Triple Cities Carousel April 2015

CAROUSEL triple cities

april 2015

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vol. 3 issue 3

your local arts and culture rag.

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April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 3

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TRIPLE CITIES CAROUSEL P.O. BOX 2947 BINGHAMTON, NY 13902 (607) 422-2043 Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Christopher M.F. Bodnarczuk Managing Editor Heather Merlis Assistant Editor Ronnie Vuolo Advertising Christopher Bodnarczuk Calendar Guru Ty Whitbeck Staff Writers Krissy Howard, Ilana Lipowicz, Rose Silberman-Gorn, Felicia Waynesboro, Phil Westcott, Ty Whitbeck Contributors Joseph Alston, Jonah Mariano, Anvile Milligan, Paul O’Heron Photography Stephen Schweitzer, Ty Whitbeck, Additional Photos Courtesy of BingPop Layout/Design Chris Bodnarczuk On the Cover Assorted glasswork by Tommy Lynch FOR ADVERTISING: triplecitiesads@gmail.com FOR LETTERS, COMPLAINTS, DEATH THREATS, AND OTHER INQUIRIES: triplecitiescarousel@gmail.com Copyright © 2015 by Triple Cities Carousel. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without prior written consent from the publisher.

editorial...........................................................4 music.................................................................5 fishin’...............................................................15 art.....................................................................16 events calendar..........................................24 theatre and dance......................................27 spring break.................................................35 come on down..............................................37 film...................................................................39 poetry............................................................43 tarotology....................................................44 celebrate.......................................................45 fun stuff........................................................47

4 Vol. 3 Issue 3

editorial.

Apologies are in order.

In last month’s issue, we may have possibly probably definitely stepped a bit too far over the invisible line in printing one of our regular columns, “Sex in the Southern Tier.” Some of the verbiage used may have possibly probably definitely been a bit extreme, and in poor taste. I wish I could excuse the lack of editorial judgement on my part, but I cannot. I take full responsibility for allowing the column to print, and I am truly sorry if any offense was taken.

The goal of “Sex in the Southern Tier” was never to offend, but rather to educate. Sally Ride is a great sex educator (she goes by a different name out there in the real world), and I’m proud to have printed her column for the last several months. I knew going in that there would be challenges in presenting a column about sex, but Carousel has always been a little bit risqué anyway (remember that time we printed a nipple on the cover?), and I believed the column was a great fit for the paper. I still do, to be perfectly honest. And yet, there are quite a few emails in my inbox from readers that do not feel the same way. Alienating our base is most certainly not something I strive to do, and it with that in mind that I must announce that “Sex in the Southern Tier” will no longer be printed in the pages of Carousel.

One of our readers pointed out to me this month that kids read this here paper. I suppose, given that it’s the coolest publication around, on top of being free and being freakin’ everywhere…

I suppose that would seem obvious. But to be honest, I never really thought about it before.

I think it’s great that the next generation is taking an active interest in the arts and culture of the area, it’s just that I always assumed we were writing to their parents. And the tone of the paper reflects that.

But it begs the question, “what kind of paper is Carousel?” I’ve never seen anything quite like it before, myself. On one hand, we’re the go-to guide for arts and culture in the region and a vital community resource. On the other hand, we’re an alternative publication. An indie mag. A creative writing outlet. Art for art’s sake. It’s a little bit twisted, and a little bit subversive. And there’s something for everyone, but quite possibly not everything for some ones.

I do not want to fool anyone. Occasionally we curse. Often we make dick jokes. We are occasionally vaguely political, though almost never overtly so. But we do so with the goal of providing a unique paper that this town’s creative community can call home. If you’re into all that, well, then you’ll probably dig what we do. If you’re not into that, you’ll still dig about half of what we do.

I don’t want to pretend that we’re the perfect paper. Sometimes we print things in bad taste.

Sometimes I forget commas. (Sometimes I tell the printer I’ll have the files in by 5am but still end up finishing twelve hours late. Most of the time). Sometimes it seems like we know what we’re doing, and sometimes we screw up bad.

All in all though, it seems like y’all dig what we do. And we dig the line we stand on. A little establishment. A little out there. I’ll do my best to not stray over the line too far one way or another. And hopefully you’ll stick around for the ride.

That’s probably where the editorial should end. But, I’ve got more space to fill, and there’s news, so if you’ve accepted my apologies and read this far, then you get all the knows there are to know. First things first, as the ad on the right says already, the website is coming! Finally!

Yay! Sometime this month! Who knows when? Only the gods of the internet. But it’s coming.

And it’s awesome. And it most definitely is the biggest step we’ll have taken since that very first issue printed, so that’s cause for celebration.

Second things second, I’d like to announce that our dear Heather Merlis is now being referred to as “Managing Editor,” which means that perhaps things will start to get a little bit more organized around here. She thinks it’ll be fun. I think that within two months, she will learn to hate publish-y things like baseline grids and 4-color black ink just as much as me.

Third things third, I broke down and signed us up for twitter. This is not easy. I hate twitter and I’m far too wordy to be limited to 140 words. Of course, I’m also a millennial, which means I’m hooked on it already. Follow us @carouselrag!

Fourth things fourth, we’ll be doing our first bout of tabling for the year at Muralfest on April 26th. Come visit. We usually have all sorts of free stuff to give away. If I get my act together, we might even have a big spinny-wheel prize thing. Who doesn’t like spinny-wheels? We’ll also be at Chestfest and Big Splash in May. As long as this snow melts before then.

Fifth things fifth… no, there’s no fifth thing.

-Christopher Mark F. Bodnarczuk

April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 5

music.

Provided.

AGAINST ALL ODDS: TOM KEIFER Tom Keifer has had a storied career. As the front man of seminal ‘80s band Cinderella, he is no stranger to the high highs and low lows of other musicians of the era.

After being discovered by Jon Bon Jovi in a bar in Philadelphia, Cinderella went on to sell fifteen million records and rack up some of the decade’s biggest hits, including “You Don’t Know What You’ve Got” and “Nobody’s Fool.” Then the ‘90s hit, and grunge took over. The band was dropped by their label, and Keifer began battling sudden vocal paralysis. He is a conquerer, though, and despite the odds, Cinderella has continued to tour intermittently and Keifer’s voice is perhaps better than ever.

In 2013, Keifer released his long awaited, critically acclaimed solo debut, The Way Life Goes, which relies heavily on the gritty blues sound the musician is known for. It is touring in support of this release that brings him to Binghamton’s Eclipse on April 30th. We touched base with Keifer, who phoned from his home in Nashville, recently, to discuss music and craft. It went like this: uuu Let’s talk about the solo album. It’s got a roots-ier vibe than a lot of your work with Cinderella. How did the songwriting and recording process differ from a Cinderella album? The songwriting process was different in the sense that I co-wrote much of the album. I wrote all of the Cinderella stuff pretty exclusively myself, and I think that that’s the main difference. But, you know, it still comes- that initial inspiration comes from, well, something that just feels real. Whether you’re writing the song yourself, or whether you’re taking it in with someone else and doing a cowrite… it’s still always that thing that hits you when you’re driving down the road or, you never know where you are, but you get inspired by something.

A lot of the stuff I wrote on the record, but a lot I co-wrote with other people, and the inspiration still comes about the same way.

Do you start with a tune or do you start with lyrics? Usually it’s a lyric that’ll hit me just out of nowhere. You could be riding on a plane or- a lot of times travelling inspires it, I think- because you get in a little bit of a hypnotic place. I’ve heard a lot of other writers say that, too. The motion of travelling in the car or on the tour bus or whatever, staring out the windowsomething just kind of opens up.

In terms of the roots-ier thing, Cinderella really progressed even from the first record, pretty dramatically to the second one. With the second, there were a lot of organic instruments and the record starts up with “Bad Seamstress Blues” on the dobro and harmonica. That roots thing started on the second Cinderella record and it just progressed more and more. I think it came about getting more in touch with producing the songs the way we wanted them to get done in the first place, whereas the first record was a little more of a slick, flavor-of-the-day ‘80s sound. We quickly started moving away from that, and the productions became roots-ier, but really the writing was always blues based melodies: just lyrics about everyday life and struggle and falling in and out of love, that kind of thing. It was never really a metal

CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

AN INTERVIEW WITH CINDERELLA’S LEGENDARY FRONTMAN

by Chris Bodnarczuk

6 Vol. 3 Issue 3

TOM KEIFER CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

vibe in terms of the writing. Even starting with the early Cinderella record, really, but the production leaned that way on the first record. Heartbreak Station was probably the most organic record Cinderella made, and certainly the most organic record of that time.

I don’t think there’s any reverb on that record [laughs]. We wanted to get away from that immediately. It never felt right for the songs we were doing.

So, fast forward to the solo record. All the things I learned making the Cinderella records obviously I tried to carry over into what I was doing, and it was hard. We went through seventeen mix engineers making the solo record- because most of them associate me with that sound, so they were all trying to make it sound like a big, slick, bombastic ‘80s record, and I was like, ‘neeexxttt’. We want the record dry, we want it in your face, you know. That was one of the most challenging parts of making a solo record. I would say at least four out of the nine years we worked on The Way Life Goes was probably mixing.

You’ve had some well-known and devastating issues with your vocal cords. How did you react when you were told you’d never sing again? And how the hell does your voice sound so good on the new album? The first thing was denial. I didn’t get that diagnosis immediately. I woke up one day and literally overnight my voice just went away. And it didn’t have to do with strain or anything. I could rest it for weeks and it would still just kind of break and crack. So that began a process of going to see doctor after doctor.

They’d look down my throat- looking for nodes or polyps or things you can see physically- on the vocal cords. That’s normally what happens to a singer’s voice. And that’s what I thought I had. But I didn’t have that. So I kept going to these doctors and they’d say ‘you don’t have nodes, you don’t have polyps, your vocal cords look pretty good, we don’t know why you can’t sing.’ And I started thinking I was crazy. I went through that for a year and a half, going to specialists and being told there’s nothing wrong with my voice.

And finally I went to a voice doctor who performed a neurological test. And when he ran that he found I had a partial paralysis of one of my vocal cords. That’s not something that’s easily spotted. So it’s something that’s not curable. There’s no medical cure like a surgery or medicine that can correct paralysis, so most people don’t recover from it. I don’t know anyone who has except for me.

He told me that I’d never sing again, and the initial reaction was denial. I wanted him to be wrong. So for another couple of years I kept going to different doctors, looking for an answer that was curable, you know, to prove the other guy wrong. But it turns out he was right.

So what’d you do? The only prayer you have to correct that condition is to retrain the voice. You have to figure out how to make that vocal cord act the same as the one on the other side- because music is all about symmetry. So you’ve got two vocal cords, and if one’s not vibrating the same as the other one, it just sounds like chaos. That started the process of years of working with coaches and trying all kinds of things- it’s not an exact science.

based, loud guitar, screaming vocals thing, so it didn’t make sense to me, the ‘oh this is so different.’ They looked different, and that’s what the big to-do was about it, in terms of the industry. Out with the old, in with the new. It was more of a fashion thing, really. And the irony of it was I think that the look of ‘90s grunge became a bigger fashion statement and pose than what we were doing, because you could walk into a mall and buy-

No one can say ‘just do this every day and you’ll be fine. You’ve got to experiment. I’ve worked with every vocal coach on the planet.

You take bits and pieces from each one. Over the course of years and years and years, I’ve strengthened it and trained it to the point that now, on a good night, I’m probably stronger than I was before this happened… There’s mornings when I wake up and ‘oh, kind of hoarse today, don’t know if I can sing tonight,’ but the routine I’ve come up with really helps to reel it all back in. I’m just glad we figured it out, because I’m still doing what I love to do.

Ripped jeans and Doc Martens? Yeah, you could buy all that stuff in a mall. It became so mainstream, and that became kind of the irony of what happened, you know?

I’m not putting them down. Every decade has a look. But it was funny, because it was kind of a rebellion to what we were doing, but then it became even more mainstream and acceptable than anything. You could never walk into Macy’s and buy anything that I was wearing. In that sense, we were outside the fringe (laughs). But it is what it is, and I loved a lot of that music. I have a saying that I think that the music industry would benefit from: ‘the music industry would be better served if they listened to music with their ears, not their eyes.’

Do you remember the first song you ever learned on guitar? There were a lot of older teenagers around when I was a kid.

I actually still had a toy guitar- I didn’t know how to play, but I’d go hang out with them in their garages and they’d be playing the Stones and really cool ‘60s and ‘70s rock. I remember them playing the riff from “Sunshine of Your love,” and one of the guys in the neighborhood taught me how to play that. Da-da-da-dumda-dum-dum-da-dum-dum. And that’s the first riff I ever learned on guitar. I remember hearing that and I thought “that’s so cool!”

And I was the little pesky kid that would hang out in their garages and listen to them playtake it all in. And one of them one day showed me that riff, and then my mom got me lessons and I was off and running, so…

It’s no secret that grunge ushered out the era of hair metal very abruptly.

Do you have a grudge against grunge?

I love Nirvana. I thought Kurt Cobain was a brilliant writer, singer, musician. There was a lot of stuff from that era, just like any erabands that I liked. I loved Soundgarden. I loved Nirvana. And then there was stuff that I didn’t care for. I try not to judge music by genres or decades- I know a lot of people do that, but I either like it or I don’t. And there were bands that came along that may have knocked our genre out of reign, if you will. I still liked ‘em. To me it just sounded like rock and roll. A lot of the grunge stuff that I likedtake Soundgarden for instance- you’ve got a high screaming vocalist that was probably influenced by a lot of the same people I was: Robert Plant, Steve Marriot, Janis Joplin.

They’ve got rocking guitars and rhythm, you know what I mean? It didn’t sound that different. The lyrics were a little bit darker, but to me it just sounded like rock and roll.

The big to-do from the ‘80s to the ‘90s was more of a fashion statement. I didn’t think the music really changed that much. There were a lot of fluffy things that happened in the 80sbands that got signed maybe on the heels of us, and some other earlier bands that came out and started that whole thing. And I think maybe there was a big difference between those bands and the bands that came out in the ‘90s. But Cinderella was always a blues-

What are your thoughts on the current state of the industry? I think the industry is in a lot of trouble. I think that the rock formats are really suffering due to too narrow of a style and a sound. I don’t hear the dynamics and the variety in sounds and instrumentation in rock today that I did in the ‘70s when I was growing up, or in the ‘80s when we were out… where you could hear a ballad, you could hear a mid-tempo, you could hear something that was just a piano. Different instrumentations.

Harmonicas. Saxophones. You name it. Rock used to be everything- all of these things- and now it’s one sound. If I listen to a modern rock station, it all sounds the same. And I think that that makes the format suffer. And the formats themselves are controlling that. They’re very narrow in what they will play, so it’s kind of eating itself. I think those rock formats don’t sell a lot of records.

The flipside of that is that the Top 40 still sells and moves a lot of records. Top 40 isn’t something I’d normally listen to, but I’ve been gravitating a lot more with it lately. Between a lot of the stuff I don’t like, there’s some really brilliant bands. I love Imagine Dragons.

I love Bruno Mars. They’re being played on top 40 stations, but they have a color, they have dynamics, and they have interesting instrumentation. When you listen to Top 40, it ranges from four on the floor bands to Imagine Dragons to acoustic stuff to Bruno Mars to old school R&B. It has everything.

It has saxophones, and it has gospel vocals, and it embraces female front people and male front people. It has pianos. It has acoustic guitars. It’s everything from electronic to hip-hop to acoustic and organic. Most of the songwriting is pretty amazing. There’s some that I don’t care for. But that format embraces everything, and it’s more interesting and inspiring to listen to, and it still has an impact and it still sells records. So that’s my take on the industry right now.

Do you feel that the fact that we find a need to compartmentalize stuffthat hair metal and grunge aren’t just

called “rock and roll”- do you feel like that’s detrimental to music. Does it play a part in why everything on the modern rock stations sounds the same?

Compartmentalizing, and narrowizing- I don’t think that’s even a word- is a killer. Because you lose the crossover. I’ve seen the same mistake in the industry for years. Even back when we put out Heartbreak Station, we had a couple of tracks that were very much on the country side. I actually suggested in a board meeting- one of the board meetings at one of the big fucking record companies- I said ‘why don’t we release this track to country radio?’ and they looked at me like I was an alien. And I said, ‘well, The Stones had a Number One hit with “The Girl with the Faraway Eyes.” They looked at me like I was nuts, and I said ‘You people are all clueless.’ I said, ‘If you could borrow a police car and go and drive around and pull people over and see what’s in their CD box, you’d see everything from Garth Brooks to Metallica. I guarantee it.’ And they looked at me like I was nuts. But it’s true.

The industry still hasn’t figured that out, with the exception of pop. And I think that the country format is very smart, too. They’re embracing rock. They’re embracing pop, and crossing over into that world. And back and forth. And there’s much more embracing of different kinds of music going on in that area.

And Top 40 is embracing alt. And there’s a lot going on in alt, as I said. Rock is the most narrow, and the end result of that- the proof’s in the pudding, because the format’s having problems. So to answer your question, departmentalizing really hurts the industry.

People like to listen to more than one thing. I listen to everything from jazz to metal to you name it. I listen to all of it.

Cinderella’s drummer, Fred Coury, grew up in the next town over from Binghamton. Have you spent any time in the area? We played there many times.

Fred was always the toast of the town. He’d have the biggest guest list. I’m expecting that when we come through, Fred will probably text me and say “there’s a few people I need you to get in.”

He still owes a friend of mine $20 from 1983. I bet!

I hate to be cliché and ask what to expect from the live show, but since everyone knows you from Cinderella rather than this new solo project, it seems like a valid question. The live show isn’t a whole lot different than what people would already expect to see from me.

It’s a real high energy rock show. We do all the Cinderella favorites. We do a bunch of stuff from the new record. There’s a point where we do some acoustic stuff. It’s a seven piece band.

Vocals are amazing. It’s high energy rock and roll. A lot of sweat. And we leave everything on the stage. uuu Tom Keifer takes the stage at Eclipse, 65 Front St in Binghamton, on Thursday, April 30th. Nineball and John Molina open. Tickets are $30/adv, $35/dos, and are available at Music City in Vestal. For more info on Tom Keifer, check out tomkeifer.com

April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 7

SIX TAKES WITH TAKE 6: AN INTERVIEW WITH GRAMMY WINNING VOCALIST CLAUDE McKNIGHT

BY HEATHER MERLIS

Claude McKnight is what some people would call ambitious, having founded the a cappella group Take 6 in 1980, during his freshman year of college. Since that time, Take 6 has performed with some of the most notable musicians of our time, collected numerous awards (including 10 Grammys), and been inducted into the Gospel Hall of Fame. Carousel spoke with McKnight the day he left for Cincinnati to kick off their 25th anniversary tour, which stops in Binghamton this month.

your voices, your arrangements, and your group, and play to these strengths. What can often happen with a cappella groups is that there’s sameness, where no one can differentiate you from the other groups. Find what is unique about yourselves, in all of the styles that you like, and put that into your music. I think Take 6 does that. And the Pentatones do that really well.

uuu

You have been performing together for such a long time, what stands out to you in your reflections? We’ve been very blessed, very fortunate, to record with a lot of great artists over the years- everyone from Stevie Wonder to Quincy Jones to Ella Fitzgerald before she passed. We’ve been one of those groups who have, creatively, been able to do everything we’ve wanted to do.

Please give us the brief version of your musical journey. I started out learning from my parents and my grandparents, who were all very musical. We lived in Buffalo, New York, where my grandfather led the church choir that my mother sang in. I knew, seeing him, that I would want to have a group of my own. I also played trombone from a very young age- fourth grade- and I played in a jazz ensemble.

So my ear was in tune from playing and singing.

How has faith served in your musical life? Faith and the love of God is the basis and foundation of our lives, and of this group, which was formed at a Christian college. One of the interesting things about being together for this long is that we have been tested, and been able to experience what faith is really about over the years- all together, individually. I think that is a testament to knowing how, and why, we do what we do. When you’re living experientially in your faith, it makes it real.

What was it like, forming the group in college? Oakwood University, in Huntsville, Alabama, has a really rich heritage of a cappella groups, so it was fairly easy. We started with four guys. We knew we wanted to do something different than what was being done, so we found two more guys- who could hear that kind of six-part harmony, which borders on jazz harmony- and formed a sextet. Everybody in our group is in tune with jazz- both traditional and contemporary style.

Could you please talk about the way that music connects to God, and to all aspects of life? In my experience, if God is my foundation, everything else sprouts from that. My music, my creativity… how I deal with people. Whatever you are is going to color each endeavor. Especially in my music, God is there, so it’s going to come out. It’s very simple for me.

It was a really cool experience, in the sense that the things I was hearing in my head- I now had a laboratory to try these things out. It was really exciting to do this as a hobby in our spare time. It was really organically wonderful.

There are a lot of college a cappella groups out there, you guys seem to be role models for them. Do you have any words of advice? Find what is unique about

A lot of people may not realize that when you’re singing a cappella, every part is as important as every other part, because nothing is backing you but your voices. If one person’s off, you’re all off. It’s not so much about your voices, than that all of your ears are in tune.

uuu

Provided.

Take 6 comes to the Osterhout Theater of Binghamton University’s Anderson Center, on Wednesday, April 1st at 7:30pm.

Tickets are $30 for adults, $25 for senior citizens, and $15 for students, and may be purchased by calling (607) 777-ARTS or online at binghamton.edu/ anderson-center.

8 Vol. 3 Issue 3 Provided.

CLICK. CLICK. BOOM.

Chris Bodnarczuk Editor-in-Chief

What can be said about Saliva that hasn’t been said about Nickelback a hundred times?

before sores develop on the interior of their eardrums, rupturing almost immediately to make way for a deluge of warm, crimson blood that trickles down the side of their face at alarming speeds. uuu

Such is the question that plagues me late one night as I Youtube my way back to eighth grade. My pubescent self would be ashamed that such a refresher course is necessarythere was a time when I knew Saliva’s music.

There was a time when I could recite every word to “Always” by heart, accompanied by some killer Drop D air guitar solos.

Listen #1: I guess this isn’t so terrible. Kind of catchy, actually. “Click Click Boom.” This is kind of ironic. I think this song is about how everybody hates on nu-metal bands.

And here I am, hating on a nu-metal band. Is that ironic? I’d rather be listening to Alanis Morissette than this. But I guess it’s not as bad as I was expecting.

I am not proud. If memory serves correct, that time period also saw me buying Hot Topic out of spiked things on a near-weekly basis and carving words like “fuck” into my skin with Exacto-knives. All in all, not exactly an era marked by great decisions.

Listen #2: No bleeding in the ears yet. Click.

Click. I did press repeat, right? I honestly can’t tell whether this is the same song or a different one. Oh, there’s the chorus. Yeah, it’s the same song. Boom. I don’t get where the “click click boom” part comes in. Like a gun?

Is this dude threatening me with a gun? I don’t get it. First, you’re all like “I’m not like you think I’m like,” but then you’re all like “click click boom.” And that’s exactly what I expect you to be all like. So what the hell, dude?

It has been over a decade since eighth grade, and I haven’t listened to nu-metal since. Or cut myself. And yet, here I am, listening to Saliva.

I can’t help but feel an overwhelming urge to shove sharp things into myself. Anything to make the music stop. Just make it stop.

It would just be speeding up the inevitable, anyway. If I keep listening, it’s only a matter of time before I start bleeding out of my ears.

I decide to test this theory. I am a journalist, you know. Anything for a story. If the people want to know how many times I can listen to “Click Click Boom” on repeat before my ears start bleeding, well then who am I to deny the people an answer?

The answer is ten. Ten times. A person can only listen to “Click Click Boom” ten times

Listen #3: I think there’s only two power chords and a little screechy thing with the guitar through the whole song. That’s it. And this dude rapping about shooting me. Or not.

I don’t even know. Who is this dude, anyway?

Oh. He’s not even in the band anymore. I hate when bands try to keep being a band when their frontman leaves. So he left the band because… wait, because of Jesus? Really? This guy’s a born again Christian?

Listen #4: Didn’t I say this wasn’t so terrible just a few minutes ago? I was wrong. This is really terrible. My eye is starting to twitch.

That can’t be good. And the music video- aww that’s cute. It’s like a mosh pit love story.

You know, other than the clicking and the booming, the lyrics seem to be downright positive. Homeboy sounds so angry, but then he’s all like, “I write songs and my mommy’s always right.” And Jesus, apparently. Jesus is always right, too.

Listen #5: Now I remember this singer guy!

Josey Scott! He did that song from Spiderman.

With the dude from Nickelback! Of course!

Wasn’t he also married to that girl from that other band? Oh, no. That was that other guy from that other other band who married that girl from that other band. Why does it all sound so alike? Wait, so he’s not even in the band anymore? I’m going to devote this whole freaking article to a guy that’s not even in the band anymore? Who sings now?

Listen #6: Okay, so before I listen to this godforsaken song a sixth time, I should probably check out the new lead singer. I guess he’s okay. Like, he’s not any better or worse than any other nu-metal singer, so that’s a start. It must be rough, becoming the frontman of an established band. Like, the band sucked already, but they’re just going to blame you for making it worse, regardless of whether you did or not. Don’t worry new guy- I won’t pick on you. You don’t have the creepy chin strap beard that your predecessor had. Given the choice, I’ll always make fun of the guy with the chin strap.

Listen #7: I’m feeling nauseous. For how long can this go on? I mean, I want to like it, I really do. I rocked the hell out to this in middle school. Actually, I think I received my first handjob- in my neighbor’s basementwhile this played in the background. Every handjob could use a little saliva. Click click

boom. Well, just like handjobs- you grow up and realize that there are so many more enjoyable alternatives.

Listen #8: I totally had this CD. I bought it with allowance money. Then I tried selling it at a garage sale a few years later, and nobody wanted it. I guess rap-rock enthusiasts don’t spend their weekends on the garage sale circuit.

Listen #9: You know in A Clockwork Orange when they make Alex watch all that awful stuff and he can’t look away? I think they did the same thing to the kid in Lost- but who really knows what the hell happened in Lost anyway.

This is like that. This is like being forced into the damn Ludovico Technique. Except not, because that was supposed to be a cure, and nu-metal never cured any- Wait! Wait! What’s that?

Listen #10: Blood. Sweet, sweet blood.

Gushing from my ears. The first verse isn’t even over. I’m bleeding. Everywhere.

The blood is clogging my ears. I can’t hear anything. I can’t hear anything at all. The music. It’s over. It’s over! Glorious silence! I think I need to go to the hospital. uuu Saliva plays Binghamton on Friday, April 25th, at Eclipse Nightclub. It might make your ears bleed. Local favorites Mobday open. They’re actually pretty damn good, and most certainly won’t make your ears bleed. Other openers include Break of Aggression, Stone Soul Foundation, and Fist Print. Eclipse Nightclub is located at 65 Front Street, Binghamton, inside of that hotel that used to be a Days Inn but now doesn’t seem to have a name.

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RECORD STORE DAY 2015:

April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 11

TY’S TOP PICKS

We love vinyl here at Carousel, which means Record Store Day is pretty much like Christmas. We tasked our own TY WHITBECK with telling us what’s what in the bins this year...

It’s that time of year again, kiddos! Record Store Day is on the horizon and all I can smell is hot vinyl being pressed with some really great music!

Record Store Day is April 18th nationwide, with a couple of shops in the area participating in the fun. Visit Music City (3100 Vestal Pkwy East) and Sound-Go-Round (305 Vestal Pkwy East) and for a bunch of limited edition material with in-store performances, giveaways, and snacks!

For the full list of special releases, visit recordstoreday.com, and be ready to drool at some of the stuff that you can possibly get your hands on. See you among the crates! Here are a few that I will be picking up: Polaris: Music from The Adventures of Pete & Pete If you came of age in the ‘90s like I did, you can surely resonate with how freaking awesome this is! Polaris is the “fictional” band of the 1993 Nickelodeon TV show The Adventures of Pete & Pete, and they provide most of the show’s soundtrack and theme song “Hey Sandy.” They were featured in the episode “A Hard Day’s Pete,” in which a music loathing Little Pete overhears Polaris playing the song “Summerbaby.” It would haunt him as his first favorite song. Just so the hook would not be forgotten, he starts a band (called The Blowholes) to keep it in his memory. For the first time ever, since its release in ’99, the Pete & Pete soundtrack is being pressed to 12” vinyl. It also happens to be Polaris’ first and only recorded album.

Metallica: No Life ‘til Leather Since nostalgia is a running theme with Record Store Day. Taking a gigantic step back in time to 1982, before Cliff Burton had even been introduced, Metallica’s No Life ‘til Leather is what started it all and led to their first record deal. The seven track EP features the rawest versions of “Hit the Lights,” “Motorbreath,” and “Seek & Destroy” ever recorded. Lars actually sounds like he knows how to play drums! And it’s being released on cassette tape, just like it was originally.

J Dilla: Fuck the Police [Disclaimer: The views expressed on this recording are solely those of the artist and in no way does Triple Cities Carousel encourage or condone the violence against law officials.] J Dilla is as much of a household name in the founding of hip hop as The Stones are to rock and roll. His catalogue spans galaxies and his poetry the same, but his most anthemic and questionably most aggressive release, Fuck the Police has been reissued for the first time since it went out of print fifteen years ago. It’s ironically pressed on a badge-shaped 7” picture vinyl, with the vocals and instrumental tracks on the b-side.

Jurassic 5: Quality Control “The Wood Box” J5 is like warm butter over biscuits on a Saturday morning. From their underground to mainstream following in hip hop, to vocal prowess with unmatchable flow, Jurassic 5 is just smooth. Their music is timeless, their lyrics are uplifting and it just invites a party wherever they’re played. So, for you true fans, their first album, Quality Control is being released as a 4LP (wooden) box set with an engraved J5 on the front, and a 24 page liner notes book with photos and contributions from the band.

St. Paul & the Broken Bones: Live from the Alabama Theatre These guys. Wow. I was absolutely speechless when I first heard them. It was on recording and I had a certain vision for what they looked like and an earlier time period in which it was recorded but that wasn’t the case at all. Lead singer Paul Janeway lays on a thick layer of soul and stage presence that wails, like, if James Brown and Al Green were surrogate fathers to a kid that grew up hanging around jazz clubs. Janeway is backed by a band that is so dynamically on point with keys, a three piece horn section and your backline rhythm section that bring the group full circle. If you like high energy soul music that you can shake a foot to, you’re going to want this red, Alabama-shaped, 12” vinyl.

SPOTTED IN BINGHAMTON: EAST COAST BIGFOOT 12 Vol. 3 Issue 3

Ilana Lipowicz Staff Writer

There’s a new band making the rounds in town. The sound is new, but the faces are familiar.

East Coast Bigfoot came together when singer-songwriter Devinne Meyers wanted to fill out her solo music and do something bigger and louder, and drummer Ty Whitbeck assured her that there was nothing stopping her. The musical coupling is now joined by bassist Stephen Schweitzer, who dug their sound so much upon hearing them live that he had to ask to join in. The three now hope to add their own unique edge to the local music scene that has so inspired them.

Beyond bringing music to people’s ears, it is important to the group that to they are contributing something original and bringing something new to the table. “That’s where my heart is,” says Stephen. “One reason I wanted to play with you guys.”

Devinne has an uncanny ability to evoke the voices of her influences, which range from Ellie Goulding to the Dixie Chicks, from P!nk to Rachael Price of Lake Street Dive. At times in her songs you can pick out these artists’ tones and inflections distinctly, but it’s mostly her own special blend guided by swooping and diving melodies. Ty brings another set of influences to the group. “I listen to funk and soul and early rock and roll, and I think that comes out a lot,” he says. The quality they try to emulate from the artists and genres they admire is timelessness.

The band (with former bassist Gabriel Plaine) first performed in February at the Old Union Hotel. For Devinne, who started out as a soloist singing and playing guitar into a camera for her YouTube channel, one of the best things about playing with a band is playing live and playing loud. She played gigs as a soloist, but she found she was limited in her range. “It’s just softer; I wanted to do more loud head-bangers.”

She released a solo album in 2013, which she produced by herself in her apartment. Titled “Unrefined,” it feels naked not only in its simplicity– a girl and her acoustic guitar– but in the thoughtful, longing feeling of the lyrics and the fluttering vocals. It is soft but rich in variety, and the way the melodies build upon each other makes it easy to imagine the songs lending themselves to compositions of greater volume.

Devinne says that the attitude that allowed her to create the album all on her own is the same one that’s been moving East Coast Bigfoot forward: “I don’t care what people say- I’m just going to do it.” Her solo album is integrated into the band’s sound, in that it provided some material to start with as they write new songs. But according to Ty, the band has built up the material so much that, “although we still play those songs, they don’t sound anything like them.” It’s true: the addition of drum and bass have brought out the blues in Devinne as well as they had for powerful vocalists like Alanis Morisette.

Ty and Stephen both live and work in Binghamton. Devinne grew up in Binghamton and now lives in Ithaca where she works at a café. The trip is no big trouble for her, though.

“I’m here anyway, because all my friends are down here… and a lot of shows, and this guy-” she points at Ty. Ty also plays for the Lutheran Skirts and the Zydeco Po’ Boys, but he was looking for a new project and found one here.

Ty got his start with music when he was little.

“I would bang on pots and pans. I would imitate Whitesnake. My cousin Joe had a drumset and I could barely sit on the stool,” he says. Devinne was involved in music in school. “I’m classically trained on the flute, which one day I need to just break out and play some Jethro Tull. I played in marching band, and I was in symphony orchestra, and I played piccolo.”

As for Stephen, he has a bunch of experience playing with bands, and he’s also recognized as a photographer, both professionally and creatively. You may know him from his recent project, Lucem Picturae, a series of light paintings he creates live using long exposures and video projection loops. He’s the most recent addition to the band, but he’s known Ty and Devinne long enough that the chemistry is already there. Both he and Ty are beginning to add some songs they’ve written to the set list.

They’re an eclectic mix of people who differ enough from each other musically and as people that their fusion creates something unique. Ty says, “Our scene here is so diverse, but at the same time we’re all wanting to see each other succeed and collaborate and do some stuff that nobody’s ever heard before.”

East Coast Bigfoot plays Cyber Café West in Binghamton with Milkweed on 4/1, Antonio’s in Endicott on 4/11, and Callahan’s Sportsman’s Club in Binghamton on 4/25.

Check ‘em out on Facebook.

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April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 15

fishin’.

FLY FISHIN’, FOLK SINGIN’, AND A BIT OF ZEN: HELL OR HIGH WATER

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS Friday, 4/10

Joe Alston. Photo Provided.

7pm-12am Simms Hell or High Water Kickoff Party (River Run Restaurant) 9pm-? Live Music w/ Milkweed (River Run Restaurant)

HELL OR HIGH WATER

Joseph Alston Contributing Writer Winter. Ungodly persistent winter.

Stupid doodoo winter. What does one do with all this damn snow? Wiper blades suck, I’m constantly tired from shivering, me and my old lady aren’t even talking. And the walls are getting closer. The house is shrinking!?

NYSEEEEEGGGGGGG! Fishing videos. That’s right, I said it, fishing videos. To be more precise, fly fishing videos on Youtube. This feeds me like beer after work.

Like sex after church. Like history before war.

Like fishing before you can go fishing.

If you frequent some of the more dive-y dive bars in Binghamton, perhaps on a shameful early weekday, you might find me after one of my more bizarre sets of indulgent folk music, preaching the mighty gospel of Fly Fishing.

A strange glint will get in my eye. I will make sweeping motions with my arms and call it ‘hauling.’ Then I’ll make even wilder gestures, flailing my arms higher, and you will hear me say ‘double-hauling’. I will begin to seduce you into conversation with whiskey and long descriptions of the life cycles of Caddis. You will begin to get excited and not know exactly why. I will bring up the river in your mind, and suddenly, the bar floor is clear and moving; the one with the boots and the sexy eyes is now a silver trout; I’m there whispering in your right ear over your shoulder, telling you to “cast, you fool, cast!”

The next morning, as you sludge your way through coffee and someone else’s life, you will remember that feeling of excitement in my voice, that image of the river in your mind, that mixture of science and art that spoke to your gut just like your first kiss. Your first

memory of being alone in the woods. The first time you remembered who you were and changed. This is the birth of passion. The creation of every great fly fisherman.

And you rush to the river, the great and ever flowing river of modernity…. Google. It is here that you discover the hidden gem in our little corner of the world: The Catskills.

Fly fishing was born long ago in a place far, far away. Earliest man- hungry and artful, watching big fish eat in a clear stream- cut a slender limb from a nearby tree and crossed his eyes as a green fly landed on his nose.

Fast forward to England after some war, and elegant country gentlemen are tying gorgeously ornate flies out of feathers, and thread onto metal hooks, while drinking black tea and taking over the world. Fast forward again, past yet another war and over a great ocean, and find yourself half an hour from downtown Binghamton, in a tiny town on the banks of the Delaware River.

The West Branch of the Delaware is the birth scene of modern Fly Fishing. American Fly Fishing. Just like the blues, a young man stripped away the ornate colors of Europe- the excess fluff of the past- and created a simpler, elegant way to connect with the fish of our new world.

The Catskills are littered with the beauty of long, slender, free flowing rivers, with names that remind us we are not native to this land: The Esopus, the Willowemoc, the Beaverkill, the Neversink, and of course, the Delaware. This small range of mountainsand its rivers, streams and creeks- are known throughout the world for the finest Fly Fishing to be had anywhere on our not-sogreen-anymore earth. Its trout are unbearably intelligent. Its waters are undesirably cold.

Its tiny towns are provincial in the hick-est

sense (meaning Japanese men with cameras and $3000 fly rods stare at white American men with no teeth and $100 rods, while the worldly trout smartly swim past their floating flies.) I say ‘awesome.’ If America is great, it is because of its ingenuity, art, and the grand majesty of its nature. The Catskills are that.

Today, Fly Fishing has become an international phenomenon that has given birth to one of the greatest and most diverse subcultures in the world. In its best form, it is one big family of misfits, radicals and millionaires who all idolize the guy without a bank account but with, quite obviously, the best cast. This family has homes all over the world, made up of wood, good whisky, brewed beer, fancy cigars, rusty trucks, drift boats and dreams that could be realized every morning right at dawn. One of those homes is a mere half an hour away from our dear city of Binghamton. Its name is West Branch Angler.

And yes, it is the shit.

On April 10th and 11th, West Branch Angler will be hosting its annual Film and Beer Festival, Hell or High Water. The best names in the industry will be there: Orvis, Patagonia, Simms, Hatch, Sage, Scott. There will be beer.

There will be music. There will be the best guides in the world drinking at the bar. There will be beginner classes for the uninitiated at ungodly hours in the morning. They will give away free gear. The touring film series will entice you with slow motion fish porn. You will meet dreamers, wild women, and men who know more about stoneflies then they do about their own wives. You will discover passion, nature, and- more than anything- a new family. All rooted in the best pursuit of all, the pursuit of the fleeting and indescribable.

And yes, I will be there. Playing songs. With Milkweed. Singing about loneliness, family, love and fishing.

Saturday, 4/11

8:30am-10:30am Women’s Only Fly Fishing 101 Class (Fly Shop) 9am-4pm Fly Fishing Presentations (Trout Room at River Run Restaurant 10:30am-12:30pm Co-ed Fly Fishing 101 Session #1 (Trout Room at River Run Restaurant) 11am-2pm Lunch (River Run Restaurant) 1:30pm-3:30pm Co-ed Fly Fishing 101 Session #2 (Trout Room at River Run Restaurant) 11am-1pm Women’s Fly Fishing Showcase (TBD) 1pm-5pm Hell or High Water Brewfest (Brewfest Tent) 1pm-5pm Hell or High Water Jam (Brewfest Tent) 7pm-9:30pm F3T Fly Fishing Film Tour (Trout Room at River Run Restaurant) Note: Some listed events may require registration and/or fees. Learn more at think-spring.com

Hell or High Water 2015 takes place at West Branch Angler Resort, 115 Faulkener Rd, Hancock, NY. For more info on the festival, check out think-spring.com. For more info on West Branch Angler, check out westbranchresort.com.

16 Vol. 3 Issue 3

SHATTERING PERCEPTIONS:

TOMMY LYNCH OF ROLLING FIRE GLASSWORKS A PROFILE BY PHIL WESTCOTT

Tommy Lynch. Photo by Stephen Schweitzer. Opposite: Glass by Tommy Lynch.

April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 17

art.

Glassblowing is undoubtedly an art unto itself. Many may not appreciate the hours of work that go into creating a vase or a pendant, but we in the Southern Tier know better.

We were raised in the shadows of Corning, and we likely took field trips as children to the Museum of Glass. We see the beauty and skill in creating even the simplest of Corningware designs. Nonetheless, it is easy to forget the craftsmanship in the things we take for granted every day. The fancy vase we bought Mom for Christmas. The pendant necklaces we picked up at the craft fair. The more “functional” pieces of glass that have become a staple of the counterculture.

Enter Tommy Lynch, the Endicott- based glassblower and proprietor of Rolling Fire Glassworks, on Nanticoke Avenue. He specializes in making and selling some of the highest end functional glass in existence.

While he is well known for intricate pendant designs and the such, his specialty is in highend adult oriented sculpture, and his store serves as a sort of living museum of that particular form of art, containing not just his artwork, but that of many of the friends and colleagues he has collected throughout the years.

Lynch, who was born in Vestal, honed his skills while living in Colorado. After a decade, he returned home to open Rolling Fire Glassworks. A few years ago, Rolling Fire operated both the studio and retail store out of a one-room storefront, though they recently expanded- these days, Tommy’s got a full working studio across the street from the lime-green store in Endicott. This separation has allowed for the hosting of occasional glass workshops, even for children, who are not allowed to enter the retail location; as well as the expansion of the already wide selection of curated artisan pieces in the store itself.

On a recent winter’s day, I arrive at Tommy’s studio and

workspace. The 1200 degree furnace in the corner provides some welcome heat as we discuss some of the finer points to the art of glassblowing:

glass. We just bought new equipment- a small furnace crucible that heats up to about 2400 degrees. We can liquefy glass inside of it, and dip into it. We’ll pull out tubing, and create layers that way.

uuu How did you get started blowing glass?

I worked in a storefront much like [Rolling Fire] and met glass blowers; became friends with them. It felt like something I wanted to do. I bought a catalogue of equipment and got everything a friend circled. I bought a book and went from there. I was almost a year on the flame when Jason Lee... I would go over and watch him make 100 pieces or whatever he had to make, and sometimes he would show me how do to things hands on. Jason is my new mentor. He’s a very big name in our industry, and he’s been taking me under his wing and show me higher level stuff.

Sounds like there’s a lot of camaraderie.

There is. It’s up to me how I present myself, and it’s up to other glass blowers to let you in.

We really don’t care- techniques are passed from one to the other.

Do you still travel to Colorado? We haven’t traveled in a while, but we’re hoping to go out soon. I have a family, and Jason [Lee] has a family, so it works out that way.

I can go work with Jason, and do a nine to five. I think that’s another reason why we’re so close- we both have families, and taking care of them is at the top of our list. Glassblowing is what gets us there, and we work hard at what we do.

You have an obvious passion for this art. If two people are willing to just take you under their wing, it says something about your drive. Glass-blowing has taken over my life, outside of my kids and family. Other than them, I don’t think there’s anything in my life that I care about more than

So it’s real hot in there. It’s the devil in there. The devil resides in that box. It’s about twice the heat on our larger furnace.

a rocket-ship on it. “These are for my son- he has a space thing going on... He uses these as his coins. They’re out here because I was just doing a demonstration for some local kids.

They come in for kind of an art class [to the studio, not the shop]. I walk them through what I do, and a lot of what I make in front of them stays here to show other kids.’ uuu

uuu I ask Tommy to take me through the process of making one of his beautiful double layered pendants. Each pendant is handcrafted by either Lynch or one of his three apprentices.

The ‘double layer’ applies to the design, but don’t let that fool you. There are actually four layers of glass, each heated, cooled, reheated, and worked so many times that by the end of the walk-through, my mind is thoroughly blown by how much work goes into such a small, beautiful piece. “The first step is the inner tube, this black and white tube,” he says as he holds up a double layered glass tube, one clear and one layered in intricate lines of black and white. “I stack another laying of tubing over this, and the clear tubing in between is the key. It’s actually a pretty elaborate process. Just to make a tube like this can take up three hours of your day.” He explains how he heats and twists, pulling and blowing on the glass to form a pretty formed rod into a staggeringly beautiful pendant.

He also takes me through the process of forming glass art called ‘murrine’, which is essentially a loaf of glass which, when cut, produces an image that can be worn as a pendant or used as decoration. He layers glass rods, and melts it into a brick. “It’s a lot like making taffy,” he says. “You create a pattern, stretch it out, and cut it.” He hands me a small piece of glass with

Do you make everything you sell in your store? We’re trying to level-up the artwork that we do. The cheaper pieces in the store are from more inexperienced glassblowers. We’re not trying to make trinkets in our shop, but we do want to be able to cater to a wide variety of customers. We don’t want to exclude anyone, but our pieces are more expensive because of the craftsmanship and material cost.

Right. As both an artist yourself and a showcaser of other peoples’ art, you want to have the highest quality. But it works out for everyone. Because I have a storefront, I’m able to sell my pieces for just a little over wholesale, because there is no middleman. Us producing our own artwork is what sets us apart from a lot of other shops.

How do you perceive glass-blowing compared to other forms of artistry, such as painting? I think it’s all commitment. The level you’re willing to go with it; there’s a paint by numbers book you can get, or you can take a class and learn how to make a beautiful work out of a blank canvas.

I think every medium has levels. I just think glass is one of those things where the levels are deep. There’s still things I’m learning after sixteen years on the torch. But it’s really about what level you want to take it to. I think glass is pretty much a limitless medium. Our work is starting to be taken seriously by the art community, and there’s pieces selling for 6 figures or more. Glass-blowing is a medium with a future. Another thing about the medium that’s interesting is that it’s one of very few mediums that I’m aware of that you can’t physically touch [while you’re working on it]. It’s a couple thousand degrees while you’re working on it, so touching isn’t really an option. Of course, you use tools, but it can be frustrating sometimes.

There’s an element of standing away.

You can never hold it, touch it- it’s fun to me.

You have to control it, manipulate it in other ways. The nuts and bolts are what I enjoy most.

It also seems like it’s an investment to learn.

I t ’ s

(CONTINUED ON PAGE 18)

18 Vol. 3 Issue 3

ROLLING FIRE: CONTINUED FROM PAGE 17 the kind of thing where you can’t just jump in. You have to rent space in a studio, pay for material costs... There’s a saying in the scene: ‘The hours give the powers.’ Of course, there’s savants who just pick up glass, but that’s not normal. I look at my work from past years and just want to break it, because I feel like I’ve progressed. Every piece- I see flaws that others don’t, because I’m trying to push myself to the next level. You have to be realistic, but you can’t stand still. There is no standing still; you’re either getting better or you’re getting worse.

Do you travel around to sell your glass?

No, we mostly travel to collaborate and work with other artists. We’ll go to trade shows or other events, but we’re pretty spread out as a community. So to collaborate or learn, one person has to make the trip. Recently, I’ve even flown out [to Colorado] by myself a few times. It’s not something that I do all the time, but it’s necessary in order to learn new techniques or enhance my skills. I flew out to see Jason Lee, and what I thought was going to be a few day thing… he said needed to be at least a week or two weeks in order to get anything done. So I called my wife, and she was actually the one who pushed for two weeks. She’s incredibly supportive of me.

Photos, clockwise from top: RFG Assistant Dave Ross blowing glass.

Collaboration piece by Tommy Lynch, Frito, and Dave Ross. Collaboration piece by Joe Peters and Alex Ubatuba.

Both pieces on display at RFG.

So, obviously a lot of your art is functional. Can you talk to me about that? I mean this is what we do, and it’s not really a secret. Ninety percent of what I make is functional art. I don’t make beakers or pipes; I’m not stepping on anyone’s toes or breaking any laws. We’ve made sure that we’re on the right side of the gray zone. We respect the community that we live in- the community that doesn’t shop in our store. But at the same time, we want to provide the quality items that people who do shop in our store want.

We don’t promote anything illegal. Our store is an adult store, and you have to be over 18 to shop there. People shop in my store for items that they need; what they do with them is up to them. We don’t allow children in our store, and we don’t sell any questionable products.

We have a friendly relationship with the local police department. uuu Tommy will be hosting an outdoor sale at Rolling Fire Glassworks on April 19th. He invites everyone to come out and enjoy his work, and to learn what goes into the making of pieces of beautiful glass. Rolling Fire Glassworks is located at 300 N. Nanticoke Ave in Endicott.

April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 19

“You have a canvas that is a collaborative force,” says artist Vann Godfrey, speaking of the Living Canvases Body Painting Art Show. “It allows for a very dynamic art form.”

This event is much anticipated annually at Jungle Science Gallery and Art Laboratories in Binghamton, stretching back through the last decade. On First Friday this month, five painters, under the gaze of gallery visitors, will transform the nude bodies of sundry models into breathing works of graphic design. Other living ‘canvases’- already fully painted- will stroll or maybe flit and dance through the space, perhaps converse, or possibly just stand and pose at times to be admired or marveled at during the evening.

It’s a transitory art form, a fact that the painter says he does not lament. Whatever it is that artist and model have tapped into, Godfrey has observed that being transformed by paint, even though the creation is temporary, often has a lasting influence on the subject who

Bowling Green State University and says that, at that time, he didn’t give a thought to the primal art of body painting and was totally unaware of its presence in the modern Western world. He did, however, find upon revisiting some of his works from his college

PAINTING LIVING CANVASES

AT JUNGLE SCIENCE

“Generally two-dimensional arts tend to be very solitary,” says Godfrey. “You spend a lot of time solo in studios.” Not so with body art. Some guests will even be invited on the spot to become canvases themselves, having their faces or full bodies transformed by brush strokes, if they choose to accept the invitation.

course with body painting.”

When asked about practical considerations involved in body painting, Vann responds that things like excessive hair can be a challenge for paint, or places where “skin meets skin”like the niche under a heavy breast or the cave of an armpit- can be havens for folds or sweat that may distort the artwork. When asked about physical imperfections, he says that even ‘canvases’ with missing limbs “have made for some very unique imagery.”

When asked, simply, if body painting is sexy, Godfrey replies, “I think that inherently, it is. I think bodies inherently are sexy.

Our culture has a fascination with nudity and automatically assumes nudity is sexy. It is sexy just because people are sexy.” So there.

But he adds, “There’s a point where you stop seeing a naked person and you start seeing this as shadows and shapes and contours and an artistic challenge.”

Godfrey believes that many people became familiar with body painting because of the annual swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, which has long featured the body artwork of Joanne Gere. While he describes Gere’s intricate work as “amazing” and “phenomenal,” he also points out that the art form had to overcome the cliché of “a very limiting pin-up, cheesecake-y” sort of flavor.

Perched overlooking the stairs entering the galleries is Masquerade Artisan, the studio of the widelyknown sculptor of leather masks, E. L. Downey- who was featured on our February 2014 cover- and who will be joining the four other body art creators. Some attendees will be masked and in various forms of costuming. The artworks exhibited on the walls that evening will be directly related to the event and “masquerade-themed,” while performers from Art by Blue Orchid Archetype will festoon the very air of the galleries with aerial acts in streams of silk. Downey describes it as “a cool amalgam of artistic visuals and people.”

“I mean there’s nothing particularly wrong with cheesecake,” Godfrey laughs, “it’s just that it’s for dessertnot for your whole meal.”

According to Godfrey, some body painting artists regularly go through the experience of being painted themselves. He does not.

While Downey’s art has had a home at the gallery since its inception about ten years ago, Godfreywho recalls being a part of each annual body painting art showjoins Jungle Science from his Transformational Body Painting Studio in Chestnut Ridge, NY. He says that, in order to do effective body art, the artist must have an appreciation for what the model is “bringing to the collaboration.”

Models at Living Canvases 2014. Photo by Joshua B. He continues, “With some people it’s a beautiful spark in their eyes; with some people it’s a well-toned, muscular has been painted. “Just like the visual effect physique; with some it’s an unusual way that can be perpetuated through photography, they carry themselves. Some people bring the experiential effect is perpetuated through a personality-energy that is unique.” He memory. It can, at times, have profound does not have the model watch in a mirror effects on people long after it’s been showered while the painting is taking place, so that the or washed off.” ‘canvas’ sees the true effect for the first time only after the entire process is complete.

Vann Godfrey got his fine arts degree from

by Felicia Waynesboro (Bingpop)

days, that he had spent his time in watercolor classes not doing paintings of the live art models but, rather, making accurate pencil renderings of the outline and contours of the models on watercolor paper and then creating paintings on top of the drawings.

His watercolor teacher was not pleased, but Godfrey now realizes, “I was on a collision

E. L. Downey relates that she was painted at least once, and had such a positive experience that she wanted to perpetuate that for others, amid the atmosphere woven by belly dancers and entertainers from the NY Faerie Festival- who, she says, “always bring their own unique brand of magic”– and the skills of Zombie make-up artist Kendra Baker. It is all about transformation, after all. She describes the event as “merriment” and says, “What makes it wild is the shared creative force and the momentum that’s built.”

If you go, plan also on attending the after party, if you so choose. Details to be announced.

Living Canvases Body Painting Art Show will take place on First Friday, April 3rd at Jungle Science Art Gallery, 33 Court Street, Binghamton, from 6pm to 10pm.

Admission by suggested donation is $5 - $10.

After party details to be announced.

20 Vol. 3 Issue 3

Provided.

FUNKY MARKETPLACE IN THE HEART

OF A REVITALIZING DOWNTOWN Jonah Mariano Contributing Writer

Atomic Tom’s is a small gallery space in the heart of downtown Binghamton, right in the middle of State Street’s Artists’ Row.

involved in the local arts scene- they are also doing their part to stimulate the local economy, while getting a completely unique piece of art with way more character than anything from a big-box store.

Since February and until May of this year it’s hosting a pop-up weekend marketplace called Twig and Thread, a collection of local artists, artisans and entrepreneurs selling their unique and handmade crafts to anyone and everyone who’s interested in checking it out.

Binghamton now is noticeably different from the Binghamton of even a few years ago.

“Five years ago was awful,” says Rinker, a Binghamton area native and lifelong resident.

A few years ago, a drive around the city would yield sights of boarded up windows from closed-down businesses and just an allaround impression of blight. Now that the city is on the up-and-up, more local businesses are opening up and hopefully booming. It’s becoming a city to not only live, but thrive in.

There are five vendors featured: The Blue Egg (blueeggvintage.com), specializing in vintage clothing and furniture; Mimi Sprague’s Wendy Willow Farms, featuring antiques and unique decorative items; Michelle Irene (michelleirene.com), specializing in handmade themed accessories such as handbags; Basketcase Soaps (thebasketcasesoapco.com), purveyor of local, natural body products; and Steven Reid, a metalsmith who pieces together industrial furniture and home accents from recycled materials.

Those interested in checking Twig and Thread out would be delighted to know that they offer wine and coffee during the weekends that the marketplace is open. They accept cash and credit cards, so you really would have to dig deep for an excuse not to check this place out. Once May comes around, Tom’s business kicks up for a summer of various events, which is why Twig and Thread is only going to be around until then. After May, the next time one could expect to see this popup marketplace pop back up again would be during the holiday season, at the earliest.

These artists have been around for quite a while and have a local following. Michelle Irene, notably, has a contract with the television-shopping channel QVC. According to Sherrie Rinker, one of the main organizers of Twig and Thread, Steven Reid’s metalworks is a regular crowd magnet as well. Despite their dedicated following, Twig and Thread wants to encourage more people to come take a gander at the marketplace and its offerings.

Since the emphasis is on promoting and getting involved with the local community, Rinker says that any local artist or business is welcome to inquire about participating or being featured in the marketplace.

It’s a small gesture on anyone’s part, but the benefits of shopping in local, artsy places like Twig and Thread add up consequently to a bigger payoff. Not only are people getting

Twig and Thread is ongoing every weekend until May. Their hours are Thursdays from 4pm to 7pm, Fridays from 11am to 7pm and Saturdays from 11am to 3pm. Atomic Tom’s can be found on 196 State Street in Binghamton. Those interested can learn more from their Facebook page at facebook.com/twigandthread or by calling (607) 349-7948.

April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 21

ARTFULLY SQUARED Provided.

AT TIOGA ARTS COUNCIL

Rose Silberman-Gorn Staff Writer

Tioga Arts Council Director Abbey Hendrickson wasn’t expecting a massive outpouring of submissions for the first Artfully Squared exhibition in 2013. However, she ended up being happily surprised.

“I thought we’d be really lucky to get 100 pieces,” she reminisces. “We ended up with 328!”

The Tioga Arts Council topped that number the following year, with 440 submissions, and they’re hoping for an even greater turnout for the third annual Artfully Squared exhibition this April.

Artfully Squared is most likely such a popular event because it’s open to anyone, regardless of age, skill level, or medium. In order to participate, artists create a piece of artwork that measures 7’’x7’’, and then donate it to the council. All works are exhibited for the month of April, and are available to purchase for a $20 donation, the proceeds of which go towards programs at the TAC. “We usually end up selling lots of pieces,” says Hendrickson. “People scoop them up.” It’s no wonder why- considering the quantity and variety of submissions, anyone is bound to find a piece that they connect with. Due to the size

restrictions, the artworks are easily transportable and very affordable.

The fundraiser initially came about because Hendrickson had seen similar events throughout the US. Also, the historical building the TAC is located in provided some inspiration.

“Our building has molding with individual squares that measure 7’’x7’’, so it was a perfect way to use the space,” explains Hendrickson.

Hendrickson is consistently excited by the submissions that come in. “I love the range of styles and mediums... I never know what will walk in the door or capture someone’s imagination,” she gushes. She’s received works in unusual mediums such as wood, felting, and quilting, all thanks to the talented, creative local community. “This show highlights how talented the makers are in Tioga and Broome Counties. We’re lucky to live in such a talented region,” says Hendrickson.

Though the deadline for entries has already passed, art lovers can still attend the opening of Artfully Squared, which will take place on April 3rd, from 5 to 8pm.

Tioga Arts Council is located at 179 Front Street in Owego, and is open Mondays from 10am to 4pm, and Tuesday through Saturday from 9am to 4pm. Artfully Squared will be open from April 1st-25th, and purchased artwork pickup will take place on April 27th-30th from 9am to 4pm.

April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 23

MURALFEST RETURNS TO BING Provided.

Ronnie Vuolo Assistant Editor

Winter in our region is uniformly gray. Devoid of the colors we associate with warmth and light, sometimes it seems as if it will go on forever.

Fear not ye long suffering Binghamtoniansspring is nigh. Not as nigh as we would like, but coming. And along with the soft colors of early spring, comes the bold colors of MuralFest.

On April 26th, the Riverwalk comes alive with creativity and unbridled energy. MuralFest is a feast for the senses, centered on the creation of public murals. This years mural projects are threefold, and includes taking a shot at breaking a Guinness World Record for the most people to contribute to a paint by numbers piece. For this mural, a group of Kady Perry’s students create a 4’x10’ paintby-number template which will, in turn, be filled in at MuralFest by as many attendees as possible. (Official recognition for the attempt is pending.) Another mural project involves 8 large panels, each painted by an individual artist chosen by the Department of Public Art. When put together, the stand-alone pieces will form a cohesive unit with a message.

The final segment involves a number of 4’x4’ cutouts in the shape of hot air balloons to be painted by selected artists. Chosen for their creativity and talent, each artist brings his or her unique perspective to the project.

But MuralFest is not simply murals; it is a family friendly event for those of all ages with live music, an assortment of vendors, food, beverages, face painting, and other activities.

Music takes place at the Peacemakers stage: The Falconers, Teddy Midnight, A Social State, Mobday, and Somerton Suitcase; and at the MLK Memorial Promenade (line-up to be announced). You can even see a family

friendly performance of “Rocky Cabaret” by The Vestal Violators.

In its second year, MuralFest promises to be a greatly expanded version of last year. What began as a BU class project to bring art to the community and fostering a mutually beneficial relationship- continues to grow through its offspring, reBold. The student run organization is made up of a diverse group, ranging from art majors to engineering students. Representative and co-founder Erica Freeman explains that too often, students come to the area for college, spend 4 years, and never get to know anything about the community beyond going to the local hot-spots. She feels strongly that they need to get out of the “college bubble,” get to know the community, be inspired by it, and get involved. ReBold was founded to encourage that involvement. In 2014, reBold partnered with local artist/educator Kady Perry, event booking agent Mayumi Park, and the Department of Public Art led by Peg Johnston to created an event with something for everyone, student and local alike.

For an early start at the festivities, attend the pre-party on the 25th, from 9pm- midnight at the Cyber Café. The kick-off features painting by Ydak Perry, Bruce Greig, and Kareema Johnson; live dark-light painting by David Francisco, and light painting by Stephen Schweitzer of Lucem Picturae. The musical lineup begins from 9-11pm with Teddy Midnight, and continues with The Somerton Suitcase from 10-11pm, and the Alpha Brass Band from 11-midnight.

Festival day commences at noon on the 26th, and continues until 6pm. While the event is free, everyone is encouraged to support the arts either by buying from the vendors and local businesses, or donating to the arts. More information about the event can be found on Facebook at MuralFest 2015. Everyone is invited to participate in beautifying Binghamton- no artistic experience required!

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Planetarium Show (ROB) Open Mic (BRK) Sassy Sundays (TRQ) Live Music (BEL) Reggae Night (CCW)

Planetarium Show (ROB) Open Mic (BRK) Sassy Sundays (TRQ) Live Music (BEL) Pink Floyd “The Wall” Concert Edition (EPAC) A Foolish Cabaret (FHS) Reggae Night (CCW) Figure Drawing w/John Brunelli (POW) Walk on the Wild Side (VCH)

TCO Presents Faust (BCA) Planetarium Show (ROB) Open Mic (BRK) Sassy Sundays (TRQ) Live Music (BEL) Stage Kiss (CMP) Pink Floyd “The Wall” Concert Edition (EPAC) Reggae Night (CCW) Time Stands Still (KNOW) Figure Drawing w/John Brunelli (POW) Guest Organist Craig Phillips (UPC)

University Wind Symphony (AC) Broadway in Bing “Anything Goes” (FRM) Civil War Day (PMM), Planetarium Show (ROB) Trapping the Light Fantastic (TECH) Open Mic (BRK), Sassy Sundays (TRQ) Pinhole Photo Day (WW), Live Music (BEL) Walk on the Wild Side (VCH), Stage Kiss (CMP) MuralFest (PMS), Master Class (EPAC) Steve Nanni (FHS) Reggae Night (CCW) Time Stands Still (KNOW)

(AC) Anderson Center, BU (ATOM) Atomic Tom’s, Binghamton (BCA) Broome County Arena, Binghamton (BCC) Broome Community College, Binghamton (BCDC) Broome County Dance Center, Binghamton (BEL) Belmar Pub, Binghamton (BRK) Brackney Inn, PA (BSP) Blarney Stone Pub, Norwich (BTP) Blind Tiger Pub, Johnson City (BU) Binghamton University (BUN) Bundy Museum, Binghamton

06 13 20 27

Tango Lessons (ATOM) Open Mic (BEL) Jazz Jam (FHS) Learn to Hand Quilt (YHPL)

Tango Lessons (ATOM) Open Mic (BEL) Comedy Night (COL) Learn to Hand Quilt (YHPL) 18th Century American Women & Lunch (PMM)

Tango Lessons (ATOM) Open Mic (BEL) Jazz Jam (FHS) Learn to Hand Quilt (YHPL) Helen’s Travelogue & Lunch (PMM)

Tango Lessons (ATOM) Open Mic (BEL) VINES Annual Fundraiser (REM) Learn to Hand Quilt (YHPL) Civil War History & Lunch (PMM)

(CAC) Chenango Arts Council, Norwich (CAL) Callahan’s Sportsman’s Pub, Binghamton (CCW) Cyber Café West, Binghamton (CMP) Cider Mill Playhouse, Endicott (DTB) Downtown Binghamton (DTO) Downtown Owego (EPAC) Endicott Performing Arts Center (FHS) Firehouse Stage, Johnson City (FIVE) Number 5, Binghamton (FRM) Broome Cty Forum Theatre, Binghamton (GXY) Galaxy Brewing Co., Binghamton

07 14 21 28

Tango Buenos Aires (AC) Speakeasy Open Mic (CCW) Open Dance w/Kate Pulling (BCDC) Swing Dance (REX) DIY Craft Night (POW)

Russian National Ballet (AC) Tango Buenos Aires (AC) Open Dance w/Kate Pulling (BCDC) Swing Dance (REX) DIY Craft Night (POW)

Tango Buenos Aires (AC) Open Dance w/Kate Pulling (BCDC) Swing Dance (REX) DIY Craft Night (POW)

Percussion Ensemble Concert (AC) Tango Buenos Aires (AC) Open Dance w/Kate Pulling (BCDC) Swing Dance (REX) DIY Craft Night (POW)

(JBC) John Barleycorn, Owego (KNOW) KNOW Theatre, Binghamton (KROW) Krowbar, Endwell (LDC) Lost Dog Café/Lounge, Binghamton (MB) Matty B’s, Binghamton (MRLN) Merlin’s, Binghamton (OUH) Old Union Hotel, Binghamton (PMM) Phelps Mansion Museum, Binghamton (PMS) Peacemakers Stage, Binghamton (POW) KAPOW Art Now, Binghamton (REX) Rexer’s Karate, Endicott

East Coast Big Cards Ag BCAC C

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(OUH) Old Union Hotel, (PMM) Phelps Mansion M (POW) KAPOW Art Now, (REX) Rexer’s Karate, En (ROB) Roberson Museum (TCO) Tri-Cities Opera, B (TECH) TechWorks, Bing (TPC) Ti-Ahwaga Players (TRQ) Tranquil Bar & Bis (VCH) Vestal Coal House (WHIP) Windsor Whip W

L 2015

esday. thursday.

Restaurant Week (DTB) Take 6 (AC) Deep Cuts Pro Jam (CAL) Open Mic (JBC) Writing Workshop (BUN) Comedy Open Mic (MB) Miles Ahead (LDC) Open Mic (KROW) gfoot w/Milkweed (CCW) gainst Humanity (MRLN) Charity Pint Night (WSB)

Price Is Right Live (BCA) Deep Cuts Pro Jam (CAL) Open Mic (JBC) Writing Workshop (BUN) Open Mic (KROW) e Twang Twisters (CCW) gainst Humanity (MRLN) Drawing Sessions (WHIP) Paint & Sip (GXY)

am w/Miles Ahead (LDC) Jamie Willard (CCW) Deep Cuts Pro Jam (CAL) Open Mic (JBC) Writing Workshop (BUN) Comedy Open Mic (MB) Drawing Sessions (WHIP) DIY Craft Night (POW)

Deep Cuts Pro Jam (CAL) Open Mic (JBC) Writing Workshop (BUN) Teen Jazz Project (FHS) urbon Symposium (LDC) Open Mic (KROW) Rick Iacovelli (CCW) gainst Humanity (MRLN)

Deep Cuts Pro Jam (CAL) Open Mic (JBC) Writing Workshop (BUN) Wine in Old Bottles (FHS) Open Mic (KROW) gainst Humanity (MRLN)

Binghamton Museum, Binghamton , Binghamton ndicott m, Binghamton Binghamton ghamton s Club, Owego stro, Binghamton e, Vestal Works, Windsor

02 09 16 23 30

Life Drawing Sessions (WHIP) Open Mic (BSP) Trash Thursday (MRLN) Adam Ate the Apple (BEL) Vermont Cheddar (BTP) Thing Two (CCW) Ultra Vibe (GXY) Mid-Day Concert (BU) Anywhere But Binghamton Film Series (BUN) DIY Craft Night (POW) Binghamton Restaurant Week (DTB) Life Drawing Sessions (WHIP) Open Mic (BSP) Trash Thursday (MRLN) Adam Ate the Apple (BEL) Thing One (CCW) The Octobermen (BHMN) George Wesley’s Small Axe Orchestra (GXY) DIY Craft Night (POW)

Life Drawing Sessions (WHIP) DIY Craft Night (POW), Open Mic (BSP) Mike Schenker (CLPS), Trash Thursday (MRLN) Adam Ate the Apple (BEL) Stage Kiss (CMP) Enerjee Jazz w/Ayana D (LDC) Thing Two (CCW) LJ Gates (BHMN) Time Stands Still (KNOW) The North & South Dakotas (GXY) Mid-Day Concert (BU) Harpur Jazz Ensemble (AC) Art Awakening Festival (BU), Open Mic (BSP) Trash Thursday (MRLN) Adam Ate the Apple (BEL) Stage Kiss (CMP) Bike Night w/Water Monsters (KROW) Thing One (CCW) Wine & Food Fest (ROB) Alpha Brass Band (GXY) Anywhere But Binghamton Film Series (BUN) DIY Craft Night (POW) Life Drawing Sessions (WHIP) Open Mic (BSP) Trash Thursday (MRLN) Adam Ate the Apple (BEL) Vermont Cheddar (BTP) Stage Kiss (CMP) Bike Night (KROW) Next to Kin (GXY) DIY Craft Night (POW) Cinderella's Tom Keifer (CLPS)

(ROB) Roberson Museum, Binghamton (TCO) Tri-Cities Opera, Binghamton (TECH) TechWorks, Binghamton (TRQ) Tranquil Bar & Bistro, Binghamton (UPC) United Presbyterian Church, Binghamton (VCH) Vestal Coal House, Vestal (WHIP) Windsor Whip Works, Windsor (WSB) Water Street Brewery, Binghamton (WW) World Wide (YHPL) Your Home Public Library, Johnson City (CLPS) EClipse, Binghamton

events calendar

friday.

03 10 17 24

First Friday Art Walk (DTB/DTO) Rick Iacovelli (BTP) Mama’s Black Sheep (LDC) Woodshed Prophets (KROW) Greg Neff (CCW) Little Paulie & the Foot Rockers (FIVE) Pete Ruttle & Friends (OUH)

Pasty White & Double Wide (BTP) Pink Floyd “The Wall” Concert Edition (EPAC) NYC Ladies of Laughter (FHS) Wine & Design Wkshp (CAC), Quantum (LDC) Water Monsters (KROW) The Vine Brothers (CCW) Brotherhood (FIVE) Time Stands Still (KNOW) The Monroe Show (MRLN) Pete Ruttle & Friends (OUH) Alex Kates & Amanda Barton (CI) TCO Presents Faust (BCA) Pete Ruttle & Friends (OUH) Stage Kiss (CMP), The McCabes (BTP) Queen Bee Comedy Invite (VCH) Pink Floyd “The Wall” Concert Edition (EPAC) Eric Comstock & Barbara Fasano (FHS) Temptations (TCO), Runaway Dorothy (LDC) The Brothers (KROW) Professor Louie & the Crowmatix (CCW) Parlor City (FIVE), Time Stands Still (KNOW) Noche de Salsa (MRLN) Tartuffe (AC) Dusty Wayne & Rusty Pete (BTP) Stage Kiss (CMP) Master Class (EPAC) Hop City Hellcats (LDC) Rooster & the Roadhouse Horns (KROW) Magnolia Drive (CCW) Brotherhood (FIVE) Time Stands Still (KNOW) The Dusty Boxx Experience (MRLN) Pete Ruttle & Friends (OUH)

saturday.

04 11 18 25

Olds Kool (BTP) DJ Castle (LDC) Jamie Willard (CCW) Beard of Bees (FIVE) Sexy Saturday (MRLN)

Thom & Beth (BTP) Pink Floyd “The Wall” Concert Edition (EPAC) Sid the Science Kid (FHS) DJ Castle (LDC) Egomaniacs (KROW) Moho Collective (CCW) Beauty & the Beats (FIVE) Time Stands Still (KNOW) The Kings & Queens of Comedy (MRLN) Faust Operalogue (TCO)

Rick Fry (BTP) Stage Kiss (CMP) Pink Floyd “The Wall” Concert Edition (EPAC) DJ Castle (LDC) A Country Mile (KROW) Hi Way Fruit Markey (FIVE) Time Stands Still (KNOW) Divas After Dark (MRLN) Record Store Day (WW)

Tartuffe (AC) Mike Whittemore (BTP) Stage Kiss (CMP) Master Class (EPAC) DJ Castle (LDC) Odd Man Out (KROW) MuralFest Pre-Party (CCW) Time Stands Still (KNOW) East Coast Bigfoot (CAL) Earth Fest (BCC) Saliva (CLPS)

The Triple Cities Events Calendar is featured each month as a courtesy to our advertisers, however we welcome venues to submit their events to triplecitiescarousel@gmail.com by the 24th of each month prior to publication.

Space is limited, so calendar entries, which have no cost, are picked on a first come/first serve basis. Triple Cities Carousel reserves the right to reject any submission.

April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 27

theatre and dance.

ANYTHING GOES

AT FORUM THEATRE

Ronnie Vuolo Assistant Editor

Anything Goes has all the elements of a great musical comedy: wonderful songs, great dancing, high energy and romance, and lots of laughs, twists and turns. On April 26th, Broadway in Binghamton brings this Tony Award winning Cole Porter musical to the Forum.

Provided.

THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! Ilana Lipowicz Staff Writer

Ballet in Russia is taken very seriously.

The best companies’ ballerinas were brought up from early childhood in a world of ballet, admitted to special schools at which ballet is top priority. Prima ballerinas enjoy a level of celebrity unknown to dancers in the US. This is why Russian ballet dancers are inarguably the most elite in the world. The Russian National Ballet Theatre is a touring company that will be performing Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty with the original choreography by Petipa at the Anderson Center.

The company is dedicated to preserving traditional Russian ballet by staying as close to the originals as they were performed in 1890. The company started up in the 80s during Perestroika, when ballet companies began to perform more modern dances as the country was opened up to the influences of the rest of the world. In response to this embrace of modern dance, the Russian National Ballet Theatre started with the mission of keeping classical Russian ballet alive.

The performances do allow for use of modern technology for the sets, lights, and audio, so in this way it strays from total authenticity. Daev says that technique has improved over the last century, but this may be a difference only a student of

ballet would notice. “But essentially Petipa would recognize his ballet, if he could see ours.”

Marius Petipa was perhaps the most well-known choreographer and ballet master of all time. His other ballets include Don Quixote and The Nutcracker. The Sleeping Beauty is particularly famous amongst his works, and to play the part of Aurora is somewhat of a rite of passage for top ballerinas. In this production, Aurora will be played by Natalia Kungurtseva.

The story, for those unfamiliar, is a fairytale about Princess Aurora, who is put under a spell which causes her to fall asleep for 100 years on her 16th birthday, at the end of which she will be awoken by a handsome prince. The Rose Adagio, one of the most famous and most difficult dances in ballet, is performed

by Aurora and her suitors in act one of the ballet.

The Russian National Ballet Theatre would like to give its audience the opportunity to travel time. When watching the performance, it will feel exactly as it did to watch it over a century ago. Daev writes, “Classical ballet is one of Russia’s greatest cultural gifts to the world. It is part of our heritage and we are happy to share the enjoyment and fulfillment it has given people in the past and continues to do so in the present day.”

The Sleeping Beauty will be performed in the Osterhout Theatre at the Anderson Center on April 14 at 7:30pm. Tickets are $45 and may be purchased online at andersoncenter. showare.com. Quotes from Alexander Daev were translated from Russian.

Based on a book by P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, the story is set in the 1920s and takes place aboard the S.S. American during a cruise from New York to England. Reno Sweeney, former evangelist turned New York City nightclub singer, is in love with her friend Billy Crocker. Unfortunately for Reno, Billy has fallen in love-at-first-sight with beautiful heiress Hope Harcourt, and stows away on board in order to be near her. Unfortunately for Billy, Hope is already engaged to a stuffy English Lord, Sir Evelyn Oakleigh. Throw in Hope’s social climbing mother, Mrs. Wadsworth Harcourt; Billy’s wealthy and sometimes tipsy Wall Street boss, Elisha Whitney; con-man and public enemy #13 Moonface Martin and his girlfriend, Erma; backup singers, card sharks, singing sailors, mistaken identities, convoluted cons, and a plethora of disguises, and you have the basis for a good old-fashioned comedic romp with many pitfalls, a few changes of heart, and just a little bit of blackmail on the rocky road to true love. And if that isn’t enough, it’s peppered with the now-classic Porter songs: “De-Lovely,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” and “Anything Goes.”

Having first opened at the Alvin Theatre on Broadway in 1934, starring Ethel Merman and Hal Linden, Anything Goes has a long history with a few twists and turns of its own. It featured a new libretto written by Howard Lindsey and Russel Crouse, which was later further revised

by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman. Revivals in 1988 and 2011 resulted in Tony Awards (1988 and 2011) for Best Musical Revival and Best Choreography, as well as two honoring individual actors. The play was also adapted twice for film: the 1936 movie starred Bing Crosby, Ethel Merman, Arthur Treacher, an Ida Lupino, and the 1956 version featured Bing Crosby, Donald O’Connor, Mitzi Gaynor and Phil Harris. The musical score, tremendously popular from the first, has retained its popularity, with songs that have been featured in the opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, an episode of I Love Lucy (with Lucy and Ethel singing “Friendship”), Blazing Saddles, and even an episode of The Simpsons.

The current Roundabout Theatre Company production is ably led by director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall and musical director/conductor Robbie Cowan. Having started its North American tour in the fall of 2012, it now features: Emma Stratton as Reno, Brian Krinsky as Billy, Rachelle Rose Clark as Hope, Richard Lindenfelzer as Lord Evelyn, and Dennis Setteducati as Moonface Martin. This joyous show is just the ticket to lift a person out of the gray gloom of winter and above the troubles of the world.

Anything Goes lights up the stage at 3pm and 7:30pm at the Forum, 236 Washington Street in Binghamton.

Tickets are $35-65 and are available online, at the Box Office, or by contacting 800-745-3000. Further information can be found at broomearenaforum.com or by calling (607) 778-1528.

28 Vol. 3 Issue 3

From left: Christopher Trapiani, Rebecca Heath, mystery cameo, Meaghan Heath, Heather Merlis.

COULD IT BE... SATAN? TALKING ABOUT THE DEVIL WITH THE CAST OF TCO’S FAUST Heather Merlis Managing Editor

I did not have to make a deal with the devil for the chance to have coffee and Cadbury Crème Eggs with some of the best singers in town.

The leads of the Tri-Cities Opera’s production Gounod’s Faust will be sung by Christopher Trapani, in the title role, with Rebecca Heath as Marguerite, and her sister Meaghan portraying Siébel. All are Resident Artists hailing from Houston, Texas, and all are roommates. The only principal player missing was the devil himself, Méphistophélès, who is played by Brandon Coleman. uuu Heather Merlis: What does the preparatory period at the Tri-Cities Opera look like?

Rebecca Heath: Normally, it’s very short.

So, basically we all learn the music by ourselves, with coachings when we ask for them. Because this production is a dramatic opera with lots of difficult, long roles, I think that the preparation has been longer, because Susan Ashbaker, our general director, knows it’s such a hard opera, and she wanted us to be prepared.

practice, can you just go downstairs and bother him?

Christopher Trapani: And she knows they’re new roles for all of us- none of us have sung any of these roles before, so that changes things.

CT: Except for one roommate downstairs, who doesn’t sing.

HM: And the principals are all Resident Artists?

CT: With the exception of Valentin, who is being sung by Dan Scofield, who is actually a native to Binghamton. He’s Marguerite’s brother, so he’s another main character.

HM: And your accompanist, Michael Lewis, lives downstairs. So, if you guys need to

Meaghan Heath: Actually, sometimes Michael comes up here and gives me coachings in my bedroom.

HM: So you guys, basically, have an opera house.

RH: It’s nice to have neighbors who won’t be upset if you’re singing opera really loudly.

HM: What’s it like, living together- the two of you are sisters, so you’ve obviously lived together before- but what’s it like living with people with whom you’re working creatively?

Do you practice whole scenes together?

RH: I’m kind of a hermit when I’m performing; I like to do things by myself for a long time, until I feel I can do it really well.

MH: Chris and Brandon have gotten together a number of times, with Susan, because they sing a lot together. Siebel does not sing as much with everyone else.

HM: Siebel is Valentin’s friend who is courting…

RH: He has a huge crush on Marguerite, but Marguerite has no interest in Siebel.

HM: It seems like Siebel is just a boy.

MH: He is. Like, too young to go to war. So he’s probably like 13, 14- around that age. He’s just too young to go to war with the other guys.

HM: How do you get into character to play aMH: To be a boy?

HM: Like, a 13-year-old boy.

MH: Just, pretend to be really horny, put a sock in my pants, you know. I usually strap

April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 29

down my boobs and pretend I don’t have them…

CT: Not a medical doctor. More like an alchemist.

HM: Wait- do you actually put a sock in your pants for the performance?

HM: So, he’s gonna kill himself, he’s sad, and then he’s like, I’m gonna call upon the devil, just to see what’s out there?

MH: I haven’t tried that yet, because I’m afraid it will fall out.

HM: Do people really do that?

CT: Some people do.

MH: Some people wear breastplates. There’s a famous opera mezzo, who does a lot of pants roles- Susan Graham- she actually wears a breastplate to feel more like a man. She’s very good a pretending to be a man, too. It’s fun. I have to put myself in the right mindset, though: after I’ve done a trouser role for a while, I stop, like, acting like a girl, and then I have to be, like, oh, wait, that’s not sexy. Siebel is sweet, though- he’s a sweet character. I don’t know how Martha Collins- our directoris going to stage me, so who knows? I might be a really horny little boy, obviously, butRH: Well, judging by your aria- he leaves me bouquets of flowers…

MH: It’s very sweet.

HM: And your character, Rebecca, is she that young also?

RH: Pretty young. I was thinking 16.

HM: And Faust is in love with her. I’m assuming Faust is not 16.

CT: He was very old, and then he was transformed into a young man again.

HM: Was he old when he fell in love with her?

CT: So, Faust, at the beginning, was trying to kill himself, so he calls on the devil to help himHM: He actually calls upon the devil?

CT: Yeah, just like Damn Yankees- not really like Bedazzled, but kind of: man calls on the devil and asks for himself, and the devil makes Faust see this vision of Marguerite at her spinning wheel, and Faust says, Oh, I have to have that woman, and that’s what does it for him. That’s what makes him want to sell his soul to the devil: seeing Marguerite and thinking, “You can make me young again and I can fall in love with her.”

HM: So he wanted to kill himself because he was oldCT: He was old, and he was depressed. He felt like his life had amounted to nothing; he was a doctor, and a scholar, a philosopher… moody…

CT: Yeah, well, he says, Forget about art, forget about science- forget about my faith in God- I want to call on something else, so he calls upon the devil, and he’s very surprised when the devil actually shows up. I don’t think he was seriously meaning to call upon the devil; I think it was more just like a “damn you” kind of moment. And then the devil actually shows up, and he’s like, “oh!” and then he’s really confused for a long time, until he sees the vision of Marguerite, which is when he’s like, Wow, I really want to become young again. Then he’s magically transformed from an old man to a young man in about six measures of music.

HM: And you play the old man and the young man.

CT: Yeah.

HM: So, what’s that like?

CT: Vocally, the music is written a little bit differently in the beginning- heavier and a little bit lower. And then once he’s transformed, things get a little bit higher.

HM: You’re a tenor. Is the role of Faust always sung by a tenor?

CT: It is; it’s pretty rangy: it’s pretty low and pretty high at the same time.

HM: And Méphistophélès?

CT: Is a bass/bass-baritone. And the devil, in this, is the sly version of the devil.

HM: He’s a shape-shifter?

CT: Sort of. He’s a gentleman kind of character.

RH: She’s a really sweet character, so you feel really bad for her, because she feels really guilty already. So, she’s at church praying, and then the devil and all these demons show up and put creepy words into my head, like, “You’re going to go to hell,” and, “There’s no dawn for you.” Lots of really upsetting things.

The lyrics- the libretto- to the opera is really good. The romantic stuff is good, too, but the devil stuff is really scary.

HM: Is it kind of like a blurry line whether she’s putting those thoughts into her own head?

RH: You know, that’s funny, because I heard of a production where, from start to finish, it’s all in her head. But that’s not the original.

That’s someone’s take on it.

CT: There’s too many questions in that, but that sounds like a really good European production.

MH: She is not the main character; she is a poor victim of circumstance.

HM: And this is a standard soprano role?

RH: It’s an iconic soprano role.

HM: You’ve played a lot of roles like this?

RH: Umm, I guess so.

MH: Yeah, you get killed a lot.

CT: It’s pretty standard.

RH: You basically take a really sweet, innocent person, who gets pregnant, and then their whole life falls apart. There’s a lot of guilt involved.

HM: It’s like a really messed-up morality tale.

So, initially, when you told me about the roles, I thought that [Siébel and Marguerite] were love interests.

MH: He’s like Lestat in Interview with the Vampire.

MH: No no no. It’s an unrequited love, thank God. Awkward. We don’t even have a scene together. We do have a scene together, in the original show, but a lot of it got cut.

RH: It’s a really fun role, in the opera, because he’s really quite funny.

RH: Even in the scene that would have been between us, it’s very much…

CT: And scary.

MH: It’s sweet. The song that I sing to her says, “You’re like a sister to me.”

RH: Yeah, he’ll turn around and be terrifying.

There’s a really creepy church scene, where I’ve already succumbed to Faust’s charms, and so I’m pregnant- or, depending on what the director wants me to do, I may have already had the baby- and I’m shunned by the town, by society. So, I’m praying to GodHM: This is just because you’ve had a child out of wedlock?

HM: So it’s not that much of a stretch.

RH: And I refer to him as “poor boy” when he’s not around. Like, “Oh, a bouquet of flowers from Siébel, poor boy.”

MH: And he’s a good friend to her, too. He’s the only one who hangs around after she’s become deflowered and disgraced.

CT: This is French grand opera. There’s originally a ballet, that’s not going to be inserted in it. There’s this scene called Walpurgis Night, which is cut, and it’s the scene where Faust is being tempted by the devil. Like, “look at these people, doing these disgusting orgies. Don’t you want to do that?”

And then Faust wakes up, and he’s like, “What about Marguerite?”

RH: There’s an emotion that the voice showsit adds another emotional element.

CT: And so does the orchestra.

RH: Marguerite has a really dramatic fall- in that church scene with the devil- that’s when I start to use a completely different color in my voice. And especially Faust and I- we have to do these dramatic high notes- but still connect to the low, scary stuff in the story. It’s exciting to sing. And it’s scary, because it’s hard.

MH: Music definitely shows the character development.

HM: This story is about making a deal with the devil. Do you think it’s really about something more than that?

CT: I think you have to remember when it’s written, particularly the opera [which premiered in 1859]. Marguerite gives in to temptation; Victorian society says she has to die. She has to pay the pay the price for what she does. And why does it have to be a woman? Well, I don’t know, I guess that’s just the way things were back then! There are these undertones of “watch what you do,” or, if you give into temptation, your life is going to fall apart.

RH: You could make the argument that the whole point of the devil going to Faust was to ruin this particular girl’s life. Why does he show him this particular girl?

CT: He had a plan. It’s like a two-for-one special.

RH: It’s all very weird. Like, why did he pick this godly chick? It’s almost like the whole point was to make one of God’s children fall.

MH: Definitely. In the book- in Goethe’s version, anyway- Faust is supposed to be one of God’s favorite children. And that’s why the devil specifically wants to tempt Faust, because it will hurt God. RH: It has a lot to do with Faust’s pride, too.

The story is about man’s pride, and how it gets the better of him. You can’t escape the passage of time; everyone has to go through life and death in the same way. And when you try to make a shortcut, because you think you’re better or more special than everyone else, then there are consequences to your actions. uuu

HM: A doctor of…?

CT & RH: Yes.

CT: A doctor of, like, the arts and the sciences.

RH: And I also kind of hate myself, because I’m super, super Catholic.

HM: Like, an alchemist or a medical doctor?

MH: She’s very pure and chaste.

HM: This is a really old story. How does opera, as a form, serve it?

RH: Pretty well, because it’s so dramatic. And this is grand opera, too.

Gounod’s Faust will be performed at the Forum Theatre in Binghamton, on Fri, April 17 at 8pm and Sun, April 19 at 3pm. For tickets and more info, visit tricitiesopera.com or call (607) 729-4444.

STAGE KISS:

30 Vol. 3 Issue 3

LIFE IMITATES ART

Rose Silberman-Gorn Staff Writer

Stage Kiss, written by playwright Sarah Ruhl, is notable in its newness.

The comedic play just completed its first successful run in March 2014 at Playwrights Horizons in New York City.

After receiving rave reviews, it went on to be produced across the country. Cider Mill Playhouse’s production of Stage Kiss will be the first in upstate New York.

CMP’s Executive and Artistic Director, Gail Belokur, chose to include the play in their season for several reasons. “Our audience loves comedy, so this is right up their alley.

Audiences like to see an insider look at how professional theatre works, from the audition process to rehearsals, which this play offers,” Gail explains. “Stage Kiss has been well-received, and it’s important to hear from female playwrights, because the field is dominated by men.”

The writer behind Stage Kiss, Sarah Ruhl, is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and Tony Award Nominee who is currently in the middle of her critically-acclaimed career. She’s known for her lively, thoughtful comedies, of which Stage Kiss is no exception. Ruhl’s play introduces an unnamed actor and actress who are cast as romantic leads in a 1930’s melodrama... who had a melodramatic affair themselves, 20 years prior. As rehearsals go on, old feelings

begin to resurface, and soon the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.

Stage Kiss contains two plays within the play, adding layers to the story, and also comments on the bizarre experience of working as an actor and pretending to be in love for a job.

“The play gives an inside look at how lives are impacted by an onstage relationship,” Belokur elaborates. “Sarah Ruhl explores real characters and relationships, and how ugly and rich they can be. It’s a comedy that’s also thought-provoking.”

Actors Erica Steinhagen and Ezra Barnes will be making their Cider Mill Playhouse debuts in the lead roles, fleshing out the story and bringing it to life. Rounding out the ensemble cast are local favorites Tim Mollen and Josh Sedelmeyer, as well as Dennis Brito, Annie Fearheily, and Iris Driscoll-Garrison. Emily Jackson, Artistic Associate at the Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, will be making her directorial debut. “Emily is one of the most impressive directors that I’ve worked with. She explores every nuance that the playwright offers,” raves Belokur.

According to Jackson, Stage Kiss is a play that is not only fun to watch, but is a joy to perform. “Plays about actors are always fun for actors to act in, because the cast gets to kind of dissect the neuroses we all live with on a daily basis,” she says.

Stage Kiss will run from April 16th through May 3rd, with Thursday, Friday, and Saturday performances at 7:30pm and Sunday matinees at 3pm. Tickets are available at the box office by calling (607) 748-7363 or visiting cidermillplayhouse.com.

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A RELATIONSHIP FROM BOTH SIDES: SRO PRESENTS THE LAST 5 YEARS April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 31

AT SCHORR FIREHOUSE STAGE Heather Merlis Managing Editor

Musicals, like breakups, can be divisive. While some of us live breathe musical theatre, others can’t seem to wrap their heads around why anyone would need to break into song as a means of storytelling.

JUST 15 MINUTES NORTH OF BINGHAMTON

But Jason Robert Brown’s 2001 musical The Last 5 Years- which chronicles a relationship from opposing perspectives and plays with the portrayal of the passage of time- doesn’t leave you with much room to wonder why anyone’s singing. The music is so good and the characters are so empathic that this show forces one to suspend disbelief. In this musical- which is being presented by SRO Productions this month- there’s no spectacle, no dance numbers- just a story that so many of us have lived out in some form, portrayed by a cast of two.

When I spoke with Jess Brookes and Andrew Simek, who play Cathy and Jamie, respectively, they were at the very beginning of their rehearsal process, getting to know their characters. “They take turns playing the victim,” Brookes reflects. “Relationships are a lot abut what you put in, which isn’t always the same as what you get out.”

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The show begins with Cathy, an aspiring actress in her late twenties, at the end of a shattered relationship, singing her pain. But after this scene, we meet Jamie, a writer in his early twenties, at the threshold of a thrilling courtship. The musical maintains a balance of humor and heartache throughout its entirety, as its narrative nature continuously places its protagonists at opposing points in time.

By the shows end, Jamie and Cathy have, essentially, switched places.

Jason Robert Brown didn’t pull this story from the ether- he drew it from his own life.

“This show is so autobiographical that, when it first came out, [Brown’s ex-wife] sued him because it was too recognizably personal,” Simek explains. Like Brown- who was writing musicals in his twenties that have since entered the canon- Jamie sees success at a relatively young age, but not without personal consequence. “As an artist, he has this idea that there’s only so much room in his heart, and that she invaded the space that’s reserved for his artistry,” muses Simek. “When the challenge is posed to make room for her to come in, he is unwilling to do that. Whether

he is worried she will corrupt his writing, or it’s just paranoia, he puts up walls.”

Jamie isn’t entirely to blame for the relationship’s failure, as nothing is ever really one-sided. “No one’s going to respond to you in a completely predictable way all of the time, even if you know that person intimately,” says Brookes, reflecting on Cathy’s expectations.

“I think she isn’t secure enough in herself to share in another person’s goals and ambitions.

She relies on him for her happiness. There’s no way for her to take ownership for his success.”

When Jamie’s book becomes a bestseller, Cathy is stuck doing summer stock in Ohio.

“She is one of the most accessible characters that I’ve gotten a chance to play,” says Brookes. “I’ve done the audition in New York thing: taking the bus into the city two times a week, in a room with 200 girls in similarlooking dresses, belting the same song out.”

The intimacy and humanity of this show resonates deeply with its audiences, in part due to the small cast size. “In a two-person show, you are essentially naked on stage,” Brookes shares. “There are no tap shoes, no big numbers. We’re dealing with pain- sincere emotion.”

Both performers are phenomenal singers, who now have a chance to explore vocal subtleties in a musical. “I’m really excited to perfect the sound of this show,” Simek beams.

“It will be more contained, and we will be able to just tell the story.”

Another compelling element of this musical is Brown’s beautiful orchestral arrangement, with two cello parts resonating alongside the characters’ emotions. The score raises the audience to a state of empathy and catharsis, and stays with you long after the performance’s end.

But The Last 5 Years isn’t merely a tragic story of a failed romance. “This show is also very funny!” exclaims director Scott Fisher.

“There’s a reason why they like each other.

Even in Cathy’s saddest song, she has a sense of humor. There’s a lot of funny moments that make you laugh; without those moments, their pain doesn’t matter.”

SRO’s production of The Last 5 Years will play at the Schorr Family Firehouse Stage on April 24th and 25th, and May 1st through 3rd; Friday and Saturday performances are at 8pm; Sunday’s performance is at 2pm. For tickets and more information, visit sroproductionsonline.com.

ATTENDING A MASTER CLASS WITH ANDREA GREGORI:

32 Vol. 3 Issue 3

Sitting across from Andréa Gregori at a bustling café downtown, I was immediately overwhelmed by the presence of her character.

She is eloquent, gorgeous, and a tour-de-force in the local arts community, the Northeast, and abroad. Her demeanor is reminiscent of that of the famed opera diva, Maria Callas, whom she portrays in Theatre Street Productions’ upcoming Master Class, which will be performed at the Endicott Performing Arts Center the last weekend of April. Before the end of the interview, I was wholeheartedly enamored with Gregori’s commitment to art, and her marvelous philosophy on acting.

playwright, actually attended many of these classes in person, and any that he didn’t attend, he listened to the recording of. He compiled all of these sessions into the script for the play. These masterclasses were a way for her to come back into the limelight, and she wanted to try something new. The classes became legendary, as they were open to the public. Tickets to the classes were as hot as tickets for a Broadway show. People lined up around the block to see her in action

to her affair with Aristotle Onassis. Mcnally uses these monologues as a way to justify her difficult personality- her brilliance. She expected everyone to work as hard as she did.

She believed that whatever was on the written page, whatever the composer had written: that was the final word. She was very much the composer’s servant.

So she was very much a purist when it came to music. She says in the play, ‘You are here to serve the composer; the composer

Tell me about you; how did you come to be who you are? I am a professionally trained opera singer. I am originally from Philadelphia, but I came to Binghamton as a resident artist with Tri-Cities Opera.

In addition to opera I’ve also done a lot of straight theatre. It’s ironic, as an opera singer originally, that I’m playing an opera diva that doesn’t sing! I also founded Theatre Street Productions in 2007.

Something interesting about Master Class is that it’s a play about opera singers, starring local opera singers playing students. Can you explain how that works? It’s a cast of six; three are students. It’s based on a series of masterclasses taught by Maria Callas at the Juliard School in the early1970s, so it’s based loosely on fact. Terrence McNally, the

So as well as playing the opera diva, you’re doing promotions and managing as well. Luckily, I’ve played the role before, so it wasn’t just from scratch.

It sounds like Callas had a lot of interesting facets. She seems like a very strong-willed woman. I’ve always had an appreciation for her. Playing her role deepened that appreciation; it made me realize she was human, with her own insecurities, demons, and frailities. I love the fact that in the play, she emphasizes the importance of opera singers being good actors; she breaks the stereotype of opera singers being poor actors.

That’s the foil I use when trying to become her when she’s on the stage. I approach her role the way that she would.

uuu

Can you tell me more about Theatre Street? I founded Theatre Street as a way to give performance opportunities to colleagues, because they’re unfortunately few and far between. We’ve crafted a niche, performing living musical history concerts focused on the Gilded Age (the late 1800’s in America) in historic venues across the Northeast.

We had our debut at the Newport Festival this past summer, when we also performed at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in the U.K. And we will be returning to the U.K. again this summer. We started at venues in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, and in Newport, Rhode Island; venues which epitomized the Gilded Age. That set the stage for us to land the Newport Music Festival.

We brought a production of Master Class to Newport in 2012 at the Casino Theatre, which was designed by the architect Stanford White.

He also designed the New York Public Library and was the premiere architect around the turn of the century.

What are they? Administratively, it’s a coproduction between Theatre street and EPAC. I was looking for a local company to do this show with, and EPAC seemed like the best local company. EPAC is doing a lot of the work, but I’ve been producing the show as well.

How many times have you performed Master Class? The first time I did the role was at the Ti-Ahwaga Theatre in Owego. The director of that production, James Osbourne, is the same, and he feels as at home at this play with I do. It’s been a wonderful way to collaborate, because he has the same sort love and admiration as I do for Callas. This has been the 4th time I have performed the role.

Provided.

So even though it’s ‘loosely based on fact, there’s a lot of intimate knowledge there. Intimate knowledge is a good way to put it. She addresses the audience and the students as if it were an actual master class. Each student sings part of an aria, so it appeals to both opera buffs and fans of the theatre. At the end of each act, she has extended monologues which provide insight into her as a person. Not only was she an opera star, but she became a celebrity due

is God.’ And that’s really the way she felt!

She berates her students, and tries to get them to understand the work and dedication that’s involved in preparing for the opera.

The wonderful thing about this play is that it doesn’t just apply to opera; whatever your utmost dedication, your passion, to pursue it with the best of your ability. There really are no shortcuts.

So you have a lot of roles with this play.

How has taking your perspective of your role, translating that, and introducing the role of acting as an opera student to trained opera singers? There are a lot of layers to this play. They are all amazingly talented, and I think casting is everything.

Steve Nanni, Jana Kucera- they’re amazingly talented. Even though we, as singers, may consider ourselves professionals, we also see ourselves as works in progress; our work is never really done. That’s the way they are approaching this, and Jim has been wonderful in helping them approach those nuances.

Each of these three characters mirror Callas; they bring an aspect of her personality to light. uuu This performance of Master Class celebrates the 20th anniversary of it winning the Tony Award. Theatre Street Productions is based out of Binghamton, and is proud to present this performance at the Endicott Performing Arts Center. Master Class will show April 24th and 25th at 8pm, and April 26th at 3pm. Tickets are available online at www. endicottarts.com.

OPERA, THEATRE, AND PASSION CREATE A SPECTACULAR PLAY

by Phil Westcott

April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 35

spring break.

Omyakon. Via web.

SPRING BREAK: OMYAKON!

(A PLAY IN ONE ACT)

Krissy Howard Staff Writer

INT. RAMADA INN, ROOM 705: DAYTIME [Three men and a little lady are gathered around a small table in a motel room. One man makes notes onto a dry erase board, as the other three pay close attention.]

TOLSTOY*: Alright you guys, this is a big deal- BIG! Of all of the 500 people who could have been chosen in this entire town, we got picked to act as “Spring Break Committee Team 2015,” you guys, we! I mean, us! This is a huge responsibility and I do not intend to take it lightly, are you with me?

LENIN: I have to pick up my girlfriend at four.

Do you think we’ll be done by four?

MCCARTNEY, clearly annoyed, chuckles.

LENIN: What?

MCCARTNEY: Nothing.

OKSANA BAIUL: I don’t know you guys, do you really think this is gonna work?

TOLSTOY: This is what’s gonna put us on the map you guys, this is our ticket to the big time right here! Now we just gotta put our heads together and think. If we could just come up with one cool line to hook them I think the kids might be like “Cancun who?”

MCCARTNEY: Who? TOLSTOY: Exactly! I used the Google website to look into this “spring break” phenomenon and it seems to be quite the “cray” as people are apparently saying over there these days.

MCCARTNEY: Oh we should ask Lenin’s girlfriend to help us then, she knows all about cray.

known only as the coldest city on Earth, it’s time the rest of the world see us let our hair down and go totally “craze!”

TOLSTOY: “Oymyakon: Warm up with some sex!” “Oymyakon: It’s really, REALLY cold, but you can still have sex with each other!”

LENIN: Real nice. Or maybe we could just play that Christmas song McCartney wrote and just drive everyone cray instead. We could just do that, too!

TOLSTOY: Yes! That’s the spirit! This shouldn’t even be that hard, there are tons of awesome, fun things about Oymyakon, Russia that would totally attract a group of earlytwentysomethings. Lenin, call your girlfriend, we’re all gonna be outta here in no time!

LENIN: Chips! Kids love sex and chips! And God knows we’ve got the potatoes.

[LENIN and MCCARTNEY stare at one another like alpha dogs for a solid three minutes, uninterrupted, as the others watch.

A bird flies into the window, snapping everyone out of their trance.]

OKSANA BAIUL: I don’t know if you understand the allure of spring break, according to the Google websiteTOLSTOY: www.google.com?

OKSANA BAIUL: Yes, it’s the same Google website, I checked. Anyway, kids like to use spring break for having parties and going to the beach. Apparently there is the occasional Jesus person who does volunteering but I think even their parents think they’re annoying, so whatever. Either way, it’s not looking good for us, guys.

[Six and a half hours later.]

TOLSTOY: We could play on the fact that we’re the coldest city on Earth? You know, use it to our advantage?

OKSANA BAIUL: I think we should kill ourselves.

TOLSTOY: Yes! That’ll surely get some media buzz around this place, good thinking Oksana!

LENIN: Not it!

OKSANA BAIUL: No, I didn’t mean... let’s just... okay, maybe we need to think about what the crowds want and meet their needs.

What do the kids do on spring break?

TOLSTOY: Alright, so maybe we live in the coldest city on the face of the Earth. And maybe not many people are willing to fly 10 hours, then drive two days through the mountains to come to a city that at one time saw temperatures as low as -89 degrees Fahrenheit. But there’s another maybe I’m just not willing to... not consider, and that’s the possibility that maybe- just maybe- this is the year Oymyakon, Russia finally blows that cocky showoff Daytona Beach right off the stupid map!

MCCARTNEY: I heard from somewhere that they like to do volunteering.

OKSANA BAIUL: You know what Tolstoy, you got me! We’ve spent far too many years being

OKSANA BAIUL: That’s it! Sex! Sex sells!

TOLSTOY: It looks like they like screaming with their tops off and drinking water beer. It all looks very sexy.

MCCARTNEY: You look very sexy, boo.

TOLSTOY: Not here! What have I said about mixing business with pleasure? Besides it being a super exciting sexual fantasy of mine?

TOLSTOY: “Oymyakon: Come for the sex, stay for the chips!”

OKSANA BAIUL: No chips, let’s just stick with the sex angle, I think we’ve got something there.

MCCARTNEY: “Oymyakon: All sex, NO chips!”

TOLSTOY: “Oymyakon: Give us a (spring) break, PLEASE come here, even just one of you. All I have in this entire lonely world is one ox and like, 13 wool sweaters. Sometimes I get calls from a Moscow area code that I answer even though I know it’s just a debt collector. When I answer he’s like ‘Hello, is this Mr.-” and as soon as he looks at the name he just hangs up on account of that one time I insisted on talking about Northern Exposure for almost 45 minutes. Please.”

[TOLSTOY has emotional breakdown; cries inconsolably for upwards of 20 minutes.]

[All four look at one another.]

OKSANA BAIUL: Yeah, I’m fine with that.

LENIN: Yeah, sounds good, let’s go.

MCCARTNEY: Can you at least write, “All sex, NO chips!” on the board, please? *Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

RANSOM STEELE TAVERN Est. 1831

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Exchange Hotel Apalachin, NY

April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 37

come on down.

who says we’re blighted? the price is right live comes to binghamton

“Heather Merlis, come on down! You’re the next contestant on The Price Is Right!”

I remember screaming, my face lit up, as I squeezed through the row of frat boys and senior citizens, and ran down the aisle to the stage. My price tag-shaped name tag pinned to my chest, I was ready to guess how much shit cost.

Only, that never happened. It was more like: I was lying on my couch, home “sick” from elementary, middle, high school: horizontal, yet fully invested in my own mental wagers. How much is a blender?

So many hours of my youth were spent taking this regularly televised consumerist quiz. I would see Barker’s Beauties, those long-haired ladies who were forbade to talk. They showed us the prizes that we could win, so long as we didn’t go over the retail price (remember retail?), not even by a cent.

Then there were those jerks who thought they were being clever by guessing a penny above the last person’s wager, essentially sabotaging their opponent’s chances of advancement. There were also those idiots who would guess one cent below the last guess. That just didn’t make any sense.

But what kept me, and all of us, engaged in this competition- aside from the dangling carrots of each round’s correct prices- was the promise of vicariously arriving to the Showcase Showdown. This was the segment at the end of each show, where the two finalists- the cream of the capitalist crony crop- were shown an array of prizes that were lumped together, to be won as a full package.

But it always seemed that one showcase was superior. It would go something like this: one contestant is shown a shiny new Corvette, a new stereo system, and then the wall would slide open like a pair of sheetrock curtains to reveal a trip to Hawaii! Contestant Number One jumps up and down, rapidly clapping, or, if male, pumps his fist or something.

But then second showcase is presented, offering a brand new dinette set, a bunch of knives, and, like, a trip to Colonial Williamsburg. It wasn’t fair. Contestant Number Two pretends to be excited, but its cleareven to my eleven-year-old self- that this person has been shafted.

Flash forward to 2015: it seems that not much has changed with this show, aside from the fact that it is now hosted by an unrecognizably thin Drew Carey, in place of the overly-concerned about the pet population Bob Barker. And now there’s a live version that tours the country, and it’s coming to Binghamton! That’s right, if you want to get up close and personal to the Plinko board or any of the “models” (they are no longer “Barker’s Beauties”), you need to do more than fake a fever and lie on your mom’s sofa.

This live version features a “celebrity host,” and is a kind of staged pseudo-version of the show. But it seems to be pretty close to the original: there’s a big wheel, clapping people, and money. Personally, if I want the authentic Price Is Right experience, I could just go down to the laundromat and look at any of their televisions. If you’re looking for something slightly more stimulating, this could be your golden opportunity to win big.

by heather merlis

But, please, remember to help control the pet population. Get your pets spayed and neutered.

The Price is Right Live will be coming on down to the Floyd L. Maines Veterans Memorial Arena at 7:30pm on Wednesday, April 8th. Visit thepriceisrightlive.com for tickets and more details.

April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 39

film.

TRAILER TRASH

Movie trailers aren’t always effective in giving useful previews of what a film is about. They’re usually a mess of disconnected images and phrases arranged in order to get the heart beating. Our resident cinephile, ILANA LIPOWICZ, deciphers these trailers each month, and here’s what she was able to deduce. This information is not guaranteed to be accurate, but it will most definitely save you from feeling like you spent two and a half minutes spiraling towards the earth in a burning aircraft and you still don’t know what to see.

Woman in Gold (April 3): Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I belonged to the subject of the painting and her husband, who commissioned the artwork in 1907. Bloch-Bauer was a salon lady in Vienna, a patron of the arts. Adele died in 1925, but when the Nazis occupied Austria during the war, Adele’s husband fled and the painting was possessed

by Nazis. In 2006, Bloch-Bauer’s niece, Maria Altmann, won a court battle with the Austrian government over ownership of the painting whose grandeur has been compared to that of the Mona Lisa, and she won. In this telling of the story, Maria (Helen Mirren) and her lawyer (Ryan Reynolds) go against the odds and win back the painting, plus four others, for a combined value of $500 million. But it’s not about the money; it’s about justice, says Mirren’s character, who is played with a tint of elderly aloofness made charming by her sense of conviction. If you like art, or you’re old and feel underrepresented in Hollywood, this is the movie for you! (PG-13) The Longest Ride (April 10): From the producers of The Fault in Our Stars and the author of The Notebook and Dear John– do I need to finish? I’ll admit, I loved The Notebook and so did my very hetero older brother, but the Nicholas Sparks adaptations have been on a steady decline since, culminating in this eye-roller about a professional bull rider (a vocation that seems far more relevant in recent cinema than it is in real life) who falls in love with a girl, but something gets in the way of that until they overcome it, etc. I can’t try to take this movie more seriously than it takes itself. A solid ten seconds of the trailer are devoted to showing a close up of the girl’s hips as she rides a mechanical bull in slow motion. A parallel story is told by a dying old man about his lost love, and it harkens to the old-timey feel of The Notebook. If you’re someone who loves to cry at the movies, this one might do the trick, but your tears may be coming from regrettable choice to see it and not the movie itself. (PG-13) Child 44 (April 17): Based on the 2008 novel by Tom Rob Smith, Child 44 tells the story of a series of child murders that happen in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Leo Demidov (Tom Hardy) is a disgraced member of the military police who is tasked with the investigation, his son being one of the early victims of the murderer. The novel looked beyond the immediate story into the workings of the Soviet Union and expressed the secretiveness and paranoia of that time. It received astounding reviews and was translated into 36 languages. The film adaptation, produced by Ridley Scott, will hopefully live up to the success of the book on which it is based. (PG-13)

Paul Blart- Mall Cop 2 (April 17): Another one for the comedy subgenre Fat Guy Does Stuff, this sequel to the 2009 box office hit also is co-written by and stars Kevin James as the mall cop who rides around on a Segway and still manages to save the day. Let’s face it– Segways are just plain old funny, and even though this story takes place in a casino and not a mall, they’ve made sure to incorporate James riding emasculating vehicles on at least a couple of occasions. The first Mall Cop movie was refreshingly PG, stealing real laughs from kids and adults alike using good ol’ slapstick humor, and you can expect the same from the sequel. Mall cops are funny even when they’re not trying to be. It’s a joke that doesn’t tire easily. (PG)

Unfriended (April 17): Hey old timers- ever heard of cyberbullying? Well, it turns out this internet thing is being used for more than just emailing your kids to ask which button on the remote to press for VHS. That’s right- bullies aren’t throwing losers into lockers anymore, but rather into spirals of insecurity by bashing them online. It’s about time there was a movie made to address this! Just kidding- they already exist, they just haven’t been allowed off of the Lifetime channel. MTV knows this, and so they’ve taken every measure to make sure their cyberbullying movie will appeal to a large audience, which means that everybody starts dying and someone’s hand goes into a blender. It takes places almost fully on the computer screens of the bullies during a videochat because kids love looking at their screens, right? Here’s a twist: the girl whose death was caused by cyberbullying was the popular girl, and the bullies were the losers. The whole word just turned upside down! It’s a cross between a thriller and a PSA, and the moral is: screw you, losers! (PG-13) The Age of Adaline (April 24): This fountain of youth story is a prime piece of evidence that a Hollywood movie really cannot survive without a love interest for the protagonist. Under the circumstances that you are actually 100 years older than you appear, maybe smooching shouldn’t be your first priority. In the case of Adaline, who crashed her car into an enchanted river, turning her immortal, there are not one but two love interests: the former lover who is her age but now looks about 40 years older, and the current lover who looks her age but is actually 40 years younger. Can you guess which one we see her kiss? Blake Lively of Gossip Girl was cast as Adaline in hopes that if the circumstances are interesting enough, the character won’t have to be. (PG-13)

Little Boy (April 24): Pepper Flynt Busbee is a little boy whose father (Michael Rapaport) has gone off to fight in World War II. This little boy wants so much to bring his father home that he will do anything to make it happen. All this sounds very sweet until you realize that Little Boy was the codename for the atom bombed dropped on Hiroshima, and it, too would do anything to bring people home from the war. Is the adorable little boy in the movie an eerie metaphor for the atom bomb? The resounding chorus of the trailer sounds “You can do anything if you set your mind to it,” and to little Pepper Flynt this means he can move things with his mind, Matilda-style. First he moves a bottle across a table, then an entire mountain, and then he blows up some kind of watchtower thingy. I can’t see how any of these actions will help to bring his father home, but if the story is as cutesy and heartwarming as it appears, I’m sure he’ll find a way that doesn’t involve using his powers to murder an entire city. (PG-13)

40 Vol. 3 Issue 3

IN REVIEW: Provided.

GET HARD Ilana Lipowicz Staff Writer

Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart play an unlikely pair that come together under ridiculous circumstances and maintain ridiculousness through and through.

James (Ferrell) is a rich stock analyst who practices capoeira and has sex with his fiancé (Alison Brie) on top of the blueprints for a new mansion because his current one is too small. Darnel (Hart) runs the car washing service beneath James’s workplace and is struggling to save up enough money to move into a better school district for his daughter.

James refuses Darnel’s desperate plea for an advance, telling him “success is a mindset.”

The tables turn when he is sentenced to ten years in maximum security prison for fraud.

Assuming that Darnel has been to jail, citing statistical analysis, he hires him as a trainer to get him ready for his time in the big house. In fact, Darnel has never even gotten a parking ticket, and he must fake being “hard” while he teaches James to do the same.

It is a satirical comedy which saves itself by being equally offensive to everyone; black, white, and gay alike. The two main characters are not overly simplified, but this is perhaps because of the contradictory qualities inherent in their situations. Ferrell manages to make the ignorant, self-centered one-percenter James sympathetic by playing him as the pathetic, childlike character that Ferrell has played many times before. The

character is so strange that he transcends criticisms deserved by ordinary humans.

Some of James’s qualities, however, are too incompatible to be reconciled by good acting.

The scenes in which he demonstrates the intelligence with which he became a Harvard grad and successful stock analyst are never believable and come off as awkward.

The character of Darnel is more consistent. As a hard working family man, he is immediately likeable, and yet the movie doesn’t deny him his flaws. Of course, his flaws are not real flaws, as being clumsy with a gun and unable to fit in with his cousin’s gang aren’t exactly things to be ashamed of. His transformation throughout the film is not as dramatic as that of James because he didn’t have much of a lesson to learn, but his character does become more interesting as he and James meet in the middle of their eccentricities, forming a pair of buddies with a cute and humorous chemistry.

At times towards the middle, the plot feels drawn out. It loses its momentum, feeling like a group of sketches rather than a series of events driven by cause and effect. This also means that each scene feels strong in itself, earning memorable moments in either laughs or shock value. While most of the laughs are at the expense of some group of people, these groups are so hyperbolized that half of the entertainment is in the caricature. Hart and Ferrell are both skilled in physical comedy, and they make the most of a script that feels a bit undone.

While this movie doesn’t quite have the intellectual comedy you might expect from such a satire, it will make you laugh, and what else can you really ask of a comedy?

April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 43

poetry.

Shards

FEATURED POET:

KAYLA VOLPE

Kayla Volpe is a twenty-something spoken word artist originally from Middletown, New York. As a young poet, Volpe attended and competed in the Woman of the World Poetry Slam in Austin, Texas in 2014, as well as the National Poetry Slam in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2013. Her first self-published chapbook, “Establishing Sovereignty” was released in February 2014, and included a collection of bildungsroman-esque poetry. She studies Creative Writing as an undergraduate at Binghamton University and currently performs for audiences locally, and regionally.

Untitled Poem About Running Out of Natural Resources You are a giver.

You are a giving tree.

You are arms outstretched bearing gifts.

Sweet gifts.

You are going to give something because you don’t know keep. Or hold.

Or wait until her actual birthday because you just can’t wait, but you always wait too long to bloom...

To learn how not to give a fuck.

You want to give so your wants are unearthed.

But blind, greedy hands pluck at you Your feet are soiled sadness wishing to grow downwards.

And you are hoping with limbs tied, clinging to your roots.

So now, with your sore, outstretched arms you will find new people to give to.

And you will bring them beer.

You love beer.

You will tell them that beer is for sharing, but everything you have to share has been bottled inside you.

Fermenting.

And you will not sip. You will not speak.

You can’t let everything out.

Beer will be there to console you so you will want to give it all away.

By the buckets.

By the barrels of empty friendships.

You are still in the process of digestion.

You will bring them coffee.

You love coffee.

You will gulp it down to feel the bitterness eat your stomach lining.

You will use this to present yourself as human.

Human with pain.

You will supplement it for food.

You will supplement it for sleep.

You will share it with people so they don’t realize you don’t eat.

You will bring them food. You used to love food.

The gesture will distract them from your growling stomach.

But you will swallow down that roar.

That screaming inside you.

You will bring food to other people because you cannot feed yourself. You cannot keep it down. And the screaming is so

loud, but you cannot keep it down.

You’ve expended your limbs with no fruit left to bare.

You think of other people when you can’t bare to think of yourself.

You will bring her silence.

And coffee.

You both love coffee.

Two cups will sit on the cold porch railing, letting off steam And you will watch them in envy.

You will have nothing else to give.

I Like the Label Smoker/You Can Smell Me Burning I have (too many) untitled thoughts because I have trouble with labels.

I have trouble; it hides behind the titles I don’t give to [things].

Admittedly, I say, I am a smoker.

I’ve heard It’s a trendy way to kill yourself. slowly, choking on smoke rings, inhaling and holding, I only have the lungs to hold things that disappear when I let them go.

I cannot name this burning.

I wouldn’t use my tongue to describe to you the taste of dying.

But I know you can smell it, the decay in my clouded breath, the fire in my tarred chest.

When you find my scent in the wind I hope you will name it.

Name it after my ashes.

I have a collection of people who have been broken by other people.

They collect their shards in cardboard boxes.

The artistic ones make jewelry out of their collected pieces.

They decoupage the box and display it as a centerpiece on a table set for houseguests.

They make music from shaking their boxes like maracas.

The smart ones compartmentalize, sorting the pieces in order of value.

They figure out what can be saved.

They figure out what to hide away in a box under a half-dusty mattress.

The smartistic ones are the most hapless.

Or hopeless.

They display the most valuable pieces to themselves in the mirror.

Glass looking at glass to see clearer.

Shards sharpening image.

But my collection, it grows each time I visit a bar or a poetry reading or a music show.

The collected and I, we tip our tongues toward each other, serpents searching for sameness.

Finding broken people for my collection has become easier the harder I look for resigned eyes and nervous fingers and bold jewelry.

My collection has a collective conscious, we all want to breadcrumb our pieces into a path back to the one who left us broken beer bottle bodies.

We want them to make us back into art.

We want them to care enough to make us back into art.

We want to make sure we are saved, (at least in boxes) and stored under their beds.

To make sure we sound like tambourines, crediting our creators while they sleep.

These people that I collect, they loved once; with all of their glass bodies.

They were once handled with care.

They were once cradled and called “Baby” by the only person who will ever be allowed to call them “Baby.”

These people that I collect, they loved once; once was all it took.

44 Vol. 3 Issue 3

tarotology forecast.

Stars & Cards Anvile Contributing Writer

Aries (March 21 - April 20) You are a One-Man-Band but your friends miss you and want to see you out and about. It’s been a while but remember what makes you a Fun Guy, not a Fungi. Past passions and lost loves will find their way back to you, be ready for the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Taurus (April 21 - May 21) Everyone knows that you are a skinflint but it’s your turn to buy, so don’t leave your wallet in the other pair of pants when you go out with friends.

You’re calm, you’re cool, you’re collected- but don’t be boring. Time to cut loose, footloose and show everyone your inner Bacon because everyone likes Bacon.

Gemini (May 22 - June 21) Trying to reinvent yourself? Well, stop... You’re fine the way you are for now. Earth, Wind & Fire are your inspirations, along with other groups of the 70s. So go with that feeling and see what new places it will take you to.

Cancer (June 22 - July 22) Some new faces, some new focus and some new advice. These are the three things you need to look for this month. Pick three things from this edition of Carousel that you would never usually do, and go do them.

Leo (July 23 -August 21) If you’re not part of the solution then you’re part of the problem. Yes, you’ve been part of the problem, get off the fringe and more to the center of things, start working better with others and row with both oars- not just one.

Virgo (August 22 - September 23) You’ve been fighting your feelings- time to give in to you impulses and find some new peeps (the marshmallow kind too, it is Easter after all).

You’ve out grown the cool kids table and want to see why the nerds are having so much fun now. Unleash the inner awkwardness that will make you irresistible to a much larger world.

Libra (September 24 - October 23) How fast is life right now, sorry that’s not fast enough, pick up the pace and I’m not talking picante. Catch a red-eye to Vegas, look for a “shooting” star on the strip, and make a wish. Now go play the same black jack at the $10 table. Win, Lose or Draw- walk away when you played the same number of hands as your age. Boo-yah!!

Scorpio (October 24 - November 22) You’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places with all the wrong people. Just because your type “O” does not mean you have to be the universal donor. Find that “AB” relationship and “C” your way to a happy ending. Unless they work as a masseuse. Then don’t mention the happy ending thing.

Sagittarius (November 23 - December 22) Break free of the emotional train wreck that is your life. Only you can prevent forest fires, and only you can be all you can be. Stop letting the Eeyore’s you’ve been schlepping with define what you can do by what they can’t do.

Capricorn (December 23 - January 20) Book that world cruise on a hot air balloon with some of your closest friends. Now is the time to roll the dice, spin the wheel and hit on 18; fate smiles and wants to help you out this month. Go bold or go home, don’t let the meek inherit the world, at least not yet.

Aquarius (January 21 - February 19) Great Grandma would always say, “hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one gets filled first.” That’s right, Pick6 cannot be your plan A, B or C. No new doors opening for you, but you may find that you’re doing your business in a new location. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

Pisces (February 20- March 20) A journey of a 1000 miles starts with a single step but that was 4,223,999 steps ago. At your journey’s end have you done more than just stretch your legs. Stronger than when you started but are you wiser for the experience. Were the right lessons taken away from this adventure? Retrace those steps and see what might have been missed.

* TAROTOSCOPE: The combining of Tarot Card Interpretation and Western Astrology Fundamentals to create a unique forecast for each astrological sign each month.

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April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 45

celebrate.

THAT’S A

HOLIDAY? If you or a loved one has a drinking or drug problem...

We like to do things a little bit different here at Carousel, and holidays are no exception. We’re bored of hearing the same-old same-old when it comes to tried and true seasonal celebrations, so we’ve tasked our own FELICIA WAYNESBORO with the monthly responsibility of filling us in on all the holidays we’ve been missing…

AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) in the Triple Cities Region Hotline: (607) 722-5983 For a list of meetings: aabinghamton.org

On April 16th, in a month pockmarked with more than its share of little-known holidays, there are annual celebrations of three seemingly unrelated phenomena. So, let’s talk about voice, stress, and Eggs Benedict.

HELP IS AVAILABLE Al Anon/Alateen in Broome Co. and surrounding areas For info: (607) 772-0889 or (607) 387-5701 For a list of meetings: nynafg.com/district_10.html NA (Narcotics Anonymous) in the Triple Cities Region For info: (607) 762-9116 For a list of meetings: tcana.net

It’s pretty easy to be aware of the importance of some things- teeth, for example. You can see them, so you know you don’t want to lose them, therefore you tend to take care of them. But what about your invisible voice? In Brazil in 1999, a group of doctors, and others concerned with healthy vocal habits, decided to organize national focus on the voice. By 2002, the focus became global, and vocal health professionals all over the world observed the first annual World Voice Day (WVD).

“People probably don’t realize how important vocal health is until they start losing it,” warns Anne Brady, Binghamton University drama professor and one of a small band of internationally revered Designated Linklater Voice Teachers. The ongoing mission of WVD is to demonstrate to the general public that “Voice Matters.”

“I strongly believe in that,” Brady says, “whether it’s ‘voice’ in terms of my right to speak, or the speaking voice itself, or giving expression to who I am or who a community is.”

The motto for World Voice Day 2015 is: VOICE, The Original Social Media. Brady elaborates, “I wish that would become more prevalent. We are losing some of our abilities to communicate vocally because we rely so much on digital media. There’s nothing like face-to-face communication.”

The Global Vocal Concert on WVD is stretching across the continents with singing and other vocal events following one another in a trail through the world, “in pace with the sun.” Though the message this year is being carried primarily on the breath of singers, Anne points out that “encouraging the breath to help support your voice is important for all humans.”

Brady also mentions the importance of relaxation, which brings me to National Stress Awareness Day. I intended to present insights here from Dr. Terrance Deak, principal investigator for Binghamton University’s Stress Research Laboratory, on how to cope with daily or excessive tensions. Twice I reached him and, both times, he promised he would get back to me and answer my questions. He still hasn’t. He sounded really stressed. He said something about there being “…only so many hours in a day…”

So let’s all just breathe deeply and move on to National Eggs Benedict Day. Eggs Benedict is known for being a classy dish, and is reputed to have been born in nineteenth century New York City, either at the then Waldorf Hotel or Delmonico’s restaurantdepending on who you listen to. Either way, very classy.

I, however, shuffled into the Pantheon Restaurant in Endicott– far more cozy than classy– seeking out the classic delight. It wasn’t on the menu, but it appeared on the specials board in the window. Brandy, the server, told me, “You just have to ask for the vegetarian version,” and you’ll get spinach and mushrooms under the Hollandaise sauce in place of the traditional Canadian bacon. (Anne Brady had advised me it might not be too good for the voice, though. Mucus-producing, you know.) What the heck?! $5.95 and glorious enough to make me vocalize about a stress-free day.

April 2015 Triple Cities Carousel 47

“Meet the Beatles” by Paul O’Heron

B.C.

DOGS OF C-KENNEL

Across 1. _____ _____ _____ _____: Song with the line “It’s been a long, long lonely winter…” (Abbey Road, 1969) 9. _____: Song with the line “Why she had to go I don’t know, she wouldn’t say…” (_____ and Today, 1966) 10. I’m a _____: Song with the line “Although I laugh and I act like a clown…” (Beatles for Sale, 1964) 11. The Beatles Lyrics: The _____ Story Behind Their Music, 2014 book by Hunter Davies.

12. Hey Bulldog: Song with the line “Yeah hey, oh! _____ , _____!”

(Yellow Submarine, 1969) 13. The early Beatles were called the “_____ Tops” by the press.

15. A short piece of writing on a particular subject, e.g. “The Beatles and Their Influence on Culture.”

18. _____ _____ Pie: Song with lyrics composed almost entirely of the last two words of the title.

(White Album, 1968) 21. _____ _____: Song with the line “You made a fool of everyone.”

(White Album, 1968) 22. Word that completes the full name of the venue mentioned in A Day in the Life: “Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.” (Sgt. Pepper’s, 1967) 24. Devil in Her Heart: Song with the line “She’s gonna tear your heart apart, No, no _____ will she deceive.” (With the Beatles, 1963) 25. A _____ Day’s Night: Song with the line “and I’ve been working like a dog.” (A _____ Day’s Night, 1964) 27. Lovely Rita: Song with the line “Standing by a parking meter, when I _____ a glimpse of Rita”. ” (Sgt. Pepper’s, 1967) 31. _____ _____ Want to Spoil the Party” Song with the line “I

would hate my disappointment to show.” (Beatles IV, 1965) 33. _____ _____: Song with the line “… sleep tight, dream sweet dreams for me.” (White Album, 1968) 34. _____ _____ _____: Song with the line “I feel good in a special way, I’m in love and it’s a sunny day.” (Revolver, 1966) Down 1. _____ _____: Song with the line “Take a sad song and make it better.” (_____ _____, 1970) 2. Til There was You: Song with the line “Then there was music and wonderful _____”. (With the Beatles, 1963) 3. Savoy Truffle: Song with the line “_____ tangerine and montelimat, A ginger sling with a pineapple heart.” (White Album, 1968) 4. All You Need is Love: Song with the line “Nothing you can make that can’t be _____” (Magical Mystery Tour, 1967) 5. Song referenced in 6-Down with the line “You say yes, I _____ _____. You say stop and I say go, go, go.” (Magical Mystery Tour, 1967) 6. _____, Goodbye: Song with the line “I say high, you say low, You say why and I say I don’t know.” (Magical Mystery Tour, 1967) 7. _____: Sung by Ringo Starr with the line “Won’t someone come and carry me away?” (Scouse the Mouse, 1977) 8. _____ _____: Song with the line “Cos you walked hand in hand, With another man in my place.”

(Beatles for Sale, 1964) 13. You Never Give Me Your _____: Song with the line “And in the middle of negotiations you break down.” (Abbey Road, 1969)

fun stuff.

by MASTROIANNI & HART

by MICK & MASON MASTROIANNI

THE FANCY RESTAURANT

WIZARD OF ID

14. The Beatles sued record company EMI, claiming that they were _____ $53.1 million in royalties after negotiations broke down. (Dec 19, 2005 , Wall Street Journal) 16. When I’m _____ Four: Song with the line “Grandchildren on your knee: Vera, Chuck & Dave.”

(Sgt. Pepper’s, 1967) 17. _____ It Is: Song with the line “I could be happy with you by my side, if I could forget her.” (Beatles IV, 1965) 19. Tell Me Why: Song with the line: “Tell me why you cried, and why you _____ to me.” (A Hard Day’s Night, 1964) 20. And I Love _____: Song with the line “A love like ours could never

by CUVELIER & HOWARD

by PARKER, MASTROIANNI & HART

die…” (A Hard Day’s Night, 1964) 21. _____ _____: Song with the line “Quando paramucho mi amore de felice carathon.” (Abbey Road, 1969) 23. _____ _____ _____: Song with the line “And when the night is cloudy there is still a light that shines on me.” (_____ _____ _____, 1970) 25. According to Mentalflloss.com John Lennon _____ his own voice.

26. Eleanor _____: Song with the line “Ah look at all the lonely people.” (Revolver, 1966) 28. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!: Song with the line “The Hendersons will all be there.” The name of the real life Mr. Hendersons’ wife.

29. Bomb of a movie with Affleck and Lopez (2003). And NOTHING to do with the Beatles!

30. While singing Scrambled Eggs with Paul McCartney on Late Night, Jimmy Fallon tried to add a verse about chicken wings, but the vegetarian McCartney stopped him and changed it to _____ wings.

32. Lennon’s second wife, and widow.

(Crossword answers on Page 45)