A PUBLICATION OF THE ARTS & CULTURAL COUNCILFOR GREATER ROCHESTER

SPRING 2012 | ROCHESTER, NY

RIT’s Vignelli Center for Design StudiesAdvertising Legend George Lois

On the International StageUniversity of Rochester’s Nigel Maister

Percussion RochesterThe Launch of a New Music Festival

MEMORIAL ART GALLERY 500 University Ave., Rochester, NY 14607 (585) 276-8900mag.rochester.edu With its permanent collection spanning 50 centuries of world art, the Memorial Art Gallery is considered one of the finest regional art museums in the coun-try. Among its treasures are works by such artists as Monet, Cézanne, Matisse, Homer, and Cassatt. The Gallery offers a year-round schedule of exhibitions, tours, and events, as well as a restaurant, gift shop, and art school. During your visit, experience the recently renovated gallery of ancient art and enjoy concerts on North America’s only full-size Italian Baroque organ, on permanent loan from the Eastman School of Music (schedule on our website).

EASTMAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC 26 Gibbs St., Rochester, NY 14604 www.esm.rochester.edu

The Eastman School of Music enhances the lives of Rochesterians with hundreds of world-class orches-tral, wind ensemble, chamber music, jazz, and opera performances each year. In its historic Kodak and Kil-bourn Halls, and now in the remarkable Hatch Recital Hall in the architecturally stunning new Eastman East Wing, Eastman musical events add immeasurably to the artistic and cultural life of our region. In addition, more than a thousand adults and children each year take advantage of the Eastman Community Music School’s renowned private and classroom instruction. See www.esm.rochester.edu for a schedule of upcom-ing concerts and events.

WRUR-FM & WXXI-AM 88.5 FM and AM 1370 www.wxxi.org/radio/wrur

Catch eclectic music programming and NPR favorites, such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered, on 88.5 FM, thanks to a partnership with WXXI and University affiliate WRUR. NPR is currently simulcast on WRUR 88.5 and AM 1370, Monday–Friday, 5–9 a.m. and 4–6 p.m. For a complete list of programs, please visit our website.

S ights & ounds of . . .S

Experience the

Parsons DanceSaturday, May 5, 8 p.m.pre-performance lecture: 7 p.m.Nazareth College Arts Center welcomes Parsons Dance, an internationally renowned contemporary company known for creating American works of extraordinary artistry. The company’s performance at Nazareth will feature “Caught,” David Parsons’s unforgettable signature stroboscopic tour-de-force.

Sponsored by Alan Cameros, Susan S. Collier, Ph.D., Helga and Paul Morgan, Mr. George Scharr and Dr. Linda Rice, David and Marjorie Perlman

at Nazareth College Arts Center

Nazareth College arts CeNter Dance FestivalJuly 14-21, 2012

For tickets, call 585-389-2170 or visit artscenter.naz.eduRegular box office hours are Monday- Friday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., and 11 a.m. until curtain time on performance days.

Series sponors:

^ Beth Gill’s Electric Midwife photo: Julieta Cervantes/ The New York Times/Redux

LehrerDance Luna Negra photo: Cheryl Mann

Highlights

• Two distinct performances by the iconic Martha Graham Dance Company, known worldwide for their unique, classic/contemporary American repertoire.

• Intimate studio performances of “Electric Midwife;” modern, experimental work by two-time 2011 Bessie Award winner Beth Gill.

• An encore performance by Buffalo’s popular, “organically athletic,” LehrerDance. Enjoy fluid modern movement with the energy of jazz dance.

• A special performance by Chicago’s acclaimed Luna Negra Dance Theater: Latino choreographers blend Latin and Afro-Caribbean energy, ballet-based discipline, and contemporary movement.

Kenneth Topping and Katherine Crockettin Martha Graham’s Circephoto: John Deanecopyright: John Deane

photo: Lois Greenfield

USE THIS>Dance.Feb.Metropolitan.ad.indd 1 2/22/12 8:45 AM

2 Spring 2012 |

From the Editor

Photo by John W. Retallack

About the Arts & Cultural Councilfor Greater Rochester, Inc.The Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester is a nonprofit corporation serving arts, culture, and education in the ten-county greater Rochester region. Our mission is to strengthen the creative sector through grant programs, constituent services, and special initiatives; and to act as an advocate, planner, and funder, supporting artistic vitality and cultural diversity.

Metropolitan is produced and published on a quarterly basis by the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester. The magazine promotes our region and is supported primarily through donations and advertising sales.

For more information about our programs and services, visit ArtsRochester.org.

277 North Goodman StreetRochester, NY 14607-1179(585) 473-4000ArtsRochester.org

This issue of Metropolitan is made possible, in part, with funds from the Gouvernet Arts Fund of Rochester Area Community Foundation.

The Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Suzanne Gouvernet

Board of directors

Hon. Carla M. Palumbo, ChairSarah E. Lentini, President and CEOGrace Tillinghast, Vice ChairT. Andrew Brown, Esq., SecretaryLawrence Heilbronner, TreasurerHon. Jeffrey R. AdairJeffrey B. CraneChristopher C. Dahl, Ph.D.Joseph Darweesh, Esq.Steven DelMonteSandra L. FrankelSabrina Gennarino

Jonathan Gonder, DMASuzanne GouvernetTrevor HarrisonMargery HwangHon. Cynthia W. KalehDawn LipsonDr. Jacques LipsonJames C. Moore, Esq.Richard E. RisingDaniel R. RundbergPengcheng Shi, Ph.D.

Honorary advisors

Peter Giopulos, Ph.D.Roslyn Bakst GoldmanNancy GongJohn F. Kraushaar

Nathan LyonsNathan J. Robfogel, Esq.Jean Gordon Ryon

promoting creativity and innovation

Arts & CulturAl CounCil stAff

Sarah E. Lentini President and CEOJerry Gombatto Senior Director of Programs and MarketingJustin P. Croteau Director of DevelopmentBruce Watson Director of FinanceAudrey Shaughnessy Grants and Database CoordinatorJim Giffi Volunteer

The fleeting nature of life is really the impetus for much of what we do. As horrible and painful as death is, it drives us to make and remake big decisions, to make and remake ourselves—to create. A state with no change, with no end, is not a journey and, therefore, provides little interest and less meaning. Stasis, one might even consider, is a bit like heaven but also a bit like hell.

Creation matters most in light of destruction, or what some might call deconstruction and rebirth. And creation is messy. We try; we test; we stumble; we brave criticism and even abandon-ment and loss in order to get to someplace new, someplace better, envisioned in our all too human minds. The annals of history are littered with examples of brave minds, brave spirits, both great and common, who risked and suffered and often did not succeed—or weren’t appreciated in their lifetimes.

Our existence is part of a creative force, driven by a life and death struggle and cycle, whether we like it or not. Though clearly the approach with mass appeal—likely due to its seeming safety—expe-riencing it all from the sidelines is an enormous waste and staying still is, ultimately, not an option. The mundane is temporal but so, especially, is the creative sublime.

I am reminded of the beginning of The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece:

April is the cruellest month, breedingLilacs out of the dead land, mixingMemory and desire. . . .

When I was a kid, I struggled mightily with these words. They in-trigued me but didn’t actually make sense to me. I didn’t under-stand how unbearable the experience of complete loss could render the experience of rebirth, and how important loss is to creation.

Loss and Creation

Sarah E. LentiniEditor, President, and Publisher

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SPRING 2012 VOLUME 7/NUMBER 2

Copyright 2012 Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester. All rights reserved. Metropolitan is published quarterly by the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester. Metropolitan may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester.

Metropolitan

Sarah E. Lentini Editor, President, and PublisherJerry Gombatto Assistant Editor, Director of Advertising and ProductionBruce Watson Director of FinanceSteve Boerner Typography & Design, Inc. Layout and DesignCanfield & Tack Printing

advertising and distribution

Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester(585) 473-4000, extension 205gombatto@artsrochester.org

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On the CoverUmbrella from the Strand series, image by and courtesy of Nigel Maister, artistic director of the University of Rochester’s International Theatre Program. Maister has taken numerous photographs of his extensive world travels, along with images of his homeland of Cape Town, South Africa—an area of extraordinary beauty. See article on page 14.

Percussion Rochester’s Bill Cahn in 1966

George Lois at RIT

Nigel Maister in Egypt

departments

rit’s viGneLLi center for desiGn stUdies

Masters of DesignGeorge Lois and Massimo Vignelli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8The Incomparable George LoisA Love Affair with Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10Dreaming in Color and SoundA Vision of Musical Theater in New York’s Wine Country . . . . . . .13On the International StageUniversity of Rochester’s Nigel Maister Directs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14Mordecai LipshutzA profile of WXXI’s Former Classical Music Host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17Banging the Drum for JoyPercussion Rochester . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1840th International Viola CongressEastman Viola Faculty Host the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

The Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24

ARTS & CULTURAL COUNCIL FOR GREATER ROCHESTER

A N E V E N I N G W I T H T H E A R T S

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The Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester cordially requests your support by attending an intimate gallery reception with distinguished artists:

Jamey LeverettArtistic DirectorRochester City Ballet

Brian O’NeillExhibiting ArtistThe Brian O’Neill Studio

Join us and our exciting guest artists for an elegant reception featuring the work of Brian O’Neill. Enjoy signature cocktails and libations • delicious hors d’oeuvre, light supper fare and desserts • live music by jazz guitarist Bob Sneider • and, what promises to be, extraordinary conversation. This event supports the Arts & Cultural Council’s core mission of promoting creativity and innovation.

Thursday, April 26, 20126:00–8:00 PMThe Gallery at the Arts & Cultural Council277 North Goodman StreetRochester, NY 14607

Complimentary valet parking

$100 per person

RSVP by Friday, April 20, 2012Space is limited. Reservations are required.Tickets must be purchased in advance.

For more information, contact:Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester(585) 473-4000, ext. 206justin_croteau@artsrochester.org

Thank you to our generous event sponsors Jim and Bernadette Krueger

Metro-Cosmo_Ad_Spring_2012.indd 2 3/14/12 10:56 AM

4 Spring 2012 |

Call for EntriEs

Member Showcase 2012A juried exhibition open to individual artist members of the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater RochesterApplications can be obtained by contacting the Arts & Cultural Council at (585) 473-4000, ext. 205, or by visiting ArtsRochester.org.

DistinguishED Jurors• LouisGrachos,Director

Albright-Knox Art Gallery—Buffalo• StevenKern,Executive Director

Everson Museum of Art—Syracuse• StephanStoyanov,Founder

Stephan Stoyanov Gallery—New York City

Jurors’ awarDs•Best in Show•Awards of Excellence (up to 3 artists)•Each award recipient will be highlighted

in the Fall 2012 issue of Metropolitan.

Entry DEaDlinE ExtEnDED (PostmarkED)Friday, April 20, 2012

Exhibition DatEsAugust 3–30, 2012

rECEPtion anD awarDs CErEmonyFriday, August 3, 2012, 5–9 PM

JointheArts&CulturalCouncilforGreaterRochesterandconnecttotheregion’slargestnetworkofartistsandculturalleaders.Membership provides access to a range of benefits, including group rates for health insurance; pro bono legal assistance; workshops; and marketing and promotional resources, such as The Gallery at the Arts & Cultural Council, ArtsRochester.org, and Metropolitan magazine.

For more information on membership, call (585) 473-4000 or visit ArtsRochester.org.

WorkshopsFree to members of the Arts & Cultural Council$50 for non-membersAll sessions held at the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester 277 N. Goodman St., Rochester, NY 14607.

Space is limited. Reservations required. RSVP to (585) 473-4000, ext. 205.

you mEan i agrEED to what?Makingsureyourcontractisworththepaperitiswrittenon.Wednesday,April18,201210AM–12PMPrEsEntErJeffrey H. LaBarge, Partner Nixon Peabody LLP

ProtECting your CrEativity—ProtECting your branDWednesday,May23,201210–11:30AMPrEsEntErsPeter H. Durant, Partner Nixon Peabody LLPKristen M. Walsh, Counsel Nixon Peabody LLP

CurrEnt kEy issuEs for nonProfitsWednesday,June20,201210AM–12PMPrEsEntErStephanie Annunziata, PartnerHeveron & Heveron CPAs

aDvanCing thE arts through soCial mEDiaWednesday,June27,201210AM–12PMPrEsEntErMark Frisk,Senior Social Media SpecialistMVP Health Care

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6 Spring 2012 |

The Gallery at the Arts & Cultural Council277 N. GoodmaN Street, rocheSter, (585) 473-4000Gallery hourS: moNday–Friday, 10 am–4 pm

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Brian O’Neill: The Bridge Between Two WorldsApril 3–26; Additional Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 11 AM–2 PMReception, Friday, April 6, 5–9 PM Live pastel painting demo and artist talk, Saturday, April 14, 11:30 AM–1 PM

The Bridge Between Two Worlds is a fine art benefit with 100% of the proceeds from one special piece and 10% of total show proceeds supporting AIDS Care.

Brian O’Neill has received international praise for his “hyper-realistic” paintings, and has showcased his work in galleries across the U.S., Canada, Japan and England. “My responsibility as an artist is one that asks me to create not because I want to but because I have to,” says O’Neill. “I am driven to make work that is at the highest level possible and depict beauty as I feel it to be and describe that in a language that can be read by all people who view my work even if we have never met in person.” To learn more, visit www.brianoneillstudio.com.

Art and History in Oriental Carpets: Oriental Rugs from 1600 to the PresentOriental Rug Mart, Inc.May 1–24Reception, Friday, May 4, 5–9 PM

Illustrating the continuation of a tradition dating back to the 5th century B.C., this exhibition will include a 17th century Chinese cushion cover, a 19th century Turkish prayer rug, an 18th century Moroccan embroidery, and carpets from the 19th century—along with modern car-pets made in the old traditions with the very best dyes and weaving techniques. The exhibit will feature exqui-site hand-woven carpets from several internationally recognized personal collections in the greater Rochester region. To learn more, visit www.orientalrugmart.com.

Manuel Rivera-Ortiz: India, A Celebration of LifeJune 1–27Reception, Friday, June 1, 6–9 PM

International Photographer Manuel Rivera-Ortiz traveled India from Pushkar to Cal-cutta, Mumbai to Ahmedabad, between 2003 and 2010. The images represented in this exhibition are a comprehensive cumulative story about the people of India—their lives, culture, daily routines and poverty in this overwhelming Southeast Asian sub-continent. The black and white photographs to go on exhibit are a highlight of a much larger set destined for Rivera-Oritz’s next book project entitled, Manuel Rivera-Ortiz: India, A Celebration of Life.

The exhibit is scheduled to travel to Berne, Switzerland; Zurich, Switzerland; and Milano, Italy. To learn more, visit www.rivera-ortiz.com.

The Gallery will be closed May 28.

Love Nest, 8x8 oil on masonite, Brian O’Neill

Photograph from the series Manuel Rivera-Ortiz: India, A Celebration of Life

18th century Moroccan embroidery

Graduate Programs School of Art School for American Crafts

MFA MST

Fine Arts Studio Glass Ceramics + Ceramic Sculpture Metalcrafts + Jewelry Design Woodworking + Furniture Design Art Education

College ofImaging Arts + Sciences

Please visit uson our websitecias.rit.edu

Carole Woodlock Chair, School of Art cmwfaa@rit.edu

Rochester Instituteof TechnologyRochester, New York

8 Spring 2012 |

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Masters of DesignGeorge Lois and massimo vignelli

By Sarah E. Lentini

At first, they might seem an unlikely pair. Massimo Vi-gnelli is soft-spoken, understated, and reserved; slender and compact; a paragon of Italian and European fashion and style. George Lois is loud, boisterous, garrulous; tall, ruddy, and broad-shouldered; a paragon of American Madison Avenue creativity and savvy. They met in 1962, 50 years ago. “We’re

talking incredibly handsome,” says Lois, with trademark immodest charm and humor. “Women fainted when they saw us—boy, were we good-looking.”

“He’s Greek; I’m Italian,” continues Lois, intentionally switching their ethnici-ties for emphasis. “We feel very close to each other.”

Massimo Vignelli—along with his wife, Lella—has spent a lifetime designing

| Spring 2012 9

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anything and everything internationally from the American Airlines logo and corporate identity to lighting and furniture to subway and street signs in Manhattan. And George Lois has spent a lifetime de-signing transformative advertising campaigns (I Want My MTV™ , Lean Cuisine®, ESPN’s In Your Face™ ) and books and magazines and cover art—along with redesigning the very core of the advertising in-dustry itself. In addition to starting and running several of the most successful New York-based advertising agencies for many years, he is perhaps best known for his 92 cutting-edge Esquire™ magazine cov-ers, chronicling key aspects of our cultural, social, and political his-tory, now installed in the permanent collections of the Museum of

Modern Art (MoMA), and the 2008 subject of a year-long MoMA exhibition.

The lifelong friendship between the two accomplished men was on display the first night I met them, at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) new Vignelli Center for Design Studies, where my husband and I at-tended a reception that included a live film interview of Vignelli and Lois, conducted by R. Roger Remington, the man responsible for connecting them both to RIT and to Roches-ter. I had trouble hearing Vignelli’s answers

and leaned forward, anxious to hear the thoughtful ruminations of a seasoned aesthete—noting a familiar mode of expression that made me nostalgic and emotional and likely had its source in our sharing a culture and even, I had just learned, a hometown: Torino, Italy. I had no trouble hearing Lois, whose speech was unapologetically peppered with salty language (like a salad) and who spoke his mind unflinch-ingly and earnestly, with a refreshing directness and openness—all the while making everyone laugh.

Weeks later I talk at length with our host from that evening, R. Rog-er Remington, who came to teach at RIT in 1963, he tells me, making him the “longest-employed” RIT staffer.

Originally from the Glens Falls area of the Adirondacks, Reming-ton is an RIT graduate who initially worked in the graphic design field and later taught in Montana before being recruited and hired by RIT when the institution was reinventing itself and planning its new campus in the early ’60s.

Since its inception in 2010, Remington has been RIT’s Vignelli Dis-tinguished Professor of Design, guiding the Vignelli Center for De-sign Studies, which—he tells me—is very interdisciplinary, much like the Vignellis themselves, and subscribes to the Bauhaus idea that a designer should be able to design anything—that there should be no artificial separation between any of the arts.

“The Vignelli connection is an interesting one,” Remington says. “I had, of course, been long aware of them—of Massimo and Lella—and their work. Early on I had the idea to educate the dean of the College [of Imaging Arts and Science] at that time by taking him to New York City to have him meet various designers. The Vignellis gra-ciously agreed to let us visit. A short time after that, I asked Vignelli to be the keynote speaker at a conference here at RIT. Over time, I invited him several more times to speak, building a relationship, all

Vignelli Center for Design StudiesSCHOOL Of DESIGN, COLLEGE Of IMAGING ARTS & SCIENCES, ROCHESTER INSTITuTE Of TECHNOLOGy

• vignellicenter.rit.edu

Massimo Vignelli (left), along with his wife Lella, has been a leader in the world of design for over four decades. George Lois, R. Roger Remington, and Massimo Vignelli (from left to right), at The Vignelli Center for Design Studies in 2011.

the while acquiring design archives—focused on American Modern-ist designers from 1930 to 1960—which I shared with him. When the time came that the Vignellis were downsizing and thinking about where to put their archive, Vignelli called me, starting a long process of negotiation and discussion and design. Step by step, it all evolved. We got support at the highest levels of RIT, raised money ($1.5 million from Vignelli friend and supporter Helen Hamlyn started the process toward an endowed professorship on design), developed a building package, and made it all happen.”

“How long did it all take?” I ask him, now understanding that Rem-ington is the true architect of RIT’s Vignelli Center for Design Stud-

ies. “From the time Vignelli first picked up the phone?” he responds. “15 to 20 years.”

Moving forward, Remington continues to expand a network of key relationships that further RIT’s preeminence in the world of design.

George Lois, connected to RIT through Vignelli and Remington (and now through his son and daughter-in-law, RIT graduates who met while studying photography at the school), is just one example of a growing set of relationships that Remington has cultivated on behalf of the new design center.

Lois’s ground-breaking creative designs from the ’60s through most of the ’70s and ’80s have made him one of the best-known and re-spected advertising minds of this century. His provocative style has made him both controversial and unforgettable.

In 2012, RIT’s Vignelli Center for Design Studies will be the repos-itory of George Lois’s long-sought-after archive, including the col-lection of iconic and award-winning Esquire™ magazine covers—a significant coup that will make RIT the envy of other institutions across the country. a

10 Spring 2012 | imageS courteSy of rocheSter inStitute of technology, photograph by a. Sue WeiSler (top); george loiS (bottom)

George Lois was born in Manhattan. When he was little, his family moved to the Bronx, where his parents, Greek immigrants, had a florist shop. “If we spoke English,” Lois tells me, “they would speak Greek in response. When I was five, six, sev-en, eight, I had lessons in reading and writing in Greek. My two sisters married Greek Americans

and were both incredibly fluent in Greek.”“It was a racist Irish neighborhood,” says Lois. “This is a racist coun-

try.” In 1951, when he was 20, with the Korean War in full swing, Lois remembers going to Basic Training in Camp Gordon—in Augusta, Georgia—in the depths of the Jim Crow South, with “colored” drinking fountains, white-only hotels and restaurants, when African-American men were still being lynched. “I was the only New Yorker. They were anti-Semitic, racist—horrible,” he says. “It didn’t make me feel very proud to be an American.”

“Before I got to Korea,” he continues, “we took a boat to Japan. Landing in Japan, there were 5,000 G.I.’s on the troop ship and 4,900 were squinting their eyes and making racist comments to the dock

workers. In Korea, I was sent to fight in what I considered a rac-ist war that supported genocide. We killed two million Koreans ci-vilians,” Lois pauses, clearly still angry and saddened. “We lost as many men in a three-year war in Korea as we did in a six-year war in Vietnam. When we got back

home, nobody even knew there was a war—no one cared.”I ask if he has nightmares stemming from his memories of war and

he says, “I did—for many, many years.” And then as if still reflecting on it all, he says, “Now, people are much more careful about express-ing their racism.”

“My father came to this country in 1907, when he was twelve, with $10 in his pocket,” continues Lois. “He knew nobody. He came alone.”

Hearing this I’m understandably intrigued. How and why does such a young boy decide to take such a big journey? “He had heard about Coney Island, where Greeks sold hot dogs,” Lois tells me. “He was a shepherd boy living atop a very high village, way up in the air, up in the clouds—so steep, so high, that neither the Turks nor Nazis dared to go. Nafpaktos, in Greece, on the north side of the Ithmus of Corinth. The Battle of Napfaktos in 1832 was one of the defining defeats of the Ottoman Empire. Both of my parents are from there.”

“People like my father were heroes, who came alone with nothing and made something of themselves. He gained the respect of every-one he dealt with.”

“Unbelievably, at the age of 21, he opened a florist shop on Broad-way and 135th Street, and it may sound kind of funny to say this about another man, especially my father, but he was very handsome, really good looking, a knockout.”

“The Greek government insisted expatriates should serve in the Greek army. My father voluntarily returned to serve, and was even

Above: George Lois stands in front of his iconic collection of Esquire™ magazine covers at

The Vignelli Center for Design Studies.

Right: George Lois with his father in front of the family florist shop in New york City.

Damn Good Advice (for people with talent!)By GEORGE LOIS

• www.Phaidon.com (in the general non-fiction section of the store)

| Spring 2012 11

a Love affair with art

rit’S vignelli center for deSign StudieS

The IncomparableGeorge Lois

By Sarah E. Lentini

12 Spring 2012 |

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required to pay the government $200—a huge amount of money at that time.”

“My father was a great, great man,” says Lois. “He understood the evils of racism. He hired a young, black man to drive his delivery truck. The Catholic Archdiocese told him, ‘Mr. Lois, we don’t do things like this. We don’t want any [black] people in this neighborhood.’ I was nine or ten years old. My father told the priest and all his parishio-ners to go to hell.”

“He was brave,” Lois continues. “He loved to wrestle. He worshipped Jimmy Londos—real Greco-Roman wrestling—he and his Greek pals would take the train to Chicago and watch some of the legendary Londos matches.”

“My father wrestled on a mat in the back of the store. People would come and wrestle and watch. He wasn’t a show-off macho—but he was manly.”

“If you read The Odyssey—The Iliad—it’s a Greek tradition to be manly.”

“I worked at my father’s store from the time I was six years old. I have never com-plained. I played all sports. I’m a big football fan, a big Yankees fan. I tried to get into the NBA. In my late 20’s, I played basketball regu-larly with four or five black guys who used to play in Europe. I still play basketball once a week. I’ll be 80 in June, on June 26th.”

Lois tells me that he now plays at the 14th Street Y, “Sign-up ball.”

“I play hard,” Lois tells me. “I know the game. I play defense like a tiger, and the young studs get a kick out of watching me kick ass.” “I have to do it,” he continues. “I schedule ev-erything around Saturday [when he plays]. Until I was 60—70—years old, I played bas-ketball four times a week and worked 16–17 hours a day. It remains an incredibly impor-tant part of my life.”

Curious as to whether this is another way in which they connect with each other, I ask whether Vignelli is an athlete as well. “Massimo is not very interested in sports—it’s his only fault,” responds Lois. “I love him like a brother.”

George Lois has just released his 10th book. “I worked very hard to make it cost only $10. It’s called Damn Good Advice ( for people with talent!) and consists of 120 lessons on ‘morality and design,’” Lois tells me. “I really poured my heart out.”

Before founding a revolutionary creative ad agency in 1960, Lois cut his teeth working for Doyle Dane Bernbach, the iconic New York advertising agency. When he started Paprt Koenig Lois, it was the first ad agency with an art director on the masthead. “I don’t think there’s an art director who’s done 1/100th of what I’ve done,” Lois says. “From 1958 until 2000, I would leave the apartment at 5:30 am every day and arrive in the office at 5:45 am. Before coming in to work, my wife Rosemary would bake two dozen blueberry or corn muffins and, while they were still hot, I’d bring them to work for my staff. I worked on 10 accounts at the same time—I work quickly. It always came eas-ily if I put in the hours.”

“I’d clean up the coffee urn, make coffee. When you worked at my agency, the food was overflowing. It was an office that cared about ev-erybody. Secretaries were certainly not asked to serve. I would make the coffee, and I would serve the coffee.”

I ask Lois what got him into the advertising business in the first place.

“It all started with drawing,” he says. “When I was three or four years old, I made a real drawing, I mean a beautiful drawing, of a face. I would draw on everything—wrapping paper, everything—every min-ute I wasn’t doing something else. I had a bed in the corner of the liv-ing room with a little desk and a little light. By the time I was seven years old, when everybody else would be asleep at 11:00 pm, I would get up and draw. I have my father’s metabolism. I don’t need more than four hours of sleep a night. I actually can’t sleep more than that. I have gotten up to draw, or read, or get ideas for my work, for two hours every night of my life.”

“My parents didn’t draw,” he continues. “Drawing just came out of me. No one else drew—although my sis-ters had very good taste, a good aesthetic sensibility.”

“I went to great public schools.” Lois es-pecially remembers his art teacher, when he was 14 years old, insisting he take the subway one school day and go to the High School of Music & Art, founded by Mayor Fiorello La-Guardia. After asking him if he had the 10 cents for subway fare he’d need to go and take an entrance test, she handed him a black portfolio filled with 100 drawings of his that she had saved over the years.

“Those four years at M & A were stupen-dous,” he says. “I was already reading about the history of art. It was there I got into designing.”

After high school, on the day he was to start at Pratt Institute, he had the difficult task of telling his father that he wanted to go to college, to art school, and that he did not want to work at the florist shop, the family business. He had secretly been saving money in a bank account to pay for school. Once his

father understood that he’d saved all the money he needed by him-self, he got the green light. Three hours later, at roll call in class, he sat four rows behind his future wife of over 50 years, Rosemary Lewan-dowski, from Syracuse. Hearing her speak, he mimicked her accent from behind. “Her head turned around. She stood up. I took a look at her and ‘Wow!’ She walked toward me; I took a long look at her; and I said to my three buddies, ‘That’s mine.’ I really meant it. ‘That’s the woman of my dreams.’ Ten minutes after we met, a buddy with a camera took a picture of me and her—I have the biggest s***-eat-ing grin.” I followed her, saying, ‘I’m walking you home. Me, Tarzan. You, Jane.’ To which she retorted, ‘Me, Rosemary. You, Arrogant.’ She bowled me over with her confidence. “Every class, I sat right next to her. She couldn’t get away from me,” Lois continues. “Everybody tells me how lucky I am to have her—hey, I should get credit for choosing her the second I saw her.”

It wasn’t until a week after their first photograph was taken, during a drawing class with a live model, that he saw her work. “Could she f***ing draw!” He complimented her and recounts that she, used to being the best artist in upstate New York, said, “Thank you very much” with a certain amount of snooty haughtiness. But then, he tells me, when she saw his work, her guard dropped and her tone changed. “She said, ‘Oh my God, can you draw!’—Oh my God, another reason to love her. Within four or five days, it was a complete love affair.” a

George Lois and his future wife, Rosemary, on the day they met.

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Dreaming in Color and SoundA Vision of Musical Theater in New York’s Wine CountryBy Sarah E. Lentini

It’s been a dream that Ed Sayles has had for over a decade. The new Finger Lakes Mu-sical Theatre Festival, piloted to large crowds and rave reviews last year, will kick off in ear-nest this spring.

Sayles, long-time head of the highly suc-cessful Merry-Go-Round Playhouse and now producing artistic director of the Festival, has been joined by an important partner, Michael Chamberlain, a former Xerox executive and seasoned volunteer fundraiser, central to making the dream a reality, who is sharing the helm of the initiative as its managing director.

Sayles’ vision consists of initially three, and ultimately four, theaters based in and around Auburn—the existing 501-seat Merry-Go-Round Playhouse, the 199-seat Auburn Pub-lic Theater, the planned 115-seat Theater Mack at Cayuga Museum of History and Art, and an additional 384-seat theater, soon to be devel-oped in partnership with Cayuga Communi-ty College under the State University of New York (SUNY) leadership of Chancellor Nancy Zimpher, which will be constructed on the former site of Kalet’s Department Store—this last performance site to be used as a training ground for college students. Festival organiz-ers will use and market each space slightly differently, capitalizing on a part of the performing arts market that, according to Sayles and Chamberlain, has held its own, while attendance for other types of theater and the performing arts more generally has declined.

“This has been a business model from the outset,” says Chamber-lain. “We will leverage the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse’s existing nine-county marketplace to new markets beyond the Finger Lakes and Central New York.”

It’s clear that business and government leaders agree. In late 2011, the Festival was awarded $ 751,450 from the State of New York and has received more than $10 million in pri-vate and public funding. The SUNY Chancel-lor has committed $3.85 million of the $7.7 million needed for the new Performing Arts Center project. In all, festival organizers tell me that, once fully operational, they are expecting to create over 400 new jobs, to attract 150,000 visitors each year, and to have an annual economic impact of almost $30 million.

“Talent is most important,” says Sayles. “We’re trying to replicate what we see in Manhattan and other successful areas for theater. Regionally, we talked to people at the Shaw Festival, the JCC, SUNY Brockport—all so helpful and wonderful resources. The Shaw Festi-val, in particular, gave us great advice.”

Actively auditioning actors, singers, composers and playwrights from around the country, the Festival is looking to bring the very best in musical theater to the Finger Lakes. Long lines of production hopefuls packed the extensive hallways of the Playhouse this winter.

As they program and market the 2012 Festival launch, Sayles tells me that the 501-seat Merry-Go-Round Playhouse will be aimed at

audiences looking for mainstream Broad-way shows; the 199-seat theater will be used to market off-Broadway shows; and the 115-seat theater will be targeted for new show development.

Central to the Festival’s longer-term vision and success is the partnership that organiz-

ers have developed with Cayuga Community College, which brings an exciting educational component to the initiative. The affiliation will likely attract additional theater majors to the school; and also connect the Festival with a young talented labor pool and commu-nity resources.

Speaking of the new performance and educational center being planned with Cayuga Community College, with key funding from both New York State and the Schwartz Family Foundation, Sayles says, “In 2013, we’re planning to have a fourth theater, the Schwartz Family Per-forming Arts Center”—already poised to see past his original dream. a

Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival• Box Office: (315) 255-1785

or 1-800-457-8897• FingerLakesMTF.com

Michael Chamberlain (left) and Ed Sayles have partnered to launch the new finger Lakes Musical Theatre festival in Auburn, Ny.

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Ifirst learned of the International TheatreProgram at the prestigious University of Roch-ester from Jack Kraushaar, who along with his wife, Barbara, is a significant patron of the arts. “I didn’t realize that the University of Rochester had a strong theater component,” I said to Jack,

a year or so ago when he first brought it up. “I know—neither did I,” Jack responded. “But they do and it’s really terrific. I think it might make for an interesting story in Metropolitan.”

Months later, the Program’s artistic director, Nigel Maister, and I finally connected for real and in person. I knew from his accent and a quick conversation over the phone that he was from South Africa, making him inter-esting from the outset. What I wasn’t prepared for, howev-er, was his broad range of knowledge and interests—and his warmth and humor and openness.

Nigel Maister was born and raised in Cape Town, a place that he describes as “extraor-dinarily beautiful.” He tells me that the city of his childhood, placed on the edge of Africa’s southern-jutting Cape of Good Hope, is built around Table Mountain, a flat-topped moun-tain surrounded by beach and over 70 sheer vertical peaks, a jaw-dropping backdrop where land and rock and water meet to form a circular horizon, shaped like the arc of the globe, in a “Mediterranean climate” by the sea. His mother, widowed and left alone to raise his older brother David, remarried and gave birth to Nigel with her new husband, an accountant, whom Nigel describes as having been an enormously kind man with a simplicity and consistent sup-portiveness—even when he couldn’t quite understand Nigel’s career choices—that made him “a wonderful father” and “the salt of the earth.” He tells me that his parents were quite differ-ent from each other. His mother, equally supportive of Nigel, later in life was a part-time mu-

On the International StageUniversity of Rochester’s Nigel Maister DirectsBy Sarah E. Lentini

Nigel Maister at 19 (above). Photograph by Maister, from the Strand series, taken in his homeland of Cape Town, South Africa (right).

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sic educator with a strong aesthetic and artistic sensibility, a likely inspirational force in triggering his passion for drama and the arts more generally, and a more sophisticated and complex personality. His father passed away recently and Nigel goes back to South Africa twice a year to see his mother.

Nigel’s brother, David, three years his senior, lives in the United Kingdom and, Nigel tells me, is one of the world’s foremost authorities on absinthe, the legendary spirit reputed to make men mad—in fact outlawed in much of the western world until the 1990’s—along with being an expert on rare and historical spirits and liqueurs more gen-erally. “If you wanted to get your hands on a particular 1841 cognac, for example,” says Nigel, “my brother could get it for you.”

Nigel’s family is already starting to make me think a bit about my own. My cousin, Gianluca, a good ten years my junior, is one of the world’s foremost authorities on dead and dying languages and dia-lects—his specialty being Italian (especially our family’s home base-related Piedmontese) and Greek languages. It is most definitely a “niche career,” and the sign of an interesting and unconventional, if perhaps somewhat separate, individual.

Beyond this, I learn that Nigel’s father was Jewish, of Eastern Eu-ropean ancestry, and that his mother, whose family came from the United Kingdom, converted to Judaism when marrying her first hus-band. It is not a cultural heritage I usually connect to South Africa and I tell him so, learning in the process that a significant number of

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Jews came to South Africa in the early part of the 20th century seek-ing opportunities. I tell him that, similarly, people are often surprised to learn that one of my Italian grandparents was Jewish—Italy being such a heavily Catholic country.

I ask about being Jewish in South Africa and Nigel seems not to want to belabor the anti-Semitism he experienced—and all at once I understand and say, “How can one complain about anti-Semitism in the country of apartheid?” and he nods and laughs assent: “Exactly.”

I ask Nigel how he initially got involved in theater and heshrugs, “The usual approbation, I guess. It gave me attention and positive feedback,” further explaining that normal, routine expo-sure to the dramatic arts in school gave him the experience he

needed to choose theater as university course of study. He was later awarded a full scholarship to major in theater but soon learned that he would need an external education to fulfill the scholarship require-ments: South African universities offered no theater degrees per se; the United States, however, was a bastion of pioneering, structured sophistication in this arena. So, Nigel came to America, originally on a student visa, graduating from the world-renowned drama depart-ment at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, later moving to New York City—a dream of his—and continuing his development as an important young writer and director, producing and staging new work off Broadway in the hope that it would be seen and, ultimately, supported. It was, indeed, through one of these productions that he came to the attention of the head of the University of Rochester’s The-atre Program, who hired him—first as a guest artist and then, when a position opened up, as the Program’s first associate director.

Nigel Maister is, at his core, a writer—an English major who has written new dramatic adaptations of existing works as daunting as The Iliad and who continues to conceive and write new plays, many connected to music and new compositions of new music. He is, in fact, a founding member of Alarm Will Sound, a highly-acclaimed new mu-sic ensemble, formed by alumni of Eastman School of Music, which I’d first heard about several years ago from Eastman School Dean

Douglas Lowry. And, Nigel Maister is semi-secretly a photographer. He tells me that, at one point a few years ago, while already running University of Rochester’s Theatre Program, he offered himself up to assist Richard Margolis, an accomplished Rochester-based photogra-pher, in the hopes of improving his craft. It is a testament, I suspect, to the commitment and energy with which he takes on everything.

As I put the pieces of the man together, it seems fitting that words and music and images would unite in him as both separate and uni-fied interests and innovations. Every aspect of his curious and un-stoppable mind is constantly observing, analyzing, reinventing and celebrating the breadth of human culture—is continually refining the development and aesthetic expression of ideas.

Nigel is also an avid traveler, using every inch of free time to ex-plore every corner of the globe, visiting some places that to me sound a bit dangerous—the sites of recent coups and revolutions. “Are you a spy?” I tease.

“No—but it’s funny you should say that!” he responds excitedly. “I’ve been asked that more than once. I don’t keep a diary per se, but I do sit and write about my day, and more than once, while I’ve been sit-ting at a café writing in one city or another, people have come up and asked me that—which is very funny to me because that would make me a very bad spy!” “Or a very, very good one,” I answer. a

Nigel Maister during his undergraduate days at the university of Cape Town, playing M. Petypon in Georges feydeau’s The Lady from Maxims (left); Maister on one of his many exotic travels, seen here on the Nile River (right).

University of Rochester—International Theatre ProgramDEPARTMENT Of ENGLISH

• Upcoming performance: Adding Machine: A Musical• April 12–29, 2012• Box Office: (585) 275-4088• www.rochester.edu/theater/

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Mordecai Lipshutz: A ProfileBy Sarah E. Lentini

Mordecai Lipshutz, classical music host on WXXI public ra-dio in Rochester for more than 30 years up until his retirement in 2008, speaks to me by phone. Listening to his voice over the meta-phorical wire (it’s an optical fiber now, isn’t it? Or even worse, wire-

less) seems apt; I’m experiencing him the way that thousands have for so many years: a strong, articulate personality with a vast base of knowledge and a huge desire to share it. In truth, central to his great appeal and loyal fol-lowing, Lipshutz is, and was throughout his radio hosting career, in many ways a teacher, providing a depth of information—about the music, the composers, the performers, the history and context for each piece—that one would be hard pressed to find embodied in

a single individual anywhere else, even in the best music education classes in the world.

Lipshutz grew up in Philadelphia. His parents were “very cultured people” who loved classical music. “There was no other music,” says Lipshutz. His family owned and ran a printing business that, for more than 40 years, produced the programs for the Philadelphia Orches-tra. His mother in particular loved music. As children, she and her sister had been sent to a settlement music school for violin and cello lessons, respectively. As a result, Lipshutz was exposed to music at home and taken to listen to the symphony on a regular basis. “There was no music other than classical music in our house,” he says, again emphasizing this point. Lipshutz remembers that the family always listened to a highly successful commercial classical music station in Philadelphia with “no produced announcements—no ads per se.” It al-most seems a foreshadowing of his future, I think to myself, as he talks.

When he was eight years old, Lipshutz tells me, his father died. “He was a Russian, from Ukraine—a Jew,” says Lipshutz. “He came to this country in 1913, at 13 years old, sent to relatives in America, in Phila-delphia, to avoid being drafted into the Russian army. My father was 5’ 2”. He wouldn’t have survived in the Czar’s army,” continues Lipshutz, stressing how harrowing the persecution of Jews in Russia was during this period, when “the Czar blamed the Jews for every problem—for bad crops. His very life was in peril in Russia.”

“My father came to America and lived with my grandmother and my grandfather.”

“My parents met in Philadelphia. They were Jewish but not reli-gious,” says Lipshutz. “They didn’t see any benefit to being religious. My parents and family in general had no use for religion.”

“At 13, my father came on a ship, alone, to Ellis Island in New York. At that time, the Germans were ascendant. When my father gave his name, ‘Lipshitz,’ the German in charge at Ellis Island changed it to Lipshutz, saying that the original was vulgar.”

“In 1946, my sister was born; in 1950, I was born.”“I was given a phonograph when I was seven years old. It played

78’s. I took piano lessons and studied other instruments—it just didn’t click with me.”

“My mother loved to sing. She taught me a lot of songs—Jewish folk songs.”

Early on, Lipshutz worked in the family printing business, then did a stint in theater—all the while studying voice and singing. He sang in high school and college, where he was “an acting major.” He pretty much expected to be either an actor or a musician or in the printing business like his family. After graduating from Lycoming College in Pennsylvania and visiting relatives in Rochester, he relocated here and enrolled in RIT’s printing management program. In those days, Lipshutz tells me, WXXI didn’t have a classical music station. WBFB was the classical music station in town. In 1975, WBFB was bought out and went off the air, went to a different format. They didn’t need a classical music library anymore, so they donated it to WXXI, which decided to become a classical music station pretty much overnight. At the urging of his uncle in Rochester, Mordecai Lipshutz applied for the job as announcer.

Over the years, Lipshutz has served as producer and host for one great show after another, including Live from Hochstein, Christmas with Mordecai (the irony of which is not lost on him), and Night of Smiles. In addition, he has been involved in a number of community initiatives. From the inception of what is now the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival, Lipshutz was a strong proponent and par-ticipant, wrapping up the event every year with a live rendition of We’ll Be Together Again, up until a severe illness kept him home for the first time last year. In his stead, he tells me, Festival organizers John Nugent and Marc Iacona placed a bobblehead doll of him, which WXXI had had commissioned for Lipshutz’s 30th anniversary a few years earli-er, on the stage and played a live instrumental rendition of the song.

“I always loved jazz. My sister introduced me to it. I can hardly re-member a time when I was not listening to it,” says Lipshutz, think-ing back to his early days in Philadelphia. He has told me earlier that he hasn’t thought about some of these things in quite some time.

“My father talked so much; he loved to talk politics. I’m like my fa-ther,” says Lipshutz, somewhat ruefully, cognizant that he has given me several rather expansive lessons on the history of eastern and central European Jews as a prelude to answering some of my ques-tions about his personal experience, once even prompting a response in kind from me—so that I ended up talking far too much and far too long about my own family history, entangled as it is in the Holocaust and the “interracial” marriage of my Italian, Catholic, seminary- and university-educated maternal grandfather and my Italian, Jewish, uni-versity-educated maternal grandmother, both of whom—much like the Lipshutz family—ultimately rejected organized religion and whose experience is just one of the triggers for my fascination with the con-cept of “race,” whose very existence I’ve seriously come to question.

“How about your mother?” I inquire.“My mother was reticent.”“She must have relied on you after your father passed away,” I say.“My mother relied on me—maybe a little too much,” he responds.

“She let me get away with too much. I was always pushing the enve-lope—then again, it’s what made me successful.”

“What did you get away with?” I ask, finding it hard to believe that he had been anything less than a responsible child and telling him so.

“I bought a lot of records.”“What’s ‘a lot’?” I ask again.“Several thousand LPs,” says Lipshutz, with not a trace of irony in

his voice. a

Mordecai Lipshutz

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By Sarah E. Lentini

“Music is my religion,” says Bill Cahn, sitting across the table from me in my office. He has come to this statement after a considerable number of others through which, trying not to offend sensibilities he’s worried I might have, he has delicately conveyed his experience with, and ultimately existence outside of, main-stream constructs of all sorts: organized religion is one—Cahn was exposed to multiple religions as a child, which helped him shape his own eclectic form of spiritu-ality—and conventional notions of money and childbearing as unassailable human aspirations are others.

It’s a cold, snowless February day in Rochester. I’m meeting with Cahn, one of three organiz-ers launching a festival, Percus-sion Rochester, in Rochester this spring: Michael Burritt and Kath-leen Holt are the other two. Two of the three percussion festival partners—Burritt and Cahn—are alumni of the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, which is serving as the venue for the festival.

Cahn was, for many years, also affiliated with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, initially as a musician and later as a member of its board of directors. For virtually all of his career, in addition to his RPO affiliations and teaching on the Eastman fac-ulty, he has been a highly successful independent musician and member of the internationally-acclaimed music group, NEXUS, performing across the globe from his home base of Rochester, New York. “I’ve been very lucky,” he tells me, although we also dis-cuss at length the importance of making choices in life, of being intentional—something that he impresses on his students.

Michael Burritt is the chair of Eastman School of Music’s per-cussion department. An accomplished teacher and musician, he is also an established recording artist and composer. Burritt has performed extensively in major venues throughout the country, including a recent gig at Chicago’s Millennium Park.

Kathleen Holt is senior analyst and director of special projects for the Chicago-based Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, as well as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Rochester Medical Center. She and her husband, Dr. Stephen Lurie, have helped commission new works and premieres for a range of music groups, including Madrigalia, the Rochester Phil-harmonic Orchestra, and NEXUS.

“Bill Cahn and my husband and I have been talking for a long time about how we could work together on a festival or a concert series that would celebrate new music and new ideas in music,” said Holt, in a recent interview by percussionist Jillian Pritchard for the Percussive Arts Society magazine. “Then Bill talked with Michael, who is so supportive of new ideas and new ways to reach students and audiences, and who has commissioned, performed and written so much new music. The whole thing just clicked into place.”

BangingtheDrum

for Joy

Percussion Rochester

Percussion Rochester organizer Bill Cahn (above). John Beck, former chair of Eastman School of Music’s Percussion Department (left).

Continued on page 21

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40th International Viola Congress Revisits RochesterEastman Viola Faculty Host the WorldBy Sarah E. Lentini

Carol Rodland comes from a family of musicians. She did, however, she tells me in a recent phone conver-sation, rebel by choosing the viola rather than the organ—both of her parents and her sister (an Eastman School of Music alumnus) are classically trained organists. An ac-complished international performer and recording art-ist, with two solo recordings to her credit, she recently recorded, for the first time, with her older sister, the or-ganist, who is Artist-in-Residence at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Rodland, originally from New Jer-sey but fluent in German, with no trace of any American accent that I can discern, worked as a full-time professor for several educational institutions, including the presti-gious Hanns Eisler Hochschule in Berlin, before coming to Rochester, drawn by the world-class reputation of the University of Rochester’s Eastman School Music, appoint-ed in 2008 to a tenured professorship.

Rodland is one of those rare musical talents. She made her solo debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra while still in her teens and early on won first prizes at the Washing-ton International Competition, the Artists International Auditions, and the Juilliard Concerto Competition. A re-cipient of Fulbright and Beebe Fund grants and Juilliard’s Lillian Fuchs Prize, Rodland holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School, with full scholarships for both, and a Graduate Diploma from the Musikhochschule Freiburg, Germany.

She plays on an exquisite antique viola made by Vincenzo Panor-mo in 1791, with a bow made in 2010 by the acclaimed Benoit Rolland. Fanfare has described her playing as “larger than life, sweetly in tune, infinitely variegated” and “delicious.”

Carol Rodland, George Taylor and Phillip Ying, comprise the viola faculty at Eastman School of Music. The three are spearheading the local planning efforts for the 2012 Viola Congress, coming to Roch-ester this spring.

George Taylor, associate professor of viola at Eastman, has per-formed throughout the United States and at the Tainan Cultural Center in Taiwan. He was also co-founder and conductor of the St. Stephens Chamber Orchestra (Durham, NC), which performs and records across the country.

An advocate for the performance of music by African-American composers, Taylor participated in the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta and is a member of the Black Music Repertory Ensemble, which presents and performs music of African-American compos-ers nationally. Taylor has performed and premiered works written

especially for him by a variety of contemporary composers, includ-ing Ron Carter, Noel DaCosta, George Walker, David Liptak, and Car-men Moore.

A native of New York City, Taylor attended the Manhattan School of Music. After his recital debut at Carnegie Recital Hall, in 1979, Jo-seph Horowitz of the New York Times wrote: “He is already an unusu-ally accomplished player, with a secure command of the instrument, and an ardent, refreshingly direct style.”

Phillip Ying, violist for the celebrity-status Ying Quartet, performs regularly across the United States, Europe and Asia. Recent appear-ances include engagements in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phil-adelphia, San Francisco, Houston, and Washington, DC, Australia, France, Mexico, and Taiwan. Ying has performed at the Marlboro, Seattle, and Tanglewood summer music festivals, among others. A recent Grammy award-winner for his work with the Ying and Turtle Island String Quartets, Ying has performed as a soloist with orches-tras such as the Chicago Symphony and the Aspen Festival Chamber Orchestra, and has been recorded by a variety of major music labels including Telarc, Quartz, EMI, Albany and Elektra.

Currently serving as president of Chamber Music America, Ying is an Assistant Professor of Viola and an Associate Professor of Cham-ber Music at the Eastman School of Music, one of his alma maters, along with Harvard University and the New England Conservatory of Music. (In 2001, the Ying Quartet was named the Blodgett ensemble in residence at Harvard University.)

Rodland, Taylor, and Ying—incredibly accomplished musicians—are the local organizing force behind the 40th International Viola Congress, an event that will draw hundreds of the best performers

40th International Viola CongressuNIVERSITy Of ROCHESTER—EASTMAN SCHOOL Of MuSIC

• May 30–June 3, 2012• www.esm.rochester.edu/ivc2012/

Phillip ying, Carol Rodland and George Taylor (from left to right) who comprise the viola faculty at Eastman School of Music are the organizers of the 40th International Viola Congress.

| Spring 2012 21

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and scholars from across the world to Roch-ester this spring, where it will be hosted by Eastman School of Music for the second time ever—in fact, Rodland tells me, Eastman has the distinction of being the first ever repeat host of the event in its forty-year history.

The 40th International Viola Congress, presented by the International Viola Society, will take place from May 30-June 3, 2012, at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. Eastman hosted the 5th Interna-tional Viola Congress in 1977.

Since this is the first time that a congress is being held at a repeat venue, the organizers “were inspired to choose ‘What’s past is pro-logue,’ a quote from Shakespeare’s The Tem-pest,” as their theme, which they have used as a programming guide as well. “Inundated with an astonishing range of proposals from artists from all over the world,” they plan to “cover the gamut from the Baroque to the newly minted.”

The event opens with a recital by a Ba-roque specialist from England, Annette Is-serlis, and an evening concerto concert, featuring former Berlin Philharmonic princi-pal violist Wolfram Christ, as conductor and soloist. Two subsequent evenings, in collabo-ration with the Rochester Philharmonic Or-chestra, will include performances by New York Philharmonic leading ladies Cynthia Phelps and Rebecca Young in Sofia Gubaidu-lina’s Two Paths and the world premiere of Af-rican-American composer Olly Wilson’s Viola Concerto, performed by Marcus Thompson.

The packed schedule will include Viola After Dark concerts in informal venues, with food and drink available, along with lecture-demonstrations by luthiers, string specialists, and composers.

The Congress will also include themed master classes and a Young Artists’ Competi-tion for violists aged 16–22, with prizes such as the Benoit Rolland Award of a new bow made by the master bow-maker.

The 40th International Viola Congress is one of several exciting international arts events that will bring visitors from around the world—and hopefully area residents as well—to Rochester this spring to show off the University’s beautifully recreated perfor-mance halls, complete with newly-commis-sioned Dale Chihuly glass sculpture, in the heart of the downtown campus in Rochester’s East End Cultural District. Historic Eastman Theatre, which houses it all, never looked better—the restoration and new construc-tion were executed with impeccable taste and the acoustics are superb. a

Percussion Rochester will bring a broad spectrum of international musicians from every genre to Rochester in May. While the festival is meant to spotlight percussion, it will do so in collaboration: through the per-formance of all sorts of instruments, all sorts of music. The universe of drums, according to Cahn, is a deep, rich, unending universe that it would take several lifetimes to fully explore. Cahn’s interest in all this is “to have some fun,” a great reason, I tell him—joy be-ing almost the best reason I can think of for doing anything.

The festival will also recognize new works of percussion music through its newly-creat-ed John H. Beck Composition Prize, named after the immensely accom-plished and highly esteemed former chair of Eastman’s per-cussion department.

John Beck was a young fac-ulty member at the Eastman School of Music when Mi-chael Burritt and both Bill Cahn and his then future wife, Ruth, were getting their un-dergraduate degrees. Recent-ly retired, Beck has been an internationally revered mu-sician and professor of per-cussion for over forty years, teaching—in addition to Burritt and Cahn—a long list of notables including legend-ary drummer Steve Gadd (a classmate of Bill and Ruth Cahn).

Perhaps retired is not the right word to de-scribe Beck at this point, however. After I catch up with him a few days after meeting with Cahn (Beck is just back from The Villages in Florida), I learn that, not only is he supporting the efforts of Burritt, Cahn and Holt to launch Percussion Rochester, he’s traveling with his wife, Ellen; making wine, learned at the hands of a wealthy Italian patron with winemaking expertise, at his Bristol Harbor home; teach-ing intensive master classes in Poland and Italy—expanding on relationships and facul-ty commitments started when he was still at Eastman; and has just published a new book, Percussion Matters: Life at the Eastman School of Music, chronicling the considerable history that he and the institution share.

Beck is also continuing a lifetime passion as a prolific music composer, with new works scheduled to be completed later this year. At

Percussion Rochester, he will be sitting in with NEXUS for the first time in a work by the Pu-litzer Prize-winning composer, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Rituals, commissioned by NEXUS several years ago—a great thrill for him, he tells me, as two members of the group (Bill Cahn and Bob Becker) are former students of his and NEXUS is “the premier percussion performance group in the world.”

A founding member of NEXUS back in 1971, Bill Cahn is originally from Philadel-phia. He was the older of two boys. His father was a truck driver; his mother was a prac-tical nurse. While his parents did not have particular musical backgrounds or passions, they were wonderfully supportive of his inter-

est, which was initially ignited at school. In those days, he tells me, the Philadelphia pub-lic schools provided students with remark-able exposure, training, and opportunities in all the arts—including the chance to learn from, and perform with, professional orches-tra musicians. Cahn, conscious he says even at an early age that time was limited, took advantage of it all.

As I push him to remember his earliest connections to music, Bill Cahn tells me that, after trying a number of instruments, he found the drums in the third grade. I pic-ture a little boy with a sense of rhythm and an unusually keen sense of measured time, find-ing his language, his purpose, and his faith. a

Percussion Rochester• May 4 & 5, 2012• www.percussionrochester.com

John Beck, Ruth Cahn and Steve Gadd (from left to right) at Eastman School of Music in 1968.

Continued from page 18Percussion Rochester

For More InForMatIon

Kiss Me, Kate • May 30-June 20

Altar Boyz • June 6-30

9 to 5 • June 27-July 18

My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding • July 5-28

My Fair Lady • July 25-August 15

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee • September 12-29

Fingers & Toes • August 1-18

Cabaret • August 22-September 8

Nunsense • October 3-20

THE PITCH • June 14-August 18

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CalendarFor a complete listing of events, please visit ArtsRochester.org

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Axom Gallery & Exhibition SpaceConvergenceFeaturing paintings by Paul Garland. Opening Reception: April 6, 6-9 PM; Artist Talk: May 3, 6:30 PM.Runs through: Saturday, May 26Location: Axom Gallery & Exhibition Space, 176 Anderson Ave., RochesterCost: FreeMore info: (585) 232-6030, ext. 23; www.axomgallery.com; margot@axomgallery.com

sUnday, apriL 1

Nazareth College, Department of MusicNazareth College ChoirsThe Chamber Singers, Men’s Chorus and Women’s Chorus present a program in anticipation of their performance in London at the July 2012 pre-Olympic ceremonies. Mark Zeigler, conductor.Time: 3 PMAlso: Sunday, April 15, 3 PMLocation: Nazareth College Linehan Chapel, 4245 East Ave., RochesterCost: FreeMore info: (585) 389-2700; http://go.naz.edu/music-events; music@naz.edu

tUesday, apriL 3

Rochester Broadway Theatre LeagueJersey BoysJersey Boys, is the Tony®, Grammy® and Olivier Award-winning Best Musical about Rock and Roll Hall of Famers The Four Seasons: Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi.Time: 7:30 PMRuns through: Sunday, April 29Location: Auditorium Theatre, 885 E. Main St., RochesterCost: $29.50 to $127.50More info: (585) 222-5000; www.rbtl.org; info@rbtl.org

friday, apriL 6

Rochester Museum & Science CenterFly Me to the MoonFly Me to the Moon combines the Apollo 11 mission with a whimsical twist involving three tween-aged flies who go along on an incredible space adventure. An animated film.Time: VariousLocation: RMSC Strasenburgh Planetarium, 657 East Ave., RochesterCost: $3 to $7More info: (585) 271-1880; www.rmsc.org

satUrday, apriL 14

Ganondagan State Historic SiteBeaded Picture Frame WorkshopGanondagan’s Ronnie Reitter (Seneca) teaches participants the steps to make a beautiful and colorful keepsake velvet and beaded picture frame. Kits will be provided. Bring scissors & beading needles.Time: 10 AM-2 PMLocation: Ganondagan State Historic Site,

1488 State Route 444, VictorMore info: (585) 742-1690; friends@frontiernet.net; www.ganondagan.org/workshops/BeadedFrames.html

tHUrsday, apriL 19

Movies on a Shoestring, Inc.54th Rochester International Film FestivalThe longest continuously held short film festival in the world. Each screening includes 7 different short films: narratives, documentaries and animations.Time: 8 PMAlso: Friday, April 20, 8 PM; Saturday, April 21, 4 and 8 PMLocation: Dryden Theatre, George Eastman House, 900 East Ave., RochesterCost: Free; donations acceptedMore info: www.rochesterfilmfest.org

friday, apriL 20

CordanciaA Night of DreamsConcert by Cordancia featuring music with a dream theme by Barber, Gade, Antheil and Lumbye. Natasha Drake, soprano. David Harman, conductor. Pia Liptak and Kathleen Suher, Artistic Directors.Time: 7:30 PMLocation: Asbury First United Methodist Church, 1050 East Ave., RochesterMore info: (585) 271-1050; www.cordancia.org; www.asburyfirst.org; cordancia@gmail.com

satUrday, apriL 21

The Landmark Society of Western New York2012 Preservation ConferenceRevitalize your city, town, neighborhood or your own property! The 2012 Conference will present success stories, new initiatives, and info on funding, building repair, vision planning, & more.Time: 8 AM-5 PMLocation: Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, 1100 S. Goodman St., RochesterCost: $40 to $85More info: (585) 546-7029; www.landmarksociety.org; cmeives@landmarksociety.org

sUnday, apriL 22

Elizabeth Clark Dance EnsembleClark Dance Celebrates Earth DayThe Elizabeth Clark Dance Ensemble premiers dances which celebrate the Earth. There will also be audience participation. The program is suitable for families.Time: 3-4 PMLocation: St. Thomas Episcopal Church Great Hall, 2000 Highland Ave., RochesterCost: $9 (adults); $6 (children)More info: (585) 442-5988; elizabethclarkdance.com; elizabeth.clark@esc.edu

friday, apriL 27

The College at Brockport Fine Arts SeriesRichard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror ShowDo YOU remember doing the Time Warp? Join Brad and

NEXUS • PEtEr ErSkiNEStEEl AlchEmy • GordoN StoUt Ur AfricAN drUmmiNG ENSEmblEJohN bEck PrizE • michAEl bUrrittPAlmEr fifE & drUm • drUm JoyrPo mArimbA bANd • ANdErS AStrANdiNdiAN mUSic • rich thomPSoN • toNy PAdillAmAStErclASSES • World PrEmiErES

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at the Eastman School of Music

(585) 395-2787brockport.edu/finearts Fine

Upcoming events:

April 27 – 29 and May 3 – 5 at the Tower Fine Arts Center

DANCE/Strasser April 12 – 14

Student Art Exhibit April 13 – May 6

Sankofa African Dance and Drum Ensemble April 26 – 29

Graduation Dances May 11

Richard O’Brien’s

| Spring 2012 25

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Janet, as they meet up with Dr. Frank-N-Furter, and his kooky, spooky crew. A musical satire of the far-fetched science-fiction flicks of the 1950s.Time: 7:30 PMRuns through: Saturday, May 5Location: The College at Brockport’s Tower Fine Arts Center Mainstage, 180 Holley St., BrockportCost: $15 (adults); $10 (seniors); $8 (students)More info: (585) 395-2787; www.brockport.edu/finearts; ssoloway@brockport.edu

satUrday, apriL 28

Blackfriars TheatreGrey GardensThe hilarious and heartbreaking story of Big Edie and Little Edie Bouvier Beale, the eccentric aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.Time: 8 PMLocation: Blackfriars Theatre, 795 E. Main St., RochesterCost: $27 (adults); $25 (seniors); $17 (students)More info: (585) 454-1260; www.blackfriars.org; bfjack@frontiernet.net

sUnday, apriL 29

SUNY GeneseoHandel’s MessiahThe Geneseo Festival Chorus joins forces with the Geneseo Symphony Orchestra in Handel’s masterpiece Messiah, directed by Dr. Gerard Floriano.Time: 3 PMLocation: Wadsworth Auditorium, SUNY GeneseoCost: FreeMore info: (585) 245-5824; www.geneseo.edu/music; farrell@geneseo.edu

tUesday, may 1

Oriental Rug Mart, Inc.Art and History in Oriental Carpets: Oriental Rugs from 1600 to the PresentThe high art and craft of handmade oriental rugs from local collections, with rugs originating from Morocco to China. Opening Reception: May 4, 5-9 PM.Time: 10 AM-4 PM weekdaysRuns through: Thursday, May 24Location: The Gallery at the Arts & Cultural Council, 277 N. Goodman St., RochesterCost: FreeMore info: (585) 425-7847; www.orientalrugmart.com; sales@orientalrugmart.com

Wednesday, may 2

RIT-Caroline Werner Gannett ProjectElizabeth TurkMacArthur award-winning artist and sculptor, named Smithsonian Research Fellow, 2011-2012.Time: 8-10 PMLocation: Rochester Institute of Technology, Webb Audtorium, James E. Booth Hall, RochesterCost: FreeMore info: (585) 475-2057; www.cwgp.org; cls3740@rit.edu

friday, may 4

Percussion RochesterPercussion Rochester FestivalRochester’s newest music festival debuts May 4 & 5 in the East End with two days of world-class music featuring 15 free events and 8 ticketed ones. Something for every music lover!Time: 11 AM-10 PMAlso: Saturday, May 5, 10 AM-10 PMLocation: Eastman School of Music, 26 Gibbs Street, RochesterCost: $0 to $45More info: www.percussionrochester.com; percussionrochester@gmail.com

satUrday, may 5

Eastman School of MusicEastman Philharmonia, Eastman Wind Ensemble, NEXUSPercussion Rochester performance, program to include Michael Burritt, Concerto for Percussion and Wind Ensemble; Zwilich, Rituals. Mark Davis Scatterday & Neil Varon, conductors.Time: 8 PMLocation: Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre, 60 Gibbs St., RochesterMore info: (585) 274-1110; www.percussionrochester.com; percussionrochester@gmail.com

JCC CenterstageParade, A Musical by Afred Uhry and Jason Robert BrownA powerful new musical based on the true story of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager accused of murdering 13-year-old Mary Phagan in 1913 Atlanta.Time: 8 PMRuns through: Sunday, May 20Location: JCC CenterStage, 1200 Edgewood Ave., RochesterMore info: (585) 461-2000; www.jcccenterstage.org; centerstage@jccrochester.org

sUnday, may 6

Irondequoit Concert BandSpring ConcertMusic lovers of all ages will enjoy a variety of concert band music from across our nation.Time: 3 PMLocation: West Irondequoit High School, 260 Cooper Rd., IrondequoitCost: FreeMore info: (585) 227-8708; www.irondequoitband.org; irondequoitband@gmail.com

Pegasus Early MusicSongs of Love and WarExperience the musical drama of love and war! The music of Claudio Monteverdi features in this concert of innova-tion in early Baroque style. Pre-concert talk at 3:15pm.Time: 4 PMLocation: Downtown United Presbyterian Church, 121 N. Fitzhugh St., RochesterCost: $25 (adults); $20 (seniors); $10 (students)More info: (585) 703-3990; www.pegasusearlymusic.org; info@pegasusearlymusic.org

Wednesday, may 9

Geva Theatre CenterCompanyA smart, modern musical about looking for love and finding yourself. From the celebrated composer of Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd and A Little Night Music.Time: VariousRuns through: Sunday, June 10Location: Wilson Mainstage, Geva Theatre Center, 75 Woodbury Blvd., RochesterCost: Tickets start at $25More info: (585) 232-4382; www.gevatheatre.org; boxoffice@gevatheatre.org

friday, may 11

A Different Path GalleryBrockport Artists’ GuildThe newly formed Brockport Artists’ Guild will exhibit member work during the month of May. On display May 4-26. Artist Reception: May 11, from 6-9pm.Time: 6-9 PMLocation: A Different Path Gallery, 27 Market St., BrockportCost: FreeMore info: (585) 637-5494; www.DifferentPathGallery.com; kwestonarts@gmail.com

www.naz.edu/gradstudies 585-389-2050 or 800-860-6942

Where can you study

Leonardo daVinci and

Leonardo dicaprio?N a z a r e t h C o l l e g eMaster of Arts in Liberal Studies“Provocative Studies for the Intellectually Curious”

RECEPTION: APRIL 6, 2012 6-9PMARTIST TALK: MAY 3, 2012 6:30PM

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JUN

E A Magical Journey Thru StagesWest Side StoryThe world’s greatest love story takes to the streets in this landmark Broadway musical, featuring some of the finest young performers from the greater Rochester area.Time: 7:30 PMRuns through: Sunday, May 20Location: Stages Theater at Auditorium Center, 875 E. Main St., Third Floor, RochesterCost: $12 to $15More info: (585) 935-7173; www.MJTStages.com; Stages@MJTStages.com

MadrigaliaMusic of Our FriendsMadrigalia ends its season with a concert of new music, featuring the world-premiere of a newly commissioned work by Rochester’s own Cary Ratcliff.Time: 7:30 PMLocation: Third Presbyterian Church, 4 Meigs St., RochesterCost: $15 (adults); $5 (children); $5 (students)More info: (585) 230-2894; www.madrigalia.org; info@madrigalia.org

sUnday, may 13

Hochstein School of Music & DanceHochstein Youth Symphony Orchestra Mother’s Day ConcertMusic of Mozart, Ravel, Brahms, Rossini, and more plus an original composition by HYSO horn, Alex Strang. Featuring Concerto Competition Winners, Cheryl Fries, bassoon and Madeleine Laitz, violin.Time: 7 PMLocation: Hochstein Performance Hall, 50 N. Plymouth Ave., RochesterCost: $5More info: (585) 454-4596; www.hochstein.org; cheri.trimble-miller@hochstein.org

friday, may 18

Rochester City BalletDance MixRochester City Ballet presents a choreographer showcase with Edward Ellison’s Carmen, Rochester native Daniel Gwirtzman’s Encore, and a new work by artistic director Jamey Leverett.Time: 7:30 PMAlso: Saturday, May 19, 7:30 PM; Sunday, May 20, 2 PMRuns through: Sunday, May 20Location: Nazareth College Arts Center, 4245 East Ave., RochesterCost: $36 to $60More info: (585) 461-5850; www.rochestercityballet.com; cityballet@frontiernet.net

satUrday, may 19

Writers & BooksGell Center Open House for Yoga & Spiritual GroupsCome visit and get a tour of our grounds and facilities. 24 acres to explore and be inspired by.Time: 12-4 PMLocation: The Gell Center of the Finger LakesCost: FreeMore info: (585) 473-2590; www.wab.org; office@wab.org

sUnday, may 20

Publick MusickSongs of Separation: 200 Years of Music by Black ComposersReginald Mobley, countertenor; Henry Lebedinsky, harp-sichord and piano; and Boel Gidholm, violin, perform music of Nunes Garcia, Chev. de Saint-Georges, Florence Price, H. Burleigh, W. G. Still et al.Time: 3 PMLocation: Christ Episcopal Church, 36 S. Main St., PittsfordMore info: (585) 244-5835; www.publickmusick.org; info@publickmusick.org

monday, may 21

Society for Chamber Music RochesterChamber Music Rochester Presents An Evening at Geva MainstageChamber Music Rochester presents two narrated classics, including Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale.Time: 7:30 PMLocation: Geva Theatre Mainstage, 75 Woodbury Blvd., on Washington Square, RochesterCost: $30 (general); $10 (students)More info: (585) 377-6770; www.chambermusicrochester.org

satUrday, JUne 2

Amadeus ChoraleMass of the ChildrenJohn Rutter’s Mass of the Children with orchestra. Irondequoit Chorale and Lyric Chorale joining forces with the children of Amadeus.Time: 7:30 PMLocation: Hochstein Performance Hall, 50 N. Plymouth Ave., RochesterCost: $10More info: (585) 494-1795; www.theamadeuschorale.org; amadeuschorale@aol.com

Rochester Contemporary Art Center6x6x2012June 2-July 15, 2012; Artwork Entries Due: May 6, 2012 (Postmarked by May 5); Opening Reception & Artwork Sale: Sat. June 2, 6-10 PM.Time: 1-5 PMRuns through: Sunday, July 15Location: Rochester Contemporary Art Center,

www.naz.edu/gradstudies 585-389-2050 or 800-860-6942

Where can you study

Leonardo daVinci and

Leonardo dicaprio?N a z a r e t h C o l l e g eMaster of Arts in Liberal Studies“Provocative Studies for the Intellectually Curious”

SB

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The National Museum of PlayExhibit Opening: Design ZoneHands-on interactives and computer-based activities reveal how video game developers, music producers, roller coaster designers, and others use math to do amazing things.Time: 10 AM-8 PMRuns through: Saturday, September 22Location: The National Museum of Play, One Manhattan Square, RochesterMore info: (585) 263-2700; www.museumofplay.org; info@thestrong.org

friday, JUne 8

Black-Eyed Susan Acoustic CaféAn Evening with Taylor PieA lifetime of experience informs the lyrics of this Nashville-based folk legend. An accomplished finger-picker and singer (formerly of Pozo-Seco) she forges an intimate connection with the audience.Time: 7:30 PMLocation: Black-Eyed Susan Acoustic Cafe, 22 W. Main St., AngelicaCost: FreeMore info: (585) 466-3399; www.black-eyed-susan.com; info@black-eyed-susan.com

satUrday, JUne 9

Greater Rochester Choral ConsortiumRochester Women’s Community Chorus presents With You By My SideThis concert offers songs about friendship, support, and

the strength of relationships and community. It will feature the full chorus, small groups, and solos. Benefit for GAGV Youth Group.Time: 7:30 PMLocation: Saint Anne Church, 1600 Mt. Hope Ave., RochesterCost: $5 to $10More info: (585) 234-4441; www.theRWCC.org; cardiganj1@aol.com

tHUrsday, JUne 14

Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival

The PitchCome see the next generation of playwrights and com-posers show off their new works of musical theatre—and become part of the show’s development, as each team will be looking for your feedback.Time: 7:30 PMRuns through: Saturday, August 18Location: Theater Mack at the Cayuga Museum, 203 Genesee St., AuburnCost: $20More info: (315) 255-1785; www.FingerLakesMTF.com

Wednesday, aUGUst 1

Elena Mora Art Salon

2012 Art ContestCall For Artists! Elena Mora Art Salon is accepting entries for its online art contest. Deadline is June 6, 2012.Time: 9 AM-9 PMRuns through: Tuesday, December 31Location: EMASGallery.comMore info: (585) 230-6584; www.emasgallery.com; artcontest@emasgallery.com

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Bernadette & James KruegerChFC, CLTC, LUTCFSenior Financial Services Executives400 Meridian Centre, Suite 315Rochester, NY 14618(585) 241-5236

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