6
ON THE COVER ROCHESTER TEN
Meet a cohort of CITY neighbors making art – and a difference.
38
UP-AND-COMING OPERA SINGERS JOURNEY THROUGH THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL
18
44 SPEAKING TO THE CHEF
Meet 10 local females working the line.
INTERVIEWS BY LEAH STACY
BYSYDNEY BURROWS, GINO FANELLI, JON HEATH, DARIO JOSEPH, DANIEL J. KUSHNER, JEREMY MOULE, JESSICA L. PAVIA, REBECCA RAFFERTY, JEFF SPEVAK, JULIA SMITH.
PHOTOS BY RAFAEL RODRIGUEZ
MAG’S LITTLE SHOW OF HORRORS
A painting hung in the ‘wrong’ place sparks an exhibition on grim art.
BY REBECCA RAFFERTY39
The 2023 Young Artists Program is stocked with Eastman School alums. BY DANIEL J. KUSHNER
ALBUM REVIEWS
Our takes on new music from Mike Melito, Infrared Radiation Orchestra, Austin Hollow, and Levi Gangi.
40
PHOTOS BY ABBY QUATRO
54
KINDRED SPIRITS
Rohrbach Brewing Company and Black Button Distilling’s partnership undergoes a natural expansion.
BY GINO FANELLI
BY
DANIEL J. KUSHNER, RON NETSKY, AND JEFF SPEVAK
PULLING STRINGS
Mikaela Davis takes the next big step with ‘And Southern Star.’
BY DANIEL J. KUSHNER56
PUTTING DOWN ROOTS
Rochester’s only urban winery builds a second home on Keuka Lake.
BY MARIEL BRINKERHOFF
AUGUST 2023
Vol 51 No 12
On the cover:
Illustration by Jacob Walsh
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FOUNDERS
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EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
themail@rochester-citynews.com
Editor: Leah Stacy
Senior arts writer: Jeff Spevak
Arts writers: Daniel J. Kushner, Rebecca Rafferty
Contributors: Mariel Brinkerhoff, Sydney Burrows, Gino Fanelli, Jon Heath, Dario Joseph, Fred McCoy, Jeremy Moule, Ron Netsky, Jessica L. Pavia, Abby Quatro, Rafael Rodriguez, Mona Seghatolaslami, Julia Smith
CREATIVE DEPARTMENT
Director, Strategy: Ryan Williamson
Art director: Jacob Walsh
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CITY (ISSN 1551-3262) is published monthly
12 times per year by Rochester Area Media Partners, a subsidiary of WXXI Public Broadcasting. Periodical postage paid at Rochester, NY (USPS 022-138). Address changes: CITY, 280 State Street, Rochester, NY 14614. Member of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and the New York Press Association.
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Irecently hit 90 days in my role at CITY – the point where starry eyes are adjusting to daylight, and plenty of emails, comments and criticisms have rolled in. But let’s be honest, this comes with the territory when you work a publicfacing job. (Breaking news: we don’t do everything perfectly!) I appreciate outside voices that bring feedback, constructive criticism and new ideas.
When I look back on the last three months, they feel so loud, and so rich. Full of meetings, brainstorming sessions, a conference, rebranding efforts, launch parties, new freelancers, meeting online friends in real life –the list goes on.
I remain immensely grateful for this role. As I read through the profiles of the Rochester Ten, I thought about how many amazing people choose to call this city home: from a spoken word poet and a young musician who both work with student artists to a Latinx storyteller who works with local voters.
As I reported the female chef story with photographer Abby Quatro this month, I left numerous interviews with a lump in my throat and a
renewed love for journalism. We get to tell stories for a living. We get to put words to a page and capture images through a lens. It’s a privilege – a public service to both our subjects and our readers.
The honeymoon’s over, but now the real work begins.
This month, we’ll hold our next launch party at Black Button Distilling’s new facility on University
Avenue. (Exact date TBD, sign up for our newsletter or check social media!)
I hope you’ll come out to say hi, sip local spirits, and maybe even pitch us an arts & culture story. Until then, we hope you enjoy this issue as much as our team enjoyed bringing it to life.
L
Editor, CITY Magazine
leah@rochester-citynews.com
The tagline for this issue, in the past, has been ‘behind-the-scenes Rochesterians doing great things that you should know about.’ While that’s still very much the theme here, CITY’s shift to primarily arts + culture coverage means we chose 10 people who are active within those fields somehow. This doesn’t mean they’re the only 10 people we could feature, or the best 10 people in Rochester. It means we’re presenting 10 people who are giving back to the community, building a stronger city, and making art in different ways. They were chosen through nominations from both staff and freelancers (in fact, one of them was featured many years ago, yet continues to be a leader in the community in different ways).
Read on to meet this year’s cohort, and learn about the ways they’re contributing to our fair city.
Profiles By Sydney Burrows, Gino Fanelli, Jon Heath, Dario Joseph, Daniel J. Kushner, Jeremy Moule, Jessica L. Pavia, Rebecca Rafferty, Jeff Spevak and Julia Smith.
Portraits by Rafael Rodriguez
ANNETTE RAMOS
MAIAH JOHNSON DUNN
Age: 48
Occupation: Artist & educator
Current residence: Brighton, NY
Hometown: Chicago, IL
PROFILED BY DANIEL J. KUSHNERArtist and independent educator Ya’qub Shabazz is an unstoppable force. As a cofounder of the 9th Floor Artist Collective, Shabazz has elevated Black representation in Rochester art while actively empowering and fostering community among local Black artists.
But unlike many visual artists, the 48-year-old Chicago native didn’t come from an environment where art was encouraged or even readily accessible. “What separates me from a lot of art teachers or independent freelance artists that are out here is that I come from a cultural perspective,” Shabazz said. “That’s not something that I was taught.”
Shabazz’s path to a professional art career was not a direct one. He only began creating his own work at age 29, but the seeds were sown when he would ditch class as a teenager and escape to the Art Institute of Chicago, which he said was a safe haven from the chaotic and counter-productive school environment in the city’s South Side.
Despite the comfort he took in the art museum, Shabazz remembered looking at 19th-century artist Georges Seurat’s iconic pointillist work “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” and feeling out of place. The absence of Black faces in the art told him he didn’t belong.
He soon dropped out of high school and sought educational opportunities at Job Corps before earning his GED and enlisting in the Army at the age of 17. After four years of service, he returned to civilian life before being incarcerated.
He is very open about his experience in prison, and used to connect with people as a case manager for those reentering the community after imprisonment in Madison, Wisconsin. Shabazz still works with individuals who are susceptible to institutionalization in prison, and teaches once a week at a maximum-security juvenile detention facility near Ithaca. Unlike his previous work in this vein, art education is now an important component.
“The art is a part of myself that I used to keep to myself, but now I’m sharing that,” he said. “And it’s beneficial. It’s absolutely working. I’ve not lost one kid in the time that I’ve been there. I have a thing where I tell them, ‘Don’t go to the hole, I want to see you next week.’”
In addition to teaching, Shabazz continues to create new work in Sankofa Studios and develop his clothing brand SKFA — both named for an iconic Ghanaian symbol important to Black culture.
“Sankofa is a bird, looking back at his tail, and there’s a jewel in his tail feathers,” Shabazz explained. “It symbolizes looking back at your history and gleaning the best parts of your history.”
Shabazz says his mentor, Luvon Sheppard, whom he calls “the epicenter for art in Rochester,” is responsible for the artist he’s become.
Sheppard — who is 83 and an active art professor at Rochester Institute of Technology for 50 years — became Shabazz’s mentor, providing insight into art history and the legacy of Black art, technical skills in mediums like oil and acrylic painting and linocuts, and giving him honest feedback on his work.
“He is an excellent listener and a person that is teachable,” Sheppard said. “He’s always open to learning things.”
For that, Sheppard credits the younger artist’s intellectual spirit and eagerness to grow personally and professionally.
“He’s inventive, he’s creative,” Sheppard said. “But at the same time, he’s out there struggling trying to make ends meet for his family, and he sets a good example for his family. To see an African American man like that inspires me and motivates me to do better.”
For more on the artist’s work, go to yaqubshabazz.com.
Age: 37
Occupation: Visual Artist, full time content manager, creative consultant, freelance writer
Current residence: West Henrietta
Hometown: Rochester, NY
PROFILED BY JESSICA L. PAVIAEverything about Brittany M. Reid and the art they produce is vibrant. On a given day, they can be found wearing a floral number, hair streaked in purple, a lavender Telfar bag strung over their shoulder. This color theory extends even to their manicured nails: a rainbow of pastels that blend as if the colors excitedly jumped over.
“I’m going to do my part to infuse my art, and the art that you buy from me and put into your homes, with color,” they said. “You won’t catch me without some richly saturated hue.”
The art medium is collage, which Reid discovered in 2019 after life happened in the form of a daughter, buying a house, and working full-time in tech. They didn’t have time for art. That was until Rochester Community Collage, an arts collective that meets every Sunday, came into the picture. In Reid’s words, they lost their mind. Suddenly, their creativity was reinvigorated.
Around that same time, Reid co-founded and launched #BlackCollagesMatter to encourage Black subjects through collage. They hosted an open call, and to this day, the hashtag has over 5,000 posts on Instagram. Those pieces were compiled and sold or published as a book, with $3,000 in proceeds going to the Black Art Futures Fund and Black Trans Femmes in the Arts (BTFA) Collective.
Reid’s art shows what they’re passionate about. Rich, luxe colors, Black subjects taking center stage, and feminine figures that are sensual, yet disrupted. Reid often searches to understand their genderqueer identity through collage; the missing heads or limbs of femme bodies suspended in space, but regal and respected.
“I’m always trying to venerate,” Reid said. “That’s always my goal, to venerate that feminine form but also communicate the pain behind it.”
One of their pieces, “When We Take it All Off,” can be seen on display in the Memorial Art Gallery’s 68th Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition. For Reid, who grew up visiting the MAG with their mother, having their work on display there is a full circle moment. “I got very emotional,” they said. “My piece features a Black feminine subject, and there’s not a lot of other ones like it in that space. I know I am making my family proud by having that in there.”
Reid makes their art in the taffy pink hue of their studio, surrounded by bookcases about to burst. But it’s not the only thing they do: Reid is also making sure less artists feel like they have no time or space to create by offering consulting on digital tooling, social media audits, content creation, and online courses to organize their time more efficiently.
“My goal is to share my experiences in a more practical and concrete way to help other artists protect their time and live creatively balanced lives,” they said.
Lydia Boddie-Rice, a local visual artist and art therapist, needed help becoming self-reliant in digital tools to expand her outreach, and it’s Reid’s identity as an artist and business owner that drew Boddie-Rice to hire them.
“If you’re not a practitioner of the art form, of the art discipline, there are certain things you won’t understand about its needs,” said Boddie-Rice. “They meet you where you are.”
Through servicing artists and finding their own time to create, Reid’s authenticity and collaborative nature is making the art world a more accessible, transparent space—and they’re just getting started.
Age: 40
Occupation: Founder of TGW Studio
Current residence: Rochester, NY
Hometown: Syracuse, NY
Lisa Kribs is, first and foremost, a human being trying to find balance in everything they do as a partner, parent, musician, artist, and “proud elder millennial.” On top of all that, Kribs is a dreamer and a doer. Full of smiles, advice and support, they are an advocate for their many communities, a role model to colleagues and clients, and an open book to those getting to know them for the first time.
It’s important to know this upfront, because Kribs is more than just their job, even though that job attempts to make significant, meaningful changes to the world around us one day at a time. As the founder of TGW Studio in downtown Rochester, Kribs is helping businesses get creative and thrive without sacrificing values and purpose.
Their journey was a short one—the distance between Syracuse, where Kribs grew up, and Rochester is less than 100 miles, after all—but there were detours along the way. After graduating with a degree in communications from Roberts Wesleyan University in 2005, Kribs landed a role with a market research firm focused on big pharma. While it wasn’t the career they had dreamed of, it did prove to be pivotal. “It really planted a seed for me,” Kribs said. “I thought, if I’m going to be spending a lot of my week working, every single day, how can I align that with things that I value and find productive, or at least helpful, for the community?”
For several years that seed germinated and in 2012, TGW Studio was formed. Kribs calls it “a charming story,” but it’s also one of humble beginnings. Like tech empires in garages, the origins of TGW Studio (first known as This Good World) began in the backroom of The Playhouse//Swillburger on South Clinton, with the nearby drone of cars on I-490. That space now is filled with arcade games, but if you look close enough you might still find an old
PROFILED BY JON HEATHTGW logo visible through thinning paint. “Anytime I go over there, I think, this is where we started,” said Kribs. “It’s very, very cute.”
Now based in the no-less iconic former Merkel Donohue building at 210 South Avenue, TGW delivers a brand of marketing expertise for a society that’s evolving fast, and has partnered with clients as diverse as Planned Parenthood, Seneca Park Zoo, and Greenspark Energy, alongside local businesses like Strangebird, Ugly Duck, and the Women’s Foundation of Genesee Valley. As an LGBTQ+, non-binary, women-owned and -operated social impact marketing firm that is also a Certified B Corporation (meaning they strive for a balance between profit and purpose), TGW is focused on meaningful work. “The creative, communications, and marketing industry as a whole really lacks representation,” Kribs said. “It lacks the leadership and ownership of women or any minority or marginalized peoples –if, for nothing else, when I’m thinking, ‘is this worth it?’, it’s so worth it because we are really trying to be different and to be that representation.”
Beal St. George, TGW’s strategy director, said Kribs is fearless.
“The work that we do is not easy,” she said. “It takes a lot of time, intentionality and thoughtfulness to deliver the results that we do for our partners, and Lisa acknowledges that.”
And for Kribs, that fearlessness found a home in Rochester.
“There’s great energy and momentum happening in Rochester, more so than 10 years ago when we came up with This Good World,” they said. “There have been times over the past couple of years when I’ve wondered, ‘do I still feel that way about the world?’ But I still feel strongly about putting a stake in the ground and saying ‘it can be, and it should be,’ so let’s all figure it out together.”
Age: 34
Occupation: MD, MS
Current residence: Pittsburgh, PA (temporary)
Permanent residence: Rochester, NY
Hometown: Grand Rapids, MI
ne of David Paul’s first exposures to a hospital came while riding along with his paternal grandfather, Robert L. Brown, a business owner and pastor, during his rounds visiting patients.
“My emotional connection was seeing my grandfather help people, seeing the impact that he had,” said Paul. “Hospitals are where people can be healed.” Today, Paul is a senior neurosurgery resident and neurocritical care fellow at University of Rochester Medical Center and the founder of the conscious coffee brand, Bold and Gritty, as well as an activist, mentor, father and husband. Next year, he will take over as lead of the brain and spine trauma lab at URMC, a position he’s worked toward his entire life. As someone with many roles, Paul knows it’s impossible to have balance. “You can’t be a neurosurgeon and have balance,” he said. “I’ve devoted my life to this. I get energy from doing all these things.”
His energy is evident as he takes a few moments to answer questions through FaceTime from his temporary apartment in Pittsburgh, where he is doing a fellowship with David Okonkwo, MD, one of the best complex spine doctors in the world. Paul adds that he owes much of his success outside of the operating room to his wife, La’ren Lauchie-Paul.
“My wife is my superpower. She pushes me to be better, picks up the slack where I’m not able to,” he said.“You can exponentially increase your capacity for good when you’ve linked up to somebody that shares the same vision as you.”
Their partnership brought a son, Julian Paul,5, into the world and helped launch the Black-owned coffee and lifestyle brand, Bold and Gritty. Their premium coffee roasts are a vehicle for telling stories of Black men who are making a difference in their communities
PROFILED BY DARIO JOSEPH BY LINDSAY STEPHANY PHOTOGRAPHYand are pioneers for the next generation. “It is important to share a different narrative than the one people see on TV,” said Paul. “For the individuals who are featured, it gives them more motivation to go out in the community and keep doing what they’re doing.”
Paul exudes the ‘Black excellence’ featured on Gritty’s labels – and does so in a field where not many look like him. “I can relate to people,” he said. “I bring a different cultural nuisance to how I approach problems, how I think through things, how I build teams and relationships.”
Paul not only embodies why representation matters, he uses his platform to be a mentor to others. During his time at URMC, Paul founded the Minority Male Leadership Association, which he still advises, and also served as a mentor for SURF, the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. Emma Strawderman, an MD-Phd candidate at URMC, has worked closely with Paul and experienced his uplifting tutelage firsthand.
“David truly has his mentees’ best interests at heart and will work to help them meet their goals with just as much verve as he approaches his own,” she said.
The brain, his area of expertise, has fascinated Paul from an early age.
“It is the most intricate and complex part of how we were created as human beings, I want to be a part of fixing problems that go wrong with it,” he said. But he still hearkens back to those visits with his grandfather, and hopes to have the same impact on his son.
“My goal as a parent is that he sees what his mom and dad are doing and realizes that there’s no limit to what he can do,” said Paul. “Black men are multi-faceted, there’s so many things that define who we are besides just our blackness. We are living history.”
Age: 31
Occupation: Poet, yoga instructor, mentor
Current residence & Hometown: Rochester, NY
PROFILED BY REBECCA RAFFERTYSlam poet and yogi Anderson Allen was working as a tutor at the Boys & Girls Club on Genesee Street in 2015 when a mass shooting took the lives of Raekwon Manigault, Johnny Johnson, and Jonah Barley. Allen recalls that summer as gut-wrenching.
“For a very long time it felt unreal,” he said. “I will never forget those screams.”
It solidified Allen’s sense that a healthier community meant consistently showing up for the youth.
“I look at what is happening today, and it pains me because I know how fragile life is,” he said. “I want to know what’s on the minds and in the hearts of our young people.”
Allen has worked at The Avenue BlackBox Theatre, a cultural and community anchor in the Joseph Ave. neighborhood, since it was founded in 2018. As a teaching artist, he mentors through poetry and spoken word programs, and often leads his mentees in performing their poetry around the city.
Reenah Golden, founder and artistic director of The Avenue, cited Allen’s respect for Black women and femme leadership as an example of modeling healthy behavior to the kids.
“He’s supporting and serving in ways that our youth really need to see,” she said. “He just brought a whole other level of thoughtfulness, and an energy and excitement.”
The kids not only benefit from Allen’s mentorship, but also the openness about his own growth and development — which, for him, is a lifelong journey.
“I know many of us are hanging on by a thread and I’m not sure what’s is going to take to reach our youth,” said Allen. “I do know we can’t afford to let fear nor anger lead us. We can’t afford to give up on them because there are already so many forces in this world stacked against them.”
Allen’s poetic verse is frank and surgical in its dissection of problems, but a vein of hope is his constant throughline.
“I’m a big dreamer, I live in that land,” he said. “But I take a scientific approach, I like to take things apart, put them back together.”
Born on the west side, Allen and his twin brother are the youngest of 10 children. He knew poverty and love in equal measures, and learned both resourcefulness and art from his family.
Last year, Allen founded Scribe & Move, a collaboration between The Avenue and Yoga 4 A Good Hood. The program creates a space for everyone, youth included, to breathe, find peace, and channel their energy through movement and onto the page.
“One thing I’ve noticed that is so profound for me,” Allen said, “is how open people are to coming to a journal to just write after they’ve done yoga, people are just a lot more open, a lot more receptive to share of themselves.”
Allen’s own writing practice fits amidst the many things he does on any given day, which includes mentoring, building theater sets, guest lecturing, and speaking at conferences about meditation and writing as approaches to healing from trauma. He also acts and performs original spoken word pieces, and leads a weekly yoga class for people with mobility challenges at Charles Settlement House.
Allen is currently writing a one-man show and book surrounding his own healing and the isolated state of Black masculinity.
“I want to feel freer,” he said. “Ultimately, I really want to have a deeper relationship with Black men that’s not rooted in relationships that we have with women or possessions, but a real, tangible, deeply emotional, tender connection with one another. And I think that’s possible. And it’s something I yearn for.”
Age: 40
Occupation: Owner of Craft Cannery; Founder of Guglielmo Sauce
Current residence: Brighton, NY
Hometown: Conneaut, OH
Dressed in a white smock splattered with red sauce stains, Paul Guglielmo seems at home inside the Craft Cannery in Bergen, despite a sweltering July day turning the facility into a tomato-scented sauna.
Most longtime Rochesterians know Guglielmo as Pauly, the radio personality who served as co-host and executive producer of the Brother Wease Show. In fact, even out of the corporate radio business for three years, an industry he had grown increasingly “disenchanted” with, his somewhat sardonic, often self-deprecating wit still seems poised for the FM Radio limelight.
Guglielmo made a leap of faith to buy the facility then known as Permac Enterprises in 2020. It was previously owned by Tony Perry, producer of the Coach Tony brand known for their jarred Rochester-style meat hot sauce, and at the time, Permac was also producing the meat sauce for Guglielmo.
Guglielmo made up an excuse to come out to the facility at 4:30 a.m. one winter’s morning. He knew Perry would be alone, and he could make his pitch to buy the facility. Perry told him to make an offer.
“I drove home, and it was January, and I was so excited that about 5:17 a.m. as I was crossing the (Frederick Douglass-Susan B. Anthony) Bridge into Rochester, and I rolled my window down and just started screaming out of happiness,” he said.
Paul’s partner in the business is Tom Riggio, a food industry professional who developed brands like Vitamin Water and BarkThins, and who Guglielmo calls “the professional love of my life.” Riggio’s son, Nick, was Paul’s first official hire at Guglielmo Sauce.
“(Paul is) a boss but also a friend,” Riggio said. “I feel comfortable talking to him about pretty much anything, so that’s the positive of it. There’s a lot of places you don’t want to talk to your boss at all.”
Today, the Craft Cannery produces products for 70 local brands, including Red Osier, Wegmans, and Naan-Tastic, alongside Guglielmo Sauce.
PROFILED BY GINO FANELLIBut Guglielmo insists his path to sauce magnate is a boring one. A native of Conneaut, Ohio, Guglielmo came to Rochester as a transfer while working at Clear Channel Radio in 2007. He missed home and found comfort in his grandfather’s sauce recipe. It became a side hustle in 2014.
The first jar he ever sold was to his grandfather out of the Orlando Brothers Golden Dawn Grocery Store in Conneaut.
“We made a whole production out of him picking the first jar off the shelf and walking it up to the counter,” Guglielmo said. “He was not very media trained, because the first thing he said was, ‘Oh, I would never pay this kind of money for sauce.’”
In 2015, Guglielmo’s big break was getting into Wegmans, a distinctly Rochester story. Robert Salisbury of Lanovara Specialty Foods was vying to be Guglielmo’s distributor and set up a meeting with Wegmans product developer Dan Mezzoprete, who had coincidentally just picked up a jar from Calabresella’s deli in Gates.
JoAnn VerHulst, a merchandising specialist at Wegmans who also runs VerHulst Haunted Hayride in Spencerport where Guglielmo was playing Michael Myers, caught wind of the meeting. She made a note to drop in on the meeting and vouch for Guglielmo.
“I got an email from Dan that Friday saying, ‘Listen, we’re interested in carrying your sauce,” Guglielmo said.
Today, the business has not only exceeded his wildest expectations, but afforded him the chance to give back to his adopted home’s community. Next year, Guglielmo has been tapped to take the seat as incoming president of the Rochester Rotary Club.
When he started the business, he said, there were only two goals.
“The first was just to hold a jar of actually legally sellable sauce, and the second was to get into the grocery store in Conneaut called Golden Dawn,” he said. “Everything else since then has just been like, holy shit.”
Age: 37
Occupation: Beverage Education Manager at New York Kitchen; freelance wine writer
Current residence: Brighton, NY
Hometown: Boston, MA
For award-winning wine and beverage multi-hyphenate Maiah Johnson Dunn, New York’s growing wine region is something to celebrate.
“Nancy Irelan (owner of Red Tail Ridge) once told me Americans torture themselves by not drinking sparkling wine every day,” said Dunn. Given Dunn’s achievements in the wine industry, every day just might be deserving of a toast.
As a current fellow at the prestigious Wine Writers Symposium at Meadowood Napa Valley, Dunn has been recognized countless times for her advancements in the wine and hospitality industry both locally and nationally – she is also the winner of the 2022 New York Wine & Grape Foundation Unity Award and 2023 ATHENA International Young Professional Award.
But Dunn’s passion for local grapes began as something personal, on a 2016 trip to visit her now-husband, Andy, in the Finger Lakes region. Mesmerized by the endless green vineyards, gorgeous foliage, and enthusiasm of the local wine culture, the former English major knew she had found something she needed to tap into with her writing.
Under the alias Chasing Grapeness, Dunn amassed a social media following as she covered New York’s ever-expanding Finger Lakes wine region. The Instagram account quickly became a digital love letter, capturing vivid images and compelling descriptions of movers and shakers, local wineries, new releases, and industry events.
But following the murder of George Floyd, the wine community she had captured so lovingly remained deafeningly silent. The response, or lack thereof, was both difficult and disappointing for Dunn. “(There were) a lot of feelings I didn’t know I had about the wine industry until that moment happened,” she said. Nevertheless, she was determined to take action.
PROFILED BY JULIA SMITHIn collaboration with Chris Grocki, owner of the Historic German House in the South Wedge, Dunn hosted two sold out wine pairing dinners appropriately titled “Chasing Grapeness.”
“It went incredibly well,” says Grocki. “We raised thousands of dollars entirely because of Maiah and how she presented the charities.”
By the time the last glass had been poured, the dinners had raised more than $3,000 in proceeds directly benefiting Yoga 4 A Good Hood and the Black Physicians Network.
Today, Dunn is blazing a trail beyond the Chasing Grapeness moniker as beverage education manager for New York Kitchen in Canandaigua. There, she works with a number of instructors to create a rotation of educational programming about wine, beer, and spirits. “I love watching people have moments of realization when they get their questions on wine answered,” said Dunn.
Currently, Dunn and her team are bringing to life New York Kitchen Beverage University, an instructional program open to the public focused on providing the public an in-depth understanding on everything from beverage to lifestyle programming. Moreover, she’s further expanded the nonprofit’s educational programming as instructor of DEI Over Wine, a class focused on providing a greater understanding of inclusion and accessibility while generating greater interest into New York’s wine scene.
Recalling encounters where the upstate NY wine region was overlooked, Dunn makes every effort to bring attention to the magic of the Finger Lakes. “A lot of people who don’t live here don’t realize how fantastic it truly is,” she said. “They’re so (enchanted) by California and these bigger regions, they’re missing the beauty of New York wine.”
Dunn’s ultimate dream is to own a winery alongside her husband in the same place where she fell in love with him, and wine, all those years ago – one where everyone feels welcome.
Age: 26
Occupation: Founder of The Local Sound Collaborative
Current residence: Rochester, NY
Hometown: Victor, NY
PROFILED BY JEFF SPEVAKThe Local Sound Collaborative was born in 2020 as the pandemic was silencing our venues and our musicians, but the need for community support has been bearing down on the arts for a long time.
Barely a year into its existence, Rochester’s Local Sound Collaborative, founded by 26-year-old Ray Mahar, has three goals: to advance musicianship as a career, to connect communities, and to amplify the concept of music as an agent of social change.
“What we’re trying to do basically is create more opportunity for local musicians, in the city of Rochester, in a lot of different ways,” said Mahar.
Mahar, who plays in the local folk-Americana band A Girl Named Genny, is the group’s executive director. The board of directors – all people with connections to the local arts scene – are Zahyia Rolle, Aubrey Baldauf, Kate DeLano, Geoff Dale and Elijah Flynn.
The Collective was born at the dining room table in Mahar’s Rochester home, evolving into a rolling series of conversations among local artists. “We talked to dozens and dozens and dozens, we had more meetings around that table, with a lot of musicians kind of sharing their experiences around it,” Mahar said. “And what everybody kept saying, the overlying theme of those meetings was, ‘it’s just really hard to make a living as a musician right now.’”
They wanted the talk to go beyond dinner-table conversation, so Mahar set up The Local Sound Collaborative as a non-profit, its first move the launching of an artist grants program, which awarded five artists a modest $200 a month for a year.
“I try and push back about it being a pandemic baby,” Mahar said. “But you know, when the shutdowns happened … the Rochester music community, we’re all very connected. We all might have some of our own individual circles and cliques that we tend to stay in, but when this happened it was kind of the big global thing that brought everybody together in different ways.”
Disparities existed in the past, but the pandemic made the connection.
“I don’t talk about our programs in a way that $200 is life-changing money for some of these folks,” Mahar said. “But for a lot of them who are receiving it right now, ‘oh, it’s that extra $200 that’s going to comfortably pay my rent or buy groceries or buy food for my kid.’”
Since launching, the group has also begun a music education program serving about 300 kids, mostly ages two to six, in 10 schools. It has organized pop-up events at venues such as Three Heads Brewing, of which Dale is a co-owner.
“It’s not a cliché when we call it The Local Sound Collaborative,” Mahar said. “It’s been so collaborative in terms of every program, every (bit of) wording, every messaging that exists, is driven by a collection of voices. It’s not just one individual.”
Rolle said one objective for the Local Sound Collaborative is the elimination of trial and error on the musician’s path.
“The biggest thing that took me a long time to realize is, as a musician, you do have value,” she said. “For a long time, I devalued myself.”
A fundraiser for the group, the “Be Kind Festival,” is set for Oct. 14 at Three Heads Brewing, with non-profit organizations, a raffle and food vendors. For its first fundraiser last year, the goal was $12,000; the event ultimately raised $14,000.
“Creatives have value. The visual arts, music, writers,” said Rolle. “People don’t realize how important these creatives are until they’re gone.”
Age: 53
Occupation: Director, Program in Dance and Movement and the Institute for Performing Arts, University of Rochester; Artistic Director, BIODANCE
Current residence: Pittsford, NY
Hometown: Buffalo, NY
PROFILED BY SYDNEY BURROWSBIODANCE is a name that has been synonymous with the Rochester dance community for almost 20 years, and those who have seen a performance will recall expressive choreography and a diverse group of dancers with impressive technical skills. But what makes BIODANCE stand out as a company is its mission, driven by artistic director Missy Pfohl Smith.
“Bio means ‘life’ and dance is how we are as humans, navigating this increasingly polarized, complicated life,” Smith said. Since its inception in 2002, BIODANCE has performed works centered around relationships – in particular, the relationship between humans and the environment. They frequently emphasize this mission through site-specific work; pieces are created for a particular space, such as the Strasenburgh Planetarium, outdoor parks around the city, and the Memorial Art Gallery.
W. Michelle Harris, a professor of Interactive Games & Media at Rochester Institute of Technology, has collaborated with Smith on numerous site-specific works. She said Smith’s innovative use of space is one of her choreographic strengths, along with the collaborative aspect of her creation process. “I especially admire her creativity and insight,” said Harris. “It’s a back-and-forth process that’s often guided by trying to say something on a human level, and she can activate the space in all sorts of different ways.” Harris creates mixed visuals that are usually projected behind the dancers, creating the setting for the work. The duo’s most recent collaboration, “Elemental Forces,” was created in concert with Dave Rivello Ensemble and premiered at Rochester Fringe in 2021.
But Smith doesn’t limit her collaborative relationships to fellow artists; she also works regularly with community groups across the city of Rochester. As part of a community engagement class she teaches at the University of Rochester, Smith and her students work alongside individuals at Jennifer House and the Senior Center at Community Place of Greater Rochester. The class emphasizes the impact dance can have on a community, which Smith feels is extremely important. Before teaching this specific course, Smith taught limited mobility classes and also arranged for BIODANCE to perform regularly for those communities.
Outside BIODANCE and her full-time faculty position at the University of Rochester, Smith is pursuing her PhD in human development at Warner School of Education and is a member of the Rochester Fringe Festival board. Beyond that, the dance world outside of the greater Rochester area has also acknowledged Smith’s dedication to the art form. She was recently invited to write a chapter for an EcoSomatics Reader by Routledge textbooks, which will be published in 2024. The book, “Geographies of Us: Ecosomatic Essays and Practice Pages,” will highlight the relationship between the human body and the environment. This past spring, Smith was also named as a member of the New York State DanceForce, a group dedicated to increasing dance creation across New York State. She will receive annual funding to support dance residences which will bring dance artists from around the country to upstate New York.
Between her work at the university, BIODANCE, and in her numerous roles, Smith will continue to support fellow artists and engage Rochester audiences. She hopes her creations are thought-provoking and offer audiences a moment of human connection. “The people that are dancing in our pieces are from different parts of the world, different races, different genders, different ages,” she said, “And we’re working together in such a way that we trust each other and love each other. I hope … that has an impact.”
Age: 62
PROFILED BY JEREMY MOULEOccupation: Voter registration coordinator for the Monroe County Board of Elections
Current residence: Rochester, NY
Hometown: NYC
As she sat in a booth at Casa Campo, a popular Puerto Rican restaurant on East Main Street, Annette Ramos was deep in an abridged version of a Puerto Rican legend about how the island’s tiny but beloved coqui frogs got their powerful voice, which can approach the volume of a jackhammer.
She grew animated and enthusiastic as she told the tale of how the frogs worked together to help one of them win the reward of song.
“Today on the island of Puerto Rico, as the sun sets, all the coqui frogs on the island sing their night songs, and it is a piercing, loud, resonating sound that reminds my people you’re never too small to accomplish anything,” said Ramos, whose petite build belies her big personality.
Ramos, who is known around Rochester as the Latina Storyteller, has spent half a lifetime sharing the folk tales and traditional stories of Puerto Rico and other Latinx cultures. She started in her native New York City then in Los Angeles, continuing when she moved to Rochester in 1996.
Ramos’s mother was born in Puerto Rico, and she learned many stories from her grandmother, who’d tell the tales as they sat on the fire escape outside of the elder’s Brooklyn apartment.
“My storytelling came out of the true love of my culture and passing on the traditions and customs of my culture,” said Ramos, who has a day job as the voter registration coordinator for the Monroe County Board of Elections. “So telling the story of the coqui frog, who overcame every obstacle, it’s really telling the story of the Puerto Rican people who continue to overcome every obstacle.”
Ramos is also well known for tirelessly advocating for Latinx representation and inclusion in Rochester’s arts and culture scene.
After repeatedly running into each other at auditions, she and Stephanie Paredes launched the Rochester Latino Theatre Company in 2011. They both had realized that, while Rochester had a vibrant theater scene, too often the roles they were landing were “maids or hot-headed Latinas,” Ramos recalled. The community didn’t have a cultural connection with the Latinx and Spanish-speaking community.
The two women set out building bridges with local theater and community groups, and Paredes said Ramos has been an invaluable part of that work.
“Annette is a wonderful, charming woman who makes people feel comfortable, who also understands how to hold people safely accountable to inclusion,” said Paredes, who is chair of the theater company’s board. “She has this gift of gab, as they say, but she also has this gift of humanity.”
Over the years, RLTC has staged its own productions, started a reading series for playwrights, and partnered with other theater companies, including Geva Theatre Center and Blackfriars Theatre, to help them improve Latinx representation in their productions and stage Spanish-language and dual-language performances.
“(When) theaters invite us to experience diverse audiences, they also experience the language access, the food, and the music because when Latino Theatre Company is in the house, you get all of that,” Ramos said. “We even had cigar rolling at Blackfriars.”
Ramos also serves on numerous boards, including the Memorial Art Gallery’s Hispanic Heritage Committee, a City of Rochester arts committee, and the Rochester Association of Performing Arts and is constantly searching out opportunities for local Latinx creatives.
“I really feel that part of my role is educating the next generation of creatives,” said Ramos, “creating pathways and opportunities for them to be successful.”
When Jonathan Binstock, the preceding director of the Memorial Art Gallery, had the idea to place “Clown” — a 2010 cartoonish oil on linen by gonzo contemporary painter George Condo — among the portraits by Dutch masters in the 17th Century Gallery, some visitors thought the juxtaposition of the works was thought-provoking. There were visual cues that linked the portraits and seemed to make a statement, such as the ruff collar on both the clown and aristocrats.
But to many patrons, the placement was an affront.
“The reaction from our visitors was swift, and not altogether positive,” said Lauren Tagliaferro, curatorial assistant at the MAG. “We got emails and letters and people were like, ‘It doesn’t fit here.
It’s ugly. It’s offensive.’
This response was the catalyst for the exhibition “Beyond Beauty,” which features artwork that goes beyond
the notion art must reflect beauty, to communicate powerful messages, and provoke the viewer. This one is for folks who want to see the full spectrum of human experiences in art.
“I really wanted to explore that push and pull of why some people love challenging images,” Tagliaferro said. “I know that I have this experience myself: ‘I love this, but it’s not beautiful. So why do I love it?’”
Tagliaferro pulled work from the MAG’s permanent collection that represents four thematic categories.
In the “Witch, Mother, Crone” section are depictions of women that are either inconvenient or inconsistent with the so-called ideal. They include a set of Thom O’Connor’s tiny, haunted etchings made in tribute to victims of the Salem witch trials, a Chrysanne
Stathacos colorful etching that emphasizes the mess and labor of birth, and Jerome Witkin’s gorgeous “St. Fichera,” a portrait of an androgynous woman with disheveled and frizzy hair, a rough garment, an inscrutable expression, and strong hands.
The “Body Horror” section tackles a visceral reaction to disfigurement, physical or spiritual illness, and death and includes a Robert E. Marx painting of a blurry, truncated figure in an ambiguous environment, and an intaglio print by Rosemarie Bernardi that elevates a set of remains from biological curiosity to something worthy of dignity and mourning. The “Social Ills” grouping features work by artists who tackle racism and misogyny — like the unflinching ink drawings of Kara Walker and the patriarch-rebuking serigraph by May Stevens — as well as the horrors of war in an arresting lithograph by Käthe Kollwitz.
The final section, “The Wages of Sin,” is a parade of dark visions of demons, death, and the inferno poised over potential transgressors, including an engrossing engraving made in 1513 by master printmaker Albrect Dürer.
“I would like a visitor to really explore their reactions to each individual piece,” Tagliaferro said. “To really sit with those feelings of the push and pull of attraction and repulsion. Confronting that within yourself can be very valuable, just like understanding and appreciating art in general.”
“Beyond Beauty” continues through November 26 in the MAG’s Lockhart Gallery. Details at mag.rochester.edu.
The used book business The Secondhand Librarian, founded in 2020 by 29-year-old Taylor Thomas (she/ they), is launching a mobile bookshop and literary events business called Archivist Books. The business’s new ‘home’ will be a renovated 15-foot 1968 Globestar trailer that Thomas scouted on Facebook Marketplace and traveled to Port Huron, Michigan to purchase.
That purchase took place in early July. For now, Thomas is raising funds through pop-up book sales in Rochester and planning renovations to the trailer, as well as colluding with authors for live reading events Archivist Books will co-present next year. The launch is planned for January 2024.
“It wasn’t supposed to be a full-fledged business,” Thomas said, “this was like a hobby that’s gone rogue.”
Thomas began selling gently used books — a highly curated collection that’s wide-ranging with a mini focus on queer fiction — online as The Secondhand Librarian and through pop-ups at area businesses in 2020. A voracious reader (Thomas estimates they’ve read 65 books so far this year), they wanted to pass books they’ve enjoyed to others, for a fraction of the dollars they spent.
“It was a way to offer readers books that were current and relevant, for a cheaper price,” Thomas said. What started as downsizing their massive book collection has expanded to include new books sourced through distributors including Penguin Random House and Ingram Books.
The trailer will offer popular fantasy, thrillers, and a sizable kids’ book selection. Thomas will also partner with small POCowned presses.
Once the trailer is renovated to include rows of shelves and a new paint job, Thomas will tow it to different spaces, like cafes, parks, or schools so patrons can browse the stacks. The January debut will focus on locations in Rochester, but Thomas has begun to book events outside the city, including a February event featuring a queer romance author. Details will be posted at instagram.com/archivist.books. —
BY REBECCA RAFFERTYEarlier this year, Andrew Scott went viral. But not the actor who played “Sherlock” arch nemesis Moriarty and the “Fleabag” character that everyone just refers to as ‘Hot Priest.’ This is the Rochester-based artist whose clever digital illustrations started getting real attention when he began posting Instagram reels and TikToks of him busting the frames, breaking the glass that protects the prints, and otherwise altering the things that encase the artwork.
These aren’t random acts of chaos, but activations. They’re precise alterations meant to create an interaction between the artworks’ subjects and the frames. One illustration features a young kid in a black beanie who has just let a projectile fly from the slingshot he’s holding. In Scott’s Instagram reel he takes a hammer to the glass, smashing it just-so, making it look like the kid caused the damage. In others, the slingshot kid has turned toward the frame, which dents outward as though struck. A boxer seems to have smashed the glass with his left hook, a man with a pickaxe seems to have broken the frame, and a kid “holds” a real string that loops around the top of the frame and attaches to an illustrated kite, as though tangled and stuck.
The insta-fame is the last thing Scott, a 32-year-old self-dubbed introvert and city resident, expected, and he’s still cautiously adjusting to what it means.
“There’s like a performance art aspect to it,” Scott said, “because I’m not showing the drawing process, I’m showing a few alterations that just bring the piece to life.”
The Fairport native has loved drawing since childhood, but only got back into making art a couple of years ago, partially as a means of responding to political upheaval. But it was crickets until he posted videos of him “activating” the art through destruction in January of this year.
Something resonated. Viewers love a process-reveal video — and it earned more than 1 million views within a week. His 600 followers soon grew to the almost 200,000 he currently has. In June he had an online, sold-out solo show hosted by London-based Stowe Gallery.
But for now, he’s keeping his day job and proceeding with caution.
“If I had a couple more shows that were as successful as this first one, I would feel I had proof it’s something sustainable, that it wasn’t just that I went viral for a few months,” Scott says. “I need to know that I have staying power.”
His work keeps playfully evolving. That kid with the slingshot? Scott brought him out of his frame and into the world — he’s now available in sticker form. Follow along at instagram.com/andrewscott_art. —
BY REBECCA RAFFERTYAudition date: 6 - 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 26 | Blackfriars Theatre
Directed by Lindsay Warren-Baker. By appointment only; email info@blackfriars. org to schedule. Callbacks will be held from 6 - 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 27.
Initial auditions will take place in onehour increments and consist of cold-reads from the script, which is available at the link below. Bring a headshot, resume, and your calendar to complete the rehearsal conflicts. blackfriars.org/auditionsthe-wickhams
Deadline: Rolling | Squeaky Wheel Recipients will receive up to $1,000 worth of equipment usage and facilities time, and a free 1-year Squeaky Wheel membership. Anyone in Western New York is eligible, and BIPOC, women, queer, trans and gender nonconforming people are especially encouraged to apply. squeaky.org/accessgrant
Deadline: Sept. 6 | Sam & Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts
Based in a 19th-century barn in central New York next to the Golden Artist Colors manufacturing facility, the residency is designed to assist professional artists in their exploration of the most innovative materials and technology. Professional (not commercial) artists working in paint who are 25 years or older should submit a portfolio of images to be judged by an independent committee. Large studio spaces and private apartments will be provided for each of the 18 selected artists. goldenfoundation. org/application/application-process
— COMPLILED BY REBECCA
RAFFERTYFull calendar of events online at roccitymag.com
TUESDAY, AUGUST 1
Kodak Center, kodakcenter.com
As well-known as singer-songwriter and classically trained pianist Regina Spektor is in indie pop and rock circles, she remains a relatively obscure talent whose music periodically appears on mainstream movie soundtracks and TV shows. But it’s Spektor’s combination of personable vocals — effective at both earnest pop and disarming cabaret — which center intelligent, piano-centric arrangements. Spektor is currently on a solo tour promoting her latest studio album, “Home, before and after,” but fans who show up to Kodak Center for tonight’s 8:30 p.m. show are sure to hear selections from throughout her more-than-20-year career — including “Samson,” which to my ear is one of the best songs ever written. $35.50 to $85.50. DANIEL J. KUSHNER
Joy Gallery, facebook.com/ rochesterblackartscouncil
It’s opening night for a group exhibition at Joy Gallery (498 West Main St.) featuring artwork that commemorates the Black Arts Movement, the Harlem Renaissance,
and Black August (which honors political prisoners, freedom fighters, and martyrs of Black freedom struggles). Individual artists have created work based on the writings of Malcolm X, Amiri Barka, as well as protest songs by musicians Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln. Presented by the Rochester Black Arts Council, the show remains on view through August. A reception takes place tonight from 6 to 9 p.m. Free admission. REBECCA RAFFERTY
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2
SING
St. Anne Church, musicaspei.org
Ever wanted to try singing renaissance music? Local choral group Musica Spei (Music of Hope) hosts informal gatherings to sing this music on Wednesdays over the summer, providing sheet music and some guidance in an informal setting. It’s not a rehearsal, not a concert, just a chance to sing song after song from long ago. It helps to be able to read music and have some experience, but I do not sing regularly, and I always find it to be a fun challenge with a welcoming group of people. Don’t forget to bring water and pace yourself if you haven’t been singing in a while (I may have been having so much fun one year that I didn’t notice singing myself hoarse...).
The singing starts 7:30 p.m. It’s free to attend, with a $3 donation encouraged to cover copying costs.
MONA SEGHATOLESLAMITHURSDAY, AUGUST 3
Montage Music Hall, rocentevents.com Havok and Toxic Holocaust are two of the biggest names in underground thrash, but they’re a great example of how two bands of ostensibly the same genre can differ quite a bit. Havok reminds me of early- to mid-80s Megadeth and Exodus, particularly their faster and tougher songs. Toxic Holocaust plays a gruff form of blackened thrash — meaning it wears its black metal influences on its sleeve — and has a song called “Nuke the Cross.” Is it blasphemous? Yes. Is it catchy? Also yes, if metal is your thing. Tickets are $28 and the show starts at 8 p.m. JEREMY MOULE
Montage Music Hall, rocentevents.com
Rochester producer and sound engineer Jacari Griffin cut his teeth working at legendary Black Dog Studios before starting his artist management and entertainment company, Beamhouse Nation. In addition to marketing, recording, and writing music for local hip-hop artists, Griffin regularly hosts BeamFest, a monthly artist showcase at Montage Music Hall. Tonight’s lineup, the second of two summer concerts in the series, features emcees such as Esco and Shep. The 16-and-over show kicks off at 7 p.m. $20. DK
Highland Bowl, afamfestival.org
Innovative Field, facebook.com/prfest
The 53rd annual Puerto Rican Festival takes place Thursday, August 3 through Saturday, August 5, featuring live music, food, and events for the whole family. Thursday’s music headliner is Dominican salsa singer Alex Matos; Friday features Puerto Rican crooner Christian Alicea as well as PR-based reggaeton duo Baby Rasta y Gringo; and on Saturday you can catch American singer-songwriter Luis Figueroa and Dominican pop merengue band Los Hermanos Rosario. The festival hours are 5 to 11 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and noon to 11 p.m. on Saturday. Admission is free on Thursday and from noon to 2 p.m. on Saturday. Children aged 5 and younger get in free through the run of the fest. Tickets for Friday and Saturday after 2 p.m. are $10, but children aged 6-12 and seniors get in for $5. RR
Summer is peak music festival season, and the Pan Afrikan Festival is not an event you should sleep on. Attracting thousands of attendees each year, the festival is presented by A.B.O.V.E. which was founded by CEO Sonya A. Kittles in 2006 to promote unity among people of the African diaspora. The artist lineup is jam-packed, including crowdpleasing Rochester groups such as Womba African Drumming, Ignite Reggae band, the R&B outfit Jamall Youngblood and Soul of the City, and Freddy Colon and the Latin Jazz Quartet. Conveniently situated at the community landmark Highland Bowl, there’s no need to pack your tent for this one-day family-friendly celebration of Afrikan culture and Afrikan American Heritage. 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. General admission is $15, kids 12 and under are free. VIP tickets are $75. DK
Blue Cross Arena, bluecrossarena.com
Monster truck rallies are a blast. The roaring engines, car crushing, wheelies, sideshows, and sometimes flames make for a memorable experience, and one that’s very easy to get sucked in to. But when Bigfoot, Bone Shaker, Mega Wrex, and Tiger Shark take to the floor of the Blue Cross Arena, there will be a twist. The trucks will be doing their thing, decked out in glow paint, under a black light. There will also be a dance party, laser light shows, and an appearance by Megasaurus, a transforming robot that eats cars and breathes fire. Performances start at 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. with an additional show Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $28.50-$53.50. The trucks are very, very loud so bring hearing protection, especially for children. JM
Lincoln Hill Farms, lincolnhillfarms.com
Performing the songs of the Grateful Dead in an overt bluegrass style is nothing new. The legendary band’s music was in part informed by that tradition, and local acts such as Dirty Blanket pull it off to great effect. But the combination never seems to get old. And when the proposition is to have jam-happy virtuoso Keller Williams and The Hillbenders headline this summer’s Brewfest at Lincoln Hill Farms, the joint will be smokin’. Rochester soul-pop band The Sideways, Hakeem Dodley’s genreblurring Keem and Friends, and hiphop artist Felix Free are the supporting acts. And of course, the participating breweries include a murderers’ row of craft beer barons in New York state: Other Half, Ommegang, Singlecut, Frequentem, Equilibrium, Prison City, and the list goes on. Tickets for this 21-and-over event range from $35 to $85. Parking is $10 per vehicle. The party starts as early as 1 p.m. for VIP ticketholders. The doors open for general admission at 2 p.m. DK
SUNDAY, AUGUST 6
Iron Smoke Distillery, Fairport, ironsmokedistillery.com
In the Finger Lakes America-roots music scene, Deco & the Dusters is a bit of an anomaly. Led by Declan Banko, the band not only melds rock, country, and bluegrass into a tasty stew, but also throws in traditional Irish folk influence for good measure. It can all be heard on Deco & the Dusters new live album “Bangers,” which the group and its fans celebrate at Iron Smoke Distillery today starting at 3:30 p.m. $5 cover. DK
MONDAY, AUGUST 7
JCC Canalside Stage, jccrochester.org/canalside
The JCC series “Music Mondays” is a relatively new addition to the weekly concert lineup in Rochester, but it’s not one you should overlook. Kelly Izzo Shapiro of “If All Rochester Wrote the Same Song” hosts the show — a hybrid between an musicians’ showcase and an open mic. The first half-hour is open to any artists who want to take the stage, and the rest of the evening is dedicated to highlighting some of the local scene’s most talented, if somewhat underappreciated singer-songwriters. Tonight features Kara Fink, one of the most dynamic original vocalists in the area. Oregon-based musician Bret Levick, some of whose songs have been featured on the TV shows “Shameless” and “Lucifer.” $10. DK
TUESDAY, AUGUST 8
THURSDAY, AUGUST 10
Canandaigua, nysteamengineassociation.com/ pageant-of-steam
Lincoln Hill Farms, lincolnhillfarms.com
The ’90s rock nostalgia trip continues at Lincoln Hill Farms with the altrock veterans of Guster. Fronted by (non-hockey goalie) Ryan Miller, the band has been making highly melodic, hook-laden music since 1991. Most recently, Guster has doubled down on its biggest commercial success with an expanded digital version of the Billboard-charting 2006 album “Ganging Up on the Sun,” including the hit single “Satellite.” The farm opens its gates at 5 p.m., with singerbassist Karina Rykman and her band opening the show at 6 p.m. Guster takes the stage at about 7 p.m. $40 to $75. DK
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9
CRAFT
Little Button, littlebuttoncraft.com
Every Wednesday evening in the South Wedge, there’s an open invitation to a cozy sewing circle that extends to all types of fiberbased crafts: embroidery, cross stitch, knitting, crochet, macrame, weaving, spinning, and more. Dreaming of finishing a project by the holidays? Or just looking to spend some time with others who enjoy crafting? You’re welcome to work and chat with fellow enthusiasts ranging from beginners through advanced, from 5:30 to 8:30p.m. at Little Button (658 South Ave). Bring your own chair, and if you’d like, snacks and drinks too. MS
A handful of spots in western New York may be metropolitan, but the majority of the state is rural farming country. You can catch a glimpse of what that looked like in the century before last at the annual Pageant of Steam, which is not a steampunk festival, but a showcase of antique steam-powered vehicles. Celebrating its 63rd year, the fest also features tractor pulls, sawmill demonstrations, a chainsaw carvings auction, live music, food, and a gigantic flea market that is worth the trip even if you don’t care about the big cool machines. The Pageant of Steam runs from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day from Wednesday, Aug. 9 through Saturday, Aug. 12, at 3349 Gehan Road in Canandaigua. Admission is $10, free to children under age 12. RR
Skaneateles Festival, skanfest.org
Violinist Nick Kendall is a classical music presenter’s dream: a player with virtuosic chops and the stylistic vision to incorporate pop and rock hits, folk and blues, and showstoppers from the classical canon — not only in the same set, but often in the same arrangement. A dynamic soloist in traditional orchestral settings and crossover settings such as those at Skaneateles Festival, Kendall first came into the broader national spotlight as a founding member of the genre-mashing trio Time for Three. The violinist performs three times with another group he co-founded, the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, at Skan Fest today and tomorrow at the First Presbyterian Church in Skaneateles and on Saturday, August 12 at Robinson Pavilion at Anyela’s Vineyards. That means there are numerous occasions — and three completely different concert programs — on which to hear this mesmerizing and effortlessly charming musician live with ECCO. The concerts at the church are $32-$45. The vineyard show is $65 general admission, VIP tickets are $195. DK
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RBTL’s Auditorium Theatre, fingerlakesopera.org
Composer Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida” is the quintessential 19th-century “grand opera” — an epic story that calls for ostentatious sets and costumes to match, larger-thanlife vocal performances, and a memorable chorus to boot. To achieve that grandness, Finger Lakes Opera is bringing the show to the Rochester Broadway Theatre League’s Auditorium Theatre for two performances. FLO’s most ambitious production in its 10-year history, “Aida” includes the invaluable contributions of two beloved local arts groups: Garth Fagan Dance and the Rochester Oratorio Society. Tenor Cooper Nolan stars as the Egyptian general Radamès at war with Ethiopia, and soprano Elena O’Connor plays his beloved Aida, the Ethiopian slave to Egyptian princess Amneris, sung by mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel. FLO founder and Artistic Director Gerard Floriano leads the company in this tragic story of a love triangle with geopolitical implications. DK
CMAC, cmacevents.com
Few country bands have been as wildly popular, nor as politically defiant, as The Chicks, the trio formerly known as The Dixie Chicks. Having weathered the 2003 storm that saw them canceled in conservative country circles for their stance against the Iraq War (detailed in the documentary “Shut Up and Sing”) Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire, and Emily Strayer have won 13 Grammy Awards and have sold 35 million albums worldwide. The band’s foot-
thumping acoustic instrumentation and stunning three-part harmonies are sure to win over longtime fans at CMAC as they play in support of their latest album, 2020’s “Gaslighter.” The show begins at 7:30 p.m. with a big-time supporting act: the brilliant if underrated singer-songwriter Ben Harper. General admission lawn tickets are still available at $51. DK
Lincoln Hill Farms, lincolnhillfarms.com
The good times continue to roll this summer at Lincoln Hill Farms in Canandaigua with a return visit from reggae-rock singer Matisyahu. Born as Matthew Paul Miller, the artist broke onto the national music scene with his 2005 album “Live at Stubb’s.” He caught people’s ears with the Billboard-charting single “King Without a Crown,” but as a practicing Orthodox Jew, his conservative appearance seemed an odd accompaniment to his rap-infused reggae songs. The resonance of those songs, particularly when performed live, was undeniable, however. Although Matisyahu no longer wears the vestiges of his Judaism in the same way, spiritual seeking is still at the heart of his music. G. Love & Special Sauce shares top billing, and Cydeways starts the show at 7 p.m. $46 to $80. DK
Peacemaker Brewing Company, peacemakerbrewing.com
Folkfaces is arguably the most ubiquitous roots-Americana band in upstate New York. If you love hearing music live, you’ve probably caught the Buffalo-based quartet’s infectious
blend of bluegrass, folk, blues, and hot jazz. Led by tireless frontman Tyler Westcott, Folkfaces are sure to paste a smile on your face with lightning-fast musical chops wrapped up in punk rock energy. The band recently released “PLUMS” — its first album with newest member Brendan Gosson on fiddle and mandolin — which includes a full-band version of Westcott’s brilliant and charming “When Lockdown Lifts.” The show at Peacemaker in Canandaigua starts at 5:30 p.m. with the opening band Old World Warblers. $12. DK
SUNDAY, AUGUST 13
FESTIVAL
Brockport, brockportartsfestival.com
Now in its 27th year, the festival sees Main Street in Brockport filled with artists selling their wares, live music, a rubber duck race on the canal, food — including a wine garden and farmers’ market — and a vintage car cruise-in. Open from 10 a.m. to 5
p.m. Saturday and Sunday, August 12-13. Admission is free. RR
MONDAY, AUGUST 14
MOVIE
The Little, thelittle.org/events
How can you not fall in love with a post-apocalyptic fairy-tale featuring guitar and sword battles, preposterous quotable dialogue, appearances by Siberian surf rock band The Red Elvises, and all manner of strange characters on a heroic quest to reach Lost Vegas? This movie has had a place in my heart ever since a friend showed me it on VHS tape after an Iron Chef marathon back in the late 90s. Who needs a budget when you have this much style? I’ll be introducing this moving at 7:30 p.m. since (shameless plug alert) from all of the classics of cinema, this movie was my choice for the “Staff Picks” series at The Little. MS
TUESDAY, AUGUST 15
waynecountyfair.org
I didn’t grow up going to county or state fairs, but somewhere in the midst of years of living in the Midwest and Appalachia, I learned that they can be a whole lot of fun. I don’t know if this one has one of my favorite fair experiences: a bus where you pay a dollar to see a bunch of snakes, but I’m sure it has something just as random and delightful, along with, of course, pigs and pies, overthe-top junk food and all the rest. Bonus for tonight, at 6 p.m. at the grandstand, there is a Garden Tractor Pull. Tickets (which include the tractor pull!) are $7 at the door, $6 in advance (a dollar less for youth 6-16, and kids under 5 are free). The fair continues through August 19th. MS
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16
George Eastman Museum, eastman.org
The Ichi-bons are back with their signature retro-rockabilly vibes. This time the band breaks out of the sweatsoaked bar for the greener pastures of the East Lawn at George Eastman Museum. The Toronto-based trio is a fresh-faced homage to the rock ‘n’ roll of the ’50s and early ’60s, but their original tunes will have you shimmying in no time. Classic summertime fun. 6 p.m. $6-$12; free for kids 12 and under. DK
CONTINUED ON PAGE 26
THURSDAY, AUGUST 17
St. Josaphat’s, rochesterukrainianfestival.com
Come for the pierogis, cabbage rolls, sausage, and borscht; stay for the folk dancing, embroidery, icons and pysanky (painted Easter eggs). There will be daily performances and demonstrations, as well as a bazaar with crafts and other goods for sale. Admission and parking are free for the run of the festival, which takes place from 6 to 10:45 p.m. on Thursday, August 17; 6 p.m. to 11:45 on Friday; 1 to 11:45 p.m. on Saturday; and 1 to 8 p.m. on Sunday, August 20. RR
Martin Luther King Jr. Park at Manhattan Square, rochesterevents. com/party-in-the-park
No music style gets people dancing quite like funk. Lucky for us, the Boston-born funk sextet Lettuce headlines the final concert of this summer’s “Party in the Park” series. Created by Berklee School of Music students in the early ’90s, the band continues to hit the smooth grooves hard, with musical chops for days and plenty of swagger. Lettuce’s newest album, last year’s “Unify,” is loaded with tunes that’ll give you that “stank face.” Don’t worry, it’s a good thing. The gates to the show bust open at 6 p.m., with supporting act Joe Samba opening the proceedings a half hour later. Lettuce takes the stage at 8:30 p.m. General admission tickets are $7, and kids under 12 are free with an adult. VIP tickets, for concertgoers 21 and over, are $32. DK
FRIDAY,
Rochester Public Market, flourcitybrewersfest.com
As quaint as it may seem, there was a time when a beer fest in the Rochester event was a novel event. That era has passed, and now in the summer months you could likely hit some variety of festival every weekend. But Flower City is different. It’s a celebration of all things beer in the region, featuring some of the most unique brews alongside the mainstay flagships. If you need a reminder that Rochester’s beer culture is truly a communal experience, this is the place. Doors open at 6 p.m., tickets are $50.
GINO FANELLI
St. Joe’s Amphitheater at Lakeview, Syracuse, asmsyracuse.com/events
The ACM Awards’ new male artist of the year in 2022, Texas-bred country singer Parker McCollum, stops by Syracuse to promote his second major-label release, “Never Enough,” which includes the hits “Handle on You” and “Burn It Down.” It’s a strong follow-up to his breakthrough album, 2021’s “Gold Chain Cowboy,” which featured the smash single “Pretty Heart.” Tickets are $19.50-$74.50 for the 7:30 p.m. show, which features openers Larry Fleet and Ian Flanigan.
JIM CATALANO
SUNDAY, AUGUST 20
Lux Bar, facebook.com/luxlounge666 Nobody reps experimental music in Rochester quite like Carbon Records. Indie record label owner and musician Joe Tunis has been putting out avantgarde rock and noise records via Carbon Records since 1994, playing in idiosyncratic bands like Pengo, Beastview Maul, and Crush the Junta all along the way. Tonight Crush the Junta joins the longtime rock weirdos in Nod and experimental folk artist Will Veeder for a Carbon Records showcase in the friendly confines of Lux. The outdoor show goes from 6 to 10 p.m. $5 cover. DK
MONDAY, AUGUST 21
FAMILY
Rochester Museum & Science Center, rmsc.org
Parents, admit it: as summer winds down and the return of school appears as a promise on the horizon, you’ll miss those daytime activities with the kids once September rolls around. While I wait patiently for your admission, it’s worth mentioning this edition of the Summer @ the RMSC series “Mini MESStival Mondays.”
From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. today, the Rochester Museum & Science Center has all sorts of ways for the whole family to let loose and play, with Mini-Mini-Golf, virtual reality games, and a station for building your own Minecraft-themed fort. The event is free for RMSC members. General admission to the museum is $16 for students 3-18 years old, and $17-$18 for adults. DK
TUESDAY, AUGUST 22
Center for the Arts of Homer, center4art.org
Veteran singer-songwriters Dave Alvin (The Blasters) and Jimmie Dale Gilmore (The Flatlanders) joined forces in 2017, drawn together by their mutual roots in the blues. Since then, they’ve released one album, “Downey to Lubbock” (drawing a line between their respective hometowns in California and Texas), and a couple of singles that blend a variety of rootsy influences ranging from country and blues to folk and rock ‘n’ roll. They’re touring the country backed by Alvin’s longtime band, the Guilty Ones, which features some of the best players on the Americana scene. Tickets are $35-$45. JC
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23
Innovative Field, milb.com/rochester
If you think getting to the ballpark for tonight’s match up with the Worcester Red Sox means getting out of the office, think again. The Red Wings pay tribute to “The Office” with a guest appearance by Brian Baumgartner, who played knuckleheaded Kevin Malone on the hit TV series. You remember Kevin from accounting: disarmingly oblivious, totally perverted, and yet somehow harmless . . . until he was caught cooking the books at Dunder Mifflin. He’ll be on hand for autographs and selfies. The opening pitch is 6:45 p.m. Tickets range from $13 to $25. DAVID ANDREATTA
Starting this month fans of WRUR FM 88.5 - Different Radio will enjoy more music as it expands its format and marks it with the launch of a new name. Introducing The Route! Offering the same great mix of music, The Route brings you more of it, as Connections with Evan Dawson and All Things Considered move to WXXI-FM 105.9 and continue to be heard on AM 1370.
Ryan Yarmel, who has been the host of Radioland with Yarms Thursday nights on WRUR-FM and WITH-FM (Ithaca) since 2019, takes on a new role as music director of The Route, steering you on the road to exciting music discovery. We sat down with Ryan to ask him more about his background and what he sees for the future of the station.
Q. How did a career in public radio find you?
A. I have been passionate about both music and radio for as long as I can remember, and I’m told before that too. Seminal early memories for me are participating in Maria Gillard’s “Old Time Radio Summer Camp” held at Writers and Books growing up and becoming addicted to Car Talk via my dad (I proudly listen to the Best of Car Talk reruns podcast). Radio has the power to create sacred spaces and intimate connections, and I am honored to help foster the musical landscape of the Finger Lakes on the airwaves.
Q. What are your top three responsibilities as music director for WRUR?
A. I am responsible for crafting and curating the musical identity of WRUR, with the aim of honoring and inspiring the musical tastes of the station’s loyal listeners. We are blessed with a rich musical heritage regionally and aim to bolster the incredible music being created in our own backyards. WXXI is fortunate to partner with the University of Rochester and growing/sustaining that relationship is incredibly important.
Q. You’re also a prolific local musician! For people who may not know, how would you describe the style of music you play, and what brought you to performing live music?
A. Musical performance has been part of my life since I began studying the upright bass classically at age 10 and picking up guitar/banjo along the way. I’ve “genre-hopped” quite a bit over the years, from electronica to old time folk music, having settled on the Country-Folk descriptor for the most part.
Q. Now with WXXI-FM 105.9 focusing mostly on news, what are some changes coming to WRUR 88.5 that people can expect?
A. In addition to increased music programing on WRUR/WITH Ithaca, we plan on championing both emerging and established artists in the region through featured on-air conversations, and reducing any barriers for airplay via our new Online Music Submission form (launching later this month).
Q. What’s an artist/band you’ve been listening to recently that you think everyone should know about?
A. New – Little Dragon’s new LP “Slugs of Love”
Some key tracks: “Disco Dangerous,” “Lily’s Call,” “Frisco.”
Classic – Curtis Mayfield’s “There’s No Place Like America Today” (1975)
Q. Your music guilty pleasure?
A. Hank Thompson: I am a lover of Classic Country music and find myself drawn to the music of Hank Thompson for many reasons, one of them being that I’m able to sing along with his low Baritone voice without changing any keys or octaves...like with Neil Young. Key Track: “Take A Look At This Broken Heart of Mine.”
Jessie Reyez: I can thank NPR Tiny Desk for introducing me to Jessie Reyez, who is a Canadian singer-songwriter, and released her latest YESSIE last year. Key Track: “Mutual Friend” and her mind-blowing Tiny Desk performance.
Q. An upcoming release you’re excited about?
A. Willie Nelson, “Bluegrass,” due 9/15
Q. What has been your favorite part of being on air or just being on the radio?
A. I’m so grateful to spin music on the radio that is impactful and supportive to listeners, wherever they might be. WRUR & WITH are here for you. Over 100 years after Rochester’s first radio station launched, it is a privilege to be involved with a medium produced by humans for humans.
To learn more about the program changes, please read more on the following pages.
Photo: Jacob Walsh, CITY Magazine
Tuesday, August 15 at 9:30 p.m. on WXXI-TV
From her first performance in front of an audience to the bestselling Gospel album of all time, The Preacher’s Wife, experience how profoundly Gospel music influenced Whitney Houston’s personal life and helped shape her career. Credit: Whitney Houston Estate
Friday, August 18 at 10:30 p.m. on WXXI-TV
This long-lost live recording of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s 1970 London show features previously unseen video and the only concert footage of the group’s original lineup to be released in its entirety. Credit: Didi Zill
Thursday, August 17 at 8 p.m. on WXXI-TV
With uncanny, note-for-note live renditions of The Beatles’ classics, The Fab Four will make you think you are back in time rockin’ with John, Paul, George, and Ringo! During the broadcast, you’ll learn more about their upcoming performance at Kodak Center in September and how you can get tickets.
Sunday, August 20 at 8:30 p.m. on WXXI-TV
Join the stellar cast for a staged concert of the beloved musical that became a worldwide phenomenon seen by over 120 million people. Featuring Michael Ball, Alfie Boe, Carrie Hope Fletcher, Matt Lucas, and John Owen Jones.
Credit: Courtesy of Matt Murphy
Monday, August 28 and Tuesday, August 29 at 9-11 p.m. on WXXI-TV
Exploring the decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland known as “The Troubles,” this series tells the story through the intimate testimony of ordinary men, women, and children who were drawn—both willingly and unwillingly—into the bitter clashes that rocked the nation and who are still struggling to hold on to a fragile peace today. Photo: Children from a Loyalist area in Belfast in front of a Union Jack flag mural, Northern Ireland, 1971 Credit: Courtesy of © Alain Le Garsmeur/ Bridgeman Images
Tuesday, August 15 at 8 p.m. on WXXI-TV
Explore the complex history of Black Americans who enlisted in the U.S. military as a path to citizenship, a livelihood, and greater respect, and how they fought in military conflicts abroad and civil rights struggles at home.
Monday, August 7 at 10:30 p.m. on WXXI-TV, and on-demand on the PBS App and YouTube
Discover the story behind an abandoned island castle turned into a million-dollar tourist destination in Alexandria Bay.
Sunday, August 27 from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. on WXXI-TV
Emma Woodhouse (Romola Garai) delights in the conviction that she’s the perfect matchmaker. But she’s playing a dangerous game as she persuades her new friend, the young, pretty and socially inferior Harriet (Louise Dylan), to reject a marriage proposal to a local farmer in favor of dashing Mr. Elton (Blake Ritson). Binge the whole 4-part series on Sunday evening. Credit: © BBC
Whether it’s television, radio, online, or on screen, WXXI is there with the programs, news, and information — where you want it and when you want it. If you value PBS, NPR, PBS Kids, WXXI News, WXXI Classical, and so much more, consider becoming a member.
Visit WXXI.org/give to choose the membership that works for you. There are many giving levels with their own special benefits, including becoming a sustaining member.
Become a WXXI Member!
Wednesdays at 8 p.m. beginning August 30 on WXXI Classical
The 2023 season kicks off a stunning set of 13 concert broadcasts with a program of Mozart and John Adams, featuring harpist Emmanuel Ceysson with LA Phil Music Director Gustavo Dudamel at the podium.
Saturdays at 1 p.m. on WXXI Classical
WXXI Classical brings you operas from the finest stages around the world! From Milan to New York, Barcelona to Chicago enjoy a front-row seat to performances from some of the world’s greatest opera companies and performers.
• 8/5 Britten: Turn of the Screw (Budapest Festival O)
• 8/12 Bellini: La Sonnambula (Opéra Royal de Wallenie)
• 8/19 Massenet: Manon (Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona)
• 8/26 Monteverdi: L’Incoronazione di Poppea (Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona)
As mentioned in the Q&A with Ryan Yarmel on page 29, Different Radio will now be known as The Route. Still located on the dial at FM 88.5, we are making a few program changes so that we can bring you more music. Connections with Evan Dawson, airing weekdays from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. and All Things Considered, airing weekdays from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., will both continue to air in that same time slot on AM 1370, and now simulcast on FM 105.9. Here’s what will take the place of both of these programs on FM 88.5:
Weekdays from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on The Route
Host Ryan Yarmel takes you through the afternoon with an eclectic mix of music-- from rock to Americana, soul to folk, acoustic to blues. You’ll hear songs by local bands, classics from well-known artists, favorites from national acts, and new tracks from emerging musicians. When you tune in, you’re sure to hear something familiar, something rare, and something new.
Weekdays from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m.
Originally airing weekdays from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., World Café moves up to the noon hour, where host Raina Douris serves up a blend of blues, rock, world, folk, and alternative country, live performances, and intimate interviews.
August 14-18 from 12-2 p.m. on WXXI News / NPR / FM 105.9 / AM 1370
The week of August 14 will be Connections’ Summer Book Week, and we’re inviting you to be a part of it. Connections’ guest host Scott Fybush has put together your reading list and is encouraging you to sit back, read the books on the list, and join him for conversations with the authors during the week. For the complete list of titles and their authors, visit WXXINews.org.
Thursdays, August 3, 10, and 17 at 12:10pm Join The Route Music Director Ryan Yarmel in the High Falls Business District for Hochstein at High Falls, a free lunchtime concert series, hosted by The Route, The Hochstein School, and the High Falls Business Association. The concerts begin at 12:10 p.m. in the outer parking lot at 4 Commercial Street on the corner of Browns Race. For details, visit WXXI.org/hhf.
This month features:
• Zahyia on August 3
• The White Hots on August 10
• John Dady & Benny Bleu on August 17
SCREENING ON 35MM FILM
Christopher Nolan’s award-winning take on the Caped Crusader (Christian Bale) swoops into The Little for a 15th anniversary screening. Featuring Hans Zimmer’s electrifying score, and Heath Ledger’s iconic, Oscarwinning turn as the murderous agent of chaos, The Joker.
Screening on glorious 35mm film.
8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 12 Tickets at thelittle.org
Saturday Night Rewind throwback genre series, presented with Fright-Rags
1 p.m. and 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 5 & Sunday, Aug. 6 Tickets at thelittle.org
The crowd-pleasing reel of cute cat videos, adorable bloopers, and silly short films, returns to The Little!
240 East Ave thelittle.org
7:15 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 10 & 3 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 12 One Take Documentary Series | Tickets at thelittle.org
Hot off the heels of their breakthrough album, “Music for the Masses,” British synth pop group Depeche Mode embark on the last leg of its 1989 North American tour. Acclaimed documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker is on hand to document the trek from New York to California, focusing his lens on the band, its fans, and the minutiae of tour life.
For information on new movies now playing, including A24’s horror picture, “Talk To Me,” crowd-pleasing comedy “Theater Camp,” and must-see documentary, “Lakota Nation vs. United States,” visit thelittle.org.
NYS Fairgrounds, Syracuse, nysfair.ny.gov
The annual state fair brings together myriad people from around New York and beyond for a 13-day celebration of food, exhibits, rides, entertainment, and competition. Standout musical headliners this year include Rochester’s own Danielle Ponder on Wed., Aug. 30 and Joywave on Saturday, Sept. 3. The fair runs Aug. 23 – Sept. 4; tickets are $6 per person, with free admission for those under 12 or over 65.
LEAH STACYTHURSDAY, AUGUST 24
FRIDAY, AUGUST 25
Kodak Center, kodakcenter.com
You’ll recognize the names on the marquee from their inspired moments of off-the-cuff chicanery on the hit TV show “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” But top-flight comedic improvisers Colin Mochrie & Brad Sherwood haven’t slowed their roll since the show first premiered in 1998. Fans who catch the duo in person can expect the same quick-witted silliness they’ve witnessed for years from the comfort of their couches. $35.50-$55.50. DK
Smokin’ Hot Chicks BBQ, smokinhotchicksbbq.com
Few Rochester bands have been laying down jam-friendly music for as long as The Buddhahood has. The sevenpiece outfit shares its own proprietary blend of rock, reggae, funk, and world music elements, charming anyone within earshot who gives into the groove. If you love live music, you owe it to yourself to catch a Buddhahood show. For this set at Smokin’ Chicks, the septet plays at 9:30 p.m. but only after the formidable local soul-funk band Helium Bubble, which starts the music at 8 p.m. With the dualguitar tack of Brother Wilson and Paul McArdle, along with the polished power of vocalist Julia Weatherholz, you won’t want to break out of this Bubble. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $12 in advance online, $15 at the door. DK
SATURDAY, AUGUST 26
Point of the Bluff Vineyards, Hammondsport, concertsatpob.com
If there’s one thing we expect from our singer-songwriters, it’s honesty. No one would ever accuse country-rock musician Steve Earle of being dishonest or inauthentic in his music. Initially inspired by his musical hero Townes Van Zandt, Earle has been making his version of outlaw country songs since the early ’80s. The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Famer — who has written songs performed by the likes of Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, and Waylon Jennings — performs a solo acoustic show without his band The Dukes for this afternoon’s performance at Point of the Bluff. Doors open at 2 p.m., and music starts at 3:30 p.m. with supporting act Danny Burns. $59-$93. DK
Radio Social, radio-social.com
The restaurant-bar, bowling alley, and general entertainment hub Radio Social doesn’t always host concerts, but when it does, watch out: the music is quality, and frequently features homegrown artists who have also had success as they branch out into the national scene. This time around, DM Stith — who solidified his solo ambient folk-pop project while playing in indie maestro Sufjan Stevens’s backing band — plays a rare local show in honor of his latest album, “Fata Morgana.” As if the auspicious album release weren’t enough, Stith will be joined by headliner Strawberry Runners, the Brooklyn-based pop project of Emi Night, fresh off the release of their self-titled album. Ben Morey rounds out the lineup. Expect an evening of catchy sound nuggets from a trio of sophisticated songwriters. The free show starts at 8 p.m. DK
SUNDAY, AUGUST 27
Point of the Bluff Vineyards, Hammondsport, concertsatpob.com
The music of Nashville string band Old Crow Medicine Show isn’t just country, and it’s not quite folk, bluegrass, or rock. Though the group isn’t easy to pin down, it’s been one of the most reliable sources of Americana-roots music around since its beginnings in the late ’90s. Grammy-winning OCMS knows how to put on a lively show, too. If you’re not singing along when the band
launches into its platinum-selling single “Wagon Wheel” — the result of frontman Ketch Secor writing original verses to Bob Dylan’s 1973 chorus “Rock Me Mama” — that’s on you. The doors open at 2 p.m., and Brennen Leigh Trio kicks things off at 3:30 p.m. $60-$95. DK
MONDAY, AUGUST 28
Art Park, Lewiston, artpark.net
Alt-rock icons Pixies and Modest Mouse join forces on this stacked bill, which also features Cat Power as the opener. Known for their “loudquietloud” sound, Pixies have released several influential albums, including 1988’s “Surfer Rose” and 1989’s Doolittle,” that still hold up decades later. And they’re not done yet, having released the new album “Doggerel” in 2022. Together since 1993, Modest Mouse is touring to promote its latest album, “The Golden Casket,” which features frontman Isaac Brock’s distinctive vocal, lyrical and guitar stylings. Showtime is 6:30 p.m. Tickets range from $39.50 to $69.50. JC
TUESDAY, AUGUST 29
Rochester Summer Opera, highlandparkconservancy.org
A student-run company from the Eastman School of Music has brought back an old tradition of opera performances in the Highland Bowl each summer (which had previously been enjoyed by Rochesterians from the 1950s through the 1970s). This year, they’re performing favorite arias, ensembles, and scenes from operatic classics for free in the park with a full orchestra, in a free, family friendly performance. Pack a picnic, blanket, and some bug spray, and head out to Highland Park Bowl (1137 South Ave.) for the music at 7:30 p.m. The rain date is August 30. MS
Rochester Community Sportsplex, flowercityunion.com
There’s nothing like a good ol’ fashioned game played with a ball to bring you and your dog together. If you’re looking for a great way to spend a late summer evening outside with your four-footed teammate, local professional soccer club Flower City Union invites you to bring your dog to the team’s rematch game against the Los Angeles Force. The Union has lost two close games to the Force this season, but it’s the perfect time for revenge in front of the home supporters and their canines. They get in for free, and with a designated place to do their business, as well as a squad of pet vendors on hand, Spot’s sure to shoot and score when the game starts at 6 p.m. For bipeds, general admission tickets are $15, and tickets at midfield are $25. DK
The Little, roclive.live
The ever-evolving, ever-fascinating band The Bad Plus is now a quartet, with original members drummer Dave King and bassist Reid King joined by guitarist Ben Monder and tenor sax player Chris Speed. With this band, whether they’re deconstructing classic rock or jazz tunes or playing their intriguing originals, it’s always an interesting journey. The Bad Plus is coming back to Rochester to play The Little Theatre tonight at 8 p.m. (doors at 7:30). Tickets are $38.50. MS
Record Archive, recordarchive.com
The Son House Blues Night is a welcome monthly occurrence at Record Archive, one of Rochester’s music meccas. But the appearance of the local blues rockers in the Son Henry Band is less common, especially since the group is set to tour in Europe next month. Band leader Karl “Son” Henry Mann has been an active part of American roots music scenes at home and abroad since the early ’90s, and he shows no signs of stopping as he continues to ply his trade interpreting the blues tradition through his faithful rock music lens. As always, Genesee Johnny hosts the free Record Archive event from 6 to 8 p.m. DK
Scene An events newsletter for the socially restless
Artists Program. It’s about evolving from student into professional singer.
“All those different components we drill into ourselves in school are now put to the test in a Young Artist program,” Rhodes said. “It becomes less about perfection and more about artistry, more about who you are as an artist.”
Other Young Artists with Rochester connections are tenor Ryan Johnson and sopranos Taylor-Alexis Dupont and Amanda Sheriff, all recent first prize winners of the Lotte Lenya Competition, a prestigious annual vocal contest based at Eastman.
The year Sheriff won first prize, in 2022, was an exception, however — final performances were held in New York City. Sheriff felt she missed out by not performing at Kilbourn Hall. “I’m upset that I didn’t get to do it in Rochester, because that stage everyone performs on at Eastman is such an important stage and a pillar in the operatic community,” she said.
BY DANIEL J. KUSHNER @DANIELJKUSHNER DKUSHNER@ROCHESTER-CITYNEWS.COMIt’s officially the off-season for opera, which means institutions such as Eastman School of Music and its opera program take a breather while summer stock companies like Finger Lakes Opera and high-profile festivals like Glimmerglass in Cooperstown take center stage.
But that doesn’t mean that emergent young opera singers who performed at Eastman Opera Theatre and the Lotte Lenya Competition, held annually at Eastman’s Kilbourn Hall, are taking a break.
The Glimmerglass Festival’s 2023-24 season, which runs through August 20, prominently features
professional singers with strong Rochester connections. Glimmerglass’s production of Handel’s fantastical Baroque opera “Rinaldo” is perhaps the most high-profile example: soprano Eastman alumnus Keeley Futterer, as well as soprano Jasmine Habersham, a recent collaborator with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, star alongside Metropolitan Opera standout and Glimmerglass Artist-in-Residence Anthony Roth Costanzo. The popular countertenor, whose portrayal of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaten in Philip Glass’s opera mesmerized audiences, will also lead the Young Artists in a cabaretstyle concert on August 11 and 14.
This year’s class of Young Artists at Glimmerglass has numerous links to Rochester.
Tenor Jonathan Pierce Rhodes, who graduated from Eastman in 2020, sings the role of spirited sidekick Cacambo in Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide.”
He says versatility is an important skill as a Young Artist, and singers need to demonstrate their ability to perform everything from early music and 18thcentury Bel Canto opera to Broadway and everything in between at a place like Glimmerglass. His understanding of diction, languages, musicality, and character-building — all of which he developed while at Eastman — is put into practice on the job in a Young
After the Lotte Lenya Competition, Sheriff received new opportunities and her profile as an artist was amplified. Now at Glimmerglass, she said the three-month, 12-hours-a-day schedule tests an opera singer’s mettle in dealing with the realities of professional life.
“It really does show you the nitty gritty side of this industry — if you can do a Young Artists program, then you can absolutely do this as a career,” said Sheriff, who stars in the youth opera “The Rip Van Winkles” while also singing in the chorus of “Romeo and Juliet” and “Candide.”
“It’s a great insight into what a career could look like, and how you would mentally, emotionally, and physically handle that,” she said. “In a lot of jobs, once you graduate college, you can do internships. And this is essentially an operatic internship.”
For more information on the festival, go to glimmerglass.org.
stacked with Eastman alums.“Candide” at Glimmerglass Festival. Jonathan Pierce Rhodes, inset. PHOTOS PROVIDED
There aren’t any jazz-rock fusion or hip-hop-jazz mash-ups on an album by drummer Mike Melito. He is a jazz purist. So it’s not surprising that his eighth album, aptly named “To Swing Is The Thing,” is composed of jazz classics and less familiar tunes worthy of elevation. And yes, it swings from start to finish.
Melito’s band features some of the top straight-ahead, hard bop players on the scene: tenor saxophonist Grant Stewart, trumpeter Joe Magnarelli, pianist Jeb Patton and bassist Neal Miner. All of them take off on imaginative solos throughout the album. But Melito has no need for the pyrotechnics often displayed by drummers; he’s satisfied to enhance the music with superb playing.
Melito was raised on jazz. His late father, trumpeter Chris Melito, was friends with Bobby Hackett, Stan Getz, and other jazz giants. His older brothers are both professional musicians. As a teenager, Melito began to work with Rochester greats Joe Locke and Joe Romano. Since then, he’s played with Benny Golson, James Moody, and many others. Still a stalwart on the local scene, Melito has driven the rhythm at the Rochester International Jazz Festival’s jam sessions for 20 years.
The album contains some classic tunes, notably John Coltrane’s “Straight Street” and Thelonious Monk’s “Ruby My Dear,” both of which lend themselves to creative solos born of experience. But the disc also introduces listeners to tunes deserving of attention. “You Said It” and “Big Red,” both by Tommy Turrentine, and “A Bee Has Two Brains,” by Johnny Ellis, belong in the jazz canon. Melito also includes top-notch works by his bandmates: Minor’s “Locke Bop,” Magnarelli’s “Blue Key,” Stewart’s “Three For Carson” and Patton’s arrangement of Jerome Kern’s “Make Believe.”
The most unusual track is the band’s take on Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,” arranged by Osian Roberts. The song begins traditionally with Stewart and Magnarelli adhering closely to the melody for the first two verses. Then it suddenly shifts into double time, transforming into a swinging, up-tempo romp and reinforcing the album’s title.
– BY RON NETSKY
Influences are a double-edged sword. And while the guess here is Kim Draheim owns all of Blue Oyster Cult’s albums, he and his band, Infrared Radiation Orchestra, successfully elude slavish mimicry with some wide-ranging … well, weirdness.
Based in Seneca Falls, Infrared Radiation Orchestra spreads its psychedelic musings throughout Western New York, including Rochester. The band’s new album, the inexplicably titled “Hot Rod Full of Eyeballs,” does make use of howls, cranky guitars, and scant attention to lyrics on “The Note.”
But “The Note” is an outlier. More often, “Hot Rod Full of Eyeballs” is quirky, offbeat, eerie and pensive rock-noir.
There is cosmic babble with the opening “Brian May…,” apparently a reference to the timeless genius Queen guitarist, and words of “the dust settles over our bones, and then moves on.”
“Mad Dog Sullivan” suggests that, comparatively speaking, the Rochester mobster maybe wasn’t so bad, having killed only 30 rivals, “while politicians sign papers that send kids off to war.”
Draheim can more narrate than sing, as on “I Can’t Help You,” where he speaks of “grasping at the curtains like some drunken priest.” Ghouls are at hand in “Old Haunts,” where places and relationships are memories, “but I do prefer when the dead stay in their graves.”
A dream state settles over “Hot Rod Full of Eyeballs” in the expansive final three songs. “Wheels” is a nine-minute tribute to the late Helen Wheels, who wrote songs for Blue Oyster Cult. “I Dreamt of Kim Gordon Playing Miniature Golf in a Silken Robe” is little more than a seven-and-a-half-minute repetition of the song title, fading to spacey guitar (Gordon, who was born in Rochester, was the lead singer of the alt-rock band Sonic Youth).
Is “Hot Rod Full of Eyeballs” brilliant, or derivative? It is possible to be both.
– BY JEFF SPEVAKIf the Rochester rock quartet Austin Hollow’s debut album “The Fisherman” occasionally sounds like praise and worship music, it’s for good reason.
Singer-guitarist Scott Austin can regularly be heard leading the musical portion of services at the nondenominational Artisan Church, where he is the pastor (note: Austin is also a co-creator of CITY’s monthly crossword puzzles). And while the auspices of organized religion aren’t present in Austin Hollow, the music and overall message aren’t all that different.
Austin Hollow’s keyboardist-singer Mel Muscarella and her husband, the album’s co-producer and sound engineer Mike Muscarella, have played music with Austin at Artisan for years. Add bassist Jona Chartrand and drummer Sean McGinnis Scanlon to the lineup — both of whom play with Austin in the Irish rock outfit Sisters of Murphy — and you’ve got a group of band members more familiar with one another than most musicians who are releasing their first record together.
And for those who already love indie rock dipped in Americana, there’s something oddly familiar about the music of the Rochester quartet, even if you’ve never heard any of them play before.
Austin’s conversational baritone voice and B3 organ-infused country-ish rock songs recall the impassioned music of the Austin, Texas-based band Okkervil River and its frontman Will Sheff — a similarity immediately apparent on the opener “A Man Like That.” Austin is bolstered by singer-keyboardist Mel Muscarella, whose strength and control as a vocalist comes through loud and clear on “Fly.”
Austin Hollow plays its vinyl release show for “The Fisherman” on Saturday, Aug. 12, at Lovin’ Cup, 300 Park Point Drive in Rochester. The music starts at 8 p.m. with Fables and Fools, followed by Austin Hollow and The Ribbon Project. $10 cover.
— BY DANIEL J. KUSHNERRochester musician Levi Gangi, of the band The Lonely Ones, has the vocal tone of someone sitting on the swing of a bucolic farm’s porch, urging listeners to join him for a heart-to-heart.
On his fourth solo album, “Somebody Else’s Broken Heart,” an 11-song set of country-folk compositions released on July 28, Gangi demonstrates his writing chops and consistent musical delivery while benefiting from the contributions of talented friends.
Lyrically, Gangi doesn’t shy away from sentimentality and nostalgia, and his singing overflows with sincerity. This earnestness could strike some listeners as cheesy, but it’s perfectly in keeping with the style and themes that run throughout the album.
The opening cut “What Did I Miss” is a ballad about how contemporary society and its addiction to social media distracts us from life in the moment. In a well-crafted first impression, Kelly Izzo Shapiro’s vocal harmonies are a brilliant finishing touch.
Background vocals continue to be vital to the poignancy of Gangi’s songs, with tracks such as “Shake Me Down,” an irresistibly catchy tune about the intoxicating, if fatal pull of an unhealthy romance. Sarah De Vallière adds musical depth and poignancy to the song’s solid bones with her well-balanced voice and keyboard playing.
Later in the album, “Murder (The Slow Way)” is a revelation, a dark but clever story-song that brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “assisted suicide” when a man is abandoned by his lover.
“Hummingbird Wings” is an unexpected electronic pop song that grows to choral proportions, but against the odds, it works.
Gangi’s straightforward song structure belies a mature musical intuition that gets the most out of familiar instrumentation, proven chord progressions, and uncomplicated lyrics. Each of the collection’s songs is immediately accessible and sonically satisfying.
— BY DANIEL J. KUSHNERThere’s an ever-evolving shortlist of locally grown artists who, despite having plenty of runway ahead of them in their careers, have already become prominent ambassadors of Rochester music culture to the rest of the world: Danielle Ponder, Joywave, Maybird, King Buffalo, Undeath.
Mikaela Davis is right up there at the top of the list. At 31, the classically trained harpist and indie
singer-songwriter has already played alongside ’60s legends Bob Weir and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, as well as millennial heavyweights Bon Iver and Lake Street Dive.
On August 4, Davis will have achieved another career milestone when her latest album, “And Southern Star,” is released by Kill Rock Stars. Now in its 32nd year, the Portland, Oregeon-based record label has helped launch the careers
of Elliott Smith, Sleater-Kinney, and The Decemberists, and with its eponymous 1991 compilation album gave many music lovers their first taste of such upstart bands as The Melvins, Bikini Kill, and most notably, Nirvana.
Davis first collaborated with Kill Rock Stars in 2021 for the label’s 30th anniversary, when she and her band recorded a cover of Elliott Smith’s “Some Song” with singer-
songwriter Mary Lou Lord, a former girlfriend of the late Kurt Cobain. A year later, Davis was approached by The Decemberists’ guitarist Chris Funk to write a song for Kill Rock Stars’ Dungeons & Dragons-themed compilation “SPELLJAMS.” By the time Kill Rock Stars agreed to put out Davis’s new album, it had already been recorded and produced by the
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singer-songwriter and her band — guitarists Cian McCarthy and Kurt Johnson, bassist Shane McCarthy, and drummer Alex Coté.
For Davis, who had previously signed with the indie label Rounder Records for her 2018 album “Delivery,” deciding to work with a label like Kill Rock Stars, outside of the mainstream, was purposeful. “It’s definitely an intentional thing, because you don’t know what’s going to happen when you sign with a big label,” she said. “You can just get stuck on the label and they’ll forget about you, and maybe not release music or not be on your schedule, but you’re in this huge contract, so you can’t do anything.”
The Rochester native, who has listened to Kill Rock Stars-produced albums since she was in high school, said the smaller independent label, now owned by Exceleration Music, is different. “It does feel like not only a partnership but a friendship,” she said, “and they’re there as committed to my album as I am.”
Kill Rock Stars founder Matthew “Slim” Moon said signing an artist to the label is not just about celebrating the music on the current record, but investing in the creative potential of the artist moving forward. “I want people to love this record, I want lots of people to hear this record,” Moon said. “But I’m also super excited and passionate about the chance to see what Mikaela and her band do next. Because as great as they are, I think they are going to go even further and do even more amazing things in the future.”
At first, Kill Rock Stars’ historical legacy and bona fide reputation as indie rock, grunge, and punk soothsayer might seem at odds with Davis’s psychedelic wash of classic rock, country, and classical precision. Both the artist and her label have strong ’70s influences, but Davis’s songs skew more toward the Laurel Canyon sound of James Taylor, Carole King and Neil Young than Kill Rock Stars’ edgier touchstones like The Clash and Patti Smith.
Moon acknowledges that apparent stylistic disconnect, but said partnering with Davis and her band Southern Star makes sense for the label at this point in its existence, coinciding with the 2002 launch of Kill Rock Stars Nashville, the label’s
Americana music imprint (although “And Southern Star” is being released as part of KRS’s main catalog).
“We’re more open to and feel competent and ready to promote a record like Mikaela’s at this time than we could have done 10 or 20 years ago,” Moon said.
The nine original songs on “And Southern Star” possess Davis’s signature harp playing, which mixes pristine timbre with nuanced technical proficiency. In short, it sounds pretty, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Davis and the band are equally skilled at presenting intimate storysongs as they are at blissing out with extended instrumental adventures. The combined sound of Davis’s harp and Johnson’s pedal steel guitar lend a distinctive twist to the Grateful Dead’s beloved country-jam aesthetic, but the songs are always delivered in a concise and accessible song structure.
Despite the auspices of a new record label whose history is steeped in a very different style, Davis’s compelling voice and songwriting remain at the forefront of her music.
WILDE
AGE | 29 YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY | 10 TRAINED AT | Good Luck, Leeward Maine, Inn on the Lake, Ramada in Geneva
WHAT IS YOUR CHEF STORY?
I was going to FLCC for liberal arts. One day, I went to school in chef pants because I had work after class, and I got a phone call from the chef asking me to come in early, so I just left school. Didn’t even think twice. And I never looked back.
DO YOU HAVE A CHEF ROLE MODEL?
Dan Martello (co-owner and chef of Good Luck, Lucky's, Cure, and also a co-owner of Wildflour) is the biggest mentor in my life, and I’ve thought about this a lot. They say ‘don’t meet your heroes,’ but then I got to – and it really has taken me to places I didn’t think I would go in the culinary world. (Don’t let him read that.)
TAYLOR
Chef/co-owner of Wildflour, 620 Winton Rd.N.
INTERVIEWS BY LEAH STACY PHOTOS BY ABBY QUATRO
This summer brought season two of “The Bear,” a hit Hulu show about a star chef who returns home to run the family sandwich shop in Chicago after his brother commits suicide. While the moody chef, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), gets a lot of play in pop culture, it’s really his gutsy sous chef, Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), who stands out in each episode. As a young female chef opening a restaurant, Sydney interviews potential cooks only to be asked “when can I speak with the chef?” – to which she answers, “you are.” Life on the line is never easy, but it’s even more complicated when you’re a female (and beyond that, a restaurant owner). CITY chatted with 10 local female chefs, some of whom are also restaurant owners, about everything from role models and what drew them to the industry to why Rochester – and what advice they’d give themselves now.
Sous chef at Branca Midtown, 280 E. Broad St. AGE | 47
YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY | 18 TRAINED AT | Culinary school in South Florida
WHAT’S YOUR MISE EN PLACE?
I just start working. I’m a creature of habit, so I set up my station first. I work pasta, and I take care of the desserts as well so I make sure all the savory things are in place. Usually listening to music while I’m setting up - I listen to country.
NIGHT OFF MEAL?
Usually cooking with a friend on Mondays, and I try to get to Velvet Belly to support Jeremy. I also like Good Luck, I always enjoy the food there. My favorite spot in the whole city is Rooney’s – and I worked with the chef there when we opened Nikko a decade ago.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE A YOUNGER YOU?
Don’t cry. Do the ‘telling what to do,’ not the other way around. The thing I always keep in my head is to do my job, and do it the best. Stay clean, work clean, be on time. But mostly –don’t cry, or at least don’t let em see you cry.
MINERVA MARTINEZ
Owner/Chef at Peach Blossom, 9 East Main Street.
AGE | 50 YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY | 37 TRAINED AT | Home, beginning at age 13
Editor’s note: Minerva’s answers were translated during the interview by her son and sous chef, Marco.
WHAT’S YOUR CHEF ‘ORIGIN’ STORY?
I started in the industry when I was roughly 13 years old. But for me, I remember starting cooking when I could barely walk because I was my mom’s helper. I grew up in a family with a large quantity of brothers and sisters, but we were in a poor state in an indigenous part of Oaxaca, so we didn’t have much. I left at
13 without shoes and walked to Mexico City to find a job. I worked in two different restaurants as the head cook, but with my age and stature people didn’t believe I was in charge of the kitchen. I had my first son, and it was difficult to find a job as a single mother. But a rundown restaurant finally hired me because I made perfect rice, and I brought the restaurant back up.
DO YOU HAVE A CHEF ROLE MODEL?
I learned to cook by watching TV. I would watch a cooking show and write recipes in a diary, and then practice. The woman I used to watch wasn’t a chef, but a housewife hired to teach basic homemaking skills on TV. So then, I would take those basic recipes and make them mine.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO A YOUNGER YOU?
When I was very young, the poverty where I lived was so bad that my mentality was always ‘I need to get out, to go explore.’ It’s a beautiful place, but I wanted to exceed what most people could. I always heard about America from a young age, and I knew I needed to go there to pursue more. I’m grateful and blessed to be here and run an establishment that is still going back to my roots, but can reach many more people. One of the main reasons I push forward is my two kids. They are my engine and motivation. When my youngest son told me he wanted to pursue culinary arts, I was ecstatic and I tell him, ‘keep learning and keep striving for more.’
ANDREA PARROS
Owner/Operator/Recipe Developer at Red Fern, 283 Oxford Street
AGE | 42
YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY | 26
TRAINED AT | The Other Side Cafe; The Owl House
WHAT’S YOUR CHEF ‘ORIGIN’ STORY?
I’m not a chef. My mom was always cooking because we’re a Greek family, and I would just follow her around, make snacks after school. I never thought I would be in this field – I went to math and science camps as a kid. Food service was just something I did at 16 to save money to buy a car. The jobs you did until you got your ‘real job.’
DO YOU HAVE A CHEF ROLE MODEL?
I do – Isa Chandra Moskowitz, who’s like the guru of vegan cooking. She wrote so many of the early cookbooks that I read when I was going vegan because I had a dairy allergy. She actually ate here (at Red Fern) once, and I died.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE A YOUNGER YOU?
Get in there and get the experience. School isn’t the only way to get the experience. Maybe it’s good for the fundamentals, but getting in there and starting from the bottom helps you appreciate each job and what people do. Also, all of us females have our stories about being mistreated in the industry – being a woman owner, there is an opportunity to have a compassionate kitchen. We have staff who come here and can’t believe people ask how they’re doing.
ANA NORTHRUP
Head chef at Leonore’s, 703 Park Ave.
AGE | 26
YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY | 7 TRAINED AT | FLCC’s Culinary School; New York Wine & Culinary Center
WHAT'S YOUR CHEF 'ORIGIN' STORY?
I was 15, working at a restaurant that no longer exists on Conesus Lake, and I got fired for smoking weed with the boss’s son – and then, rehired because I was a good worker. And I was like, ‘oh, this is allowed?’
FAVORITE MENU ITEM YOU'VE CREATED?
Can it be a special?
I like that I can make a lot of different desserts now – I’ve been making baby bundt cakes and doing different plays on that, like a goji berry-orange with a pandan whipped cream and candied, pickled mandarin oranges.
WHO’S YOUR CHEF ROLE MODEL?
Kelly McDonald (currently at Vern’s) – when we worked together at Ox & Stone she really made me who I am today and I still look up to her. She’s badass.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO A YOUNGER YOU?
Take it seriously, but not too seriously where it becomes all-consuming. Just the right amount of consuming. I try to do fun things in my free time, things that are distracting from work.
ASHLEY SWAN
Executive chef at Roux; chef at Vern’s AGE | 39
YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY | 22 TRAINED AT | The French Culinary Institute
WHAT'S YOUR CHEF 'ORIGIN' STORY? This will sound hilarious, but it was actually during culinary school - you think it would’ve happened before. But the passion of the chefs there and all I learned made me realize it was what I should be doing. It’s not a job you look at and say, ‘I want to do that.’ It’s hard. You definitely have to love it.
FAVORITE MENU ITEM YOU’VE CREATED?
I love doing everything seasonally. Right around three months, I get sick of everything and want to recreate the entire menu.
DO YOU HAVE A CHEF ROLE MODEL?
Obviously, Julia Child. Jacques Pepin is adorable – I actually met him when I was in culinary school and I almost died. He came up while I was making a little fruit tart and he said how good my fruit tart looked and I just stared at him. I was so mad I didn’t get a photo with him. Anthony Bourdain. All chefs are badass, but it’s so funny, because when people come in to Roux to talk to the chef they go straight to a man. And back in the day, it was all women in kitchens!
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO A YOUNGER YOU?
Be strong, follow your gut, follow your heart, and if you love it, stick with it. Be organized. There will be a lot of curveballs thrown at you, especially if you are also an owner (I think the greatest restaurants have a chef who is also an owner). And if you don’t love it, leave.
PAULINA SWAN
Co-owner/chef of Swan Dive, Vern’s, Leonore’s, Pearson’s
AGE | 33
YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY | 17 TRAINED AT | Cibon, under sister, Ashley Swan, and mom, Robin Swan
FAVORITE MENU ITEM YOU’VE CREATED?
The pizza dough at Dive. The Lost Meatball at Vern’s - it was my grandma’s recipe, and we doctored it to make it our own. Elevated it, if you will. It’s nostalgic. And I’d have to fly out of town if we ever took it off the menu.
WHAT’S YOUR MISE EN PLACE?
Music first, usually lo-fi beats to keep me even. Or dirty rap. Depends on my mood and where I’m working. At Dive, we had a Missy Elliott playlist.
NIGHT OFF MEAL?
Rocco’s my thing.
WHO'S YOUR CHEF ROLE MODEL?
Not necessarily for the food, because I haven’t had it often, but Gabrielle Hamilton (who opened Prune in NYC and wrote “Blood, Bones and Butter”). Her book is amazing.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO A YOUNGER YOU?
Something to the tune of, ‘shit happens.’ And you sometimes are going to lose control – you have to ride the wave. That, and say what you need to say. Don’t hold onto shit. I did a lot of that. Have the conversation, it’ll be easier than you think. That’s what I wish I knew.
VOULA KATSETOS-GARWOOD
Owner/Chef, Voula’s Greek Sweets, 439 Monroe Ave.
AGE | 41
YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY | 29 TRAINING | Home
WHAT IS YOUR CHEF ‘ORIGIN’ STORY?
I always wanted to work in a kitchen. I lived in NYC for eight years, but no one ever wanted to hire me because I was the bartender (and that money was good). But I wanted to do this, so I moved back here in 2010 and opened Voula’s with my first husband because we couldn’t afford it in New York. Voula’s has been in this space ever since. I started working in the kitchen a couple days before we opened. I had a lot of confidence that I could do it with my family recipes. I didn’t care about formal training, I grew up cooking with my grandma - my ‘YaYa’ - my mom, my dad.
FAVORITE MENU ITEM YOU’VE CREATED?
I went out on a limb and made this place vegetarian because I don’t eat meat, and I invented a vegan seitan (a high-protein meat substitute made of wheat gluten) gyro. My family was like, ‘oh, this worked.’ But I’ll still menu test at home, we’ll eat the same thing until I get it right.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE A YOUNGER YOU?
Prepare yourself to work with all kinds of people. To be patient and listen to what others have to say, because you don’t know everything. It’s important to live your life knowing you can learn from others and draw from those experiences. Also, when someone is taking advantage of you, you gotta cut it off. I still have to remind myself of that. And hire your friends!
Co-owner/Chef at Zemeta Ethiopian Restaurant, 1015-1009 S. Clinton Ave. AGE | 40
YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY | 10 TRAINED AT | Her mom's restaurant in Ethiopia
WHAT’S YOUR CHEF ‘ORIGIN’ STORY?
Zemeta just turned 10 years old. My husband is also a partner in the hookah lounge (the nearby UN Cafe and Hookah Lounge on S. Clinton). We started with little to-go box takeout then, and there was no other Ethiopian restaurant in Rochester at that time. Our people loved it, and they pushed us to open a full restaurant. I like everything about cooking – I always wished I could have a restaurant. We don’t own this building yet, but we hope to someday.
DO YOU HAVE A CHEF ROLE MODEL?
My mom taught me to cook. In our culture, all the recipes come from the mom, and my mom had a restaurant in Ethiopia. I’m trying to teach my children to cook, too, but I’m pushing them to focus more on school. When we opened Zemeta, my daughter Solyana was four months old and my son, Michael, was two years old.
FAVORITE MENU ITEM YOU’VE CREATED?
To be honest, people love everything. Mostly they order vegetarian and vegan dishes, like spiced cabbage and brown lentils, but we also have red meats –something like a steak tartare, but made of ground beef – and a spicy chicken. Lamb, too, a lot of people order that.
AGE | 31
YEARS IN THE INDUSTRY | 8
TRAINED AT | Wegmans, The Owl House
WHAT’S YOUR CHEF ‘ORIGIN’ STORY?
I grew up cooking with my grandma – there are still recipes I’m not allowed to know, Italian grandma – but I was always the one cooking for friends and family. I moved here seven years ago after getting a music education degree at Ithaca College, and I just wasn't sure it was what I wanted to do. The Owl House was the first place I ever ate in Rochester, and I thought, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I know I eventually want to work here.’ Six months later, there was a job posting and I applied. I love going to work and doing my favorite thing every day.
DO YOU HAVE A CHEF ROLE MODEL?
Gabrielle Hamilton (of Prune) is incredible. She did a great interview on ‘Mind of a Chef’ where she talks about sustainability. That really changed my mindset from ‘I make the food and the guests get it’ to how we as a business have to fit into our culture if we’re all going to survive. How do you use up all the product when margins are thin, but also honor the product you’re getting? We compost or use all scraps - we aren’t throwing anything out.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE A YOUNGER YOU?
Ask for help. This part always makes me emotional – it’s so hard to be a woman in this industry, because there’s typically one spot for a woman. You’re working against men who get the opportunities and get the handholding, and you have to have a stuff upper lip and the hours to match that. When there’s another woman, it’s who’s gonna beat who. Here, we’re a place of learning – for my team, everyone can do everything. We say yeah, you tell me what you want to do. Let’s figure it out. We have a strong, eclectic staff, some of whom are non-binary and don’t have to feel like the token person on the team. You can’t do it on your own.
BY GINO FANELLI @ GINOFANELLI GFANELLI@ROCHESTER-CITYNEWS.COM
When Black Button Distlling founder Jason Barrett set out to open Rochester’s first distillery since Prohibition, it found a home in an unused portion of Rohrbach’s building on Railroad Street, sandwiched between the brewery’s production space and taproom on one side and a storage and lab space on the other. That was in 2013; Black Button has since grown to the point where it can leave the nest to fly on its own, officially setting up shop in a sprawling new space on University Avenue.
Rohrbach, meanwhile, is growing as well, taking over the 5,000-squarefoot Black Button space. The new portion of the brewery will offer an expanded canning line, larger cold
storage area, and an outgrowth of the brewery’s taproom and restaurant. In the long run, Rohrbach owner John Urlaub said the new space could allow the brewery to up production by 50 percent to 15,000 barrels per year.
“It’s not like we do that all at once,” Urlaub said. “But it gives us the opportunity because we’ll free up a lot of space in the brewery.”
Brewery Manager Joel Will said the expanded canning line is key to the brewery upping production, describing the current 10,000-barrel output as a “bottleneck” from brewing more beer.
“We made it work, but if we grow any more, which of course we hope to do and foresee going into the next year, we’d kind of be at our limit,” Will said.
The growth of Rohrbach over its 31 years of life has moved at a decisively slow, methodical pace.
In 1992, Rohrbach Brewing Company founder John Urlaub swung the doors open at the German House in the South Wedge and welcomed Rochesterians to their first taste of craft beer. In 1998, he opened his second production brewery on Buffalo Road in Chili, which today also houses the brewery’s barrel-aged beers program “Parting Glass.” In 2008, Rohrbach bade farewell to the German House and opened its doors on Railroad Street.
To say Urlaub was ahead of the curve would be a gross understatement. In fact, it would be nearly two decades from Rohrbach’s opening before another
homegrown craft brewing operation would take hold in the city. At the time, craft beer had hardly even entered into the status of a novelty. A mere 300 microbreweries were estimated to be in operation nationwide, compared to the 500 or so operating in New York alone as of 2022.
Throughout all that time, and as some other, newer breweries have had to tighten their belts to survive, Rohrbach has stayed consistent.
“The reality is that the market has changed a lot, and we are not growing at the pace that we used to,” Urlaub said. “But we do continue to have good, steady growth. We are in the positive numbers, and I think when you don’t grow, that’s where the trouble starts.”
Urlaub credited a large part of the brewery’s success to its consistency. Its flagship beer, Scotch Ale, has remained virtually unchanged since its inception, and today still accounts for a quarter of the brewery’s sales.
“It’s been around forever, and that brand continues to grow,” Urlaub said. “We get new fans, and people trust our brand.”
In July, Black Button cut the ribbon on its ambitious new University Avenue facility. To put into perspective just how big the facility is, the entirety of the old distillery’s bar and manufacturing plant could fit comfortably in the new space’s tasting room. Its production capacity is expected to increase 10 times when the distillery gets fully up and running.
The process of moving the old equipment over and getting the distillery’s new, titanic vats and stills up and running is expected to be finished by the end of August. At that point, Barrett will sever the last physical ties with Rohrbach, marking a parting of ways between two titans of Rochester’s beverage culture.
“John was so good to us,” Barrett said. “I always say, his leap of faith was a little crazy. Here I was, a 24-year-old kid, and we’re going to renovate this place into a modern distillery. But he was hugely helpful.”
Both Barrett and Urlaub see the two facilities’ relationship in the same building as a sort of symbiosis which propped up both brands, and as that era ends, both are well positioned to expand.
“We’re not disappointed that they’ve been there the past 10 years,” said Urlaub, “and we’re also not disappointed they’re moving, because it gives us an opportunity to expand our business.”
A beloved Thai and Vietnamese mainstay since 1984, Mamasan’s Noodle Caboodle has moved to what the owners are calling its ‘permanent home’ at 1400 Mt. Hope Blvd. in College Town. The menu features spring rolls, dumplings, rice and noodle dishes in all of the lemongrass, pineapple, basil, sesame, tamarind and other dreamy flavors, and dishes can be made spiced to your liking and come with meat, vegetarian, or vegan. 461-3290, mamasans.com
For some Syrian comfort food, head to Jasmine Restaurant & Cafe, now open at 1761 Mt. Hope Ave. Menu highlights include falafel, kabobs, fresh salads, and pitas with veggie and meat fillings such as chicken shawarma, gyro, and salmon. They also offer baklava and fresh juice, as well as halal options. Jasmine has seating inside and on its patio, and its hours are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. 319-3534, patatoscafe.com
B + Healthy Fresh Food Market has added a third location to its existing two (at 1508 Dewey Ave. and 442 Genesee St.) in the Temple Building at 14 Franklin St. All locations offer a menu of fresh fruit smoothies and juices ($6-$8) — some with greens, ginger, and other health-minded ingredients — as well as a variety of veggie wraps ($5-$7) to grab and go. Open 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday. 644-9639, bhealthyfreshfoods.org
Just about a 15-minute drive south from Henrietta is The Normal BBQ & Drinks, at 1887 Rochester St. in Lima. Owner-chef Adam Peterson nods to his Scandinavian roots with elements such as the lingonberries he incorporates into his house made BBQ sauce, specialty margarita, and even the lemon-buttermilk pie. The website and menus have a fun, retro sci-fi vibe and feature pulled pork, brisket, and chipotle-lime sausage sandwiches on brioche rolls, wings, dry-rubbed ribs, and vegetarian fare. Picnic-like sides include German potato salad, slaw, and the like. Beer, wine, and an assortment of cosmicthemed cocktails round things out. The Normal is open from 3 to 9 p.m. on
Tuesday and Thursday, and from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. thenormalbbq.com
The Buffalo-area business Bar-Bill Tavern opened a Rochester location in early July at 1129 Empire Blvd. Styled Bar-Bill East, the Roc location offers chicken wings with dozens of sauce options, beef-on-weck, and pizza, beers, wine and signature cocktails. It’s open 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, but closed Tuesdays. bar-bill.com
The dining options in and around the Rochester Public Market have expanded once more. Flour City Bread Co.’s anticipated restaurant, Public Provisions, opened at 45 Rochester Public Market in late June, and offers a full-service casual gourmet menu of burgers, sandwiches using breads from its bakery, and a full entree menu featuring savory salads and bowls, vegetarian bibimbap, pork tenderloin and short rib steak. It’s open from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesday and from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. 504-4617, public-provisions.com
Laughing Gull Chocolates has developed a bar from a delicate variety of chocolate tree that historically wasn’t considered as commercially viable as hardier varieties, but is emerging in the craft chocolate world. Based in Latin America, only a handful of these pataxte (pa-TASH-tay) trees are in cultivation. Also known as jaguar cacao, the beans are used to make a nutty-floral flavored bar that’s light in color, even at 80% cacao. Laughing Gull works directly with growers to source beans that it has processed into small squares of Jaguar Chocolates, which are available at the shop now.
After more than six decades in business, Grinnell’s Restaurant closed in late July. The Brighton eatery was established by brothers Fred and Al Grinnell and remained in the family until now, most currently owned by the founders’ cousin, David Grinnell, and run by his son Matt. Another restaurant is soon to follow in its place — Richard Reddington (Redd) and Marty O’Sullivan (Marty’s Meats) are taking over the building at 1696 Monroe Ave. — COMPILED BY REBECCA
RAFFERTYIn 2014, Fairport native Colleen left her corporate job in Chicago to pursue a career in the wine industry and flew across the world to work a grape harvest in Adelaide Hills, Australia. There she met Seb, a member of the wine industryrenowned Hardy family, through mutual friends, and the rest is history.
They were married in 2016 and founded Living Roots Wine & Co., a bicontinental winery producing in both New York State and South
Australia, that same year.
In 2017, the duo opened Rochester’s first urban winery on University Avenue – a unique concept that allows Rochesterians to enjoy Living Roots’s selection of wines in a tasting room setting without leaving the city. The thoughtfully made wines showcase the cross-continental range of the brand, highlighting classic varietals from the Finger Lakes and Adelaide Hills, along with more experimental
projects that work with different grapes and techniques to reflect both regions’ changing climates.
Living Roots sources their Finger Lakes grapes from several sites as well as Shale Creek, a vineyard site owned by Colleen’s family, on Keuka Lake. In summer 2020, Living Roots opened an outdoor pop-up tasting room amidst the indoor dining restrictions of the pandemic, and the pop-up has run seasonally each year since. This year, it became the site of their new
tasting room and winery.
While a Finger Lakes winery wasn’t a primary objective for the Hardys when they started the business, it was always something they thought of as a long-term goal.
“We never went into this wanting to lose Rochester,” said Seb. “Moving (production) to the Finger Lakes was always something we were looking to do as well as Rochester if we were ever in a position to expand.”
The opportunity presented itself,
and has come to fruition in the form of a large new winery and tasting room tucked into a hillside in Hammondsport overlooking Keuka Lake.
The tasting room space is airy, open, and minimalist in design, allowing sprawling views of Keuka Lake to shine as the focal point. The tasting room will be open year-round, offering reservations for seated flight tastings, plenty of space for walk-in groups to enjoy glasses of wine at the large central bar or two spacious patios, and ample retail space.
The first floor of the space will house the new winery, complete with 20-foot ceilings and a two-story crush pad for processing grapes. While Living Roots will still utilize the winery in the Rochester location for smaller projects such as their Champagne-method sparkling wines, the majority of production will move to the Finger Lakes winery, which offers closer proximity to the vineyards and more space for their growing operation.
For the Hardys, one of the most
exciting aspects of the new, permanent location is an opportunity to feel more closely tied to the community of wineries in the region.
“We’ve always been on a bit of an island with Finger Lakes wine as a whole,” said Colleen. “We’re a bit of an outlier in Rochester, so I’m excited
to be a bit more connected to the Finger Lakes wine industry.”
The tasting room is slated to open to the public in August. Until then, the outdoor pop-up is open Friday through Sunday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. livingrootswine.com
Answers to this puzzle can be found on page 37
1. Terrier in a 1955 Disney film
6. Defeater of rock in a classic game
11. Minor prophet quoted by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
15. Money, according to a Pink Floyd song
19. Shoot for
20. Seeing red
21. Speck
22. Cubs slugger with over 600 career home runs
23. Disney character with a penchant for rum
25. Famed foe of the Sheriff of Nottingham
27. Biblical garden
28. Lay _____ (bomb on stage)
30. _____ Troi, character on “Star Trek: T.N.G.”
31. “Don’t have _____, man!”
34. Prominent feature on a rooster
36. Marching band instruments
39. Beginning
40. Religious title word that means “ocean”
42. The “A” of AIM
44. Put a spell on
46. Hans Christian Anderson’s transformed protagonist
50. Scam
51. Many a coffee shop sales terminal
55. Hawaiian garland
56. Like a car that wasn’t purchased
57. Fastener with a helical thread
59. University address ender
60. Early smartphone made by Palm
62. Las Vegas trade exhibition where 60-Across was introduced, for short
63. Keep _____ Weird
65. Sign lit up over a studio door
67. Some appetizers
70. Regret
71. Pays off a politician
72. To back down due to fear, colloquially
76. Rank held by Neil Armstrong
before he walked on the moon
79. Storm tracking devices
80. Headed up
82. First wife of Jewish folklore
83. 101
84. Small valley
87. “The more I learn about people, the more I like my _____” (Mark Twain)
88. Bring in
92. Bambi’s aunt
93. Cacophonous
95. Gamer’s accessory
98. Sound heard on the Irish countryside
99. Clothing for paupers
101. School fund-raising grp.
102. Idiomatically ecstatic
104. Campfire sound
107. Lone Star State coll.
108. “Socrate” composer Erik
109. Printer company that bought Dunder Mifflin on “The Office”
112. Quibblers split them
114. October birthstone
117. Look after
118. Internet company whose ads featured a baby voiced by Pete Holmes
120. Big mess
122. Brown, as the outside of a steak
124. Eyes’ laugh lines, poetically
127. Phrase meaning ‘unimportant’, or a hint to the puzzle’s theme
132. Ark. neighbor
133. Renown
134. Come next
135. Up to
136. Super hot
137. Daze
138. Editorial takebacks
139. Bitty
1. _____ Mahal
2. Narrow inlet
3. Movie theatre chain
4. Clear a path
5. Common problem for vets
6. Soft, in music
7. Pirate’s cry
8. Mathematical curve that literally means “throw beside”
9. Alma mater for Aldous Huxley and Boris Johnson
10. Marry again
11. BB shooter
12. Onomatopoetic word in “Old MacDonald”
13. Place to parlay on the ponies: Abbr.
14. Spoke
15. One-named singer with the 2002 #1 hit “Foolish”
16. Hired thugs
17. Together
18. 1978 Peace co-Nobelist
24. Spot for a tat
26. Atomic number 10
29. The kid in “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”
31. Grown-up
32. Basketballer, in old lingo
33. Many a skater’s first trick
35. Gets by
37. Start of the 14th century
38. Trimmed, as a sheep
41. Altar words
43. Bart’s sister
45. Wheel of Fortune purchase
47. Scrooge and Remus, for two
48. Spotless
49. Brainy prefix
52. Grammy winner Bryson
53. French farewell
54. Limp Bizkit vocalist Fred
57. Sneak (away)
58. Like West Virginia among all U.S. states when it comes to education
61. Canadian pianist Peterson
64. Take to court
66. Narrow segment
68. Ohio city that was home to the world’s first rubber factory
69. Stain, as a reputation
71. Tan, cream, and ecru
72. Old-timey town employee with a bell
73. _____-Barbera
74. Collar attachment
75. No. on a business card
77. Shout to a horse
78. Novelist Mario Vargas _____
81. Capital of Qatar
84. Thumb a ride
85. Tennis champ Naomi
86. Sobbed
89. Remove, as mold
90. _____ to go
91. Wearing one’s birthday suit
94. German grandpa
96. One of many for a H.S. valedictorian, probably
97. Profs’ aides
100. Like an underfed pup
102. Not his’n
103. Military necessity
105. Communists, pejoratively 106. Attend
109. Religious offshoots
110. What’s clothed in summer and naked in winter, per an old riddle No Clue
111. Borough that is home to Yankee Stadium
113. Some hotel room amenities
115. Fireplace remnants
116. Sheltered side
119. Flunking marks
121. Calibri, e.g.
123. Border on 125. Nosh
126. Outback bird
128. Disapproving syllable
129. GPS suggestion
130. Loud and continuous sound
131. Sneaky
