Music

Last week, I attended a performance of Rent’s 20th Anniversary Tour. The musical follows a year in the lives of several artists, some of whom are afflicted with HIV/AIDS. In 1996, the future was grim for those who had the disease. Over the years I’ve seen Rent on Broadway, on tour, and on the big screen. Reflecting on the passage…

This post originally appeared on the DVD Netflix blog “Inside the Envelope.” That company folded in 2023, and the blog was shut down, but you might find some good stuff here. Isabelle Huppert made her movie debut in 1971 and has not slowed down since. I first saw Huppert in Home (2008), where she plays…

Recently, I had my aging piano tuned. As pianos go, it’s a middle of the road model. We purchased it when my daughter was taking lessons and showed more promise than the clunker we had purchased from someone’s basement could accommodate. She’s grown up, and I don’t play much anymore, but it’s handy for rehearsing…

I stood in the lobby of the 1891 Fredonia Opera House, in upstate New York, passing the time by looking at my phone while my husband sought out our will-call tickets. We were there to see Pat Donohue, Grammy-winning guitarist. Pat Donohue is well known for the almost-two decades he spent as a guitarist for the…

Can you imagine a 21st century school district and community raising $176,000 for a single musical instrument? Can you fathom that the equivalent of that figure was raised in Erie, PA, for a pipe organ in the midst of the Great Depression? In these days of STEM obsession, it’s important to remember that the arts were…

I’ve been attending Peter Mayer concerts for more than a decade. Peter, a member of Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band, tours with his own people whenever he’s not busy with Buffett. He usually comes to my town at Christmastime for his Stars & Promises shows, but recently, he played an intimate concert in the Bayfront Sheraton ballroom in Erie, PA. Only four musicians…

Our third Erie Ambassador Program session took us to the Erie Playhouse where we learned about several arts organizations in the area. They were the Erie Playhouse, the Erie Art Museum, the Erie Philharmonic, and Erie Arts & Culture. Of course, we were already aware of these organizations, but it was good to hear about…