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The News, Briefly

Primary Notes

by Geoff Kelly

About a half hour after the polls closed on Tuesday night, I called Pat Burke, who was running in a three-way Democratic primary for the 7th District seat on the Erie County Legislature. It was early going, but Burke had just 17 percent of the vote tallied thus far. “Those are Cheektowaga districts,” the South Buffalo native told me, “and we figured we had to be at about 15 percent in those districts to win, so we’re a little ahead of where we thought we’d be.”

News Analysis

Change Agent?

by Bruce Fisher

Bill de Blasio, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, has pledged to raise the New York City income tax rate on households with incomes over $500,000. As of 2009, the last year for which the Internal Revenue Service makes local data on individual returns available, there were 3.6 million people who filed income tax returns in New York City. About 33,000 of them reported incomes of over $500,000.

News Feature

The Theater Community Mourns Actor and Friend J. R. Finan

by Anthony Chase

A 2001 graduate of St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute, after high school, J. R. studied theater at Niagara University and later transferred to Buffalo State, where he completed his B.A. in theater. Even before graduation, J. R. began to build an impressive resume of varied roles across the range of Buffalo’s professional theaters: BUA, American Repertory Theatre of WNY, O’Connell & Company, Theatre of Youth.

Theater Week

La Cage at MusicalFare and the History of the Normal

by Anthony Chase

The current MusicalFare production of the Jerry Herman/Harvey Fierstein musical, La Cage aux Folles, provides a nostalgic look back to the early 1980s, a time when positive representations of gay characters on the Broadway stage were new and legal gay marriage in our lifetime was unimaginable.

Art Scene

West Side Stories

by Jack Foran

The politicians purveying the anti-immigrant rhetoric ought to watch the dozen or so young filmmakers’ videos on selected aspects of the West Side of Buffalo. The documentaries are the product of an eight-week summer program for aspiring film and video artists at Squeaky Wheel.

Jazz Notes

The Jazz Singer

by J. B. Sesom

Ever since The Tonight Show aired in 1954 with host Steve Allen (long before Johnny Carson), it was jazz vocalist Peggy Farrell’s dream to sing on the nation’s most popular entertainment show. Coming from a large and deeply Irish-Catholic family in South Buffalo, she grew up in a household where everybody sang.

Classical Music Notes

An Exciting BPO Opening Night

by Jan Jezioro

For many decades, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra would launch its new season in its home in Kleinhans Music Hall with a pair of concerts, on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, almost invariably featuring a “big name” guest soloist, playing a well known, audience favorite piece.

Music Interview

Thurston Plugs Back In

by Cory Perla

For Sonic Youth co-founder Thurston Moore, starting a new band was as simple as putting down an acoustic guitar and picking up an electric one.

Music Feature

A Light in the Woods

by Jeremiah Shea

After just over an hour’s drive, you enter a place that has been transformed into a living, breathing work of art. The forest is deep, lights cascade as you walk the trails, and shadows set the backdrop. As the sea of green is swept away by the vibrance of fall’s various hues, the natural beauty becomes fully enhanced. Welcome to the Fall Night Lights Music Festival.

Film Reviews

Blackfish

by George Sax

The Rep

by M. Faust

Listings

On The Boards Theater Listings

Movie Times (Friday, September 13 - Thursday, September 19)

Film Now Playing

Featured Events

See You There!

Artvoice's weekly round-up of featured events, including our editor's pick for the week: the Spiritualized who plays The Waiting Room on Delaware Ave this Saturday the 14th.

Book Review

You're a Very Nosy Fellow, Kitty Cat

by Woody Brown

There is something liberating about reading an unpublished author’s debut novel. The reader is free of the often oppressively voluminous pages of context that accompany a new release from an established writer.

You Auto Know

Bigger Than a Bread Box

by Jim Corbran

You’re excused if you didn’t immediately recognize this week’s test car as being a Fiat. There’s slightly more of a resemblance from the frontal view, but it’s still different enough that I think Fiat should have just gone ahead and given the 500L a different name.

Dispatches: War of 1812

Shooting Star

by Mason Winfield

The American Army of the Northwest lost ground and water on the northern frontier in 1812. It spent most of 1813 trying to recover them. A single stroke changed everything. Though the Battle of Lake Erie (September 10, 1813) involved two tiny fleets—nine American ships and six British ones—control of the inland ocean was a game-changer. Suddenly it was the Americans who could feed or choke forts.

Offbeat News

News of the Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

Beginning in 2011, about three dozen people in Tokyo have been meeting every Sunday morning at 6 a.m. on a mission to scrub down, one by one, the city’s grungiest public rest rooms. “By 7:30,” according to an Associated Press reporter who witnessed an outing in August, the team had left behind a “gleaming public toilet, looking as good as the day it was installed.”

Horoscopes

Free Will Astrology

by Rob Brezsny

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): This is a good time to free yourself from a curse that an immature soul placed on you once upon a time. I’m not talking about a literal spell cast by a master of the dark arts. Rather, I’m referring to an abusive accusation that was heaped on you, perhaps inadvertently, by a careless person whose own pain made them stupid.

The Back Page

Clifton Childree: Niaga-Rag Follies

For his installation at Hallwalls, Miami-based artist Clifton Childree is creating a speculative local history that grows out of his exploration of Niagara Falls and QRS Music Rolls, a player piano roll company still operating in Buffalo. The work will combine film, strange narrative, stereoscopes, a newly composed musical score, sculpture, found objects, dioramas, and a host of other elements.