Across the Universe

"Iron Smoke's Home for the Holidays Christmas Party & Toy Drive" is on Friday, featuring a parade of local musicians barking out Christmas classics. But in the end, the toy drive is the point.

The Webster native and Grammy-winning fiddler has been hospitalized for both physical and mental health issues. She's home now, but her ordeal is nowhere close to over.

As we look inward for our salvation, Across the Universe columnist Jeff Spevak writes, we look at what we're writing and recording here. In our basements, in our studios. We're creating our own music.He hears it in two new local albums.

Thompson’s book, “What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues,” was prompted by Trump’s election, says the author, who will do a reading this week at SUNY Brockport.

After a life of ups and downs, the songwriter from Lima takes their act to where it all began.

Right now, Danielle Ponder seemingly can do no wrong. Each stop on her current tour is followed by fans raving on social media. You can see and hear for yourself Friday when she returns home to play Water Street Music Hall.

Where does Rochester fit in on the Kurtz scale? She’s been here a couple of times, so we must be OK enough — and she returns at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 18 at The Little.

Rochester’s ImageOut film festival opens this week, and as we have grown accustomed to over the last couple of years, these films will be screened at a hybrid of live and virtual events. And the films are the point here — 10 days of LGBTQ+ movies.

Bandaloop was a part of the first two Rochester Fringe Festivals. It returns for the event’s 11th year, with two shows each on Friday and Saturday on the side of Five Star Plaza. The shows are free, and easily visible from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park.

Tav Falco’s Panther Burns is finally touring again, with a Sept. 13 date at Photo City Music Hall, 543 Atlantic Ave.