Arts Features

Native Americans have played an important role in the U.S. military.  Tonight, a documentary that pays tribute to their stories premieres at 9 o'clock on WXXI-TV.

Jeff Beal can put his feet up and relax Friday night at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theater. “I have nothing to do,” he says.

Yes, that’s the job of the Eastman Philharmonia, conductor laureate of the St. Louis and Detroit symphony orchestras Leonard Slatkin, and Grammy-winning soprano Hila Plitmann. It’s a celebration of Beal’s Emmy-encrusted career as a composer of film scores, television themes and classical compositions.

A new play premiering in Rochester this weekend tackles the issue of race relations.

"I just think it's something we don't about in the world," said Ralph Meranto, artistic director at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Rochester. "We all have friends of all different races, and there's always this awkwardness when you get to that point of the conversation."

The High Falls Women’s Film Festival pulls no punches when it opens Thursday at The Little Theatre. When the first film, “We Are Not Princesses,” lights up the screen, a woman who has fled her native Syria matter-of-factly describes wild dogs feeding on dead bodies in the streets.

Michelle Wolf certainly has a way with words. Whether those words are truth-telling or rabble-rousing depends on the listener’s perspective. But it was certainly both sides of that argument, after her appearance at the 2018 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, that catapulted her into the upper realm of talked-about comedians.

Wolf has two shows here Saturday, 7 and 9:30 p.m., at Comedy at the Carlson.

Leave your digital devices at the door. At last weekend’s Rochester Antiquarian Book Fair, old-school technology was on display. The printing press.

The Main Street Armory was a creepily appropriate setting for the people who love old books. To see the books, hold them, smell them, own them and, I suspect, sleep with them.

“Where did you get the braille Playboy?” I ask Dennis Seekins. I figure he found it under a bed.

“At an estate sale!”

Water Street Music Hall, which had been the most-significant club on the local scene since the late 1980s, is rising from the ashes of discord once again. The two-headed entertainment center announced its return Wednesday afternoon with a ribbon cutting ceremony at the red brick, turn-of-the-last century old warehouse tucked away off of Andrews Street in the St. Paul Quarter.

Owner Peter Sewell explains that the extensive renovations are working alongside a repurposing of the two rooms, a restaurant called Jack’s on Water Street and the larger music venue side, Water Street 2020.

A re-branding of Water Street was essential. Sewell says the venue’s nights of bad economic management and hip-hop brawls are over.