WBFO Arts & Culture Desk

It takes two trucks to transport the International Touring Organ which will grace the stage of Kleinhans Music Hall when the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and JoAnn Falletta welcome organist Cameron Carpenter to perform some rather loud music Friday morning and Saturday night. The all-digital organ's sounds were "sampled" from some of Carpenter's favorite organs.

"It's one of the most satisfying moments in all of music" says Dover Quartet cellist Camden Shaw about the music of Beethoven which was to be played tonight, March 8, at 7:30 p.m. at UB. UPDATE: CONCERT POSTPONED DUE TO WEATHER (HIGH WINDS). NEW DATE T.B.A.

Have you ever felt like you’ve hit a barrier at work? A period when you’re just grinding it out and you’d like to find a way to get your head back in the game? That was what it was like for RE Katz. She’s a writer and artist who found that magic zone again at Dreamland Arts in their newly-launched residency program.  WBFO Arts and Culture Desk producer Scott Sackett visited with Dreamland’s first artist-in-residence and shares her story about the residency and the personal politics of her art.

The Music is Art Festival is moving to a new location this year. Buffalo Riverworks will host the 15-year-old festival on September 9.

The local arts and culture community is preparing for cuts in federal funding. The White House Office of Management and Budget has suggested eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities among others.

With trips to Los Angeles to visit film executives and the Sundance Film Festival in Utah now behind him, Buffalo Niagara Film Commissioner Tim Clark shares his experiences with WBFO’s Pat Feldballe and talks about the effect the film commission’s out of town success is having on Buffalo’s home-grown” film producers.

As demand for his landscape paintings continues to grow, it’s becoming clear that collectors are connecting with Thomas Paquette’s vision of the American vista. “It moves beyond even the representation of this beautiful landscape,” said Sharon Ewing of Philadelphia’s Gross McCleaf Gallery. “He's actually on a mission to make sure that we preserve it.”  It's a mission that is facing challenging times.

The site of a former hospital for the mentally ill will soon be reborn as a hotel and architecture musem and education center. Officials at the Richardson Olmsted Complex marked the completion Tuesday of a busy three-year stage of reconstruction.

The plan is to start construction on the Explore and More Children's Museum at Canalside next month. The schedule and the associated construction details received recommended approval Monday.

If you watched the Grammy Awards Sunday night, perhaps it inspired fantasies that one day you might march on stage and accept an award for your singing. Or maybe not.

Buffalo-based recording and performing artists Shawn Elliot Lewis and Suzanne Bonifacio have made names for themselves on the experimental electronic music scene. Shawn is known by his following as Lesionread and Suzanne’s audiences know her by the stage name Space Cubs. The two artists were working in their West Side studio when WBFO Arts and Culture Desk producer Scott Sackett sat down to talk with them.

On this week's Theater Talk, Anthony discusses the difficulties with mounting a review such as SOPHISTICATED LADIES now at MusicalFare, Peter shares a moment while watching Eric Rawski and Caitlin Coleman in STEVE, and both agree on Theater of Youth's THE SHAKESPEARE STEALER.

Some Buffalo public high school students will be center stage this Sunday with a renowned jazz pianist and composer who is a Niagara Falls native. The Buffalo Academy of Visual and Performing Arts Choir will perform at Second Sundays at the Buffalo History Museum. WBFO's senior reporter Eileen Buckley was at a rehearsal Monday with students.  

Tim O’Shei of The Buffalo News has been traveling around the country visiting Western New Yorkers who’ve made it to the highest levels of show business and pop culture. Sunday's paper included his latest feature, with a profile of Buffalo native Rob Lieberman, who became one of the most successful commercial directors in the world, and is still hard at work filming television and movies.

The Buffalo History Museum is looking to reopen space within the Pan-Am Exhibition Building that has been closed for approximately three decades. Museum officials offered an update on a capital campaign for a project inside the Nottingham Terrace building known as "Restore, Reactivate, Reconnect."

The list of refreshments available at local movie theaters may be expanded soon.

Some young Buffalo artists created a special original song for First Lady Michelle Obama to wish her well as she leaves the White House. WBFO's senior reporter Eileen Buckley says the project was led by their youth instructor at the Buffalo Center for Arts and Technology.  

Local lawyers are commemorating one of the most important court cases in history on the stage of a local middle school. Members of the Bar Association of Erie County will re-enact the 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal – an event that its organizers believe, even 70 years later, still has an impact on today’s society.

A project more than a year in the making will be officially opened to the public over the holiday weekend at the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens. A restored greenhouse space within the complex is home to a new aquatic garden and Asian garden.

Hayden Fogle demonstrated his prodigious blues guitar skills at age 12, performing on stage at the UB Center for the Arts with blues guitar legend Buddy Guy. Now at age 16, he has teamed up with guitarist and singer Vince De Rosa. The duo will perform at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tennessee in late January.  WBFO Blues host Pat Feldballe recently spoke to the pair.

A landmark on Buffalo's West Side should remain standing for years into the future thanks in large part to New York taxpayers. WBFO's Chris Caya has more on a major restoration project slated for First Presbyterian Church, the home of Buffalo's oldest congregation.    

This week marked the 50th anniversary of the death of visionary American landscape painter Charles Burchfield. WBFO Arts and Culture Desk reporter Scott Sackett recently visited the Hamlet of Gardenville, the place that inspired many of Burchfield's works, for a look at his legacy.