Michael Janairo

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Author: Michael Janairo

  • Is it me or are the 1970s coming back stronger than ever?

    Here’s my evidence:

    • On Tuesday, Van Halen releases a new album. (Its first album VH1 came out in 1977)
    • On Friday, Peter Frampton comes to the Palace Theatre in Albany to play Frampton Comes Alive (from 1976) plus other songs.
    • Also on Friday, Star Wars Episode I (the “first” Star Wars, as confused young people who weren’t alive in the 1977 when the real first Star Wars came out, even though it was called “Episode IV”) returns to the silver screen in 3-D.

    Now all we need is some new Donna Summer songs in the boom box, and the Pittsburgh Pirates in contention for the World Series.

  • What’s your take on EMPAC?

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    The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at RPI in Troy begins its Spring 2012 season Thursday night with a screening of Alfred Hithcock’s classic film “Vertigo.”

    Some highlights of the coming season include Annie Dorsen: “Hello Hi There” on Feb. 18, in which chatbots hold a conversation; a solo saxophone performance by John Zorn on April 3; and a dance performance by Wally Cardona and Jennifer Lacey called “Tool is Loot” on April 20, 21.

    The building opened in fall 2008 and was hailed by the New York Times as a “technological pleasure dome for the mind and senses… dedicated to the marriage of art and science as it has never been done before.” Sometimes, though, it seems not enough people are familiar with EMPAC or they are turned off by what it presents to the public. Of course, public events are only part of what happens at EMPAC, which also commissions new work in video, dance, music, theater, internet art, DVD productions, interactive installations and multimedia art; holds residencies for artists and scholars, who get to use the venues facilities; conducts workshops to give people hands on experience in various types of new technologies; as well as rents out the venue for other events.

    For an upcoming column, I’m wondering what other people think of EMPAC. So you can take the poll below and add any comments you may have.

    [poll id=”93″]

  • Ice Racing championship event at Glens Falls Civic Center canceled

    From the Civic Center:

    The Championship Ice Racing event scheduled for Saturday, January 28 at the Glens Falls Civic Center has been cancelled due to a scheduling conflict.

    All ticket holders who purchased their tickets via credit card through GlensFallsCC.com will be automatically refunded the ticket price.  All other refunds are only available at the original place of purchase.

  • Big picture: Which Broadway shows would you like to see come to the Capital Region?

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    Times Union Studio shot of Entertainment Editor Michael Janairo for his upcoming Unwind “Big Picture” Arts Column, shot on Wednesday, June 16, 2010, in Albany, NY. (Luanne M. Ferris/Times Union)

    On Tuesday night, “Shrek: The Musical” opens at Proctors.

    It’s the third production in the venue’s five-musical Broadway season. (“La Cage Aux Folles” started the season, followed by “The Addams Family”; later will be “Jersey Boys” and “Memphis”). Now that the season is around the halfway point, I thought I’d try my powers of prognostication about what may be in store for Proctors’ 2012-13 Broadway season.

    Although nothing has been announced at Proctors, some current Broadway shows have already announced 2012-13 tours, even the biggest one of them all — “The Book of Mormon” — which last year won nine Tony awards, including best musical. The show, which satirizes organized religion and Broadway shows, comes from the same brains behind the TV show “South Park,” Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and Robert Lopez, who co-wrote “Avenue Q.” So the questions are: will Proctors be able to snag this hot ticket, and will the venue be able to sell enough tickets to fill its 2,646 seats for a run of a week or longer?

    Of course, the matter of selling tickets is the big question for every show at every venue, but the kinds of shows Proctors brings in says something about the audience. Are Capital Region theatergoers eager and open enough for a musical about naive Mormon missionaries in Uganda, a production that Stone has called an “atheist’s love letter to religion”?

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  • Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company celebrates 21 years at The Egg

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    By Tresca Weinstein, Special to the Times Union

    Melissa George and Laura Teeter, dancers with the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company, have been living parallel lives for quite some time now. Both women graduated from the Boston Conservatory in spring 2004, joined Sinopoli’s company that summer, and have been with her ever since.

    “I didn’t anticipate being here this long, but the longer I stayed, the more confident I became, and the more I felt my artistry growing,” Teeter said recently. “I was pretty lucky to land the perfect job for me right out of college.”

    In their time with Sinopoli, Teeter and George have seen the company’s public profile grow as well, along with its reputation and base of support. This year, the troupe celebrates its 21st anniversary as the resident company of The Egg. Its annual “home” performance is slated for 8 p.m. Friday.

    What accounts for the longevity of the company and its dancers’ long runs? (A third dancer, Claire Jacob-Zysman, has been with the troupe for six years, while Marie Klaiber, Andre Robles and Sara Senecal are newer additions.) George sums it up in two words: “Ellen’s passion.”

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  • Martin Sexton, Joan Osborne, Daughtry and more coming to region

    Martin & Joan at The Egg
    The Egg in Albany has two new concerts from artists about to release new albums – imagine that. First up on Saturday, March 3, Syracuse native Martin Sexton takes the stage solo and acoustic. If you’ve already seen him, you know the singer-songwriter’s voice can go from a blues growl to a soulful croon to a gospel-tinged falsetto, often within the same song. Get a primer when his five-song EP “Fall Like Rain” drops next Tuesday.
    Speaking of the blues, Joan Osborne has a CD full of blues covers due on March 27. That will give you a few days to listen before her show at The Egg on Sunday, April 1. Osborne’s breakthrough album “Relish” with its hit single “One of Us” came out 17 years ago, but she’s been working toward this one her whole career. As she puts it, she was waiting until “someday, when the time was right and my voice was ready.” About to turn 50 – gulp! – the time seems to be now.
    Tickets for both go on sale Friday at 11 a.m.
    “Idol” hands at Palace
    In a week when “American Idol” returns to the airwaves, it seems fitting that there is news of one of its biggest alumni – if not one of its winners – is coming to town. Season five fourth-place finisher Chris Daughtry brings his band Daughtry to the Palace Theatre in Albany on April 28, in support of their current release, “Break the Spell,” and the Malaria No More foundation. Get tickets beginning Saturday, Jan. 28. (more…)

  • Big Picture: Writers worth seeing this spring

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    Times Union Studio shot of Entertainment Editor Michael Janairo for his upcoming Unwind “Big Picture” Arts Column, shot on Wednesday, June 16, 2010, in Albany, NY. (Luanne M. Ferris/Times Union)

    The New York State Writers Institute recently released its spring schedule, but in thinking about writers coming to the region this spring, my first thought goes to Darin Strauss.

    His books include the memoir “Half of Life” (2010), in which he recounts how he killed a classmate in a car accident and its aftermath, which won a National Book Critics Circle award, and his 2001 debut “Chang and Eng” (2001), a fictionalized account of the famous conjoined brothers.

    It was because of that book that I first heard Strauss give a talk in the common room of a dorm at Skidmore College. I was a student at the New York State Summer Writers Institute, studying with Marilyn Robinson and Russell Banks, and he was one of the alumni with a success story – the publication of his first novel. He said he had worked on the novel at the Writers Institute at Skidmore, and was especially impressed with the sharp-eyed Douglas Glover, who at that time would read manuscripts from students and offer a one-on-one critique that was both thrilling and terrifying.

    What I remember best was how Strauss responded to the question of what it was like going from a writer working away, often alone, to having published a book. He said something like, “You know the saying, ‘the quiet before the storm.’? Well, it’s like the quiet after the quiet.”

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  • New York State Writers Institute announces spring 2012 season

    The complete listing of the Visiting Writers Series and Classic Film Series schedules follows.

    VISITING WRITER SERIES

    February 2 (Thursday): Alan Lightman, novelist and science writer

    Seminar – 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

    Reading – 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

    Alan Lightman, theoretical physicist and bestselling author, is renowned for accessible works of fiction and nonfiction that explain the “grand ideas” of physics. His most recent book is Mr. g: A Novel About the Creation (2012), which Publishers Weekly called, “a touching, imaginative rendition of God’s creation of the Universe.”

    February 10 (Friday): Teju Cole, novelist and street photographer

    Seminar – 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

    Reading – 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus

    Teju Cole is the author of the critically acclaimed debut novel Open City (2011), the story of a young Nigerian-German psychiatrist who wanders the streets of Manhattan exploring the city’s landscapes, people, and his own feelings of isolation. The New York Times named it a “2011 Notable Book” and described it as “an indelible novel [that] does precisely what literature should do: it brings together thoughts and beliefs, and blurs borders…A compassionate and masterly work.” (more…)

  • Skidmore’s Steven Millhauser a Story Prize finalist

    The Story Prize announced today the three finalists for the annual award for books of short fiction.

    The three short story collections were chosen from among a field of 92 books submitted in 2011.

    The finalists are:

    • The Angel Esmeralda by Don DeLillo (Scribner)
    • We Others by Steven Millhauser (Alfred A. Knopf)
    • Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman (Lookout Books)

    The finalists were selected by Story Prize founder Julie Lindsey  and Director Larry Dark. The judges for this year’s award will be award-winning author Sherman Alexie, Indiana University comparative literature professor Breon Mitchell and Louise Steinman, the curator of the award-winning ALOUD reading/conversation series for the Los Angeles Public Library, and co-director of the Los Angeles Institute for Humanities at USC.

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