Genesee Country Village & Museum

Each time I visit the Genesee Country Village & Museum (GCV&M) I experience it in a completely new way. This past weekend, Charlie and I were delighted to dine at the Hosmer Inn, at the invitation of friends who had “won” the experience in GCV&M’s Whirl fundraiser last fall. The Village was virtually empty when we arrived at 6pm, after closing hours, and the stillness was serene and unexpected. It was a leisurely stroll to Hosmer Inn, where most of the group was already gathered, and wine and beer began to flow. 

The Intrepid Ale tasted a bit fruity (I was informed it had lemon and ginger) and was delightfully refreshing at the end of what had been a perfect summer day.

Thus fortified, our interpreter for the evening, Allison, led a few of us on a brief tour of the Inn, which was built in 1818, and originally sat on Route 5, between Avon and Caledonia near the (now defunct) Genesee Valley Canal. Each of the rooms for rent was “high class” – clients rented a whole room (except for one room, which had 2 separate beds that could be rented), not just a bed or a spot on a floor, and each room had its own chamber pot – no sharing required! 

Our tour also took us to the basement to see the kitchen, which was a good 15 degrees cooler, and where day laborers would have taken meals. Allison was in costume, and as a lover of history, she was extremely knowledgeable about the village and the period in general. But she wasn’t “in character,” as Mrs. Hosmer, for example, because that would have prevented her from interacting with 21^stcentury visitors. That subtle distinction would have escaped me entirely had she not explained it.

When we joined the group back on the ground floor, it was time to sit and eat. We were divided in two rooms, and our server was actually Allison’s husband, Stephen. Both work full time at the GCV&M (Allison fell in love with the history of the village as a child, and has worked there for 9 years, and I think she even met her husband there, if I heard correctly). I learned from our hosts that, unlike some of the other living museums in the country, all 68 of GCV&M’s buildings are genuine; they are original structures that have been moved to Mumford, not built in place to look like something from the 1800s. Also, while I had always thought that the Village was the Museum, one of our hosts gently corrected me and encouraged me to visit the Gallery, which houses collections of sporting art and costumes, on my next visit.

Each course of the dinner was delicious: the hearty bread and interesting pickled fruits and vegetables; beef and cabbage soup; pork, with applesauce, mashed potatoes, asparagus, and a delicious mustard I would have bought a jar of, if it were for sale; and finally, the delicious cheesecake, which I’m sure we all wanted seconds of when they were offered, but we politely declined! Accompanying the dessert were incredible candied orange and ginger. It was such a lovely and leisurely meal, and such a joy to be away from the bustle and stresses of life for a few hours, enjoying good food and drink and conversation with old friends and new ones in the making.

There are so many different events at GCV&M throughout the summer that each visit brings some new adventure. I am seriously considering both the Lewis Carroll weekend and the Fiddlers’ Fair. And next time I have company from out of town, the GCV&M will definitely be on my list of places to take them.

Concentus Women's Chorus - A Choral Journey Around the World

Shortly after I moved to Rochester in 2011, I decided it was time to sing again. The last group I’d been in was in London, in the early 2000s, and I sorely missed the camaraderie and joy (although I didn’t miss some of the ‘girl’ drama...). I stumbled on the website of something called the Greater Rochester Choral Consortium, and a group called Concentus Women’s Chorus sounded interesting. So I emailed the director, and we bonded immediately – in her reply email to my audition request (which I still have…), she declared us the same “vintage” and even before auditioning me, asked “if there was anything (she) can do to help (me) feel at home in Rochester.” I knew I wanted to be accepted into this group. I also still have an excited post-audition email to my sister, exclaiming, “I found a group!” It was a bit daunting joining the chorus, not just because it’d been over a decade since I’d exercised my vocal chords. But since then, I’ve made some wonderful friends in my singing sisters and the director, Gwen. I’ve also been able to perform an old favorite (Ceremony of Carols, and I even managed to snag a solo last time!) and discover some new favorites (Cassiopeia, a song about dealing with a mother’s cancer, and Nocturne, a song about a deaf/blind person – you can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS6EHPwtXrc).

For many singers, old age manifests itself as a slide into a widening vibrato. That is not going to be my fate, but I have different issues that I will blame on my increasing number of revolutions around the Sun, rather than simply being out of shape (higher notes cracking, less breath control, standing fatigue). So I’m not sure how many more years I will be able to sing classical music comfortably in a small ensemble (we currently have only 16 active singers, so any mistake instantly becomes an audible inadvertent solo!). I just know that I have to take advantage of whatever (quality) years I have left.

Our upcoming concert, on June 9, will be lots of fun, not just because we are singing in some unexpected languages (Hebrew and Finnish and Farsi, oh my!), and not just because we’ll be on Pittsford Presbyterian’s music program (which means a post-concert cookie and punch reception), but because I have a couple of little solos! With just two three rehearsals left, I am still chewing on the French pronunciation, and am extremely thankful that the choral part of our Gaelic piece is tiny and repetitious (compared to the soloist, who sings lots of difficult syllables…). Hope to see some of my Rochester friends in the audience and at the reception afterwards. For more information, visit www.concentus.org

Coffee with the Conductor

One of the benefits of giving to the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) at a certain level is periodic invitations to things like artist meet-and-greets, which we rarely accept, because they occur post-concert, when we are rushing to our car to avoid the crush. But when the opportunity of “coffee with the conductor” on an otherwise lazy Saturday morning presented itself, I was curious. 

When I arrived at 9 am, there were a few people milling around the section of Java’s Café reserved for the event, including two RPO staff and Conductor Ward Stare. Since I imagined we’d all sit and he’d stand and give a talk, I wasn’t in an hurry to sit when no one else was, and went to use the loo. When I returned, Stare was at a table with three patrons, deep in discussion, so I chose another table and was joined by a lovely couple, and we proceeded to have our own chat, waiting for the event to begin. Around 9:30 I became a bit puzzled, but shortly after that, one of the RPO staff brought the Maestro over to our table, which was then expanded to include two other tables, for a total of nine. It was then our “turn” for a conversation with the conductor. 

He began by talking a bit about his excitement from this season, which ends shortly, and his anticipation of the next season. It was interesting that when he started enumerating some of the artistic risks of the next season, one man applauded them, while one woman admitted that they had turned her off. You can’t please everyone! The season’s musical progressiveness will reflect the social progressiveness it is celebrating: the 200^thbirthday of Susan B. Anthony and the 100^thanniversary of women’s suffrage in our country. And when he talked about breaking boundaries, he wasn’t just being metaphorical. He described the genesis for one of the concerts in February that will include “a new theatrical work setting the stories of strong Rochester women, past and present, to music,” written by playwright Mark Mobley. I was certainly intrigued and will be adding that to my calendar, because it’s not in my philharmonic half-subscription. So, while I was initially lukewarm about the 2-week festival in February, which will also include the opera The Mother of Us All, I am now actually looking forward to it! Maybe the unenthusiastic woman will also give it a chance.

One of the patrons asked if Stare was concerned about an aging audience for symphonic music. Stare shared anecdotes of various people at various times in the 20^thcentury predicting the imminent death of classical music, and yet it continues not just to survive, but thrive. He did acknowledge some obstacles to engaging younger people, but he is cautiously optimistic, if I read him correctly. He understands the correlation of arts education and audience development – it certainly helps if kids are taught music in school. It shouldn’t be a constant struggle to fund arts in the public schools, and yet…

Once I left the café, I realized how out of practice I am at blogging, because I had forgotten to take a picture of Stare chatting with people. So instead, I ambushed him on the street, which I’m sure he thought was a bit strange. But he was extremely gracious, just as he had been giving up his Saturday morning to talk to a bunch of strangers. 

I hope I can convince a few friends to go to the February concerts with me. For more information on the season, visit rpo.org 

Jen Cody in Geva’s “Hard Cell”

Several years ago, at a Geva fundraiser, I “won” a live auction bid to have dinner or coffee with Jen Cody, who was going to be starring in Sylvia the next season.  Unfortunately, her run in Rochester coincided with her father falling ill and dying, so it was not a good time to impose further on her generosity. How she managed to go on stage and give us those amazing performances portraying a dog, while dealing with personal loss, is a wonder, and a credit to her professionalism. Our date would have to wait... But it was only a matter of time before she’d return to our stage, and Hard Cell turned out to be the perfect vehicle for her.

So, the day before I saw the show, I had a lovely lunch with her at Amore. Of course, I forgot to ask her some of the questions I’d had, like what it was like to be in Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party (incredibly, there were two different musicals that year based on the same 1928 poem, and she was in the least awful production…). Or what it was like to live a partly nomadic life. Although I did ask her a few questions right out of the gate, our lunch was more of a conversation than an interview (I think?). I learned that even though she grew up in the suburbs of Rochester, she never went to Geva as a child. Instead, she went on school trips to New York City to see shows. And it was a production of Noises Off that opened her eyes to the possibility of acting as a career. She said she’d started out as a dancer (and now I’m wondering, was she the sprightly young actress I vaguely recall bouncing all over the Wild Party stage? I might just have to bid on dinner with her again to get some answers), and I loved her comparison of timing (and math!) in dance to comedic timing. And yes, she really is that petite, and apparently after the set for Geva's Women in Jeopardy was built, they had to lower some of it so that she could be seen by the audience over it!

Jen is such a “regular” person, that we also just talked about regular stuff – her rescue dog from Puerto Rico’s Dead Dog Beach, the gentrification of New York City, and Rochester winter. We also talked a bit about the current play, a world premiere, and her feeling that it deserves to be seen by a wider audience. 

Hard Cell was truly enjoyable, and all of the actors in it (although there wasn’t enough Jen Cody…) were marvelous – the four whose characters were more caricatures as well as the one whose wasn’t, and served as kind of an anchor. The show definitely requires you to suspend rationality at points that are required for comedic effect, but it’s worth it. The show runs through February 3, and tickets are still available at www.geva.org

Singing with the ROS, with the RPO

Eric Townell leading ROS rehearsal

I haven’t sung in a large mixed chorus since I lived in Connecticut, over 20 years ago. I sang with two choruses there: the Greenwich Choral Society and the Fairfield County Chorale, but neither suited me. I quit the first after I was fired from being music librarian, a job I was “volunteered” for… I quit the second because I disliked the director, who was much more passionate about his boy choir gig (after his death, his preference for young boys became clearer…). Plus, all that religious music large choruses sing... But when I learned last spring that the Rochester Oratorio Society (ROS) would be singing two of my all-time favorite large choral works – Carmina Burana and Chichester Psalms – I couldn’t resist the temptation to audition.

Chichester Psalms

My college chorus performed this work, and even though Bernstein is very specific that the soprano soloist NOT be a woman, I am quite sure I recall ours being female, albeit with a ‘boyish’ voice. Later, as my fanaticism for Stephen Sondheim developed and I devoured any book on him I could find, I learned this fascinating nugget:

“Bernstein was nothing if not utilitarian with his music, and the ‘Officer Krupke’ tune appeared on Sondheim’s desk because it had been cut from Candide…. Less well known than the exchanges with Candide is the fact that a rejected first-scene number for the Jets, ‘Mix!’ reappeared nine years later as the ‘Lama rag’shu goyim’ section of the slow movement of Chichester Psalms. Few choristers singing this work can have been aware that the ‘heathen’ were originally raging to Sondheim’s words.

            Mix!

            Make a mess of ‘em!

            Pay the Puerto Ricans back, 

            Make a mess of ‘em!

            If you let us take a crack,

            There’ll be less of ‘em,

            There’ll be less of ‘em.”                                 

(Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals, Stephen Banfield, pp. 35-36)

Carmina Burana – so many consonants, so little time!

This piece is just pure pleasure, both to sing and to hear. Back in my NYC days, I attended a summer sing at Carnegie Hall of this score, and sang a lot of “ta ta ta” instead of the words - I had no chance of actually learning them properly in the two-hour session. So, I looked forward to spending quality time with it under Eric Townell’s expert direction (I am also greatly impressed with his rehearsal management skills). I am taking his first-rehearsal advice to the chorus that “it’s important to sing so your voice feels healthy at the end of it” very seriously, because both performances are going to be long nights! Luckily, the ROS has already performed this work 14 times since the late 1950s (when they actually received a good-luck telegram for Carl Orff himself!), and many times recently, so the core chorus is already capable of performing it. That makes it easier for a newbie to learn, although it’s been a challenge erasing from my mind the spoof lyrics of one of my favorite YouTube videos: O Four Tuna. 

This is going to be an amazing experience to be a part of, and it will be a terrific concert to attend. The ROS is the most organized chorus I’ve ever been a part of, and of course you can’t beat singing with the RPO. I’m also excited that four of our out-of-town friends are going to visit us specially to hear this concert!

For more information on the concert and tickets, click here: RPO website

(What I write is my personal view. That's obviously always true, but I've been asked to add that disclaimer.)

Election Inspection

I have never given much thought to the people who work at our polling station – the ones who check you in and give you the ballot, or the ones who help out at the machines. But after taking a 3-hour training session (and a test!) to become an election inspector, I have a newfound respect for the individuals who take on this civic duty.

Although I was warned by my friend Nanette, who acted as an election inspector in Florida, I didn’t believe that the process would be similar here in New York. The warning wasn’t about the duties (they’re fairly rote, unless an exception occurs), but about the hours – morning till night. I envisioned a shift of, I don’t know, 4 hours? 6 at the most? Nope. In New York, inspectors have to arrive at 5am, an hour before the polls open, and cannot leave until 10pm, an hour after the polls close. My mind went numb at the thought, but I was too embarrassed to get up and leave the training only 15 minutes into it. And once I heard what is involved, I understood the need for the long day, since any discontinuity would provide an opportunity for compromising the integrity of the process.

The Image Cast machine,
which keeps a paper
audit trail

The attention to detail, and allowances for all sorts of exceptions, like incorrect markings, over-voting, spoiled ballots, and ballot reconciliation, is impressive. New York also has several laws aimed at making voting accessible: machines that are handicap accessible (and not just for people in wheelchairs, but for the blind, as well), Spanish interpreters in districts with a certain percentage of Spanish speakers, and the lack of requirement for identification (other than a non-rigorous signature authentication). 

Very specific table setup instructions!

Although I went into the training thinking it was something I could volunteer for, it turns out that election inspectors are paid $11/hour. So now I actually think it’s my duty not to be an inspector, but to let those who needs that money earn it. My civic duty, which I take very much to heart, is to show up on Election Day, vote, and thank them for their service.

I certainly hope that this election brings record turnout for a mid-term (unlike a Republican associate’s actual out-loud hope for bad weather, which tends to decrease minority voting), and that the egregious Republican attacks on minority voting rights in states like Georgia, Kansas, and North Dakota are corrected by the 2020 election. It is mind-numbing that in the 21^stcentury voter-suppression is still a thing. 

“The Rocky Horror Show” at Blackfriars Theatre

While I had never seen a live performance of The Rocky Horror Show, I have no idea how many times I’ve seen the movie version. I remember going to Georgetown in the late 70’s, to the midnight show, and knowing most of the audience lines, and, of course, all of the music by heart. That’s when I fell in love with Tim Curry (and I know I wasn’t the only one, regardless of gender!). I even bought a maid’s outfit so that I could dress up as “Magenta.”

I’m always a bit hesitant to see a performance of a show whose movie version has been indelibly imprinted in my mind (the recent Broadway version of Mary Poppins comes to mind as a huge disappointment, for example). But I hadn’t been to Blackfriars in a couple of years, and I loved both of the only shows I’d seen there (Grey Gardens and Assassins), and I’m a sucker for a musical, so… 

I went to a Sunday matinee, because I wanted to go to the post-show talk-back. Everything about the performance was first-rate – the cast, the set, the costumes, and the way it paid homage to the film but also allowed itself freedom for its own creativity. The production begins and ends with a brilliant bit of film and live interaction, and by the time “Brad” and “Janet” set foot on the stage, the audience knows it’s in good hands.

At this performance, there was, sadly, very little audience participation. Although the two women next to me knew their lines cold, they were practically whispering, because they were a bit shy. The three of us did manage to almost-shout “Say it!” when “Frank-N-Furter” taunts, “I see you shiver with anticip…” But so many of the audience “callbacks” are not really callbacks as much as they are callforwards– anticipating the next actor line (like asking “what’s your favorite science fiction TV show?” in the brief pause between the narrator’s “lost in time” and “lost in space.”) And as the Blackfriars’ website says, “it’s all in the timing!” So, the actors need to allow the beat, in case the audience chimes in, but also need to keep the pacing when the audience is unwilling or unable to contribute. And they did.

At the talk-back, all of the actors introduced themselves, and most had been performing since they were teens or pre-teens. The set, built in just four weeks, is apparently one of Blackfriars’ most complex and expansive. Unfortunately, it will not travel with the cast when they take the show to the Laurie Beechman Theatre in New York City on January 11 (yes, they’re taking a concert/cabaret presentation to NYC!), because that dinner theatre is too small to accommodate it. But I’m going to encourage all of my city friends to go see this wonderful cast. And I’m sure they will all fall in love with Ed Popil, aka Mrs. Kasha Davis. (Now I must see Drag Story Hour with Mrs. Kasha Davis...)

The show has been extended to November 11, and is selling out. For more info about the show and the season, visit blackfriars.org