6x6 Challenge

Ever since I first visited the 6x6 exhibit/sale at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo), I’ve had the itch to make something to submit. Especially after seeing some of the artworks, and thinking, “I could do that.” (Which reminds me of a very funny exchange in We Go to the gallery, a Dick & Jane parody in the “Dung Beetle” series – it is ROTFLOL funny: “John sees the painting. ‘I could paint that,’ says John. ‘But you didn’t,’ says Mummy.”).

I actually have several ideas, although they are not really mine, but merely adaptations of various other works, created by truly creative people. And I’ve bought lots of arts and crafts supplies, including a multitude of 6x6 art boards and shadow boxes. What I lack is talent – I drew the short stick in my family on the eye/hand coordination gene. Still, each year, someone from RoCo calls or emails, asking me to participate by donating a work, not just buying them. (And I am happy to support RoCo by purchasing the little pieces – my collection is up to 19…)

One of my fears is that whatever I end up putting together to donate will be so terrible that no one will buy it, and I’ll have to send a friend in to do a pity-purchase. Of course, if it’s hung near the ceiling or the floor I could always blame it on poor positioning instead of lack of artistic quality. I wonder if you can submit things anonymously – then, at least, the people at RoCo wouldn’t be able to identify me!

The 6x6 exhibit goes live on the RoCo website on May 18, although no purchases can be made till the opening night party, on June 2. The deadline for submitting artwork is April 15. So there’s still time, for me and you! Anyone willing to accept the challenge? I might even be willing to share some of my supplies…

Singing with the RPO - again, and again, and again!

This has been a banner collaborative year for Concentus Women’s Chorus – a performance with the Rochester Oratorio Society this fall, our upcoming March concerts (that will be sung behind a screen projection of photography by P.J. Pennewell, Principal Dancer / Rehearsal Director at Garth Fagan Dance), and two RPO concerts – Debussy’s Nocturnes, which we just completed mid-January, and Holst’s The Planets, which will be presented in April.

Debussy’s Nocturnes

Although the Nocturnes choral movement, Sirènes, is only about 9 minutes, it still took hours of preparation. It also required more singers than Concentus currently has, and we were lucky to be joined by some excellent guest voices. Even with them, we were only about 25-strong, and the piece is usually performed with twice as many voices. Our quality made up for some lack of quantity, but strategically placed microphones didn’t hurt, either…

Marcelo Lehninger rehearsing the chorus

Our conductor, Gwen Gassler, rehearsed us studiously, but we had to remain flexible, so that we could adapt to the RPO guest conductor’s choices of tempo, stress placements, etc. Marcelo Lehninger was delightful, and although he did ask that most of our dynamics be a notch louder than Debussy’s markings, he wasn’t put off by our lack of numbers. And this was certainly a case where deviating from the piece as specified by the composer was warranted (we didn’t have the luxury of splitting into a double chorus). Lehninger masterfully juggled Debussy’s two orchestrations. Thankfully, he deferred to the chorus at the end of the movement, where he preferred the original score, but the singers preferred the revised, with the altos echoing the clarinet (in the original score, the altos sing the entire passage, and it’s very difficult to find our starting note). It didn’t hurt that one of our singers is married to the clarinetist, who could champion our cause!

Brahms’ Requiem

Alison and Honey chatting over my empty seat

This weekend, I attended the first Winter Sing with the RPO, because my niece Alison was in town and she guilted me into it. The Brahms Requiem isn’t what I’d normally choose to spend a Saturday afternoon with, but in the end, it was almost as much fun as it was challenging and exhausting to sight-read, and Dr. Weinert did an outstanding job conducting us. His best piece of advice: don’t look back!  I smartly sat between Alison (who’d sung the piece before) and Honey Meconi, a Concentus alumna and frequent Concentus guest singer and incredible musician, so that when I got lost, I had an anchor on both sides.

Dr. Weinert waiting for the orchestra to tune,
while Richard Decker looks on

Holst’s The Planets

Soon we will start rehearsing the Neptune, the Mystic movement, which many of the singers performed with the RPO three years ago. But we’ll have a different conductor – Hans Graf, instead of Michael Francis – who will most certainly have different insights into how the piece should be performed. One thing that will be the same – the singers will be offstage, and the door will slowly close on us as we perform the first-written musical fade out. While I’m not sad not to be on stage again, I am disappointed that we’ll miss seeing the visual part of the performance – projections of NASA pictures that will accompany the music. It should be an amazing performance!

Yes In My Back Yard, please!

When I first visited Rochester, about 20 years ago, it puzzled me that East Avenue in Brighton and Pittsford was four lanes, with not an inch of shoulder, and a hard curb to boot. If you are driving side-by-side with another car, there is no margin for missing a pothole, or random debris, or a biker, or a stupid walker or runner who refuses to use the sidewalk (yes, those people exist, and I’ve almost hit them!). There is also no room to peek out of a side street to see what’s coming, and sight lines are obscured by curves, or on my road, a stone wall that is sacrosanct. Of course, I voiced my opinion to my neighbors that what would make more sense is one lane in each direction, a turning lane in the middle, and shoulders/bike lanes on each side.

So imagine my delight when we got a notice recently from the New York State Department of Transportation that they intended to do just that, and were hosting an open meeting to learn more about their vision! One of my neighbors even called me to ask if I’d had anything to do with it, but I don’t have those kinds of connections…

Their proposed work includes resurfacing (which the stretch sorely needs, especially after this year’s batch of slush turtle hatchings – I tried googling that term but can’t any reference to the tales my dad told about this mythical cause of potholes); widening the remaining three lanes by a foot each, and providing 3.5’ shoulders; and repairing sidewalks to be ADA compliant. I would hope that part of this project includes creating more sidewalks, the lack of which is apparently the reason that kids on my street have to take a bus to a school that is half a mile away.

Project Engineers were on hand at the meeting to answer questions about this project, which will stretch from the “can of worms” Rochester city line to St. John Fisher. Most of the intersections with lights will remain as they are, which won’t minimize the strategizing necessary when heading north at Allens Creek Road. And, at least initially, it may cause more rush-half-hour congestion on this stretch that parallels 490 and is used as an alternate when that highway is backed up. But it will ease making left turns out of side streets, as an engineer and I tried to explain to an elderly resident of the apartments of the Crossway Condos, since you could go halfway, to the turning lane, instead of waiting for 3-4 lanes to clear. She refused to see the logic, and both he and I ended up rolling our eyes and walking away.

Construction isn’t slated to begin till this summer, and that means that this spring’s pothole-patching will be haphazard, at best. And there will be some disruption (and night work! Oh no!). But I look forward to the results – a newly resurfaced road, better visibility turning left out of my street, and the ability to ride my bike on East Avenue with less fear of getting hit (because, let’s face it, there’s always the fear of some texting idiot hitting a biker…).

My dinner with… Steve Rosen

Decades ago, I was too timid to bid on a silent auction item (I don’t recall the charity now) I dearly coveted – dinner with Stephen Sondheim. It didn’t quite go for a song, but I could have afforded the splurge, and I regretted it. As an antiques dealer later admonished me, when trying unsuccessfully to negotiate the price of a Windsor chair, “You never regret an extravagance. You always regret an economy.” So, when the bidding got heated at Geva’s Summer Curtain Call fundraiser two years ago, I didn’t give up, and I “won” the opportunity to dine with Jen Cody, who starred in Geva’s hysterical production of Sylvia. Unfortunately, my dinner date was canceled at the last minute, because her dad was dying. I look forward to her starring in a future Geva production, so I can redeem by voucher. In the meantime…

There was another Summer Curtain Call auction last year for dinner with Steve Rosen that I couldn’t stop bidding on. Luckily, his parents, who live in Pittsford, are healthy, so Charlie and I had our “meet and eat” with him last week at Salena’s, in Village Gate. I was a little intimidated, and worried that we wouldn’t have enough to talk about for an entire dinner, but when he arrived, he put us completely at ease. First, although he did ask us a few questions about ourselves, he seemed perfectly happy to be grilled by me. Second, he turned out to be delightfully unassuming; he grew up in Pittsford, so we chatted about local stuff, like the weather, and how he felt about staying with his parents for the duration of the show, in his old bedroom with show posters and memorabilia from his childhood.

I tried to apologize to him for not letting him eat that much (he took most of his dinner home…) as I peppered him with questions. When he mentioned that he’d gone to summer camp in the Catskills, I asked if it was like Camp (the movie that got Anna Kendrick noticed, and had a cameo by Sondheim), and he said yes, but it wasn’t “that” camp, he went to the “other” camp – French Woods – where he met Zooey Deschanel and other now-famous actors, and formed lifelong friendships.

Since we were in Sondheim territory (he actually met the god when he worked as an audition reader for a production of The Frogs), I asked about The Other Josh Cohen, the show he wrote and is currently starring in at Geva: which came first, the words or the music? Interestingly, he said the music came first – he was in LA pitching TV ideas, and in a moment of distraction, wrote several songs as Neil Diamond riffs. The show started out as a vehicle for him and his writing partner, but has evolved into a full-fledged musical, with the multiple characters being played by any number of actors, from 3 to 30. This sounded extremely sensible for the long-term success of the show – it could just as easily be produced with a small cast, to contain costs, as it could be by a high school drama department. The cast, except for the “Josh” character, which Steve plays, are also the band, so the show requires some multitalented individuals, which many performing artists seem to be these days!

Steve talked a bit about an improv variety show he co-created at Joe’s Pub, and working with the Open Doors Program, initiated by the great Wendy Wasserstein. And about being burgled as a rite of passage in NYC. The evening ended too soon (it would have been impolite to impose further on his time), and I look forward to seeing his show later this month at Geva. And who knows, it might even make it to Broadway? If it does, it’ll be such fun to tell friends I saw it here first! 

For more information on The Other Josh Cohen visit: www.gevatheatre.org

How Brighton Works – Assessor’s Office

Almost a year ago, I wrote the following article for my neighborhood magazine, after doing some research at our Assessor's office. Brighton residents recently received their notices of reassessments, and of course many are stunned by their increases, seemingly in one year. I had to remind one friend that  the increase was really based on a 10 year-old value. So, for example, a 25% increase might seem drastic, but that really averages out to about a 2.3% annual increase over the past 10 years. Since writing the article, the equalization rate issued by New York State actually fell from 94% to 89%. Warning: math!

In New York State, most municipalities collect taxes – for schools, towns, counties, and fire departments – based on the assessed value of “real property” – i.e., real estate. The total budget amounts are divided by the total non-exempt property assessments to determine the tax rate. That rate is then applied to individual property values to determine the total tax.  (If a town assessment roll is not at 100%, the applicable equalization rate is applied to the taxable assessments as a part of the tax rate calculation.)

So what is the basis of assessed values? First, as you may have read recently in a series of articles in the Democrat & Chronicle, many properties are tax-exempt: parks and vacant land, properties related to religious organizations (places of worship and houses for the “parsons”), schools, and other non-profit organizations. In Brighton, roughly 20% of the property base is wholly tax-exempt; these organizations pay zero taxes, unless they negotiate something called Payment In Lieu of Taxes (which the University of Rochester does).

There are currently approximately 9,000 single-family residences on the Brighton tax rolls (other categories include multi-resident complexes, commercial, and industrial). The Town Assessor, Elaine Ainsworth, is charged with maintaining fair valuations on all of these properties – a daunting task. Sales prices can certainly be an indication of value, but even then, there can be extenuating circumstances that could cause that price to be under or over the property’s realistic value. As new properties are built, and properties are bought and sold, the Assessor attempts to keep the values in line with the market, so that all taxpayers are treated fairly.

However, over time, assessed values can diverge from market (although luckily, this is a pretty stable area), so the Assessor periodically performs an Assessment Roll-Revaluation also known as Town-Wide Assessment Roll Update or Assessment Equity Project (there is a balance of cost-effectiveness and equity of the assessed roll, since a revaluation isn’t cost-free). For several years, the assessed values equaled 100% of the market value estimate, but over the past 3 years, they have diminished to 94% on the latest filed roll--2016.  This equalization rate is set based on statistics the assessor receives from the state, and applies to all classes of taxable properties (except condominiums, which fall under a special tax law). You can see the effect of this on your tax bill, where your assessed value is divided by the “uniform percentage of value used to establish assessments,” to arrive at an estimated full market value. The goal, then, of revaluation, is to reestablish parity of assessed and full market values. The assessor cannot simply use the market value implied by the equalization rate, since different classes of property (e.g., residential vs. commercial), as well as different sizes/types of homes, or homes in different neighborhoods, might not have changed proportionately.

Assessed values can sometimes change in between revaluations, for example, when the Assessor is invited into a property, or when a property is sold or has a change in use or has an addition of livable square feet (usually detected through a building permit). The last time such a revaluation was performed was for the 2008 Assessment Roll filed on July 1, 2008.  The Assessor is now in the process of conducting a new revaluation, which will affect the 2018 tax roll.

How does the Assessor perform the Roll-Revaluation? The Assessor has hired a consultant to assist in updating and running the computer models that will generate the new proposed values. She and assessment office staff will review this information by neighborhood and in some cases by property, pulling comparable sales values, when necessary, to finalize the assessments. Commercial property owners will receive letters with their new assessments around the end of June, and residential owners will receive theirs around the end of November. The goal is to establish assessments that reflect what could reasonably be expected to be received in a market sale. The Assessor doesn’t know about condition issues on many of the properties, so homeowners have room to contest their assessments.

And just because many property assessments may increase, that does not mean that our taxes will have a corresponding increase. The various taxing authorities’ budgets are determined independently of the assessed values. So at least initially after the revaluation, the tax rate should decline. There is a lot of great information on the Assessor’s portion of the Brighton Town website about the property tax cycle. And all residents should get familiar with the Monroe County Real Property Portal (http://www.monroecounty.gov/etc/rp/) by reviewing not just their own properties, but sales of similar properties, to start thinking about what your property is worth. Many thanks to our Assessor, Elaine Ainsworth, not only for the time she spent with me to help me understand her department, but the effort she takes to oversee such a diversity of properties and to ensure equity of our assessments.

Bell Ringing at Church of the Ascension

My niece Alison never ceases to amaze me with her musical knowledge and talent, and her Thanksgiving visit, with her boyfriend, Nick, didn’t disappoint. On her agenda was a visit to the Church of the Ascension, off Lake Avenue, to ring their bells.

Tower bells are something I’d never given any thought to, but apparently there’s a whole organization devoted to what is called Change Ringing, and there are relatively few towers in North America (47 in the United States, and 9 in Canada, according to the website for the North AmericanGuild of Change Ringers). While it’s no surprise that Boston has three towers following this English tradition (most of the bells were made in Whitechapel, and there are roughly 6100 churches with change ringing bells in Britain), it is curious that there are three in Houston alone. Rochester is one of only a dozen on our side of the pond with 10 bells; most have 6 or 8, although Trinity Church in NYC (the only other tower in the state with active change bell ringing) and St. James Cathedral in Toronto have 12.

As they were getting ready, one of the regular ringers, Bob, explained the mechanics of bell ringing on a little wooden model. The bells start in the “down” position, and have to be rung “up” (upside down). This transfers the energy to the bell, making it easier to ring. There are special knots they tie on the ropes to indicate which position each bell is in. Once the bells are up, the ringing commenced, with Sue, on the smallest bell, calling, “look to, treble going, she’s gone.” They started the bells in sequence, finding the right pace, and then Chris would call out commands that only make sense to a bell ringer: “dodge” and “make seconds” and “plain hunt” and “stand.”

Nick's lesson

thumb ringing

Rochester’s bells are a recent phenomenon, as I learned from Helen while Nick was getting a quick lesson from Chris, and Bob, Sue and Alison were pretending to ring hand bells (which looked like they were practicing thumb wrestling). Helen is married to Chris, the “tower captain.” It was his passion that led to the bells’ installation just two years ago. Apparently, there weren’t many towers in Rochester that could accommodate the bells or the fundraising required. Helen has rung bells in over 1200 towers, mostly in England, while Chris has rung in over 2600 (she called bell ringing “addictive”). There are actually ringing tours, and the density of bell towers in England makes it easier to “collect” them. But there are English groups who tour North America as well, and three came through Rochester (and Canada) this fall. Most of those groups rang a “peal” in each location.

Sue, Helen, Alison, Chris, & Bob

A peal is around 3 hours of 5000+ changes. If you don’t want to repeat a change, a peal requires 7+ bells (7!= 5040 – yes, studying permutations and combinations is useful in real life…). Helen showed me a chart of one sequence of changes, and said it’s not as complicated as it looked – you just need to memorize the “blue line.” Alison (who Nick explained is the “ringing master” at Smith College) seemed to understand the patterns instinctively, and tried to help explain a more complicated one to one of the ringers who wasn’t getting it. It was cool, in a nerdy sort of way.

When they were finished with the practice session, they rang the bells down and put the ropes up. Nick explained that sometimes the ringers ring the bells down in a peal, instead of one a time, and that that’s particularly impressive. I can imagine – and now, I really can!

Ringing bells truly is a team sport – it requires not just the physical stamina to stand and pull the rope and understand the timing of your bell pulling to its ringing, but also to coordinate with your fellow players to ring in time, to change places in the sequences, to listen to the captain calling the changes, and to keep going when you make a mistake. It’s musical, it’s mathematical, and it’s hypnotic to hear and to watch. The Ascension ringers are always looking for recruits, and Chris is happy to teach and available for lessons. If you know someone who’d be interested in learning, visit: http://www.ascensionroch.org/change-ringing

And here's a video of Chris, Helen, Bob, Sue, and Alison ringing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcOtwyjtxCk&feature=youtu.be

Abstract Art class with Brian O’Neill

Brian with our finished works, top left to right: Charlie's,
Colleen's, Maggie's; bottom: Bill's

Years ago, before I moved home from London, I took several oil painting classes with a group of friends. My finished projects were nothing to brag about, but for some reason my teacher was so encouraging that, when asked what I wanted for a repatriation gift from my expat community, I decided against the usual Timothy Richards sculptural bookend, and asked for a set of Winsor & Newton paints. I chose poorly: I love my seeing my Timothy Richards collection on display throughout our house; the unopened box of paints taunts me every time I open the drawer it’s buried in.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve gone to Painting with a Twist several times. It’s a lot of fun, especially the BYO part, and at the end of 2+ hours you have a painting that’s ok to hang…in the laundry room. But this experience emboldened me, so when the incredibly talented Rochester artist Brian O’Neill announced a one-day abstract painting class, I signed Charlie and me up (our friends Colleen and Bill were also going to be return students). It was fun purchasing all the stuff on his supplies list – the paints, the brushes, the fake gold leaf… But then the actual day of the class came and I was filled with trepidation.

Colleen & Bill

"More red... More blue...
More beer... More light!"

We began with 5 minutes of quiet, to reflect on the images that were our inspiration, to think about what motivated our choices, and to consider what else we could discover. It was also an exercise in getting comfortable with stillness, which we have so little of in our lives of these days. I’d chosen my photo because it was purple. But looking at it more carefully, it was more than just shades of purple – there were pinks and oranges, and to me, the sense of calm after a storm.

Brian was an excellent instructor – telling us not to judge ourselves or our work, giving us helpful suggestions and brush strokes when asked, but basically letting us explore our own creativity. I mixed some really cool shades of purple, but found I didn’t know how to blend them on the canvas, so he helped me over that hurdle.

One of Brian O'Neill's beautiful creations...

... and another...

...and another

After lunch, we took a break and visited Brian’s studio, where his talent in abstract painting, hyper-realism, and the blend of the two was on display.

Towards the end of the session, students and teacher were sharing supplies – a fellow student let me use some of her paint that gave things a pearly sheen, Colleen was using our stuff for adhering metallic leaf, and everyone was using Brian’s silver leaf with abandon.

At the conclusion, Brian had each of us talk about what we learned and how our visions had transformed through the process. As a newbie, I struggled with a lot of things, like techniques that probably could be learned if I took the time. The biggest hurdle, though, was giving myself license to be creative – to let go of the literalness of my photo and try to capture the essence instead. I didn’t quite succeed in abstracting my image, and Charlie and I both agreed that our paintings looks better in a photo than in person. Still, as the day progressed, we promoted our paintings from garage to laundry to exercise room art. Not worth framing, but still worth displaying, for the sense of accomplishment.

The class was held at the Rochester Art Club – 2^nd oldest art club in the country – in the Hungerford building. For more information on Brian O’Neill’s studio and upcoming classes, visit: https://www.brianoneillstudio.com