tuesday december 2nd 2008
Q&A with Dave Ruch
Alison Zero
With a new album hot off the press, this Buffalo folkie chats with Buffalo Rising about the traditional music of New York State, song collecting, and how quitting his day job was among the best things he’s ever done.
AZ: How did folk music, especially historic folk music, become the focus of your career?
DR: Gosh, good question. I wonder that myself sometimes. As I look back, it’s been a long, gradual, even logical progression to this point, but one that I could never have forecast.
The folk music that I am currently so interested in is a whole lot different from most people’s notions of folk music. I’m never even sure what to call this stuff, but I think the term “traditional music” might get close, or “regional heritage music”. It’s the music that ordinary people – nonperformers – used to entertain themselves with here in our region in the days before radio and TV. It rings my bell in many ways – it’s fascinating to me, it’s relatively unknown to …
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monday december 1st 2008
Ani DiFranco on WNED
BRO Reader Submission
By: Brandon Schlia
Perhaps you're familiar with public broadcasting and its noble intentions for communal enrichment through music. Or perhaps you just thought about Wayne's World and instead wondered why he wore such a devastatingly tight t-shirt. But if you look you'll see the wealth of opportunity provided for by a national airwave designated specifically for our local ambitions. Buffalo's favorite daughter, Ani DiFranco, is a prime example of broadcast worthy television with a member-supported local endorsement.
Today at 8 PM, WNED will broadcast "Live at Babeville," a concert filmed in Buffalo last year. It celebrated the grand opening of DiFranco's first venue …
sunday november 30th 2008
“Triangles” at The Road Less Traveled Productions
Kate Sorice
Opening night is normally a series of highs and lows. Anticipation, nerves and excitement go hand and hand, for a new playwright it can be agony. Wondering how people perceiving your work, your words, your motivations. Until the curtain closes and there is an eruption of applause, you’re on pins and needles; a sign of a good show is the audience feeling that anticipation as well. I was able to attend opening night of “Triangles” at Road Less Traveled Productions and it was a packed house and a wonderful night of theatre.
I had the chance to speak with playwright Jon Elston who wrote “The Elliptical”, to get a sense of where he was coming from and this is a not to be missed theatre experience. Jon confesses that Ches is a more dysfunctional version of himself and he molded his characters after people he has known for a long time. The line between fact and fictions is …
buffalorising
Want a different kind of holiday celebration? One that celebrates the dysfunction of the holidays instead of the usual phony good times and cheer? Squeaky Wheel is hosting their seventh annual Dysfunctional Holiday Party and although it may be celebrating the unhappy side of the holidays, it’s still sure to be a delightful event with a lot of fun and screenings.
This holiday extravaganza isn’t so much as a party of dysfunction as it is a celebration of the dysfunction that comes with the holidays by giving participants a chance to relax amongst friends before returning to the stress that families bring. Holiday snacks, hot chocolate, and loads of food will bedeck Squeaky Wheel’s halls with gluttony as art-lovers and film-buffs rub elbows and celebrate the holiday season.
There will be a silent gift auction and a stop-in by a certain someone. That’s right, the real Santa…
saturday november 29th 2008
Boris and Clouds at Soundlab
R. Ski
The critically acclaimed Japanese experimental trio, Boris, will be performing this coming Monday at Soundlab. Recently ending their tour opening for Nine Inch Nails, Boris will be sharing the stage of a more personal venue with Boston’s Clouds.
Boris, an act that has spanned over a decade, found it’s footing with an American audience when their genre-bending album “Pink”, released in the States in 2006 by Southern Lord became an immediate appeal to critics and fans alike topping SPIN, Blender, and Pitchfork as one of the best albums of the year. Borrowing flavors from such classics as Motorhead, Blue Cheer, and 90’s stoner rock sensations Sleep and Kyuss, Boris crafts a heavy sound spun by E-bows, generating an unsettling amount of distortion and plenty of droning feedback. The psychedelic sound of Boris has found appeal to wide range of music listeners as every albu…
friday november 28th 2008
"Complex Compost" Opens at ArtSpace
Annie Schentag
The latest art exhibition at ArtSpace, “Complex Compost,” reflects and encourages a growing local interest in reuse and renewal. From the abstract to the absurd, there is something for everyone at this show. “Complex Compost” features the artworks of four emerging local artists, each using found objects as a medium to translate the material language of our surroundings. By placing discarded objects into innovative, unfamiliar contexts, each artist interprets the boundary between trash and treasure and its place in our daily environment.
The strength of the exhibition lies in the diversity of materials and mediums used to comment on a common theme. In all of the artworks, objects once rejected become celebrated, examined and reassigned into new meanings. Each artist contributes their individual vision and technique to the show, providing a wide range of id…
buffalorising
It’s funny how as our economy falls into a slump, the Great Depression is mentioned again and again. And why not? Foreclosures are on the rise, the economy is in decline, and more people are still living with their parents at a later age. That draws a pretty striking parallel to an age when families struggled to make ends meet and capture the American dream even as three generations lived in a single apartment. Though that could be the setting of any family from that era of our history, it happens to be the setting of “Awake & Sing!” – the latest production by the Jewish Repertory Theatre.
Directed by Greg Natale and starring Saul Elkin, Ellen Horst, David Butler, Patrick Cameron, Susan Drozd, Don Gervasi, Peter Jaskowiak, Lawrence Rowswell and Tom Zindle, this play promises to be an intriguing look at the way life in the 1930s can still be compared to today. The play w…
friday november 21st 2008
Sheldon Berlyn's Dramatic Movement
Sandra Williams Gordon
Color, form, shape, light, movement, relationship, exploration, playfulness, line, structure, vibration, expression, response, gesture, flow…
These are just some words that can describe both the artwork and the process of respected artist, Sheldon Berlyn.
Born in Worcester Massachusetts in 1929, Berlyn studied at the Worcester Art Museum School and at Yale's Norfolk summer School of Music and Art. He also studied with Herbert P. Barnett, under whose tutelage Berlyn developed his strong sense of structure and drawing skills.
In 1958, Berlyn became a faculty member at State University of New York at Buffalo, where he taught painting and drawing for over 40 years. Upon his arrival in Buffalo, Berlyn's work took a dramatic turn from working in the traditional methods of drawing and painting. His artistic vision changed, in a large part due to the Albright Knox, where he dis…
wednesday november 19th 2008
Stephen Stanley and Carla MacNeil
BRO Reader Submission
By Dick Shaner
May 2006, Carla MacNeil, violin in hand, and Stephen Stanley walked on stage at a low-key gig at Mitzi's Sister in downtown Toronto. In Carla's own words, the night was a "glad you missed it" affair, but the week of rehearsal leading up to the gig had been enough to get Stanley excited enough to dig into a major change of musical direction. "I knew that I wanted to introduce a violin into the new songs, but I hadn't bargained on finding someone to share lead vocals with."
Instantly, the idea of forming a post-Low band was dropped, the new duo was where it was going...
Stanley first came to prominence as a founding member of Toronto's indie faves, Lowest of the Low. During their celebrated career the band released four CDs, sold more than 100,000 records, and toured endlessly. Perhaps their high-water mark was the release of their 1991 certified gold album S…
tuesday november 18th 2008
Hero in Your Living Room
Thomas Stanford
Pretend, for a moment, that we were to play the word association game. As you know, the one and only rule is that you’re to blurt out the first word that comes to mind as soon as you hear the subject given.
Ready? And… “Influential Rock Icon”! Do you have your answer? Good. Now imagine having this person or group suddenly playing for you and 25 others in your living room…
It’s quite a striking thought, yes? Such was the case for local musician Michele Buono this past 23rd of September, when she hosted singer-songwriter Kristin Hersh in her home, enthralling a small, amorous crowd. A long-time and avid listener of Hersh since her days in the 90’s indie rock mainstay, Throwing Muses (and since with 50 Foot Wave), Buono learned through a fan-list email sent out by Hersh that the Muses/Wave singer was looking to put together a limited series of these very r…
