On Saturday, Sept. 15, the free Lark Street festival, Lark Fest, features music on two stages. The festival is presented by The Lark Street Business Improvement District and WEXT 97.7 FM.
Madison Stage (Lark and Madison)
Headband Jack
The City Never Sleeps
Sevendys
MaryLeigh & the Fauves
Jukebox the Ghost
World Party
Washington Stage(Lark and Washington)
Dirty Paris
Northern Faces
Erin Harkes
Lucky Jukebox Brigade
Graham Alexander
Ryan Shaw
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David Wiegand of the Times Union’s sister newspaper, San Francisco Chronicle, has a wonderful appreciation of Marvin Hamlisch. He is part of it:
Mr. Hamlisch often wrote with great heart and emotion, but the music for “Chorus Line” memorably shows how much more there was to Mr. Hamlisch’s music than what we heard on the surface on a first listen: He didn’t write songs of hope, love and longing — he wrote human songs, songs about life, not just Broadway or Hollywood’s version of life.
Mr. Hamlisch wrote scores for more than 40 films, including “Sophie’s Choice,” “The Way We Were,” “The Informant” and “Ordinary People.” He was an equally gifted arranger, most memorably, perhaps, for his work on the Paul Newman classic, “The Sting,” in which he adapted the ragtime music of Scott Joplin. If you listen carefully to that score, as everyone did when the film came out in 1973, you may get yet another sense of Mr. Hamlisch’s genius. The score, and the main theme, “The Entertainer,” display an absolute respect and loyalty to Joplin’s original music, even while reworking it for a big Hollywood film.
In a more popular music vein, Mr. Hamlisch and then-girlfriend Carole Bayer Sager composed “Nobody Does It Better” for the 1977 James Bond film “The Spy Who Loved Me.” It was sung by Carly Simon on the soundtrack and became one of her most enduring hits.
And through it all, the awards kept coming: He was one of only 11 people to have won Tonys, Grammys, Oscars and Emmys, and one of only two people to have also won the Pulitzer (the other is Richard Rodgers).Unlike other composers, it isn’t always that easy to identify a Marvin Hamisch song or score. We might be able to identify a piece of music as, say, a “Henry Mancini song” or a Bernard Hermann score, but that’s less true of Mr. Hamlisch’s music. The same man who wrote “Sunshine, Lollipops and Roses,” sung by Lesley Gore, wrote the score for the musical “The Sweet Smell of Success,” the score for the film “Bananas,” the classical symphonic suite “Anatomy of Peace” and was principal pops conductor for the Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, San Diego, Pasadena and Dallas symphonies. He was due to be announced as principal pops conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra at the time of his death, had completed the score for the forthcoming Steven Soderbergh film about Liberace, starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, and was working on a new Broadway show called “Gotta Dance.”
That isn’t to say that Mr. Hamlisch somehow lacked a style — far from it. If anything, he owned many styles, and each one was authentic and unique.
Acclaimed author William Kennedy has been described as doing for Albany what James Joyce did for Dublin. But in this hour-long video, he talks about old Saratoga Springs, a place where he has been visiting since he was a boy.
The video was taken Aug. 1, 2012, at the Canfield Casino, as part of the Saratoga Springs History Museum’s Alfred Z. Solomon Charitable Trust Series.
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Sherman Hemsley, who is best known for his role in the TV sitcom “The Jefferson,” has died. He was 74 years old.
Early reports from TMZ say the El Paso, Texas, resident died at home of natural causes.
Hemsley’s character George Jefferson first came to prominence through the sitcom “All in the Family” in the early 1970s. “The Jefferson” spun off of “All of the Family” two years after the characters were introduced, and “The Jefferson” ran for 11 seasons.
A 1999 Times Union article by Mark McGuire listed George Jefferson, the character Hemsley played as No. 80 on the list of 100 all-time best TV characters.
Isabel Sanford, who played George Jefferson’s wife, Louise “Weezie” Jefferson, had died in 2004.
Here is a link to a more complete obituary: http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/TVs-George-Jefferson-dies-in-El-Paso-3731858.php
Barrington Stage Company has announced that the wildly popular production of “Dr Ruth, All the Way,” a one-woman show written by Mark St. Germain and starring Debra Jo Rupp, will return from Sept. 19 to Oct. 7 at the BSC’s St. Germain Stage in Pittsfield.
Read the Times Union review of the show. For more information contact (413) 236-8888 or http://barringtonstageco.org.
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Blue Man Group is coming back to Proctors theater in Schenectady for three performances: 8 p.m. July 21, and 1 and 5 p.m. July 22.
This is a return engagement of the show that played at Proctors last year, which critic Michael Eck called “wickedly subversive” and “hugely, satisfyingly fun.”
Tickets (priced at $20, $30, $45, $60 & $75) are on sale at Proctors Box Office, (518) 346-6204 or online at proctors.org
If you missed the Times Union panel discussion on social media at the Smalbany conference at the UAlbany Nanocollege, here is a wrap up, via storify:
Continue reading →
At noon today, I’ll be moderating a panel during the free Smalbany Conference, geared toward small business, on “Growing your social media reputation.”
Noon Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Auditorium at CNSE’s Albany NanoTech Complex
255 Fuller Road, Albany, NY 12203
Moderator
Panelists
More info on the day:
The day’s events run from 7 am to 5 pm.
http://smalbany.org/
Admission is free, but you’re encouraged to register:
http://smalbany.org/registration/
Map and parking information:
There is a bit of a walk from the main parking lot to rotunda, where the day’s events take place.
http://smalbany.org/map-directions/
Bouchercon is slated to come to Albany in 2013. And volunteers are being sought to make it happen.
What is Bouchercon, you ask? The full name is the Anthony Boucher Memorial World Mystery Convention, a meeting of authors of mystery and detective fiction — and their fans — that has been going on since 1970. The man the event is named after was an author, editor and New York Times critic of both science fiction and mysteries. He died in 1968, and a memorial for him in 1970 has turned into the annual convention.
The Albany Bouchercon is slated to have some big names as guests of honor: Sue Grafton, Tess Gerritsen, P.C. Doherty and Steve Hamilton.
Al Abramson, one of the chief organizers of the convention, plans to hold an organizational meeting for volunteers.The meeting is slated for 5:30-7:30 tonight (Monday, July 16) at the Albany Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, 25 Quackenbush Square in Albany.
