Arts Features

Winter’s coming. A long season of coronavirus discontent is settling over us.

A shift in our community interactions has already proven to be inevitable.

After a slow, downward spiral, one of downtown Rochester’s iconic bars, Richmond’s, closed last weekend. The place goes back more than three decades, back to when it was Schatzees.

Morning glory vines have overtaken my backyard this summer. They are deceptively beautiful, with their lush greenery and scattering of delicate trumpet flowers creeping up the deck railings, thin tendrils reaching out to embrace the legs of the grill. The morning glory grows with startling virility. If the dog stood for too long within its reach, I might have to tear the vines from her legs.

But in truth, the morning glory is a lie. It is a noxious weed. If I allow it to spread, it will kill everything beneath it.

For fans of metaphors, the morning glory is 2020.

James Brown sat in his usual spot, on the last stool at the lunch counter in his namesake diner on Culver Road, thumbing through a stack of bills and reminiscing about his time in the restaurant game.

“The customers and the neighborhood, they made it fun,” Brown said. “But you can’t do it forever. I physically can’t do it anymore.”

He swung a beefy leg onto the open stool next to him and rubbed his swollen knee. It was flaring up again.

The Majestics have returned mightily with “Majestics MMXX” with a musical fist in the air and a steady, rocksteady-reggae groove.

The band's appeal is found partly in its longevity — with a tenure that goes back all the way to the 1970s when it was on Record Archive’s imprint and fans still called it Bahama Mama — and also in its willingness to color outside the lines. Though they've shared the bill with legendary artists like Burning Spear and Lee “Scratch” Perry, traditional bonds and sounds have eluded them.

“Samadhi” is a Sanskrit term referring to a state of heightened awareness, leading to communion with the divine. That may seem to be quite a reach for a record title, but on Jacám Manricks’ new album, “Samadhi,” you can feel the musicians aspiring to a lofty goal.

Manricks not only wrote all eight tracks (one is a collaboration), he also plays alto, tenor, and soprano saxophones, clarinet and bass clarinet, flute and alto flute, and MIDI (synthesized) strings. His arrangements are unfailingly ambitious.

If Korean-born pianist Sukyung Kim ever visits Rochester in the springtime, she can feast her eyes on our real lilac hill at Highland Park. The title tune of Kim’s impressive debut EP, “Lilac Hill,” was inspired by a dream, but that won’t stop listeners from taking an evocative musical journey there.