly warm toward him, something K2 describes as confusing. As he spoke about his family, K2’s eyes nervously searched the counter of the Allentown cafe where we spoke. His father, he believes, was not ashamed, K2 said. But other interpreters from their community were spoken of with disdain by their families after being killed. “He’s not one of those fathers,” K2 said. “But still, our tribe, our people, it’s something, like, really shameful for him.” K2 didn’t feel that he could expect his family to protect him if Taliban came searching for him. If they tried to hide him, they would likely be killed as well, he said. His family would be forced to negotiate with his captors, so he had to get out of Afghanistan for their safety as well as his own. “If the bad guy come after me, then my brothers and my family would come after me,” he said. “They will start talking with the bad guys.” K2 recently took a trip to San Francisco, a town that hosts a large Afghan community. He toured the sites, making a group of international friends while staying at a hostel. For the time being he is happy living in Buffalo, but the West Coast trip has him thinking that his permanent home might be somewhere with a climate more akin to his native country’s. He plans to start college courses in the fall at Erie Community College and has been talking with an Afghan woman who lives in New York City. He has even been to visit her a few times, he said. He hopes to bring his family to America to live with him, though his parents are elderly and his brothers have no desire to leave. It is often a topic during their internet chats. Having experienced life in America he wants nothing more than for his parents and brothers to join him. “I will definitely fight for my family if I get them out here,” he said. “Life’s really good here.” Meantime in Afghanistan, violence remains widespread, but there are more jobs, more roads. K2 hopes those trends continue and that one day, maybe seven or eight years down the line, he will be able to visit. “If I was the one who helped make Afghanistan P better,” K2 said, “I’m proud of myself.”
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ALLENTOWN: 2BR newly-reno’d lower unit with A/C. W/D & strg in bsmt. Sm dogs OK. 19 N. Pearl, $1,200 (incl. heat & hot H20). Mark W. DiGiampaolo, 887-3891(c) ALLENTOWN: Updated 1BR + den, 1.5BA w/ hrdwd flrs, mantels, coff’d ceilg in custom kit/DR. 451 Franklin St., $1,100+. Mark W. DiGiampaolo, 887-3891(c) CHEEK OFC: Two sep. 1200sf ofcs (1st or 2nd flr) w/ reception & 4+ rms each. Shared parkg for 30. 3620 Harlem, $1,200/mo for ea. unit. (incl util). Ellen Drexler, 912-1966(c) CHEEK: 3BR w/ hrdwd, kit w/ new appl, terrace, beaut. yard, fin garage. 58 S. Rossler Ave, $1,000+. Robin Barrell, 986-4061(c) ELMWOOD VLG: 5BR, 3.5BA house w/ hrdwd flrs, hi-end kit w/ SS, LR w/ built-ins, DR w/ fp, lg mstr, yard & gar. 128 Lexington, $2,800. Susan D. Lenahan, 864-6757(c) ELMWOOD VLG: Large 2BR w/ hrdwd flrs & nat wdwrk, formal DR, ofc/den, bsmt lndry, attic strg, porches, off-st park, 268 Baynes, $900+. Robin Barrell, 986-4061(c) NIAG. FALLS: Furnished waterfront condo. 1.5BR 1BA great views of river. 51 S. 86th St #1A, $850 inc. util. Robin Barrell, 986-4061(c) NO. BUFFALO: 2+BR, lrg LR, formal DR, eat-in kit, den-study w/ exit to sm. porch. Updated bath, new windows & furnc. 27 Commonwealth, $900+ util. Robin Barrell, 986-4061(c) SO. BUFFALO: 3BR lower unit, appliances included, W/D hookups avail. On street park only. 28 Magnolia, $725. Robin Barrell, 986-4061(c) WEST SIDE: 2BR. Former church w/ hrdwd flrs, gas fp, in-unit lndry. Lrg mstr, sitting rm & full bth on 2nd flr. Rooftop deck. 75 Bird Ave. $1,300+. Robin Barrell, 986-4061(c)
716-819-4200 431 Delaware Avenue Buffalo, NY 14202
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MUSIC SPOTLIGHT
M.A.G.S. BY TOM ETU Elliot Douglas is as humble as he is talented. His shiny new project M.A.G.S. came soaring out from the ashes of the Malones, a band in which Douglas had previously played bass, which gained quite a substantial cult following. It would seem remiss not to mention the Malones, as their shadow loomed quite large over the local scene in the wake of their breakup over a year ago. In spite of that, M.A.G.S. glimmers brightly as its own marvelous creature. Already his new music has struck a reverberating chord throughout the scene, stealing ears and garnering much attention. “It’s been surprising actually,” he says. “I knew I had a small following that would carry over from my past projects but I was not at all expecting this to be something that would get so much local publicity.” M.A.G.S. began as a solo project, allowing for Douglas to push his creative boundaries and experiment without limitations. The end result is a collection of catchy, groove- and hook-oriented songs that are practically guaranteed to trigger your aural pleasure sensors. Delicate craftsmanship is obviously at play in Douglas’s work. His impressive abilities as a composer and songwriter are showcased in his latest EP, Cellophane, which was recorded by Nick Borgosz at World of Noise studio. Douglas sings honest and personal lyrics through a light fuzz and reverb, carried by a bright, shimmering guitar tone. “I feel most inspired by the people around me, and the way I communicate with others. A lot of my songs are about conversations or happenings between me and a friend or someone close to me. I try to paint a picture of that experience and make it relatable in the context of a song.” This authentic and personal approach opens avenues that cause listeners to identify with the words, and interpret the music in their own respective manner. The open platform for development offers for a world of different opportunities in terms of the places the music is able to go to. Currently, the songwriting process is all up to Douglas’s personal creative vision. The immediate connection that he has with particular songs is heard most prominently on “Young,” off of Cellophane. It is one of his personal favorites, he says, “for its line in the chorus ‘You’re so young and I’m so empty.’ It was about a conversation I had with my younger brother. In short, he asked me for some advice on a situation in his life and as the conversation progressed I found myself receiving advice from him on a situation in my life. It was weird. He had surpassed my understanding of a situation and helped me understand how to deal with it more effectively. I wish I had more tangible advice to give him as his older brother, hence the line in the song.” M.A.G.S. may have started as a solo project for Douglas, but he has also enlisted a band for live performances, and they are certainly up to the task. “In my mind M.A.G.S. is a project I will always be tweaking and developing. It’s hard for me to stick to writing one genre per say, and I think that will become more apparent as I continue releasing music. As for the live situation, I am extremely thankful and grateful for Adam Lilly and Andy Wesner and their involvement in this project. They are superstars in their own right and I think they are the perfect fit for how I’m writing right now. Going forward it’s very possible you may see a keyboardist or a second guitar at times but for now the three-piece is working well.”
PHOTO BY DOUG GURR
103.3 THE EDGE PRESENTS: MADE VIOLENT w/ M.A.G.S., THE SLUMS, & HUMBLE BRAGGERS FRI, MAR 6 / 7PM / THE STUDIO AT WAITING ROOM / 334 DELAWARE AVE, 2ND FLOOR , BUFFALO
The vast canvas available to the project invites numerous possibilities for expansion. The space for musical freedom keeps an artist excited and stretching his abilities, in the same sense that it keeps an audience dancing. “Truthfully, I’ve been making this up as I go. I’ve been in enough bands to know what I don’t want to do, but the best thing about this is just letting things progress organically. I have no intentions of being Taylor Swift-big but the sky’s the limit.” So far, this approach has yielded beautiful results. Douglas has a knack for choosing hooks, selecting the
right lyrics for a good chorus, and knitting a song together in a way that seems effortless but is most certainly the opposite. “My writing process is mostly me trying to develop five different ideas at once, hating everything I come up with and picking the best parts out of maybe one of those ideas and developing that. It’s a delicate process that I’m trying hard to perfect. Writing is something that has to happen organically for me. If I force it, I usually can’t write anything I’m happy with. It may sound cliché P but the best songs are the ones that write themselves.”
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THEATER PUBLIC QUESTIONNAIRE
THE PUBLIC QUESTIONNAIRE:
ANNE ROALDI BOUCHER BY ANTHONY CHASE With a mischievous smile that can morph into a smoldering scowl in carefully calculated increments, Anne Roaldi Boucher has long been a mainstay of Buffalo’s acting pool. She can bring depth and complexity to a cartoon character, and has actually done exactly that, for instance, when she appeared in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown at O’Connell & Company and snagged an Artie nomination for her efforts. Her current assignment, Christine, the long-suffering fiancée of a fellow servant at a grand English country house in After Miss Julie at the Irish Classical Theatre Company, provides the actress with a real opportunity to strut her stuff. The fortunes of her character evolve with her disintegrating relationship. Significantly, after a career dominated by child roles, a consequence of her small physical stature, this diminutive dynamo is now getting opportunities to play grownups. While those child roles were grand, Miss Roaldi Boucher may finally have left her Anne Franks, Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, Kindertransports, and Charlie Browns behind her. After Miss Julie is an updated version of August Strindberg’s classic naturalistic tragedy about an upper-class woman and her fateful dalliance with a servant in her father’s home. In his retelling of the Miss Julie story, playwright Patrick Marber has transplanted the action from Scandinavia in 1888 to and English summer in 1945 on the eve of a historic Labor Party victory. While the sexual dimension has been heightened, the basic details of story remain unchanged from Strindberg’s original telling. The Irish Classical Theatre Company production is quite remarkable. Under the direction of Fortunato Pezzimenti, the company is uniformly excellent, with Kate LoConti giving a truly extraordinary performance as Miss Julie, a woman whose discontent with her life torments her like an itching wool sweater worn inside her body. She is matched by dashing Christopher Evans, whose performance as John is astonishingly natural and believable. Anne Roaldi Boucher, however, is the link that holds the pieces of this classic drama together. And we are very pleased that she was willing to submit to The Public Questionnaire. What word would your friends use to describe you? Listener. What quality in the character you are currently playing is most unlike your own personality? Pride, which makes her feel superior to others. What quality in your current role is most like your own personality? Pride in her work. When and where were you the happiest? When my daughter was born and I was able to say, “Hello, Sofia” for the very first time. What is your idea of hell on earth? Always being tired, but never being allowed to sleep. What is your greatest fear? That I will screw up my daughter emotionally. But that’s what therapy is for, right? Which talent do you most wish you had? The ability to make difficult things look easy. What superpower do you most wish you had? The ability to slow down time— especially when I’m sleeping. What would you change about your appearance? I would be two inches taller so I could be five-foot. Is that too much to ask? What trait do you most dislike in others? Self involvement.
What do you most value in your friends? Genuineness. What quality do you most value in a good director? Honesty—a director who will tell me what I need to improve, not stay silent or think they have to spare my feelings. I need them to be my third eye when I am not able to be. What is your guilty pleasure? Chuck—it is a horribly written show, but yet there is nothing better than curling up on the couch with my hubbie and watching an episode. Who is your favorite fictional hero? Jane Eyre. Who are your real life heroes? My brother. He is a Franciscan priest. He has given up everything, all his worldly possessions, and is dedicated to a life of service. He is the most peaceful and happiest person I know. What do you consider to be the most overrated virtue? Righteousness. On what occasion do you lie? To cover up an awesome surprise. What was the subject of your last Google search? Baked chicken thighs. Anyone have any recipes? If you come back in another life, what person or thing would you like to be? A 6’ 7” man. Just to see what it’s like. What is your motto? Live in the moment. P DAILYPUBLIC.COM / MARCH 4, 2015 / THE PUBLIC
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12 THE PUBLIC / MARCH 4, 2015 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM
CHAMBER by Gary Sczerbaniewicz, a Buffalo-based multimedia artist whose work is currently the subject of a show at the Castellani Art Museum. DAILYPUBLIC.COM / MARCH 4, 2015 / THE PUBLIC 13
EVENTS CALENDAR PUBLIC APPROVED
IN PRINT
PHOTO BY THE CANADIAN PRESS
Made Violent (EP)
JEREMY HOTZ THURSDAY MAR 5-SATURDAY MAR 8
Recommended If You Like: Ty Segall, The Strokes, the Orwells
8PM / HELIUM COMEDY CLUB, 30 MISSISSIPPI ST. / $15-$28
MADE VIOLENT
After the release of a handful of singles and videos over the last year, the garage trio finally sees its self-titled debut—locally recorded at Quiet Country Audio, released—by Columbia Records’ imprint, StarTime International, on February 24. Made Violent will celebrate the release of the EP on Friday, March 6 at Waiting Room.
[COMEDY] Jeremy Hotz stands (giggling) somewhere between Jerry Seinfeld and Louis C. K., with more humility and improvisational chops. He often uses audience members or the city he’s performing in as a theme. Hailing from Ottawa, Canada, the two-time Gemini Award winner began his career as a writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. A regular at comedy clubs like the Laugh Factory and the Improv, he’s also appeared on Comedy Central Presents, Just For Laughs, The Late Show with David Letterman, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, as well as starring in CBC’s outlandish comedy series, The Newsroom. His comedic style is marked by his sharp-witted bewilderment of everyday life. His delivery is characteristically accompanied by a hand-over-mouth gesture, as he attempts to stifle his laughter. His tendency to laugh on stage is less Jimmy Fallon—“Debbie Downer” and “Cowbell”—and more Hotz as an observational comedian who can’t help but laugh over the absurdity of someone posting a “Lost Pet” sign for their bird. Catch Jeremy Hotz at Helium Comedy Club starting at 8pm on Thursday, March 5 through Saturday, March 8 (7:30pm and 10pm shows Friday and Saturday). -KELLIE POWELL
WEDNESDAY MAR 4 DEL PAXTON “Bad Batch”
Pink Talking Fish
RIYL: Braid, Prawn, Mineral
9pm Buffalo Iron Works, 49 Illinois St. $18
“Bad Batch,” the first leaked song from the forthcoming split EP between the Buffalo indiemo trio and new label mates, Gulfer, premiered last week through Absolute Punk. The EP is set to be released on April 7 via Topshelf Records.
MILE HIGH MUZIK “Red Future” RIYL: Future, Curren$y, Flatbush Zombie
After the tracka-day #Juugcember campaign, the Mile High crew, led by rapper/producer M-A, released the first video from the month long project for the track “Red Future,” a hyped up cut of trap featuring Carrera on lead.
LOCAL SHOW PICK OF THE WEEK POSTURE & THE GRIZZLY BLACK DOTS 223 LAFAYETTE AVE THURS, MAR 5 / 7PM / $8
[ROCK] If Darwin had had his hand in music, maybe he could’ve forseen the evolution of the tribute or cover band. There are many bands that will recreate one band’s sound, but Pink Talking Fish is a totally different creature. The band is a fusion of sorts, crafting a musical mashup of Pink Floyd, the Talking Heads, and Phish. Those might seem like a strange combination, but the band does more than just justice for each, and the way their vision comes together is something you’ll want to hear for yourself. The band is coming to Buffalo Iron Works tonight, March 4. During the show, the remaining acts for Buffalove Music Festival will also be announced. The festival will be taking place on the weekend of June 18-21 in Panama, New York and will feature bands from all around the region, as it has since its inception. -JEREMIAH SHEA
Savage in Limbo 7pm UB Center For The Arts, 103 Center For The Arts $20 general admission, $10 for students and seniors.
[THEATER] John Patrick Shanley’s imaginative play Savage in Limbo will be presented by the University at Buffalo Theatre & Dance Department. The story follows a group of young losers in search of respite from their lives, who frequently dwell in a sleazy Bronx bar. Moving back and forth from comedy to tragedy, this play examines the human condition and how we all yearn for purpose, in what sometimes seems like an empty world. Maria S. Horne will direct the performance, which will take place in the Black Box Theatre in the UB Center for the Arts, North Campus, from Thursday March 4 to Sunday March 8 (Thursday through Saturday starting at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2pm). -VANESSA OSWALD
14 THE PUBLIC / MARCH 4, 2015 / DAILYPUBLIC.COM
Squeakeasy Film Series: Dream of Life: Patti Smith
THURSDAY MAR 5
7pm Market Arcade Atrium, 617 Main Street, Washington Street Entrance $7 general admission; free for members of Squeaky Wheel and Just Buffalo.
Sarah Riggs Reading
[FILM] That faint thumping of horse hoofs you may hear out of people’s chests is not just their heart beating, but the anticipation of Patti Smith’s appearance at JustBuffalo’s BABEL series on April 17. Squeaky Wheel is putting their cart before the Smith, featuring Steven Sebring’s 2008 film, Dream of Life: Patti Smith—a portrait of the legendary artist and musician—in their new digs in the Market Arcade as part of the Squeakeasy Film Series, on Wednesday, March 4. JustBuffalo’s Barbara Cole will introduce the film and set the stage. -AARON LOWINGER
[POETRY] Poet Sarah Riggs writes, “seasonal grief she has, they say. But who / is she? The soup will be ready,” which is something, it’s safe to say, we can all relate to by this point. She has recently returned to New York after a decade in Paris. When she isn’t writing poems (she has five collections of verse) she’s making films to be screened at the Tate Modern or translating French poets. Come listen to her read from her most recent work Pomme & Granite—forthcoming from 1913 Press—on Thursday, March 5 at the Western New York Book Arts Center. Presented by UB Poetics. -KEVIN THURSTON
8pm Western New York Book Arts Center, 468 Washington St. free
CALENDAR EVENTS PUBLIC APPROVED
LIVEMUSICEVERYNIGHTFOROVER30YEARS!
WEDNESDAY
MAR 4
Dean’s List 9PM FREE
Left Coast Country,
THURSDAY
MAR 5
Ben Whelan & Friends, Acoustic Kuebler 9PM $5
KEVIN MORBY SATURDAY MAR 7
HAPPY HOUR: a band named sue 6PM FREE
FRIDAY
8PM / MOHAWK PLACE, 47 E MOHAWK ST. / $10-$12 [ROCK] Kevin Morby is in a van. The Kansas-bred singer/songwriter tells this to me over a heavily muffled phone call—a call which ultimately ends when it somewhat expectedly drops. It’s not unusual or surprising that Morby is in a van right now. In fact, it would be surprising if he weren’t, and instead lounging at his place in Los Angeles. He’s traveling through Santa Cruz, Califronia, talking to me about his latest album, Still Life, which he says is about “living nowhere.” Not only has Morby jumped from city to city—from his native Kansas City, to Brooklyn, and now to Los Angeles—he’s jumped from band to band. In 2005 he joined the experimental folk group Woods, before forming garage rock band, the Babies, with his roommate Cassie Ramone of the Vivian Girls. Last year the Babies went on an indefinite hiatus so that Ramone and Morby could both focus on their solo careers, which Morby had launched a year earlier with the release of Harlem River—his debut solo album.
MAR 6
Transformers II: I’ll be your mirror:
a birthday tribute to lou reed w. TREMENDO!, WOODEN WAVES, SMALL SMALLS, THE GOOD, THE IRVING KLAWS, NORWOOD KICKS, THE CARD CHEATS
Harlem River is, in essence, an homage to New York City written from an expatriate’s point of view. He followed up Harlem River with the contemplative, quarter-life study that is 2014’s Still Life. The title itself works on a few levels: It’s ironic because Still Life is clearly a record about transition and journey, but a few of the tracks, like “The Ballad of Arlo Jones” and “All of My Life,” can be seen as portraits or landscapes, evoking the Still Life theme. We spoke with Morby this week in anticipation of his concert at Mohawk Place on Saturday, March 7 presented by ESI and The Tralf. How have the places you’ve lived influenced your music? Cities are kind of like people, they have their own personalities. The title of your record is taken from a piece of art by Maynard Monrow. Monrow’s Still Life series is almost like anti-art, though. Most of it is simply words displayed on lunchboards. What was it about this artwork that inspired you to title your record after it? I liked the text of that particular piece “Still Life With Rejects From The Land Of Misfit Toys” in particular because it spoke to me. I felt it represented or summed up some of the characters or the subject matter of the record. [Monrow’s] art feels very contemporary yet very classic to me; like it’s something that won’t age and if it does age, it’ll age very well. It just seemed kind of iconic and I really wanted to use it. If Harlem River, is, in a phrase, “an homage to New York City,” then what does that make Still Life? A heavily transitional period of my life. Kind of turning the corner on 25, descending into my later 20s, and just a document of a year literally living nowhere. Not having a house or city that I lived in. Just being on the road the whole time. Life and death are pretty major themes on this album. You’re a young man, you’re 26, but you seem to think about your own
OPA!
7pm Acropolis, 708 Elmwood Ave. free
[NETWORKING] The Public has teamed up with Acropolis OPA, Chris Ring, EverydayInk, Paul Tsouflidis and the Elmwood Village Association to present a monthly happy hour encouraging the growth of local business and conversation amongst business owners as well as their customers. Thursday, March 5 will mark the first OPA!, at Acropolis. This is a free event, but business cards are mandatory and they will be collected upon entry. They will also enter your name to win various door prizes. There will be drink specials for event goers as well as half off food from 7-10pm. -SEAN HEIDINGER
Thunder Rolls Festival 8pm Buffalo Iron Works, 49 Illinois St. $5 (after 8pm) (re-entry following the Garth Brooks show is permitted)
[COUNTRY] The upcoming, four-day Garth Brooks concert at the First Niagara Center also has Buffalo Iron Works all hopped up on country. Enter, Thunder Rolls Festival– four nights of Buffalo’s favorite country acts before, after, and during the Garth Brooks concert, featuring: The Heritage, West of the Mark, Ashton Hollow, Blood Money, Beautiful Remedy, Scott Militello, and The
mortality quite a bit. I think that’s a pretty common thing. It’s a hard thing not to think about. It’s one of those things where you don’t really think about it and then all of the sudden you know a couple people who die and it’s all you think about after that. You just put out a video for “Dancer,” which is the second video from Still Life. It stands out from the rest of the album quite significantly. It’s totally not a pop song, like your last single, “All of My LIfe. It’s more like performance art. The vocals are kind of disorienting, heavily reverberated, and it’s got this kind of ghostly guitar line. Why did you decide to feature this song? I wanted to make it a video is because of my friend Claire, who stars in the video. I really love her work, which is all interpretive dancing. I was thinking about making another video for the record and I was thinking, “what if I did, like, the least pop song on the record and made it an art piece as opposed to just a fun video for one of the singles?” It was also just an excuse to work with Claire. What’s next for you? A lot of touring this year and recording the next album. It’s already written. I’m going to take a little bit more time with this one and do it throughout the year. I’m trying to slow my roll a little bit. -CORY PERLA
Marshal Dillon Band. West of the Marks’ modern foot-stompers will get your tractor running before settling down with the soulful country ballads of the Beautiful Remedy. Throw in some Blood Money hillbilly romps, and Ashton Hollows’ rock-tinted country, and you’ll surely get your country fix. -KP
Get Involved 7pm Sugar City, 1239 Niagara St. free
[ART] Are you looking to get more involved in the arts and cultural community of Buffalo, and are interested in music, film, poetry, zines, crafts or art? Well then look no further, because Sugar City is looking for you! Join them this Thursday, March 5 for an informational session on how to get involved. The new space has been under construction, and they're currently waiting for their permit application to be approved by the city, but once they get a green light and the sawdust is cleared, the space will be ready for the programming to begin. Sugar City is about sharing creativity and energy to collectively build a community of like minded individuals that are about doing, and breaking down the barriers of what art can be. Come meet new people, join a motivated team of groundbreakers, and begin creating history. -TD
10PM $5
SATURDAY
MAR 7
8PM FREE WEDNESDAY
MAR 11
Brown Sugar,
intrepid travellers, the goods 9PM $5
BPO Musicians
(Brett Shurtliffe & Amy Licata)
go Irish at nietzsche’s
JoE Rozler & John Lombardo 10PM FREE
WEEKLY EVENTS EVERY SUNDAY FREE
6PM. ANN PHILLIPONE 8PM . DR JAZZ & THE JAZZ BUGS
FRIDAY MAR 6
(EXCEPT FIRST SUNDAYS)
EVERY MONDAY FREE
Pyramid Scheme Dance Party 9pm Allen Street Hardware Cafe, 245 Allen St. Suggested $10 donation
[BENEFIT] Stop waiting for things to get better, it’s time to shake off the last icy shards of this cruel and fanged winter. Join the birthday party for activist and civil servant Harper Bishop this Friday, March 6 in the back room of Hardware with DJ Yama, DJ Milk, and DJ LoPro on the wheels. The $10 suggested donation goes to Dennis Maher’s in-progress art space Assembly House 150. This is a safe space for women, POC, and LGBTQ community members. Respect is expected. -AL
8PM. SONGWRITER SHOWCASE 9PM. OPEN MIC W. JOSH GAGE
EVERY TUESDAY
8PM. RUSTBELT COMEDY 10PM. JOE DONOHUE 11PM. THE STRIPTEASERS
EVERY WEDNESDAY FREE 5PM. TONY DEROSA
EVERY THURSDAY FREE 5PM. JOHN & BILL
(ACCORDIAN & SAX)
Igor & the Red Elvises 9pm Sportsmen's Tavern, 326 Amherst St. $15
[ROCK] There’s nothing else quite like Igor Yuzov and his Red Elvises. As a Russian-American outfit based out of Los Angeles, the Red Elvises evolved from Limpopo, which you may remember from the 1990’s as a one-of-a-kind, Russian indie folk-pop outfit. Taking that a step further, the Elvises blend
EVERY SATURDAY FREE
4:30-7:30PM. CELTIC SEISIUNS (TRADITIONAL IRISH MUSIC FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY)
248 ALLEN STREET 716.886.8539
NIETZSCHES.COM
CONTINUED ON PAGE 16 DAILYPUBLIC.COM / MARCH 4, 2015 / THE PUBLIC 15
EVENTS CALENDAR CONTINUED FROM PAGE 15 traditional Russian tones with a ska/surfpunk sensibility that relies heavily on absurd, camp humor. Enjoy them at the Sportsmen’s Tavern on Friday, March at 9:30 p.m. There’ll probably be leisure suits... and a bunch of songs from their new collection, Bacon. -CJT
PUBLIC APPROVED
Smooth Jazz Concert Series 6pm The Forvm, 4224 Maple Rd. $20-$25
[JAZZ] On Friday, March 6, The Forvm is hosting the Iris Jazz Stage Winter / Spring Smooth Jazz Concert Series featuring national recording artist and contemporary jazz trumpeter, Willie Bradley, and 17-yearold multi-instrumentalist, Luke Ciminelli on baritone sax accompanied by local jazz guitarists, the Lance Tanner Duo. Known as Buffalo’s youngest jazz sensation, Ciminelli plays in various jazz groups across town. Hailing from Fayetteville, North Carolina, Bradley’s smooth trumpet-playing chops render a honey-sweet romance to his playing, which is why his moniker is “the trumpeter with a heart”. -KP
Made Violent 7pm Studio at the Waiting Room, 334 Delaware Ave. $5
[ROCK] Gritty garage trio Made Violent have had quite a year since the release of their single “Wasted Days” on band camp in early 2014. The track is packed with lo-if swagger reminiscent of Arctic Monkeys and Cage the Elephant. Since then they’ve played in London, generated fans in the Netherlands, signed with a major label—Startime International, an off-shoot of Columbia Records— and very recently, released an eponymous debut EP. Check them out at Studio at The Waiting Room this Friday where they’ll be playing with a host of this city’s most promising outfits: M.A.G.S, the Slums, and Humble Braggers. -JEANETTE CHIN
CHILDREN OF SAN JOSE DEL NEGRITO SATURDAY MAR 7 7PM / CEPA GALLERY, 700 MAIN ST / FREE, DONATIONS WELCOME [ART] On Saturday, March 7, local photographers Alexis Oltmer and William Bergmann will be exhibiting and selling their travel photos from Honduras at CEPA Gallery as a fundraiser for the non-profit, Shoulder to Shoulder Pittsburgh, whose mission is to provide healthcare and training for health professionals from the area of San Jose Del Negrito. Since 2001, this organization has provided humanitarian aid to the region that was devastated by Hurricane Mitch. San Jose Del Negrito is a remote mountain village of about 1600 people whose living conditions are beyond poor, and just recently ( June 2014) started receiving electricity. Oltmer and Bergmann traveled with the organization to help complete the construction of the playground and community center, and while there documented their surroundings. All proceeds from the sale of the photographs will be donated to Shoulder to Shoulder, to assist with their future projects. And mark your calendars for March 27, where Board Members of Shoulder to Shoulder and the artists will discuss their work and time spent in Honduras. -TINA DILLMAN
PUBLIC APPROVED
Transformers II: The Songs of Lou Reed 8pm Nietzsche's, 248 Allen St.
[TRIBUTE] March 24, 1973 was a legendary night for Lou Reed. It was on that night, during a concert at the Century Theater in Buffalo, that a crazed fan leapt up on stage and bit Reed on the ass. Though Transformers II: The Songs of Lou Reed this Friday, March 6 at Nietzsche’s is actually a celebration of Reed’s birthday (March 2), I prefer to think of it as a tribute to that now infamous, ass-biting night, nearly 42 years ago. Either way, it’s a good excuse to come out and catch a bunch of solid Buffalo bands—Tremendo!, Wooden Waves, Small Smalls, the Good, the Irving Klaws, Norwood Kicks, and the Card Cheats—pay tribute to one of the most unqiue and imitated songwriters of all time. -CP
Tritonal 10pm Lift Nightclub, 257 Franklin St. $20
[ELECTRONIC/DANCE] Since their formation in Austin, Texas in 2008, progressive trance duo Tritonal—Chad Cisneros and David Reed—have been making a name for themselves within the genre’s bustling scene. They’ve done this by mastering the art of crafting euphoric singles of which trance addicts can’t get enough. Their own powerhouse productions, like their latest high intensity banger, “Ginsu,” have generated buzz among some of the most influential DJs today, including Armin Van Buren and Steve Aoki to name a couple. This Friday, March 6 they’ll unleash a set at LiFT Nightclub with support from Jesse Aaron and Jillie Wags. -JC
HOSPITAL RECORDS TOUR SATURDAY MAR 7 7PM / THE WAITING ROOM, 334 DELAWARE AVE. / $18 [ELECTRONIC/DANCE] “The biggest thing about Hospital Records is that it’s the meeting point between light and dark. It encompasses what jungle and drum and bass is all about,” says Robert Matthews, better known as Basha, leader of Frosty Tone. Hospital Records is a drum and bass record label founded by South Londoners Chris Goss and Tony Colmon—aka London Elektricity—in 1996. Since its formation, it has become the quintessential drum and bass label, releasing records by the likes of High Contrast, Nu:Tone, Metrik, Danny Byrd, London Elektricity, Logistics, S.P.Y., Etherwood, Dynamite MC, and many others. When the Hospitality Tour comes to the Waiting Room on Saturday, March 7, presented by MNM Presents, label vets Metrik, Nu:Tone, Etherwood, and Dynamite MC will throw down some serious 170bpm madness. Don’t miss out. Basha opens the show. -CORY PERLA
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CALENDAR EVENTS
SATURDAY MAR 7
PUBLIC APPROVED
Shamrock Run 12pm Old First Ward Community Center, 62 Republic St.
[RUN] Despite the record breaking cold weather, the Old First Ward is really heating up. Between the recent release of a benchmark documentary detailing the importance of the neighborhood past and present, this weekend’s Shamrock Run and next weekend’s Old Neighborhood Parade, it seems nearly impossible for a citizen of Buffalo not to make their way down to the Ward this time of the year. The 2015 Shamrock Run (8K) takes place on Saturday, March 7 at noon. Registration is still open and all late fees have been waived. For more information or to register for the run, visit buffaloshamrockrun.com. The Old First Ward Community Center will be the headquarters for all matters Shamrock Run. The 2015 run has been dedicated to Sue Conway. -SH
Lady Lush & the Vinyls 10pm Gypsy Parlor, 376 Grant St. $5
[FUNK] Local funk and soul mavens Lady Lush & the Vinyls are flying the coop to the Big Apple this spring, but not before a sendoff show at Gypsy Parlor this Saturday, March 7. The band's gooey groove has proved a unique amalgam for Buffalo—a mix of unexpected soul oldies with tonguein-cheek pop covers and some jammy originals that highlight co-ed lead vocals and live beat-boxing. They'll be back, but it may be a while, so don't miss this. Radarada opens. -CJT
BrownSugar 8pm Nietzsche's, 248 Allen St. $5
[JAM] This Saturday, March 7, Nietzsche’s will play host to a few up and coming bands that have been hitting the local scene hard as of late. Opening the night will be the Goods from Fredonia, who work through bouts of funk and psychedelic spaces throughout their set. Next up, another band with some Fredonia roots, the Intrepid Travelers will play the middle slot of the night. The guys just opened for The Nth Power and also like to play in a similar space as the Goods musically. With a new release under their belts, expect the Travelers to bring some new music to the table. Capping off the night will be none other than Buffalo’s BrownSugar. This funky outfit likes to weave in some jazz and jam and never disappoints whenever they take to the stage. The band recently opened for The Heavy Pets and is also slated to play the third annual Buffalove Music Festival this summer. -JS
DIANA KRALL TUESDAY MAR 10 7PM / UB CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 103 CENTER FOR THE ARTS / $65-$85 [JAZZ] Canadian chanteuse Diana Krall postponed her fall tour and the release of her latest, Wallflower, due to a bout with pneumonia. The David Foster-produced disc, which finally arrived last month, is an uneven collection of singer-songwriter covers and pop radio classics... and Foster’s production is to blame. Fans have clamored for a release like this for years, based largely on Krall’s stunning versions of tunes by Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and her husband, Elvis Costello, as served up in the past. And despite Wallace, Wallflower still manages to deliver some compelling moments, attesting to Krall’s interpretative strengths. Whatever your take on it, her concert performances usually feature impressive contemporary jazz talent and are rarely top-heavy with material from any particular project. Early reports from this tour support a continuance of that pattern: expect cherry-picked selections from Bix Beiderbeck, Fats Waller and Nat King Cole peppered between a few tunes from Wallflower, 2012’s vaudevillian-themed Glad Rag Doll, and old favorites, all delivered by a crack six-piece ensemble featuring Krall on keys. Krall comes ot the UB Center For The Arts on Tuesday, March 10.-CHRISTOPHER JOHN TREACY
PUBLIC APPROVED
Wynonna Judd and Friends 8pm Seneca Niagara Events Center, 310 4th St. $25-$50
[COUNTRY] Catch Wynonna Judd and Friends at Seneca Niagara Casino on Saturday, March 7. It’s the penultimate show of their Stories & Songs tour of which Judd shares stories of her experiences over her nearly 30-year career, bookended by hits like “She Is His Only Need” and “I Saw The Light." -KP
WEDNESDAY MAR 11 Filmstrip
6pm Mohawk Place, 47 E Mohawk St. $10-$15
[INDIE ROCK] Filmstrip's Dave and Matt Taha and Nick Riley have been playing together for nearly two decades, and it shows. Their 2010 self-produced album, Everything Can Change is stacked with tight musicianship, and establishes their production chops and mastery of dynamic interactions. Their latest release, Moments of Matter, reveals a clear evolution in their sound, with several country-tinged cuts, and sounds tilting more toward melodic pop without sacrificing that winding-guitar wall of sound. Ultimately, each new album solidifies Filmstrip as a groundbreaking Cleveland rock band seething with boundless possibility. Catch Filmstrip at Mohawk Place on Wednesday, March 11 with American Stories and Zealot.-KP
YOUNG THUG WEDNESDAY MAR 11 7PM / TOWN BALLROOM, 681 MAIN ST. / $30-$55 [HIP HOP] 2015 should be a big year for Young Thug. After releasing seven mixtapes since 2011 (including two on Gucci Mane’s record label, 1017, and one on Cash Money Records), the Atlanta rapper will finally drop a full length studio album with producer Metro Boomin under the alias Metro Thuggin this spring. But this is just the beginning: The 23 year old has goals that reach far beyond simply rapping. He sees himself as an emerging mogul. A future icon. “I hope to be like Bill Gates, bro…Or Michael Jackson,” he said in an interview with GQ earlier this month. With it’s massive hook and barely understandable, slurred verses his 2014 single “Stoner” may not have earned him icon status yet, but it has earned him a couple million YouTube hits. When Young Thug comes to the Town Ballroom on Wednesday, March 11, he’ll bring along Travis Scott, the 20-year-old Houston-based rapper known for his singles like “QuinP tana” featuring Wale, “Upper Echelon” featuring T.I. and 2 Chainz, and his latest, “Mamacita” featuring Young Thug himself. -CORY PERLA DAILYPUBLIC.COM / MARCH 4, 2015 / THE PUBLIC 17
ARTS REVIEW
NEW TALENT
Me by Alex Currie, Amherst Central.
High-school artists at UB Center for the Arts BY JACK FORAN Some precociously accomplished-looking artworks by area secondary school students are currently on view at the UB Center for the Arts. Such as some wonderful graphite drawings—head and shoulders portraits, and apparently self-portraits—by Jenna Pecky and Lauren Bauer, both of Lancaster High School. Excellent work. Or a little balsa foam material—but that looks like soft stone— relief sculptural piece by Joey Lo of Williamsville East, with close-packed array of wheels and floral forms, morphing to buttons, gears. A little reminiscent of the filigree ceramic skin of the Prudential Building. Or Gina Boccolucci’s delightful ceramic cookie jar in the form of a New York City brownstone, complete with street art mural on one side of the building. A hippie-looking beggar figure with beggar’s cup and a sign with the enigmatic message: “Keep your coins, I want change.” Political change, it sounds like he wants. Change the system. Good. Works in a wide variety of styles and subject matters. Anatomy, architecture, animals, allegory, to name just some of the A’s. Anatomy often with an X-ray character, like Canisius High School student Mike Ye’s odd but interesting pencil drawing portrait that simultaneously depicts surface features and bony structures below. Mandible and teeth, neck spinal column, eyes and eye sockets. Or Charter School for Applied Technologies student Iyanna Taylor’s digital photo collage of hands on a keyboard. X-rays and multiple images. Among architecture, pastel and ink drawings/paintings by two John F. Kennedy School students, Amber Keith, a work called Gold Dome, the Roman architecture downtown M&T Bank— dome and classical columns and broad arch windows—at ease as it were, slumping a little, and Shelby Ciaudella’s gothic architecture church in watery browns—St. Paul’s Cathedral, it must be, but stripped to edifice essentials—against a soft blue sky, entitled Pearl Street. Lots of animal art, including Lancaster High School student Katelyn Cefali’s fine close-up partial view photo of a horse grazing, and Charter School for Applied Technologies student José Cordovez’s horse poking his nose through the bars of the fence, wanting something from the photographer. An apple, a carrot, maybe. Something more than just to get his picture taken. Lawrence DiVito, Kendall High School, has an apprentice-Audubon colored pencil drawing of a marsh bird and suggestions of habitat. Kaitlyn Gernatt, Immaculata Academy, a fauvist-flavor acrylics bovine of some exotic sort with thick hair covering its eyes—like an Old English Sheepdog—but peering apparently straight at the artist/observer. And Brianna Kraus, John F. Kennedy School, a digital photo of a cat looking straight at—or possibly right through—the observer, called The Eye of the Tiger.
IN GALLERIES NOW: BY TINA DILLMAN = ART OPENING 464 Local Art Gallery & Gifts (464 Amherst Street, Buffalo, NY 14207 464gallery.com): Wed-Fri: 12-6, Sat-Sun: 12-4, by event or appointment. 1045 Elmwood Gallery for the Arts (1045 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222, 716-228-1855-call for open hours photographics2.comstore/ welcome-to-our-studio-1045-gallery-store): Mar 5-Apr 5, Opening Reception on Fri Mar 6, 6-9pm, Duality, work by Candice Pack & Tom Coyne. Albright-Knox Art Gallery (1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York 14222, 882-8700, albrightknox.org): Overtime: The Art of Work & Eye to Eye: Looking Beyond Likeness, both shows opening Sat Mar 7, 7-9pm in Sculpture Court, Free; Arturo Herrera: Little Bits of Moderism, on view through April 5; David Adamo in the Sculpture Court, on view through May 17: Robert Heinecken: Surrealism on TV, on
UB CENTER FOR THE ARTS 103 CENTER FOR THE ARTS / 645-6259 / UBCFA.ORG
And Chelsea Ardillo, Dunkirk High School, a giraffe in ink and colored pencil and paint and fantastical decorative patterns. Among allegorical works, Amherst High School student Almisah McAllister’s Algea—a Greek word meaning pains, sorrows— of two figures—an angel type and a devil type—at a tomb strewn with flowers, the angel collapsed in grief, the devil figure either supporting her from behind or possibly trying to take advantage somehow of the mourner in her distraught state. Allegories by nature not always crystal clear as to meaning. As also in a drawing by Ellicottville High School student Aiden Wilson, called Nature teaches beasts, showing a human figure surrounded by collage-like array of totemic-looking beasts or beast parts, including a tortoise, a hippo, a tiger, an armadillo, even an aardvark (I think). Among other fine and imaginative work is Attica Central High School student Bailey Mallon’s little sculptural take-off on Alberto Giacometti Walking Man often on display at the Albright-Knox. It’s called Elementary Giacometti and shows a walking man figure—complete with long neck scarf— and carrying—or losing, dropping—some cut-out numbers, 1, 2, and 3. Also, Pembroke High student Emily Dyson’s exquisite scanned and digitized photographic image of a dandelion gone to seed, seeds flying from it in the breeze, called Evanescent. And Nichols student Wilson Alex Fischer’s excellent photo collage and linoleum print abstraction arrangement, called Border Crossing.
Gazelle by Ashley Irby, West Valley Central.
And nature works by two Kendall High School students. Jacob Weed’s forest scene in a Monet-impressionism barrage of color specks and daubs, called Out the window, and Jenna Gideon’s mysterious dark-hued collocation of a circle of rocks campfire ready to fire up, and square sticks and leaves item—maybe a mat to sit on to watch the fire—in fern-décor dark paper frame, entitled Forest Solitude. The high-schoolers art show continues through March 13.
view through May 31. Tue-Sun 10am-5pm, open late First Fridays until 10pm. Art Dialogue Gallery Custom Framing (5 Linwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14209. artdialoguegallery.com): Riding the NYC Subway, Sketches by Andrew Sanders, circa 1960-71, up through Mar 13. Wed & Thu 11am-5pm, Fri 11am-4pm, Sat 11am-2pm.
Big Orbit (30 Essex Street, Buffalo, NY 14222, cepagallery.orgabout-big-orbit): I Have Nothing To Say About Anything At All, Graduate Thesis exhibition by Sangjun Yoo. Opening Fri Mar 6, 8-11pm. Fri-Sat 12-6pm. Box Gallery (Buffalo Niagara Hostel, 667 Main St, Buffalo, NY 14203): Pseudo-Phernalia, installation by Kate Gaudy up through April.
Artists Group Gallery (Western New York Artists Group) (1 Linwood Ave, Buffalo, NY 14209, 716885-2251, wnyag.com): 19th Annual Juried Members Exhibition, on view through Mar 13. Tue-Fri 11am-5pm, Sat 11am-3pm.
BT&C Gallery (1250 Niagara Street, Buffalo, NY 14213, 604-6183, btandcgallery.com): Currently on view, Millie Chen: stain, on view through Mar 27, participatory dialogue with artist Mille Chen, Tues Mar 10, 6:30pm. Hours, Fri 12-5pm or by appointment. Buffalo Arts Studio (Tri Main Building 5th Floor, 2496 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14214, 8334450, buffaloartsstudio.org): Tommy Nguyen, Me PLUSH You Long Time and Dennis Barraclough, Recent Works. Both shows on view through Mar 6. Tue-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat 10am2pm, fourth Fridays through 8pm.
Artspace Buffalo Gallery (1219 Main Street, Buffalo, NY, 14209): Artspace Buffalo 8th Residents Exhibition 2015, opening reception Fri Mar 13, up through April. Sat-Sun 12-4pm. Benjaman Art Gallery (419 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222, 886-0898, benjamangallery.com): Rotating selected works from collection. Thu-Sat 11am-5pm, Sun-Wed by appointment. Betty’s Restaurant (370 Virginia Street, Buffalo, NY 14201, 362-0633, bettysbuffalo.com): Catherine Shuman Miller: Works on Paper on view through Mar 22.
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Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology (1221 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14209, 259-1680, buffaloartstechcenter.org): Currently on view, Graham Mitchell Sears, through mid April. MonFri 10am-3pm.
P
Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens (2655 South Park Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14218, 8271584, buffalogardens.com): Michael Haderer, Arcangel Gallery Exhibit, on view through Mar 15, included with admission. Mon-Sun 10am5pm. Burchfield Penney Art Center- 1300 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222, 878-6011, burchfieldpenney.org): Inquisitive Lens: Marion Faller, on view through Mar 29; Discovering Deco: Photographs by Bruce Jackson, on view through Mar 29; When the Self is Not: David Moog, on view through Mar 29; Alexander O. Levy: American Artist, Art Deco Painter, on view through Mar 29; Phillip Stearns: A Chandelier for One of Many Possible Ends, on view through Mar 29. Tue, Wed, Fri & Sat 10am-5pm, Second Fridays through 8pm, Thu 10am-9pm, Sun 1-5pm. Burchfield Nature and Art Center (2001 Union Road, West Seneca, NY 14224, 677-4843, burchfieldnac.org): Cheektowaga Art Guild Exhibit Feb 5-Mar 1. Upcoming: Fiber Arts Exhibit Opening Reception Sun Mar 8, 2015, 2-4pm, on view from Mar 2-29. Tue-Fri 104pm, Sun 1-4pm.
GALLERIES ARTS Canisius College Andrew L. Bouwhuis Library (Canisius College 2001 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14208, 888-8412, library.canisius.edu/): Broad Matter, by Alixandra Martin, Opening Reception Fri Mar 6, 5-7pm. Hours: Mon-Thur 7:30am-2am, Fri 7:30am-8pm, Sat 10am-8pm, Sun 11am-2am. Castellani Art Museum (5795 Lewiston Road, Niagara University, NY 14109, 286-8200, castellaniartmuseum.org): Gary Sczerbaniewicz: High Strangeness, on view through May 3. Tue-Sat 11am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm. CEPA (617 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14203, 8562717, cepagallery.org): From the Archives-Enter Here: Photobooth Portraits 1979-80, & Children of San Jose Del Negrito, photographs by Alexis Oltmer & Wiliam Bergmann, both shows Opening Mar 7, 7-10pm Lukia Costello: As I Wake, I Cry: Revisiting Ukraine, on view through Mar 28. Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, Sat 12-4pm. Fargo House Gallery (287 Fargo Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14213, thefargohouse.com, visit website for appointment): Currently on view, Caitlin Cass: Benjamin Rathbun Builds Buffalo, on view through April. Enjoy the Journey Art Gallery (1168 Orchard Park Road, West Seneca, NY 14224, 675-0204, etjgallery.com): Currently on view, Be Inspired, work by West Seneca Academy of Visual Art. Flying Anvil Metalworks (51 Botsford Place, Buffalo, NY 14216, 308-0825, flyinganvilmetalworks.com): Tue-Fri 12-6pm, and by appointment. Hallwalls (341 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14202, 854-1694, hallwalls.org): Amid/In WNY, survey of local and regional contemporary artists, through Mar 6, 2015. Tue-Fri 11am6pm, Sat 11am-2pm. Impact Artists’ Gallery (Tri Main Building, 2495 #545, Buffalo, NY 14214, 835-6817, impactartistsgallery.org): Feb 4-Mar 13, Beyond Reality, Fantasy Art Exhibit, Artists Reception Feb 27 from 530-8pm. Wed-Fri 11am-4pm, Sat 11am-2pm. Indigo Art Gallery (47 Allen Street, Buffalo, NY 14202, 984-9572. indigoartbuffalo.squarespace.com): Confluence, Monoprints by Monica Angle, Opening Reception Fri Mar 6, 6-9pm. Wed & Fri 12-6pm, Thu 12-7pm, Sat 12-3pm, and by appointment Sundays and Mondays. IPRINTFROMHOME Gallery (2630 Elmwood Avenue, Kenmore, NY 14217, 800-736-8652): Rotating works by local photographers. Kenan Center House Gallery (433 Locust Street, Lockport, NY 14094, 433-2617 kenancenter. orgarts/gallery.asp): 30th Annual Storrs All High Photo Show, Mar 1-22. Mon-Fri 12-5pm & Sun 2-5pm. Karpeles Manuscript Library (North Hall) (220 North Street, Buffalo, NY 14201, 885-4139, rain.org~karpeles/): On view The Wright Brothers Documents. Tue-Sun 11am-4pm. Karpeles Manuscript Museum (Porter Hall) (453 Porter Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14201, 885-4139, rain.org~karpeles/): On view Maps of the United States, and upcoming Early Maps of the World. Tue-Sun 11am-4pm. Lockside Art Center (21 Main Street, Lockport, NY 14094, 478-0239, locksideartcenter.com): Currently on view, Made by Hand, sculpture exhibit. Fri-Sun 12-4pm. Market Street Art Studios (247 Market Street, Lockport, NY 14094, 478-0248, marketstreetstudios.com): Finding the Moment, Exporations in Photography, Mar 1-Apr 2. Meibohm Fine Arts (478 Main Street, East Aurora, NY 14052, 652-0940, meibohmfinearts. com): Upcoming Fri Mar 20, 2015, Joe Orffeo (1926-2013): Retrospective Part II (1980-2013). Tue-Sat 9:30am-5:30pm.
Self-portrait by Richard Prince. Part of the Enter Here: Photobooth Portraits 1979-80 at CEPA Gallery.
Native American Museum of Art at Smokin Joes (2293 Saunders Settlement Road, Sanborn, NY 14123, 261-9251): Open year round and free. Exhibits Iroquois Artists work. 7am-9pm. Niagara County Community College Dolce Valvo Art Center (3111 Saunders Settlement Road, Sanborn, NY 14132, 614-5975): Currently on view, Menagerie: Paintings and Woodcuts by Polly Little, through Mar 6, Artist Talk Thu Mar 5 at 11:30am. Nichols School Gallery at the Glenn & Audrey Flickinger Performing Arts Center (1250 Amherst Street, Buffalo, NY 14216, 332-6300, nicholsschool.orgartshows?rc=0): On view through Mar 30, Kurt Treeby, Traces. Mon-Fri 8am4pm. Nina Freudenheim Gallery (140 North Street, Buffalo, NY 14201, 882-5777, ninafreudenheimgallery.com): Beverly Semmes, The Feminist Responsibility Project, Feb 7-Mar 11. Tue-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat & Mon open by appointment only. Pausa Art House (19 Wadsworth Street, Buffalo, NY 14201, 697-9069, pausaarthouse.com): Elemental, by Rosemarie Bauer Sroka, Opening Reception Fri Mar 6, 6-10pm, Free. ThurSat 6pm-12am. Project 308 Gallery (308 Oliver Street, North Tonawanda, NY 14120, 523-0068, project308gallery.com): Upcoming Mar 14, solo exhibition by Martin Schmidt. Tue-Thu 7-9pm and by appointment. Project 308 also holds classes and rents their facilities, for more information visit their website.
Queen City Gallery (617 Main Street, Buffalo, NY, 14203, 868-8183, queencitygallery.tripod. com): Rotating members work on view. Tue-Fri 11am-4pm and by appointment. Open late every First Friday from 6-10pm and every Thursday Open Mic, 7-9pm. Open to all musicians and writers. RO (732 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14222, 240-9387, rohomeshop.com): Hosts shows of local artists on a bi-monthly rotation, call for more details or visit Tue-Sat 11am-6pm, Sun 11am-4pm. Squeaky Wheel (617 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14203, squeaky.org):Currently on view, Sang Jun Yoo, Distant Light. Show on view through Mar 21. Tue-Sat 12-5pm. Stangler Fine Art (6429 West Quaker Street, Orchard Park, NY 14127, 870-1129, stanglerart. com): Currently on view, 6 Ways: 6 Women Artist 6 Different Mediums. Mon-Fri 11am-5pm, Sat 11am-3pm. Starlight Studio and Art Gallery (340 Delaware Avenue, Bufflao, NY 14202, starlightstudio.org): Opening Reception Fri Mar 6, 6-8pm, Ubiquitous Benevolence, works by Larry Allen. MonFri 9-4pm. Studio Hart (65 Allen Street, Buffalo, NY 14202, 536-8337, studiohart.com): Love for Sale: I Hart Buffalo, curated by Molly Jarboe, Feb 6Mar 28. Tue-Fri 11:30am-3:30pm, Sat 12-4pm, and open every First Friday 6-9pm. Sugar City (1239 Niagara Street, Buffalo, NY 14213, buffalosugarcity.org): Buffalo Fun-a-Day 2015, Thu Mar 12 at 6pm. Participants created
a work everyday during the month of February and will have these on display. Informational meeting on Thursday, 7:30pm. TGW@497 Gallery (497 Franklin Street, Buffalo, NY 14202, 949-6604): Black and White & Red, Opening Reception Fr Mar 6, 6-9pm. Wed-Fri 12-5pm, Sat 12-3pm. UB Anderson Gallery (1 Martha Jackson Place, Buffalo, NY 14214, 829-3754, ubartgalleries. org): Upcoming, Opening reception Mar 28, 1-5pm, Cravens World: The Human Aesthetic, on view through Dec 31, 2015. Exhibition will include archaeological and ethnographic objects from Annette Cravens collection. WedSat 11am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm. UB Art Gallery (North Campus, Project Space) (201 Center for the Arts, Buffalo, NY, 14260, 6456913, ubartgalleries.org): Creative Skin, wearable works by Liz Black. Tue-Fri 11am-5pm, Sat 1-5pm. Unity Gallery (1243 Delaware Ave, Buffalo, NY 14209): The Journey Continues, a collection of paintings and found object mosaics by Judi Witt. Opening Mar 8, 12-2pm and up through Apr 29. Western New York Book Arts Collaborative (468 Washington Street, Buffalo, NY 14203, 4381430, wnybookarts.org): Small Obsessions, by Katherine Sehr. Show on view through Mar 13. Wed-Sat 12-6pm. Wine on Third (501 Third Street, Niagara Falls, NY 14301, 285-9463, wineonthird.com): Call for show information. Mon-Wed 4pm-12am, Thu P 4pm-1am, Fri-Sat 4pm-2am, Sun 4-10pm.
SHARE YO U R EVENT EVENTS@DAILYPUBLIC.COM DAILYPUBLIC.COM / MARCH 4, 2015 / THE PUBLIC 19
FILM REVIEW
IN CINEMAS NOW: BY M. FAUST & GEORGE SAX
PREMIERES CHAPPIE—In South African director Neill Blomkamp’s (District 9, Elysium) latest vision of how the future will suck, his regular star Sharlto Copley plays a police robot that is re-programmed to experience inedpendent thoughts and emotions. Starring Dev Patel, Ninja, Hugh Jackman, and Sigourney Weaver. Area theaters. THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL—Sequel, with all of the original cast members (Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Dev Patel, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, Celia Imrie, Ronald Pickup) joined by Richard Gere, David Strathairn, and Tamsin Greig. Directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love). Reviewed this issue. Amherst, Eastern Hills. UNFINISHED BUSINESS—Businessman Vince Vaughn and his associates run into endless obstacles on their way to close a deal in Europe. With Dave Franco and Tom Wilkinson. Directed by Ken Scott (Delivery Man). Area theaters.
ALTERNATIVE CINEMA
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
EAST MEETS WEST & BACK AGAIN A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT / THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL BY M. FAUST If you ever looked at a classic vampire movie and thought that Dracula’s cape looks not unlike a male chador, you’re on the wavelength for A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, a Sundance presentation that all by itself nearly makes up for every failed attempt of the past decade to breath new life in the vampire genre. “The first Iranian Vampire Western” proclaims the film’s tagline, echoing its creator, writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour. It’s apt in that it signals a cultural and cinematic mashup that, to the best of my knowledge, hasn’t been seen before. So we’ll overlook that it’s not entirely true: there’s a vampire, yes, but it’s only a western in that it features some faux Ennio Morricone music, and it was shot in California by a firsttime filmmaker who is ethnically Iranian but was born in England and raised in Miami and Los Angeles. On the other hand, the rundown oil town outside of Bakersfield where Amirpour filmed, in low-contrast B&W, is otherworldy enough to pass for some place in Iran known as “Bad City.” Everyone in it speaks Persian, and it can clearly be read on one level as a critique of Iranian patriarchy. Bad City is a place of disconnected, troubled souls, like Arash (Arash Marandi), a James Dean type anchored here by his drug-addicted father’s debts. He loses his one prized possession, a car that lends him mobility, to dad’s dealer (played by Dominic Rains, star of the shot-in-Buffalo feature The Taqwacores.) Arash thinks he’s found a similarly lost soul in the traditionally garbed girl (Sheila Vand) he meets while wandering the streets after leaving a costume party. He’s dressed as Dracula and tells her not to be afraid of him. Little does he know. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is thin on plot but heavy on atmosphere, much it provided by music. Amirpour spent most of her 20s fronting a band and designed much of the film beginning with the songs, mixing European post-punk and new wave with underground music from Iran. It’s a score that, combined with a sound design that recalls Eraserhead, could make you sit through 99 minutes of ATM surveillance footage. The sound isn’t the only thing that recalls David Lynch, whom Amirpour clearly hold in high esteem. Ditto early Jim Jarmusch (whose recent vampire film Only Lovers Left Alive is a catalogue of mistakes that she avoids.) It’s smart, beguiling filmmaking that makes you look forward to more from Amirpour, even if her next project, which she has described as “a post-apocalyptic cannibal love story set in a Texas wasteland” that is “The Road Warrior meets Pretty in Pink” and “El Topo meets Dirty Dancing,” sounds like she wants to become a female Quentin Tarantino. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night opens on Friday at the Screening Room in Amherst, the venue that recently ran the local premiere of an-
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ALL THAT JAZZ (1979)—Bob Fosse’s Fellini-esque film based more or less on his own life, starring Roy Scheider as a choreographer with almost no redeeming qualities other than his talent. With Jessica Lange, Ann Reinking, Cliff Gorman, and John Lithgow. Presented by the Buffalo Film Seminars. Tue 7pm. Amherst. CASABLANCA (1941)—Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in what is by general consensus Hollywood’s greatest romance, if not the most popular Hollywood film period. With Paul Heinreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, S. Z. Sakall, and Dooley Wilson. Directed by Michael Curtiz (Yankee Doodle Dandy). Fri-Sun, Tue 7:30pm. Screening Room. A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT—“The first Iranian Vampire Western.” Written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour. Reviewed this issue. FriSat 9:30pm, Sun-Thu 7:30pm. Screening Room. PATTI SMITH: DREAM OF LIFE (2008)—Documentary about the punk rock icon and poet, who will be appearing locally for Just Buffalo’s Babel series in April. Directed by Steven Sebring. Weds March 4, 7pm. Squeaky Wheel. RENOIR (France, 2013)— Gilles Bourdo’s visually beautiful film set late in the life of the great Impressionist painter Auguste Renoir (Michel Bouquet), living in semi-retirement in the south of France and vying for the attention of a model with his war-wounded son Jean (Vincent Rottiers), soon to be one of the cinema’s great auteurs. Presented by the Roycroft Film Society. Sun 4pm. Parkdale School Auditorium, 141 Girard Ave. East Aurora. ROMEO AND JULIETTE—From the Bolshoi Ballet, Alexander Volchkov, and Anna Nikulina dance the lead roles in Shakespeare’s classic story set to the music of Sergei Prokofiev. Sun 11am. Amherst.
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
other unique female-generated horror film, The Babadook. Support this kind of thing and you’ll get more of it. There was a time when sequels who put some effort into refreshing your memory of the events of the preceding film, at least enough to bring you up to speed on what you’re about to see. Not any more—filmmakers now proceed on the expectation that you have either committed the previous film to memory or that you have rewatched it in preparation. The former is the case with The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a film clearly made in the expectation that there is a large audience that adored its predecessor. As someone who saw but barely remembers it, I was at a loss to follow a good deal of the further adventures of the old Brits who came to India for a cheap retirement but found new life. Think Cocoon without any aliens. And then think of Cocoon 2: the ratio is pretty much the same. As haphazardly and indifferently plotted as it is, you can’t go entirely wrong with a movie that lets you watch Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Penelope Wilton, and Celia Imrie for two hours, joined by Richard Gere, David Strathairn and Tamsin Greig (of TV’s “Black Books” and “Episodes”). And of course there is Maggie Smith, the Don Rickles of her milieu, exercising the tart tongue she gets to indulge on Downton Abbey (and occasionally remembering to switch her accent for what is supposed to be a working class character here.) The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel lives up to the presumably unintended double meaning of its title, but if you loved the first one I wouldn’t try to talk you out of seeing it. It opens P Friday at the Amherst and Eastern Hills Mall theaters.
IN BRIEF:
AMERICAN SNIPER—Clint Eastwood’s adaptation of the memoir of Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper), who as a Navy SEAL sniper killed between 160 and 250 targets in Iraq, is hardly the only recent film “based on a true story” to play fast and loose with the facts. But the goal here seems to be less dramatic shaping than hagiography, a disappointment given Eastwood’s more nuanced films of recent years. The script doesn’t only ignore Kyle’s human failings (which is understandable if unfortunate); it erases most of what might have made him interesting as a character. Eastwood remains the consummate craftsman, but the film serves no real point. With Sienna Miller, Jake McDorman, and Luke Grimes. -MF BIRDMAN—Too much and not enough. Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s Oscar-winning “meta-movie” stars Michael Keaton as Riggan Thomson, a once famous actor whose career took a downturn after he stopped playing the superhero character he was famed for. In need of a comeback vehicle and artistic validation, Thomson mounts a Broadway play as a vehicle for himself, a troubled production that forms the basis of this film’s increasingly wild proceedings. It’s certainly challenging, dynamic, and technically fluid. But it’s also erratic, lurching from scenes of banal domestic confrontation and confession to deliberate comic excess to surreal flights. In the end it’s too much structural complexity for one film to handle. Co-starring Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, and Andrea Riseborough. -GS
PLAYING NOW FILM homosexuals in the British Isles. Although the movie’s dramatic arc is consistently entertaining, it bears only a limited general resemblance to the more complicated story told in Andrew Hodge’s long, dense 1983 Turing biography, credited as a primary source. Exaggerating and invention are hardly uncommon in biopics, but the filmmakers choices here are dramatically conservative and audience-oriented. Co-starring Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Charles Dance, and Mark Strong. Directed by Morten Tyldum (Headhunters). -GS JUPITER ASCENDING—The Wachowski siblings should be put to work raising money to combat world hunger. If they could raise $180 million for their newest movie after a record of mega-flops like Cloud Atlas, Speed Racer—well, everything they’ve made since the original Matrix—they obviously have powers that are being wasted on making dull, turgid sci-fi spectacles. It was supposed to be released last summer but was pulled—supposedly for reshoots, but I’ll bet because the studio was afraid to go up against Guardians of the Galaxy, which is just as derivative but at least knows how to entertain an audience. Starring—oh, why bother naming them, it’s not their fault. Starring Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Eddie Redmayne, and Sean Bean. -MF KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE—“Give me a farfetched theatrical plot any day,” says the villain to the hero during a discussion of spy movies in one of this comic book adaptation’s more bluntly self-referential moments. Far-fetched and theatrical it is, and pretty entertaining to boot, even if it leaves you feeling slightly soiled for succumbing to such excesses as a parade of The university response to rape on campus exploding heads that David Cronenberg could never have imagined. The story is essentially an Anglicization of Men in Black, minus most of BY LIZZIE FINNEGAN the sci-fi and the overt comedy. Working from the same comic book creators who spawned his hit Kick Ass, director Matthew Vaughn pits a The most striking feature of Lisa F. Jackson’s new documentary It Happened Here is how the secret organization of immaculately clad British individual stories of its five protagonists simultaneously personalize and universalize the haunting spies (suit fetishists will swoon) against Samuel L. Jackson as a frustrated billionaire with specter of rape culture in America. We are drawn compellingly into the intimate world of each of a desperate plan to cure global warming. The these courageous young women, but never at the expense of the larger context of rape culture as a sequence with Colin Firth slaughtering the conwhole, which only reinforces their experiences and which is expertly framed by the testimony of gregation at a stand-in for the Westboro Baptist administrators, faculty, and activists. Church—to the tune of “Free Bird”—is probably the most jaw-dropping thing you’ll see all year. These students were among the first to go public with their stories not only of their assaults but With Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Michael Caine, of how they were treated by their university administrations; they were belittled, shamed, and disand Mark Hamill. -MF missed, while their attackers went unpunished. What is shocking about the film is the resistance THE LAZARUS EFFECT—A quartet of young medical with which these women’s attempts to be heard were met at every turn by the very institutions they researchers discover a way to bring the recently expected would protect and help them. dead back to life. Having apparently never seen a horror film, they proceed to do so, to their reWhat is inspiring is the way these young women refused to be silenced. They evolve from victims gret. For a while the scientific gobbledygook in to activists as they break the silence so key to maintaining the systemic abuses of power that perthis thriller feels reasonably plausible, at least by the low standards of the genre, and the depetuate rape culture. They confront these systems of power, holding their schools accountable and bates among our crew raise interesting quessparking national awareness of this pervasive problem. tions about our ideas of life after death. But that all goes out the window for a third act of Lisa F. Jackson has been making documentaries for over 35 years; she has won two Emmy awards generic monster movie stuff, with lots of build and a Sundance Jury Prize. Her recent films include Sex Crimes Unit and The Greatest Silence: Rape up for presumed sequels. (Don’t count on it: in the Congo. She will present It Happened Here in person at the Burchfield-Penney Arts Center on This has been on the shelf since it was filmed Thursday, March 12, at 7pm. On Friday, March 13, she will offer a workshop on Documentary and in 2013). Starring Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Social Justice at 10am in Ketchum Hall Room 118 on the SUNY-Buffalo State Campus. Sarah Bolger, Evan Peters, and Donald Glover. Directed by David Gelb, which is the same name as the director of the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi—can it possibly be the same guy? –MF BLACK OR WHITE—As a story of a family dispute the story only stumbles in the third section as LEVIATHAN—Vladimir Putin may seem to control generated by racial differences—a mixed-race everything in Russia, but it’s doubtful he was writer/directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa girl is fought over by her white (maternal) responsible for sending this film to the Oscars (I Love You Philip Morris) go overboard in lulling grandfather and black (paternal) grandmother, (where it was nominated for Best Foreign Lanus off guard prior to their big finale. With Gerald who both want custody—Black or White arrives guage Film): it hardly paints a rosy picture of McRaney, Rodrigo Santoro, and BD Wong. -MF at a perfect time to add something to the freshlife in his homeland. An auto mechanic fights to HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2—John Cusack had the ly simmering debate about race and civil rights save the house he built for himself and his famisense not to show up for this sequel to his 2010 in America. But it brings little to the table, either ly from being seized by the corrupt town mayor, hit, though all of the rest of the cast is back, substantively or aesthetically. It’s a rather plodwho wants to give the land to a developer. The along with director Steve Pink (who wrote Cuding, insufficiently focused effort, uninformed mechanic’s ruination is a slow moving nightsack’s High Fidelity and Grosse Point Blanke). by real insight or narrative facility. It mostly mare, charted deliberately by director Andrey The trailer tries to make it look like Rob Cordresembles Kramer vs. Kramer, succumbing to a Zvyagintsev (The Return). He keeps a contemdry, Craig Robinson, and Clark Duke (joined by melodramatic conclusion that resolves nothing. plative grip on his material until an ending that Adam Scott) get caught in a lot of back-andStarring Kevin Costner, Octavia Spencer, Jenniseems over-determined and weakly plotted. -GS forth time-traveling a la Back to the Future II, fer Ehle, Anthony Mackie, and Bill Burr. Directed Starring Aleksey Serebryakov, Elena Lyadova, but in fact it’s all set 10 years in the future—a by Mike Binder (Reign Over Me). -GS and Vladimir Vdovichenkov. bad decision given that the only charm of THE DUFF—High school girl rebels when she MAPS TO THE STARS—If two hours spent with vethe original was making retro jokes about the discovers that her friends keep her around nal, petty, self-obsessed and incestuous Holly1980s. It’s certainly unpredictable, but that’s only because they think she makes them look wood folk is your idea of a good time, here you not necessarily a good thing: It plays as if they prettier. Starring Bella Thorne, Mae Whitman, go. David Cronenberg turns his clinically cold were making it up as they want along (and hopRobbie Amell, and Allison Janney. Directed by eye on a script by novelist Bruce Wagner, who ing that Cusack would step in at the last minAri Sandel. has made a career out of trashing people who ute). Caveat emptor: If you don’t remember the work in the movie business, and the result is an previous film, you’re going to be very confused FIFTY SHADES OF GREY—B&D goes mainstream ensemble piece that would be risible if it weren’t (though on the other hand you won’t rememin the movie adaptation of the books that have so insistently unpleasant. It’s painful watchDAILYPUBLIC.COM FILM LISTINGS & REVIEWS >> ber the repeated jokes either, so maybe they’ll sold VISIT an estimated 100 million copiesFOR (evenMORE ing Julianne Moore work so hard in a role that seem fresh to you). Worth seeing only if you’re though no one will admit to liking them). Stardoesn’t deserve her talents, as a second-rate aca huge fan of dick jokes. With Gillian Jacobs, Biring Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan and Jennitress exploiting the memory of her dead mothanca Haase, and Chevy Chase. -MF fer Ehle. Directed by Samantha Taylor-Johnson er; co-stars Mia Wasikowska, John Cusack, Evan (Nowhere Boy). THE IMITATION GAME—The story of English mathBird, Olivia Williams, and Robert Pattinson don’t ematician and logician Alan Turing, who was FOCUS—A subdued Will Smith stars as Nicky, vetfare much better. -MF instrumental in breaking Germany’s Enigma eran con man, who takes on fledgling femme MCFARLAND, USA—Disney jock drama. With Kevin code during World War II but was later driven fatale Margot Robbie as a protégé—but who’s Costner, Maria Bello, Morgan Saylor, and Vincent to suicide for being gay. Benedict Cumberbatch seducing whom? As a romance among thieves, VISIT DAILYPUBLIC.COM MORE LISTINGS & REVIEWS >> Caro (Whale Rider). Martella. Directed by Niki plays Turing FOR as a kind of comicFILM but poignant geFocus at its best has some of the sultry ambinius in a clever and vivid performance. Britain’s ance of Out of Sight: The soundtrack has more PADDINGTON—The beloved “short but polite” stringent secrecy laws kept Turing’s role in the smooth funky grooves than a 1970s prom, and talking bear of children’s books comes to the Allied victory a secret until the mid-1970s, since if Smith and Robbie are no George Clooney and big screen in a good-natured movie that will be which point Turing has become both a hero of Jennifer Lopez, they’re not bad either. Locabeloved by Anglophiles of all ages. Combining the code-breaking program and as a martyr of tion shooting in Manhattan, New Orleans, and computer effects with animatronics and voiced by Ben Whishaw, Paddington’s story stays close Buenos Aires keeps things looking nice, and the oppressive, sometimes vicious treatment of
IT HAPPENED HERE
CULTURE > FILM
CULTURE > FILM
to the books as he journeys from “darkest Peru” to London in search of a home. For dramatic structure the movie borrows from 101 Dalmations in the form of Nicole Kidman as a Cruella De Vil-ish taxidermist in a snakeskin jumpsuit. It was co-written and directed by Paul King, but don’t expect anything as anarchic as The Mighty Boosh, the cult comedy show he’s best known for: Special effects aside, it’s as traditional as a cup of hot chocolate. The cast includes Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey’s Earl of Grantham), Sally Hawkins, Peter Capaldi, Julie Walters, and Jim Broadbent, along with other faces you’ll probably recognize if you’re a Britcom fan. -MF SELMA—Detailing the events leading up to the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, the capital, to protest the denial of the vote to the great majority of the state’s African-American residents, director Ava DuVernay’s film ranks among the very few respectable and involving American movie treatments of historical characters, forces, and events. Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo), both the great public leader and symbol and the private man, is at the center of this film, but he’s presented as part of an increasingly diverse and populist campaign in this movie’s unusually clear and sophisticated narrative. Its one lapse is in exaggerating President Lyndon Johnson’s (Tom Wilkinson) resistance to sending a voting rights bill to Congress, which was actually based on his assessment of the timing and political opposition. With Cuba Gooding Jr., Tim Roth, Giovanni Ribisi, Carmen Ejogo, Martin Sheen, and Tom Wilkinson. -GS THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SPONGE OUT OF WATER— The title seems pretty self-explanatory to me. Directed by Paul Tibbitt. STILL ALICE—Julianne Moore’s Oscar-nominated performance as a Columbia professor diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Like the just-departed Cake, you can’t help but feel that this film exists largely to get an Oscar nomination for its star (the difference being that she may actually win, and good for her if she does). But little else in the film is as good as Moore’s performance. Directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (Quinceañera) are lightweights who want to touch audiences without really disturbing them, and their film has little of the lasting effect of either the Glen Campbell documentary that recently played here or Michael Haneke’s wrenching Amour. With Alec Baldwin, Kate Bosworth, Kristen Stewart, and Hunter Parrish. –MF THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING—As an Oscar contender, this biography of Stephen Hawking, based on a memoir by his first wife Jane, is a model of restraint and inoffensiveness: it’s a shoo-in for the The King’s Speech voters. Hawking’s work takes a back seat to his slow debilitation from ALS and the history of his marriage. But while we go into the film knowing it will end in divorce, the factors driving the couple apart feel elided. It’s as if the filmmakers didn’t want to be disrespectful to a man who is considered one of the great scientific minds of our era. But in that case, why make the film at all? Even the irony that, as presented here, all that ended the marriage of a man so obsessed with the nature of time was time itself seems unintended. With fine but unostentatious performances by Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones as the Hawkings. Co-starring Harry Lloyd, David Thewlis, and Emily Watson. Directed by James Marsh, best known for documentaries like Man on Wire. -MF THE WEDDING RINGER—The ubiquitous Kevin Hart as an LA hustler who makes a good living hiring himself out as a hip best man to guys who have no real friends to turn to for their weddings. His skills are challenged when financial executive Josh Gad comes to him in need not just of a best man but seven groomsmen as well—and in 10 days. The directorial debut of Jeremy Garelick, who rushes through all the best material in his own script. (Maybe it was his way of not having to cut anything?) It’s not well tailored for Hart’s strengths, allowing Gad to steal most of their scenes. The humor isn’t as crude as other wedding comedies of recent years, which is a plus or a minus depending on your perspective. Nor is the bromantic aspect adequately fleshed out. It’s not an awful movie, but neither is it memorable. Co-starring Affion Crockett, Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, and Ken Howard. -MF WHIPLASH—Inspired by his own experiences at a musical conservatory, writer-director Damien Chazelle’s film about an obsessed drum student and his even more obsessive teacher takes its cues less from movies about the arts or academics than the military, starting in An Office and a Gentleman territory before plunging unexpectedly toward Full Metal Jacket. An excellent performance by Miles Teller as the student is overshadowed by Oscar winner J. K. Simmons in the role of a lifetime as the teacher who believes in pushing students past what they think their limits are. The finale arguably undercuts everything the rest of the movie stands for, but it’s so well executed it’s hard to complain. -MF P
CULTURE > FILM
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GOOD NEIGHBOR NOTICES HAPPY BIRTHDAY! GABRIEL ROBERE GARRET GREEN EMILY NUGENT TYLER VAN SCHOONHOVEN GABRIELLE SCHWAB NEAL BRODFUEHRER GEBRIELLE JOY BRANDON DAVIS JAMES DOVEY HARRY ZEMSKY MATT CARLUCCI -----------------------------------------------
A sound I didn’t hear often: “Please.” I know now that I have won - the monster is truly defeated. This blade resting on my palm feels warm and safe, but the drum in my head seems treacherous. The madness must stop. ___, the final swing takes place.. thedirectionofup.com
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60. Response to “The Bills might really go all the way this year”? 62. Ache
33. Company that introduced non-stick cookware 34. “Slammin’ Sammy” 38. Monopoly income
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64. Penthouse location
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2. Main Street Trattoria
23. Big name in plastic
3. Bad impressions?
50. Summer fixture at the base of the hill in Delaware Park
24. ___-di-Pizza
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PLEASE EXAMINE THIS PROOF CAREFULLY
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57. “Are we ___ off?”
37. Lilydale resident, colloquially
10. Abominable sight?
58. Main Street gallery
43. “Scooby-___”
18. “The Big Band,” for one
IF YOU APPROVE ERRORS WHICH ARE ON THIS PROOF, THE60. 100-year-old NYC subway 15. “___ in cat” 41. Big name inCANNOT Top 40BE HELD RESPONSIBLE. PLEASE EXAMINE THE AD PUBLIC 61. “Addams Family” member Online list starter? 42. THOROUGHLY “Traffic” cop’s org.IF THE AD IS16. EVEN A PICK-UP. CHECK COPY CONTENT MESSAGE TO ADVERTISER19. A�Celtic language 45. Mean to get out of the
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CROSSWORD BY DONNA HOKE DONNAHOKE.COM Crossword puzzle
IN THE MIDDLE
I LOVE YOU! No really, I mean it! I’m Molly, a 3-yea r-old girl who falls instan tly in love with people ! I hope you’ll come in and meet me and my friend s at the SPCA Servin g Erie Count y or visit us online at YourS PCA.o rg. | 360 205 ENSMINGER RD. TONAWANDA 875-7
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PROGRESS CHECK
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CLASSICAL MUSIC
ABOUT SCHMITT
Harmonia
BY DOUGLAS LEVY Who was Florent Schmitt, the star of this week’s Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra concerts Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 2:30pm in Kleinhans Music Hall? His family, who despite their surname were French, was from the Lorraine region, an area long disputed between Germany and France. Schmitt was born on September 28, 1870 in Blâmont, in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department, the arrondissement of Nancy, roughly 250 miles east of Paris. He studied locally and, at the age of 19, entered the Paris Conservatoire where his composition teachers were Fauré (composer of a transcendent Requiem and a catchy Pavane for flute) and Massenet (many of whose operas are still performed at the Metropolitan Opera). For purposes of comparison, he was eight years younger than Debussy and both men won the coveted Prix de Rome. While the latter directed his full attention to composition, Schmitt, besides being a composer, was also a teacher and music critic. In that role he often created controversy, and it was not uncommon for him to shout out his opinion of the music in the hall while it was being performed.
PHOTO BY SHAWNA STANLEY
A CAPPELLA Harmonia keeps pace with an ancient form BY AARON LOWINGER
On a recent Tuesday evening Rob Pacillo sat at his keyboard surrounded by 20 people in open song until they all realized together that something was amiss in their “Ave Maria.” Like a school of fish, a choral group is an exercise in collective movement, where—solos hardly being an exception—the individual always performs as a mere function of a larger body. As soon as one fish opts for aberration out of instinct rather than bravery, the body politic follows. Pacillo reset the song, instructing the singers in a wide circle around him almost filling the large room off the main chapel of Blessed Sacrament Church on Delaware Avenue that “This is a really easy one to miss if you don’t all breathe when the hands go up.” Pacillo, whose underspoken intensity is best illustrated by his neat tie and sweater vest, raised his hands and the room performed its best diaphragm inhalation before expelling back into song just a beat later. Pacillo nods and smiles slightly as the hands follow: the universal language of music directors. Music teacher in Lockport by day, Pacillo is artistic director of Harmonia at least every Tuesday night. The piano and harmonica that Pacillo employs in his direction are there only to establish the key, a tease of instrumental technology that came along sometime after vocal song. Founded in 2006, Harmonia is exclusively an a cappella ensemble that performs eight concerts a year locally. And in a turn of events that proves that things happening in small groups in underutilized spaces under drop ceilings and fluorescent light have a near-universal implication: Harmonia is one of three ensembles invited to perform in Carnegie Hall on March 13 for its A Capella Next concert. Derived from perhaps the most ancient and elemental human art form and set most often in churches, it’s hard to divorce choral music from its centuries-old liturgical history. But the ensemble seems far less religious than spiritual. Roger Griffiths, a chaplain at Sisters of Charity Hospital and Harmonia singer since the beginning, put it this way: “I’m part of the spiritual-not-religious culture of the ’80s and ’90s. I mean we all have these big unanswerable questions, right? Music has always been my doorway.” This attitude seems to permeate the group, which by cursory observation has only two members north of 45 years of age. When asked about the spiritual aspect of the material, Ericka Milczarski, a third-grade teacher in Lockport, turned the question on itself. “The special thing about this group is that it’s a smaller group and we know each other well. The music community in Buffalo is a small world and we have a large following, and we’re able to make a connection with each other and with our audience.” After all, before any church had a building it was a community of the faithful: ecclesia meaning “assembly” or the place that that assembly exists.
HARMONIA: INTO LIGHT FRI, MAR 6 / 8PM ST. LOUIS ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 35 EDWARD ST, BUFFALO SUN, MAR 8 / 7PM ST. PETER RC CHURCH / 620 CENTER ST, LEWISTON
But since they do have buildings, it’s fascinating to consider the relationship between voice and architecture through the lens of a cappella choral music. The term “a cappella” itself, meaning “in the manner of the church,” suggests a history that must extend as far back as when the first humans discovered reverb. The ur-artists who painted in caves almost certainly sang in them. It only makes sense that if the decision is made to build a church with a ceiling high enough to suggest the eternity of the heavens, that you better fill that acoustic space with singing. In contemporary Buffalo terms, if you’re going to have all of these half-empty but gloriously built churches, someone or some group will inevitably find a new way to appreciate the architecture. While they rehearse every Tuesday, in between members constantly preen their feathers for flight, singing scales and arpeggios. The old saying about getting to Carnegie Hall rings true. The exercise differs for each singer, “depending on their instrument,” Veronica Shanchuk explained, but for each it’s daily practice and not just in the shower. Pacillo’s quick lesson about breathing is lost on no singer, attentive breathing being the most mundane but important vocal exercise. The Harmonia repertoire favors modern, even contemporary composers, but touches on chamber choral roots in chant, follows the arc through the Renaissance and into post-Industrial Europe, and diffuses into the spectrum of modernity. Half of their current repertoire is music composed by living artists, including a piece by SUNY Fredonia faculty Rob Deemer and another composed by Harmonia member Jeffrey Trenchard. An upbeat spiritual “In Dat Great Gittin’ Up Mornin’” is tempered by Michael McGlynn’s “Jerusalem,” a challenging feat of heterophony where singers enter the same music at different points, unifying briefly at a common pitch before going their separate ways again. Harmonia puts on four programs every year, each consisting of two performances held almost exclusively in churches at night with the ensemble’s 200 pound 20-candle candelabra built by Andrew Chambers of Arc Iron Creations providing the only light. The current concert series, Into Light, will be held on March 6 at 8pm at St. Louis Church in Buffalo, and on March 8 at 7pm in St. Peter Church in Lewiston.
He was one of the most performed French composers during the first four decades of the 20th century, but his music fell into neglect following World War II. Since the turn of this century, however, something of a Schmitt revival has been taking place, in which BPO Music Director and Conductor JoAnn Falletta has a leading role. Why Debussy has maintained his notoriety in the 97 years since his death, while Schmitt passed into obscurity have his death in 1958, Falletta thinks, is because of a number of factors, the German side of his ancestry being one. “He had an Impressionistic sensibility, like Debussy, but he was influenced by a much more Germanic tradition,” she says. Musically, this period in France had many composers taking sides between German Romanticism a la Wagner (e.g. Franck, Saint-Saëns) and a more formally experimental, freely rhythmic, and enormously colorful music that found source material in folk and oriental themes provided to French composers via both the Paris Exhibition of 1889 and Stravinsky’s presence in the French capital, which was the music capital of the world at the time. (Schmitt was counted, in fact, among a group of 16 musicians, writers and artists, including Falla, Ravel, and Stravinsky, who called themselves Les Apaches—yes, like the tribe of Native Americans.) “He was a hybrid; he was singular, and I think he was very proud of that. His music is very, very lush, it’s dark, and it’s extremely beautifully crafted. Perhaps his French sensibility is best heard in the clarified way he writes thick textures with so much going on and yet you can hear everything. That’s very rare. It is music that suits the orchestra very well, although it is very difficult, very complex music.” The music’s complexity can be found in its rhythmic underpinnings. “It sounds very free and flowing, almost improvisational,” says Falletta, “never rhythmic in the sense of Stravinsky. There are lots of things going on at any point, and they all have to line up exactly, and the end result is this beautiful wash of sound. But it has to be right.” Much of Schmitt’s music is programmatic, taking a story or poem and producing a symphonic study that is more like an impression of the events in the text. Cleopatra figures in the two suites that the BPO plays this week, and Schmitt composed works about Salomé and Salammbô, as well. “He seemed to be fascinated by interesting women, not necessarily paragons of virtue. The other challenge is to bring out the colors. This music is so thickly scored, we have to be sure that just the right balance is achieved at all times, so that every beautiful English horn solo can sing, and a rhythm that only happens in the violas will be heard. The whole orchestra is like a kaleidoscope of different sounds happening at once.” Rhythm and color carry through to the second half of the program, featuring acclaimed Canadian pianist Alain LeFevre soloing in Gershwin’s Concerto in F. Schmitt experimented a bit with jazz. Says Falletta: “The French invented the saxophone, which we imported, and then jazz musicians embraced it and brought their sound and music back to France, who loved it. There is this special connection between French and American music” which makes the pairing of Schmitt and Gershwin so appropriate. There will be a P lot to listen for this weekend in Kleinhans Music Hall.
BUFFALO PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA & ALAIN LEFEVRE WORKS BY FLORENT SCHMITT & GEORGE GERSHWIN SAT, 8PM / SUN, 2:30PM KLEINHANS MUSIC HALL SYMPHONY CIR, BUFFALO DAILYPUBLIC.COM / MARCH 4, 2015 / THE PUBLIC 23