Michael Janairo

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Author: Michael Janairo

  • Palace adds second Price is Right Live show

    The Palace Theatre in Albany has announced that The Price is Right Live has added a Friday, June 7, 2013 show for the Palace Theater.

    Tickets — priced at $32.75, $42.75 and $52.75 — for the new show go on sale 10 a.m. Monday, April 8, at the Palace Theatre Box Office, ticketmaster.com or (800) 745-3000.

    Tickets are still available for the previously announced May 31 show at the Palace Theatre in Albany.

    The Price Is Right Live is an interactive stage show that gives contestants pulled from the audience the chance to win appliances, vacations and cars by playing the classic games from the TV game show, including Plinko, Cliffhangers, the Big Wheel and even the fabulous Showcase, all the favorite games are played just like the TV show.

  • Albany Berkshire Ballet returns to new work

    By Amy Biancolli

    Even if you don’t know ballet, you know “The Nutcracker”: Like eggnog, reindeer sweaters and the rosemary scent of pine trees, it’s an eternal harbinger of Christmas. In the Capital Region, one of its chief purveyors is the Albany Berkshire Ballet, which has mounted 38 productions of Tchaikovsky’s tale of Clara, Fritz and the Mouse King.

    For the last several years, those “Nutcrackers” have been the company’s mainstay. More than a mainstay: That’s pretty much all they’ve done. The professional company with a toe shoe in two cities — Albany and Pittsfield, Mass. — once offered other types of programming at other times of year. When the financial crunch forced it to downscale in ambition and budget, the ballet began to train its energy on performances of just the one, beloved chestnut every year. With its masses of student dancers from its own schools, “The Nutcracker” drew families and seasonal ballet lovers from around the region. And it will again, come Christmas.

    But this month, for the first time in several years, the Albany Berkshire Ballet is offering two all-professional performances of non-”Nutcracker” works: the first at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the University at Albany’s Performing Arts Center, the second at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 20, at the Barrington Stage in Pittsfield.

    Read the rest of the story here: http://www.timesunion.com/entertainment/article/Different-steps-for-ballet-troupe-4410367.php

  • Saratoga Chamber Players @ United Methodist Church, 3/31/13

    By Mary Jane Leach

    Saratoga Springs
    The Saratoga Chamber Players presented “Music for a Promise of Spring” Sunday afternoon in the United Methodist Church in Saratoga Springs to an almost full house. The music and a window at the back of the stage with a view outside more than made up for being inside on a spring afternoon.

    The concert opened with Joseph Haydn’s Piano Trio in D Major (Hob. XV:16), with flute replacing the usual violin, which lent an airiness and lightness to the texture. Susan Rotholz (flute) and Margaret Kampmeier (piano) matched each other in phrasing and quality as they traded melodies and then played fast passages in remarkable togetherness.

    Cellist Eric Bartlett rounded out the trio, adding a fullness to the sound that wasn’t at first apparent, but added greatly to the color of the sound. The opening movement had some surprises — sudden stops and abrupt modulations, foreshadowing some of Franz Schubert’s more daring harmonic escapades.

    (more…)

  • Who will win TV battle between ‘Bible’ and ‘Walking Dead’?

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    Tonight, Easter Sunday 2013, brings an interesting nexus of television trends. AMC’s “Walking Dead” Season 3 comes to an end at the same times a the History Channel’s miniseries “The Bible” comes to an end. Which one will get the most viewers? And what does that mean about our culture today?

    The distinction couldn’t be more stark:

    The story of the “The Bible,” of course, is the story about the presence of God among mortals, and culminates in the promise of glorious after-life in heaven, a defeat of death that is led by the resurrection of Jesus.

    The story of “The Walking Dead,” on the other hand, is the story about the presence of mindless evil among mortals, the ever-present struggle against an overwhelming horde of people — including loved ones — who have become so defeated by death that they’ve been reanimated in a perversion of the resurrection so that they don’t seek people to join in a glorious after-life in heaven; rather, they hunger for living flesh and seek to make others like them: endlessly stuck in a state of living dead here on earth.

    What’s interesting is that even though “The Walking Dead” consistently ranks as the top cable TV show, with about 11 million viewers, “The Bible” has been ranked No. 2, with about 500,000 fewer viewers.

    A recent news report said that Clemson University professor Sarah Lauro has found that zombies become more popular at times of unhappiness, cultural dissatisfaction and economic upheaval. So that could explain the popularity of “The Walking Dead,” but does that explain the almost-equal popularity of what could be seen as a more hopeful story of “The Bible”?

    I asked readers on the Albany Times Union Facebook page which they would watch, and people were equally passionate about “The Bible” and “The Walking Dead” (and some were watching both through the magic of DVRs).

    Here are some people’s comments:

    • Don Rittner said, “The Bible is an attempt to create a tale showing the evolution of humanity striving to find its way to salvation. The Walking Dead shows how society really reacts when presented with its own evil.”
    • Rich LaPointe said, “Walking Dead. The Bible is almost as realistic, but a little more far-fetched.”
    • Kelley Qua Wallace said, “Not too impressed with the Bible series. Not as good as The Book.”
    • Nikki Mcdonnell said, “The Bible. Who the hell likes zombies.”
    • Collin Martino said, “Tough call, they both have zombies…”

    Though Martino may be joking, and despite Rittner’s astute’s comment, the shows do share a few things. One of them is the Golden Rule of loving they neighbor as thyself, which is one of Jesus’ teachings but it also how audience members judge the humanity (or inhumanity) of “Walking Dead” characters, who either trust and help strangers, or distrust them and leave them to struggle on their own. Or, sometimes, just out and out kill other living people because they are so afraid they have lost their humanity.

    The two shows also show, to quote Rittner, “humanity striving to find its way to salvation.” In one, that way is found through God; in the other, through man. For audiences, though, the shared feeling is one of hope beyond the despair of death. So in the TV battle between “The Bible” and “The Walking Dead,” the clear winner is hope.

    Of course, Sunday also brings the start of Season 3 of “Game of Thrones,” whose tagline is the rather gloomy, “Winter is coming,” which might through a wrench into that “hope” theory.

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  • Is NYC’s Metropolitan Museum duping visitors?

    The AP is reporting that a class-action lawsuit is targeting the Met for how it charges admission.

    The story begins:

    Before visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art can stroll past the Picassos, Renoirs, Rembrandts and other priceless works, they must first deal with the ticket line, the posted $25 adult admission and the meaning of the word in smaller type just beneath it: “recommended.”
    Many people, especially foreign tourists, don’t see it, don’t understand it or don’t question it. If they ask, they are told the fee is merely a suggested donation: You can pay what you wish, but you must pay something.
    Confusion over what’s required to enter one of the world’s great museums, which draws more than 6 million visitors a year, is at the heart of a class-action lawsuit this month accusing the Met of scheming to defraud the public into believing the fees are required.

    What do you think? Have you visited the Met recently? What did you pay?

  • The Price is Right Live coming May 31 to Palace Theatre

    Come on down!

    The Price is Right Live is coming on May 31 to the Palace Theatre in Albany.

    Tickets start at $32.75 and go on sale at noon Friday, March 29, at the Box Office at 19 Clinton Ave., at http://ticketmaster.com or (800)745-3000.

    The Price Is Right Live is an interactive stage show that gives contestants pulled from the audience the chance to win appliances, vacations and cars by playing the classic games from the TV game show, including Plinko, Cliffhangers, the Big Wheel and even the fabulous Showcase, all the favorite games are played just like the TV show.

  • David Miller joins Sorelle Gallery roster

    'Blue Lagoon' Mixed Media on Paper 38 x 50 by David Miller (Courtesy Sorelle Gallery)

    David Miller, a painter who lives in Saratoga Springs and is a retired professor from Skidmore College, has recently joined the roster of artists represented by the Sorelle Gallery at Stuyvesant Plaza in Guilderland, the gallery has announced.

    A 2001 Times Union review of a retrospective  exhibition of his work at the Tang Museum said: “His joy infuses the gestural, calligraphic line and color on his canvases, much as it did for the Abstract Expressionists, to whom he clearly owes a debt.”

    For more about Miller and the Sorelle Gallery, click here.

  • The Acting Company brings As You Like It to Troy Music Hall

    The Acting Company has seen its share of stars trod the floorboards since the classic theater troupe was formed in 1972 by actor/director John Houseman. Kevin Kline, Rainn Wilson, Patty Lupone and David Ogden-Stiers are a few of the thespians who have acted in a company production.

    Over the years, The Acting Company — called the “major touring classical theater in the United States” by The New York Times — has played to more than 3 million people in the U.S. and around the world. After a string of performances in New York City, the Manhattan-based company hits the road with its production of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” They’ll stage the second show of their tour this week in Troy.

    7:30 p.m. Wednesday. $15-$36. Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, 30 Second St., Troy. 273-0038; http://www.troymusichall.org

    — Mike Lisi

  • Albany Symphony Orchestra @ Palace Theatre, 3/9/13

    By Mary Jane Leach

    Albany Symphony Orchestra presented a colorful concert Saturday night at the Palace Theatre, using visual art as inspiration for instruments to create aural images for our ears.

    The Palace’s large stage was ideal for the concert, as each piece used large sections of brass and woodwinds, as well as a full complement of strings, with many percussion instruments spread around the periphery of the stage.

    The first piece, “Trama” by Gabriela Ortiz, while not inspired by a specific painting, was nonetheless pictorial, creating a tapestry of images and events from Mexico, weaving in different genres of music: folk, jazz, and classical. “Trama” is the orchestral version of a movement from “Altar de muertos,” a string quartet by Ortiz. With its skillful and expansive orchestration and its use of color, it’s hard to imagine its origin as a string quartet. (more…)