Arts/Culture

Borderland Music and Art Festival returns East Aurora this weekend for its second straight year. The two-day event boasts a lineup of over 25 bands at Knox Farm State Park playing Americana, bluegrass, blues and rock. That includes Canadian rock band the Sheepdogs.  Lead singer and guitarist Ewan Currie spoke with WBFO’s Nick Lippa and festival co-founder Jennifer Brazill on what to expect this upcoming weekend.

Although the annual start of the Buffalo theater season sees many openings, in fact, a number of plays and musicals have been up for a few weeks, including HAIRSPRAY, which is dazzling audiences young and old, from all backgrounds. Director Carlos Jones has added a twist, a second role in drag, "Motormouth Maybelle" sung by operatic tenor Shawn Parnell.

Political cartooning has been impacted by many things over the past decade. The advent of social media. The change in how consumers receive their news. And more recently, President Donald Trump. Buffalo News’ Pultizer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Adam Zyglis spoke with WBFO’s Nick Lippa about what makes a great cartoonist in 2019.

Jeanne Hebborn Cairns has amassed over 40 years of experience as an actor, director and producer in Buffalo’s theater community. She was honored for her career Friday night with a star in the Theatre District’s Plaza of Stars.

While the gala dinner for Curtain Up! Friday night, September 20 is sold out, many restaurants can accomodate or you can just come for the street party on Main between Tupper and Chippewa with live music, food trucks, and fun until 1 a.m. (See the lyrics to Irving Berlin's "Top Hat, White Tie And Tails" below.)

At some point in time, "operettas" became the uniquely American phenomenon known as "Broadway Musicals" and they excel at exposing the realities of life in the U.S. including racism. From the days of SHOWBOAT to BABES IN ARMS to the period pieces WEST SIDE STORY (which opened this week at Muscialfare) and HAIRSPRAY (opening tonight at the Kavinoky) there's intense drama when the characters on stage cross race lines.

An art installation nearly three decades in the making is making its way to Silo City in Buffalo starting Friday. ‘Rio Negro II’ is a collaborative project that mixes rain sticks, sculptures, electronic music and robotics. Its focus is on humans examining their relationship with their living environment. WBFO’s Nick Lippa spoke with the artists involved as they spent this past week setting everything up.

With 333 features scheduled over the coming days, the Toronto International Film Festival should have plenty to offer cinema lovers. Peter Howell of the Toronto Star encourages visitors to follow him for information and perspective on what's happening at the sprawling event. "A film festival is challenging you," Howell told WBFO, offering a warning to those in search of happy endings. "It's designed to make you think. That's the primaty mission."

There has been a change to Buffalo's landscape along Elmwood Avenue in front of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. The museum's set to close in less than two months for a major expansion project. And as WBFO's Chris Caya reports, the prep work includes moving a highly visible artwork. 

Before Curtain Up! on September 20,  Jeanne Hebbbon Cairns will be inducted to "The Plaza of the Stars" on September 16 at 5:00 p.m. (free, open to the public, at Shea's 710 Theatre). WEST SIDE STORY opens at MusicalFare this Wednesday, and Anthony reports a very satisfying theatrical event, the six-hour (including lunch and two intermissions) production of MAN AND SUPERMAN with the often excerpted DON JUAN IN HELL. Only 17 performances have been scheduled at The Shaw Festival.

QRS has manufactured piano rolls at its home on Niagara Street in Buffalo since the 1960s. By the end of this year, they plan to close their doors for good.  It’s the end of an era for player piano lovers. Former QRS Music Director Bob Berkman spoke with WBFO’s Nick Lippa about the company’s history and how his love for the instrument led to a lifelong career in Buffalo.

Buffalo actors are busy prepping for Curtain Up!, but there's not much on stage yet. Charmagne Chi wraps up her "adult content" cabaret at MusicalFare tonight. Yet trips to the two great Canadian Festivals continue to yield treasures. A stunning CYRANO DE BERGERAC at Shaw stars Stratford/Shaw's Tom Rooney in a new translation/adaptation by Stratford/Shaw's Kate Hennig  whose play MOTHER'S DAUGHTER at Stratford is worth the drive.

In what has became a staple film series in the Buffalo movie-going community, Thursday Night Terrors returns Thursday night for its seventh season at the Dipson Amherst Theatre with showings of Frank Henenlotter’s 1982 cult classic Basket Case.

Students from the Buffalo Youth Media Institute premiered their documentary "1988" Tuesday night at the Burchfield Penny Art Center. The film examines society’s relationship with climate change.

When Jimi Hendrix was taking the Woodstock stage for his legendary performance, Mike Desmond was driving back to Utica for work on Monday morning. That performance aside, Desmond was on-site covering most of the festival for The Daily Press.

For the Pittsburgh-based funk-jazz group Afro Yaqui Music Collective, advocacy is at the core of who they are. Their new album, a jazz opera titled Mirror Butterfly: the Migrant Liberation Movement Suite, is about climate change and mass migration.

Ellen Horst is the stern Holocaust survivor, Grandma Kurntiz, admonishing her daughter Bella (Diane DiBernardo) and her two grandsons, played by Ayden Herreid and Timothy Whipple, who get some great Neil Simon gag lines in LOST IN YONKERS. Out of town, there's fun for all at both The Stratford Festival and The Shaw Festival when actors take on wildly contrasting roles in different plays in repertory, such as Stratford's OTHELLO and THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR on stage this summer.

The young Samuel Clemens grew up along one of the world’s great rivers, the Mississippi, and eventually became a pilot on the riverboats that carried the trade of a continent to the world. Better known today as Mark Twain, he is now an entry on the greatest of trade routes: the World Wide Web.

About seven years ago, 12-year-old blues guitarist Hayden Fogle took Buffalo by storm after playing on stage with Buddy Guy at a University at Buffalo concert. Now he is traveling around the world, playing various festivals and releasing a debut album in October. Fogle came to WBFO’s studios to play a few tunes and chat with Reporter Nick Lippa about his growth as a musician in Buffalo.