Michael Janairo

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Author: Michael Janairo

  • Jim Gaudet and The Railroad Boys celebrate new CD

    Jim Gaudet and the Railroad Boys

    Jim Gaudet and The Railroad Boys are coming back to The Linda, WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio, in Albany at 8 pm Friday for a release party for their third album, “Reasons That I Run.” The CD will be available at the concert for $5 off.

    The roots music album is filled with character sketches, bluegrass story songs, blues tunes and call-and-response dance numbers, all delivered in Gaudet’s distinctive voice. The songs may come from Gaudet, but the msuic lives because of all the members of the band, including: bassist Bob Ristau, mandolinist Sten Isachsen and new addition and former Times Union employee, fiddler Mat Kane of The Doc Marshalls.

    Tickets are $15. For tickets or information on the show, visit http://www.thelinda.org or call 465-5233, Ext. 4. For more information on Jim Gaudet and The Railroad Boys, visit http://www.jimgaudet.com or call 438-1297.

  • Judge a book by its cover: Dan Brown’s ‘Inferno’

    Courtesy Random House

    People didn’t so much read Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” as inhale it, with the page-turner selling something like a bajillion copies (now those tattered paperbacks are left behind at rental cottages all up and down the coasts).

    In anticipation of his newest book, Inferno, Random House has just released the cover art.

    So, go ahead, judge this book by its cover.

  • DMB returning to SPAC on May 25, 26

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    There is no official word from the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, but the Dave Matthews Band say they’re playing the outdoor amphitheater for two nights in May.

    The calendar on the band’s website says the jam band will be at SPAC on May 25 and 26.

    SEE THE BAND’S WEBSITE

    Pre-sale for tickets will be held on Feb. 21 and tickets go on sale to the general public on March 22.

  • Video: Matt & Kim, RPI and Harlem Shake awesomeness

    Were you there?

  • Home Show art show winners announced

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    “Spring Bed #4” by Catherine Wagner Minnery of Saratoga Springs was named best in show at Albany Center Gallery’s Project Art, a pop-up gallery at last weekend’s Great Northeast Home Show at Times Union Center.

    The award for the 8-by-8-inch oil-on-panel painting comes with a $250 prize and is meant to recongize a single work that stood out among the more than 90 entries of various mediums by artists from throughout the Capital Region.

    Four other works received recognition as honorable mentions. They were:

    • “Coincidentia Oppositorum” by Chris Escobar of Albany, mixed media
    • “Lake George” series by Chris DeMarco of Albany, photography
    • “View” by Jenny Hutchinson of Glens Falls, painting
    • “Bloodwood and Holly Vessel” by Raymond Puffer of Watervliet, sculpture (wood turning)

    The jurors of the show were Elizabeth Dubben, director of exhibitions at Saratoga Arts; Tony Iadicicco, executive director of Albany Center Gallery; and Michael Janairo, Times Union’s arts and entertainment editor.

  • ASO announces 2013-14 season

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    Albany Symphony Orchestra music director David Alan Miller, coming off the blockbuster success of Yo-Yo Ma’s sell-out performance last month, on Thursday announced the ASO’s 2013-14 season.

    The featured concert will be a special gala performance next January with acclaimed pianist Andre Watts, who is slated to fill the Palace Theatre with the sweeping Romantic grandeur of Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2.

    Watts previously performed with the ASO in 1995, and has been a frequent guest with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, having performed the Brahms piece in 1997 at SPAC.

    Another superstar performer slated to play with the ASO is Dame Evelyn Glennie, the Scottish percussionist who was featured during the Olympics opening ceremonies in London last year. She will be the featured soloist of the May 17, 2014, American Music Festival at EMPAC in Troy, performing “Strike Zones” by Joan Tower.

    Known for featuring the work of new composers, the ASO season includes three world premieres of pieces by Clarice Assad, Aaron Jay Kernis and Conor Brown.

    The ASO is also known mixing new with old, and the season will include cherished works such as Ravel’s “Bolero,” Tschaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade,” Beethoven’s Third Symphony and Barber’s Violin Concerto.

    For ticket information, contact the Albany Symphony Orchestra at 465-4755 or visit http://www.albanysymphony.com.

    The complete season (more…)

  • Tina Packer how we know her: High brow and brilliant

    Shakespeare & Company’s Tina Packer is now performing Women of Will in New York City, and the big city is loving it (Read the AP review).

    The latest evidence comes from NY Mag’s Approval Matrix.

    Congrats, Tina!

    Read previous reviews of Women of Will by the Times Union:
    http://blog.timesunion.com/localarts/women-of-will-shakespeare-and-company-62010/2139/

    http://blog.timesunion.com/localarts/women-of-will-the-complete-journey-part-v-shakespeare-company-6511/16332/

  • LeeSaar The Company to present ‘grass and jackals’ at Mass MoCA

    How can the extreme conditions of military life be translated into contemporary dance?

    Choreographers Lee Sher and Saar Harari of LeeSaar The Company (founded in Israel, now based in New York City) spent four years researching that question. The result is “grass and jackals,” a new work onstage Friday at Mass MoCA that was presented as a work-in-progress at Jacob’s Pillow in the summer of 2012.

    Using dramatic lighting by Avi Yona Bueno and movement structured as a continual series of climaxes, the piece shifts among moods of isolation, vulnerability, intimacy and imminent violence as the dancers—who hail from Taiwan, Korea, the United States, Malaysia, Canada and Israel—are pushed to the edge of their physical abilities.

    LEESAAR THE COMPANY: GRASS AND JACKALS
    When: 8 p.m. Friday
    Where: MASS MoCA, 87 Marshall St., North Adams, Mass.
    Tickets: $15; students, $10
    Info: (413) 662-2111

    — Tresca Weinstein

  • Motionhouse ‘Scattered’ @ Proctors, 2/2/13

    SCHENECTADY — Modern dance is an abstract art, with bodies moving through 3-dimensional space creating lines that appear and disappear in a snap.

    The centerpiece of the British troupe Motionhouse’s performance Saturday night on the Mainstage at Proctors, however, was something very concrete: a large curved wall like a skateboarder’s quarter-pipe that stood in the middle of the stage and rose more than 12-feet.

    In “Scattered,” a crowd-pleasing 65-minute piece, that wall, which was designed by Simon Dormon, was not only a screen for projected images — such as glaciers, ice floes, the inside of a freezer, drops of water, a pools of water, a desert landscape, snowfall and avalanches — but also the point from which dancers launched their bodies or to which they threw themselves.
    (more…)