If you haven’t yet seen the new Hallwalls space at 341 Delaware Avenue, you can’t ask for a better opportunity to check out all it has to offer than RESOLUTIONS 2006, their annual two-day festival of new experimental films, videos, performances, Web-based work, and sound art. Featured works were selected from open submissions by local, regional, national and international artists. Various video and on-line installations will be available both days. Friday’s program begins with “Human Trials,” a performance piece by Josephine Anstey, Dave Pape and Sarah Bay-Cheng. The second half of the evening includes videos by Liss Platt, Virocode and Torsten Z. Burns, and a film/performance piece by Bill Brown and Thomas Comerford, “Chicago Detroit Split.” The Saturday program includes work on video and film (8mm and 16mm) by Elka Krajewska, Nick Golebiewski, Nicholas Economos, Seon Hyoung Kim, Roger Beebe, Wieslaw Michalek, Robert Mead, Ann Steurnagel and others. Following Saturday’s program, an after party featuring more performance and video installations by Gregg Biermann, Brandon Blommaert, Jax DeLuca, Stephanie Maxwell, Mike Olenick, Julie Perini and Rozi Peters will be held at Squeaky Wheel (712 Main St.).

Shift & Switch is an anthology of contemporary Canadian poetry that represents work from some of the country’s more formally-inventive practitioners. A local launch party for the book begins with a panel discussion to contextualize the anthology against a backdrop of Canadian poetry and continues with readings from Geoffrey Hlibchuk, Trevor Speller, Gregory Betts, Mark Truscott, Rob Read and Angela Rawlings (pictured). This is exciting stuff, folks. Buffalo connections abound—panel members for the discussion include UB graduate students, and readers Hlibchuk and Speller are both pursuing PhDs at UB. The other readers also come with an impressive pedigree: Angela Rawlings (one of the anthology’s co-editors) received the bpNichol Award from York University and will pubish her first full-length book through Coach House Books later this year. Also with a Coach House Books edition, Mark Truscott was short-listed for a ReLit Award for his Said Like Reeds or Things. Both Rob Read (who reads as part of Just Buffalo’s Orbital series in February) and Gregory Betts have had books published by BookThug (Read uses spam e-mail as the basis of his poems, see review in Artvoice v5n1, while Betts uses anagrams).

Sadly, it’s always the dead musicians who develop the biggest following. While Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart may not be alive, his musical legacy is still strong, and orchestras and chamber musicians all over the world celebrate his music. This weekend, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra performs an all-Mozart program to commemorate what would have been the famed-composer’s 250th birthday. Led by acclaimed conductor Stefan Sanderling and featuring Polish-born principal horn player Jacek Muzyk, the BPO will perform several Mozart works, including his famous “Symphony No. 40.” For all non-Mozart aficionados: you may recognize this musical piece from several films, including the James Bond flick The Living Daylights. (Well, maybe.) So if you’re looking to do something different to celebrate Mozart’s 250th birthday, check out the BPO as they play some of his “greatest hits.” It will be much easier than trying to say the word “bisesquicentennial” ten times fast.

After only one listen to the music of critically-hailed arranger and composer Maria Schneider, one will immediately note the influence of such monumental jazz figures as Gil Evans and Bob Brookmeyer. So it should come as little surprise that Schneider studied and worked closely with both composers and is both carrying on and expanding upon their musical traditions. Schneider’s orchestral jazz music is moody and evocative, conjuring pastoral imagery, and has earned the composer multiple Grammy nominations. The fact that Schneider’s 2004 recording, Concert in the Garden, was the first recording to be nominated for such an award without the benefit of major label distribution or placement in record stores (the disc is available exclusively from the musician’s Artist Share label and Web site) speaks volumes about her genre-spanning appeal. On Sunday, Schneider brings her 19-piece band to the stage of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery as part of the gallery’s Art of Jazz Series. Rarely do Buffalo audiences have the opportunity to witness such a large jazz ensemble in such an intimate setting.