February 2021

NEWS. ARTS. LIFE. | FEBRUARY 2021 | FREE | SINCE 1971 POLITICS

IN MEMORIAM

APHRODISIACS

BLM PROTESTERS RUN FOR OFFICE

MICHÉ FAMBRO AND THE MEANING OF SUCCESS

FOODS THAT GET THE JUICES FLOWING . . . SORTA

THE REV. MYRA BROWN’S CALLING

INBOX WANNA SAY SOMETHING? CITY wants to hear you rant and rave. Your feedback must . . . . . . be no more than 250 words . . . respond to CITY content . . . be engaging CITY reserves the right to edit for accuracy, length, and readability.

Send your rants and raves to: feedback@rochester-citynews.com

CITY, 280 State St., Rochester, NY 14614 (ATTN: Feedback) GOETHE BUST NEEDS A NEW HOME Your report in the January issue of CITY, “If Rochester is a ‘City of the Arts,’ why don’t we invest in the arts?” correctly identifies the need for more funding for local art, but it didn’t delve deeply enough into the need for someone to decide where art most appropriately fits in our region.

Since the bronze bust of the literary giant Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was stolen from the Highland Bowl in 2015, we have identified a sculptor to recreate the iconic memorial and a foundry to cast it, but we have yet to obtain permission to place it in a more visible and secure setting, with the Greater Rochester International Airport being our preference.

The Goethe monument was unveiled in Highland Bowl in 1950 and is one of three monuments representing Monroe County’s large German-American community.

The other two are the Schiller Memorial on Andrews Street and the Lomb Memorial on St. Paul Street.

There seems to be no difficulty in finding public spaces for murals on buildings, bridge underpasses, and communication boxes, and statues on street corners. But our idea of placing this sculpture in the airport, along with a sign indicating some of the many contributions that German Americans have made to our region over the last 200 years, has elicited no response from our county leaders.

We therefore respectfully ask that the city and county name someone to work with local artists to decide 2 CITY

FEBRUARY 2021

THE ARTS HAVE ME I’m a proud Rochester city resident, and I’ve been a regular reader of CITY since the ’80s.

The impact of COVID has reached far and deep into all of our lives, changing the way we view the world. With fewer and fewer socializing opportunities, many of us are left alone with our thoughts.

We’re left with introspection, hopefully recognizing what’s really important to each of us. Personally, I’ve realized that creating art, and supporting the arts in general, has become a priority to me.

After reading “If Rochester is a ‘City of the Arts,’ why don’t we fund the arts?” in CITY’s January edition, I was sad to learn of the disparity of funds distributed from the county’s annual budget. The word “pathetic” comes to mind. So, I decided that my government-issued stimulus check would be used for multiple donations to support our local arts.

Maybe, if we collectively change our focus, there will be some good that rises out of this pandemic. Thank you for helping me learn what’s important.

Michael Lohr, Rochester

where their art best fits, and give those individuals the authority to help install and maintain it.

Max Schaible, Rochester, and Roger Ehrich, Radford, Virginia.

Ehrich is the son of the late sculptor of the lost Goethe bust, William Ehrich.

PAB LEGAL FIGHT IS FAR FROM OVER The Police Accountability Board Alliance largely agrees with the premise of the opinion piece by Monroe County Public Defender Timothy Donaher in CITY’s December issue (“The time for a standard code of conduct of police is now”). The drive to have universal conduct standards and accountability for police here in Rochester, in our region, and throughout the country is why we have fought so hard for the City Council to create the Police Accountability Board in the first place. A major part of what the PAB does and will do is enacting a standard disciplinary matrix to ensure transparency and consistency for the community and officers alike.

We also concur with Mr. Donaher’s assertion that the PAB not having its full power to discipline police officers directly makes ensuring

necessary changes difficult, and, in his words, renders the board “toothless.”

The PAB is notably different from the previous Civilian Review Board, particularly in that it is independent of the Rochester Police Department and has subpoena powers. However, the reason we have fought so hard for the PAB to have its full powers is because that discipline piece is crucial to ensuring the PAB is a truly transformative agency of the city government and a vehicle for community pushback against ongoing police abuses.

Where we take issue with the piece is the suggestion that the legal fight over PAB discipline power has been over since state Supreme Court Justice John Ark ruled in favor of the Rochester Police Locust Club in May and stripped PAB of its disciplinary powers. The litigation is ongoing as a result of City Council appealing the case. In fact, CITY reported in a July 17 story by Gino Fanelli that the case has been taken to the Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court; and even that may not be the final say in the litigation.

We feel the need to write this response because we can abide no confusion over the status of the PAB and its role in our community.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 4

NEWS. ARTS. LIFE. February 2021 Vol 49 No 6 On the cover: Photo by Max Schulte 280 State Street Rochester, New York 14614 feedback@rochester-citynews.com phone (585) 244-3329 roccitynews.org PUBLISHER Rochester Area Media Partners LLC, Norm Silverstein, chairman FOUNDERS Bill and Mary Anna Towler EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT themail@rochester-citynews.com Editor: David Andreatta News editor: Jeremy Moule Staff writer: Gino Fanelli Arts editor: Daniel J. Kushner Life editor: Rebecca Rafferty Music writer: Frank De Blase Calendar editor: Kate Stathis Contributing writers: Vince Press, Chris Thompson, Adam A. Wilcox CREATIVE DEPARTMENT artdept@rochester-citynews.com Creative director: Ryan Williamson Designer/Photographer: Jacob Walsh ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT ads@rochester-citynews.com Sales manager: Alison Zero Jones Advertising consultant/ Project mananger: David White OPERATIONS/CIRCULATION Operations manager: Ryan Williamson Circulation manager: Katherine Stathis kstathis@rochester-citynews.com CITY is available free of charge. Additional copies of the current issue may be purchased by calling 585-784-3503. CITY may be distributed only by authorized distributors. No person may, without prior written permission of CITY, take more than one copy of each monthly issue.

CITY (ISSN 1551-3262) is published monthly 12 times per year by Rochester Area Media Partners, a subsidiary of WXXI Public Broadcasting. Periodical postage paid at Rochester, NY (USPS 022-138). Address changes: CITY, 280 State Street, Rochester, NY 14614. Member of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and the New York Press Association.

Copyright by Rochester Area Media Partners LLC, 2021 - all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, photocopying, recording or by any information storage retrieval system without permission of the copyright owner.

@ROCCITYNEWS

IN THIS ISSUE OPENING SHOT

Betty Wyatt waves to a friend before entering the pop-up COVID-19 vaccine site at Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in Rochester. PHOTO BY MAX SCHULTE

NEWS

5

MOURNING IN AMERICA

The Capitol siege wasn't a revolution, but a convulsion to the rejection of a presidency rooted in nostalgia.

ARTS

16

BY DAVID ANDREATTA

WASTED POTENTIAL

6

Composting is growing, but we're a long way from getting with the program.

FROM THE STREETS TO CITY HALL

The RPO's new music director, Andreas Delfs, is a conservative choice with a progressive record.

34

18

SEND IN THE CLOWNS

Rebecca Soriano's anxious artwork is a perfect portrait of our collective trauma.

ON THE COVER THE REV. MYRA BROWN'S CALLING

She has the ear of the city's leaders and its grassroots advocates.

BY GINO FANELLI

BY DANIEL J. KUSHNER

BY JEREMY MOULE

10

MAESTRO, PLEASE

LIFE

38

RANDOM ROCHESTER THE SHEPHERD OF LINDEN ST.

Margaret Nordbye, who died at 101, was the glue of the South Wedge.

BY DAVID ANDREATTA

BY REBECCA RAFFERTY

30

BLM protest organizers mobilize for a new march — as candidates for City Council.

BY GINO FANELLI

MICHÉ FAMBRO AND THE MEANING OF SUCCESS

The crazy-talented Miché Fambro never made it "big," but he touched lives.

BY ADAM A. WILCOX

40

SMOKESHOW ON SOUTH AVE.

Meet "Goliath," the hulking smoker of Bubby's BBQ that you'll smell before you see.

BY CHRIS THOMPSON

MORE NEWS, ARTS, AND LIFE INSIDE roccitynews.org

CITY 3

There are, have been, and will be powerful forces aligned against the board as long as it fights to rein in police abuses, and we cannot afford to have defeatist sentiment when it comes to ensuring the board has its full powers. Numerous members of the PAB Alliance believe that Mr. Donaher supports our effort and likely did not mean to suggest the fight is over. However, the Alliance will always push back when public inaccuracies are portrayed about the PAB’s role and powers in fighting for our community.

The PAB Alliance is a coalition of organizations that championed the creation of the Police Accountability Board.

FIRE DISTRICTS REPORT WAS EXCELLENT, BUT OVERLOOKED I love CITY and WXXI and have been a supporter for decades, but I was disappointed that the excellent investigative article by Gino Fanelli about fire districts in the January edition, “Overlooked fire district elections come with a price,” didn’t get the traction it deserved. It seems to have been buried on CITY’s website and wasn’t posted on social media sites, such as independent town Facebook pages.

While the focus of the article was on town fire districts, broader issues include voter suppression tactics, such as those employed in Henrietta by moving the single polling site to a remote location for both the board election and a bond referendum and continuing the ban on mailin voting during a pandemic. The conditions are ripe for an abuse of authority and lack of accountability in fire districts, which seem to tax residents and businesses at whatever rate they please with no pushback.

There are questions of character and competency of fire district leadership and serious questions of financial management, conflicts of interest, and excessive spending and debt.

Fire districts have evolved, over a relatively short period of time, from small non-profit volunteer community organizations to big businesses with grossly inadequate state controls.

Jim Sorrentino, Henrietta 4 CITY

FEBRUARY 2021

TWO CENTS ON TOBACCO I wish CITY readers showed as much outrage of advertisements for gasoline-powered cars as they do over ads for cigarettes.

Stephen Byrne, Rochester Size matters. Would a half-page or quarter-page tobacco ad not in red be less of a trigger for alarmed health moralists responding in degrees of high dungeon to CITY? Sadly, I think not, although it’s worth a try in the event that CITY has not already caved to the pressure.

I’m a former smoker and there was nothing so good as a cigarette and a beer at the right time and place.

My mom smoked six cigarettes in the evenings while she worked the crossword puzzle, cutting back to three during Lent, and she lived to be 89 years old.

Yes, the evidence of the harmful effects of smoking and its addictiveness is real. But not everyone abuses tobacco and its quiet pleasures are real ones. Tobacco is legal and companies have a right to compete via advertising for your patronage.

I wonder if the real motivation behind the outrage of CITY’s cigarette advertising is not simply societal anxiety, significantly ramped up, as I have observed in the last 50 years of my life, that is as censorious and selfassured and cancelling as a sermon of any Puritan preacher addressing his flock and threatening fire and brimstone to the unrighteous.

Joe R. Struble, Rochester CORRECTING OURSELVES: A feature story on Monroe County Public Health Commissioner Dr. Michael Mendoza that appeared in the “Public Lives” section of CITY’s January edition misspelled the name of his wife, Dr. Lisa Vargish.

An investigative report on the state of public arts funding in Monroe County in CITY’s January edition incorrectly reported that Rochester does not have a “percent for art” ordinance. Such a law was enacted in 2007, but it has been dormant since its inception.

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

As America climbs the hill, it must prepare to fight

BY DAVID ANDREATTA

T

@DAVID_ANDREATTA

he “Save America” rally on the Washington Mall and the insurrection at the Capitol that followed, and what they revealed, was ugly. In the moment, it was tempting to despair.

But with the distance of a little time and an infusion of inspiration in the words not of a new president but of the 22-year-old poet who performed at his inauguration, the uprising that spat a dark stain on the history of the nation may have actually been a bright spot.

As Amanda Gorman eloquently reminded us in her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” the great experiment that is the United States isn’t broken so much as it is “simply unfinished.” Ours is a country in the arc of things, as it has always been. Sometimes it is ahead of the curve, sometimes it is behind it, but it is forever on the curve.

Some people who gathered in Washington that day characterized their presence as “a revolution.”

But the countless hours of video to surface from that day from both inside and outside the Capitol crackled less with the spirit of Lexington and Concord than that of a raging collective of disillusionment in its death throes.

What were they revolting against exactly? To hear them tell it, they

DANDREATTA@ROCHESTER-CITYNEWS.COM

were pushing back against a leftist “deep state” conspiracy to steal the presidential election from Donald Trump. Some of them, particularly those who stormed the Capitol, may have actually believed that.

But I don’t believe that’s what fueled most of the people there that day.

A stolen election is a serious charge, one that merits a fullthrottled and unwavering commitment to counteract. After all, acts like that kill democracies.

Yet, when faced with such a dire threat to the country they espouse to love, most of the thousands who descended on Washington came unprepared to fight. They didn’t have the stomach for a real revolution.

They know that real revolutions mean cities get destroyed and houses get ransacked and their neighbors get killed. They know they have it pretty good, at least good enough to not want all that to happen. They know that the election wasn’t really stolen.

They know war means having an endgame, and they know they don’t have one.

What we witnessed in Washington that day was not a revolution, but a convulsion in response to the American rejection

of a presidency and a movement rooted in nostalgia. It was a rebellion against the future.

That’s the bright spot — the recognition that a future packaged in a yearning for the past is at odds with an America coming to grips with its history of racial and social injustices and inching toward becoming a country whose default citizen isn’t white and Christian and speaks English at home.

The United States has always been, at least on paper, a melting pot, a country made up of people of all the countries of the world. But it has never been a country without a dominant race and religion and language; or a place where resembling the default citizen didn’t give one a leg up.

Holding fast to that social status and the financial benefits that come with it was what “Make America Great Again” was about for many Trump supporters.

This is especially true for those who made the pilgrimage to Washington on Jan. 6 hopped up on four years of a president, “news” pundits, and people in power fueling their anxieties for pecuniary and political gain.

That the bright spot is a backlash against the future of

America doesn’t mean we can afford to be naïve about the butterfly effect of Trumpism or the insurrection, though. Seventy-four million people voted for Trump.

They are not all knuckledragging mouth-breathers who wear face paint and fur hats with horns to blitzkrieg the Capitol. Many are professionals and businesspeople with families.

Two-thirds of Trump voters described the participants in the Capitol riots as either “criminals” or “fools” in a Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,005 American adults, including 339 who said they cast a ballot for Trump.

They need to be told, and told forcefully, where America is headed and the benefits of the destination — a country that works better for more people.

At the same time, 12 percent of the respondents to that poll said they supported the Capitol siege.

There is no point in trying to tell them anything, understand them, or sympathize with them.

They are beyond saving. All we can do is recognize that and prepare for future confrontations with them.

That hill is worth climbing.

roccitynews.org

CITY 5

NEWS

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Beckett Putney empties household food scraps into a Dumpster at Impact Earth, a residential food scrap collector in Monroe County. PHOTOS BY MAX SCHULTE

Wasted Potential

Composting is growing, but we’re a long way from getting with the program

BY JEREMY MOULE

A

@JFMOULE

n earthy, musty smell hangs in the air of Impact Earth’s cavernous headquarters on Brighton-Henrietta Town Line Road, where crews are emptying buckets of vegetable peels, apple cores, coffee grounds, egg shells, and other food scraps into totes destined for small farms for composting into a top soillike material.

Roughly 20 tons of food scraps pass through the facility each week, 6 CITY

FEBRUARY 2021

JMOULE@ROCHESTER-CITYNEWS.COM

according to the company, organic waste collected from residential customers and commercial clients, such as restaurants and institutional kitchens, that would otherwise sit in a landfill.

“Everyone has food waste to varying degrees and rather than throw it in the trash bucket and have that go to the landfill, which we know is a bad thing, diverting it and having it turned into soil or energy is a much

better alternative,” said Robert Putney, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Impact Earth.

Impact Earth became Monroe County’s only residential food waste composting service in January after it acquired its competitor, Community

Composting, for an undisclosed price.

But the merger is more significant than a couple of companies consolidating. It is the latest sign that there is growing interest in and demand for composting in the Rochester region.

PHOTO BY MAX SCHULTE

That shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Across the country over the past five years, the number of communities offering some form of composting has grown by 65 percent, according to a 2019 report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Still, Rochester and Monroe County towns and villages are somewhat advanced when it comes to composting in America in that residents can subscribe to a curbside food scraps pickup service. The U.S. PIRG study noted that such programs are available in less than 2 percent of the 19,000 towns and cities across the country.

At the same time, Rochester and Monroe County lag their peers in New York in terms of public composting programs. The city of Buffalo and Onondaga County, for instance, launched municipally-funded initiatives years ago.

The growing interest in food waste recycling, a term often used for the collection and composting of food scraps, emerges as governments and the public at large have become increasingly aware of the problems posed by burying food scraps in landfills.

In the United States alone, food waste generates the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as 37 million cars, roughly 1 in 7 cars on the road, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. That accounts for both the energy to grow unused food, as well as the methane that is released by food rotting in landfills.

The problem will only worsen, as studies project the global population will need potentially twice as much food by 2050 as it did in 2005. “Food waste is actually a very high

Robert Putney, Impact Earth founder and CEO, in front of a Dumpster filled with food waste.

PHOTO BY MAX SCHULTE

CONTINUED ON PAGE 8

roccitynews.org

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PHOTOS BY MAX SCHULTE

percentage of what goes into the municipal waste stream,” said Charles Ruffing, director of the New York Pollution Prevention Institute, which is based at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Community Composting was a relatively young company, having been started by Rochester residents Brent Arnold and Steven Kraft in 2013. Since its founding, Arnold figured, the company has kept some 1,500 tons of food waste out of landfills — an amount equivalent to 937 Toyota Priuses.

But Arnold noted its customer base grew by about 30-percent annually and was still rising at the time of the sale — a rate too rapid for the company to keep pace.

As Putney put it: “There was more demand for curbside than what the company was doing.”

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FEBRUARY 2021

Impact Earth, which is located in Brighton near Monroe Community College and the Henrietta border, is an equally young company. It started in 2014 with a focus on helping event organizers cut down on the amount of trash they were sending to landfills. As the company grew, it started collecting and composting food scraps from commercial clients.

Two years ago, it expanded into residential service and began accepting food scraps for a fee of $5 per bucket.

Customers were able to drop off full five-gallon buckets, and pick up clean, empty ones, at the Rochester Public Market and area farmers markets.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the company pivoted to a curbside pickup model, Putney said. By October, the company had 500 curbside customers, many of whom previously used the drop-off service.

Today, after acquiring Community Composting’ clients, Impact Earth

serves about 3,000 residential customers in neighborhoods across Monroe County through curbside pickup and drop-off locations.

The acquisition boosted Impact Earth’s collection capacity, but company officials say the higher volume translates to more efficient and less expensive collection and compositing that could ultimately drive down costs to customers.

“There’s just an economy in combining the two groups together, which was also a driver for us,” Putney said.

A state law coming into effect next year requiring large producers of food waste to donate edible food it would otherwise discard and compost scraps could also boost Impact Earth’s business.

Food waste is a major problem in the United States. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that food waste accounts for roughly a quarter of the trash sent to the country’s landfills.

In Monroe County, an estimated 119,270 tons of food waste was generated in 2010, according to an analysis conducted as part of the county’s 2015 solid waste management plan. The scraps — which weighed more than a military aircraft carrier — amounted to an estimated 16 percent of the county’s solid waste.

That figure doesn’t include the large amounts of food scraps that county residents run through their garbage disposals and into the sewers, noted Mike Garland, the county’s Department of Environmental Services commissioner.

Ideally, food shouldn’t be wasted at all, but when it can’t be avoided, diverting it away from landfills and sewers is the next best option.

When food waste is entombed with trash, it not only takes up finite space in landfills, but shortens the lifespan of landfills. As food waste breaks down underneath thousands of tons of garbage, it emits offensive odors and generates substantial amounts of methane, a potent climate-disrupting greenhouse gas.

Composting food scraps turns them into nutrient-rich, soil-like humus — a valuable commodity to gardeners and

farmers. Impact Earth gives some of its compost to customers free of charge and sells the rest.

Local governments, including Rochester, have started looking at food waste recycling programs to help cut their communities’ carbon emissions and save money. The U.S. PIRG report noted that, in 2017, the average price to dump waste at a landfill was $52 a ton, but the average price for dumping organic waste at a composting facility was $35 a ton.

The city of Rochester, which does its own refuse and recycling collection, in 2019 began studying the feasibility of a municipal food waste recycling program as a way to save money and the environment.

The city is expected to launch a pilot program in the near future.

Shortly after County Executive Adam Bello took office last year, his transition team recommended that the county work alongside the city as the latter explored a potential municipal composting program. The county is doing just that, Garland said.

But the county will explore its own food waste reduction efforts, including food scraps composting, as it develops a climate action plan, Garland said.

The first phase of work on the plan will start this year, although handling food waste is expected to begin in 2022.

“We realize it’s going to be a community-wide effort, a county-wide effort, to implement an aggressive climate action plan,” Garland said.

The city and county’s peers to the west and east already have public food scrap composting programs.

Buffalo started its Scrap It! initiative in 2018 and added six food scraps drop-off locations the following year. Between May and September of 2019, the city composted 8,638 pounds — over four tons — of food waste, according to Buffalo’s annual recycling report.

Onondaga County residents are also able to drop off their food scraps at a composting facility owned by the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency. The county collects upwards of 95,000 tons of food waste each year mostly from businesses and factories, though a small potion does come from residents, according to the agency.

By contrast, neither Rochester

Food scraps collected from households enrolled in the curbside pick-up program at Impact Earth. The waste will be recycled into compost.

PHOTOS BY MAX SCHULTE

nor Monroe County have any such public program. Their only options are composting in their own yards, which isn’t an option for everyone, or subscribing to the service offered by Impact Earth.

Community food waste recycling programs are in their infancy and they take different forms in different places, Ruffing said. Some are run entirely by for-profit companies, while others are operated by local governments.

Sometimes they are the product of public-private partnerships.

Ruffing believes that the publicprivate arrangement may prove to be the best model for expanding and promoting food waste composting efforts.

“The private sector is better positioned to run the routes, do the pickups — depending on the location, even operate the composting facility,” Ruffing said. “But generally it takes a municipality scale to do the communication, the encouragement, in some cases the regulation.”

Putney also sees the publicprivate model as key to the future growth of Impact Earth’s residential

composting business, especially if local governments set up programs where residents can opt in and pay for the service through their tax bills. Those programs would help Impact Earth to break into the mainstream and reach Putney’s next target: 10,000 customers.

“A collaborative approach is always best,” Putney said. “We collaboratively collect trash now so it wouldn’t be any different.”

The company already has contracts with the towns of Victor and Canandaigua to administer their food scrap drop-off programs.

It has also served as a consultant on Rochester’s food waste recycling feasibility study.

For now, it’s not clear what an expansion of food waste recycling services in Rochester would look like. Residents could see ramped-up curbside pickup, more municipal food scrap drop-off sites, or even the development of neighborhood food waste drop-of hubs.

Putney said there’s merit to having both curbside and drop-off options available to residents. He noted that even after Impact Earth began offering curbside pickup, many customers opted to continue dropping off their scraps at farmer’s markets, which they want to support. As a business, the best way to attract and keep customers is to provide a service that works for them, he added.

“I think the best way to encourage people to compost, whether it’s residentially or commercially, is to give them options,” Putney said.

roccitynews.org

CITY 9

NEWS

STREET SMARTS

Brittan Hardgers, Stanley Martin, Kim Smith and Kevin Stewart. PHOTO BY GINO FANELLI

From the streets to City Hall BLM protest organizers mobilize for a new march — as candidates for City Council.

BY GINO FANELLI

L

@GINOFANELLI

ast year, they marched on City Hall. Now, a handful of organizers of the 2020 protests are hoping to march into City Hall as members of City Council.

The foursome of Democrats, who dub themselves “The People’s Slate,” is comprised of Free the People organizer Stanley Martin; VOCAL-NY organizer Kim Smith; Brittan Hardgers, a barber and staple of local Black Lives Matter protests, and Kevin Stewart, a quiet fixture at the protests who did much of his organizing behind the scenes.

The members are looking to convert their popularity and ability to galvanize 10 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

GFANELLI@ROCHESTER-CITYNEWS.COM

people into political power by taking four of the city’s five Council seats “atlarge,” meaning offices that represent the entire city as opposed to a district defined by boundaries.

In the process, they will have to wage primaries against at least three incumbents in Council members Mitch Gruber, Willie Lightfoot, and Miguel Meléndez, all of whom are seeking re-election. The remaining at-large seats are currently occupied

by Malik Evans, who is running for mayor, and the Council’s president, Loretta Scott, who as of this writing has not announced whether she is

seeking another term.

The slate is betting on a belief held by many of the thousands of people who took to the streets last year that Rochester’s elected leaders have failed to address basic needs of everyday city residents, and that the only way to address their shortcomings is to oust them and rebuild.

Martin cast their candidacies as both a duty and desire to affect change.

“If we felt they have done enough, I don’t think we would feel the burden to fill these positions with community members and people who have witnessed and experienced what it feels

like when they haven’t done enough,” Martin said.

BORN OF PROTEST The People’s Slate was forged over months of protests, first following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May, then again in September, after news of the March killing of Daniel Prude by Rochester police officers.

Prude’s death and the lack of transparency about it at City Hall, coupled with the perception that the police’s response to demonstrations was extreme, fueled a movement that had

for some time considered a sea change in the city’s halls of power was long overdue and simultaneously exposed a vacuum in potential leadership.

“What you are seeing in the streets are a result of numerous meetings where there has been no follow through, numerous requests for meetings that have not been followed through,” Smith said. “When we say our voices are not being heard, that is not a figurative statement.”

Stewart and Hardgers are political newcomers.

Smith has dipped a toe in political waters. She most recently vied to fill the vacancy on City Council left behind

by Jackie Ortiz, who resigned her seat in August upon being appointed the Monroe County Democratic elections commissioner. That seat was ultimately filled by Meléndez. Earlier in 2020, Smith lost a Democratic primary for the 61st Senate District.

Martin previously ran unsuccessfully for City Council’s East District seat in 2019, which was ultimately won by another progressive in Mary Lupien.

Martin said she had no plans to run for office again before joining the slate, seeing her role as an activist as more her speed.

But she said building the slate and running for office was a begrudging last resort after months of calls for change were met with little action from city leadership. Namely, protest organizers sought a large cut in RPD’s budget to fund crisis response teams and the passage of “Daniel’s Law,” a bill which would forbid police from responding to mental health crises.

In June, the city did reduce the police budget by about 5 percent, including halving the incoming recruit class. In September, the city announced the opening of the Office of Crisis Intervention Services, which includes the Person in Crisis (PIC) team. That 14-member team was funded partly through RPD budget cuts, and serves as a police alternative which responds to calls related to behavioral health. It’s one of the first of its kind in the region.

“We do see change in the most important piece, which is more people getting involved and focusing on the issues,” Martin said. “Within the establishments, it is a wall that feels like it cannot be broken through, but that’s why we are creating an alternative.”

Stanley Martin. PHOTO BY GINO FANELLI

CONTINUED ON PAGE 12

Brittan Hardgers. PHOTO BY GINO FANELLI roccitynews.org CITY 11

The slate’s main focus is propping up its candidates for office. But its members acknowledge they are players in a broader mission of supporting and giving voice to people who have had trouble gaining a foothold in mainstream politics in Rochester.

Hardgers, a transgender man, said ensuring every member of the community has a voice is the most critical piece of the governance puzzle.

“There are too many people that are patting themselves on the back with a job well done, that literally are not responding to the voices of the community, the needs of the community,” Hardgers said. “We are here because everybody deserves a seat at the table.”

POLICY AND PLATFORM

Kim Smith. PHOTO BY GINO FANELLI

Kevin Stewart. PHOTO BY GINO FANELLI 12 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

The People’s Slate breaks down its platform into four stated goals: reimagine public safety, “refunding Rochester,” housing justice, and transparent and accountable leadership.

In practical terms, platform items like reimagining public safety and “refunding Rochester” mean diverting resources from the Rochester Police Department into mental health services — a common call of Black Lives Matter protests that culminated in the catchall phrase of “defund the police.”

All the members of the slate believe the Police Department’s budget is bloated.

But each member has their own ideas of how deeply law enforcement budgets should be cut. Smith, for instance, believes that a police force is essential to a healthy community. Martin, on the other hand, would like to do away with traditional officers entirely and replace them with a variety of crisis response teams.

The candidates are united on the belief that governing starts from the ground up, and that city government currently does too much behind closed doors.

“We all learned and heard these stories about smoke-filled back rooms in middle school, and it was sort of like an American myth, but that’s what is happening in our government,” Stewart said.

Slate members said that, if elected, they would hold public meetings in the days and weeks leading up to a vote, make sure members of the communities affected by new city policies have a chance to converse directly with Council, and that policies would be proposed based on the stated needs of the community heard through public hearings.

As it stands, Council members allow time for residents to address them at every meeting. But it is largely a one-

way conversation in which residents speak and Council members listen without responding.  “With our process, every month as we get our campaign up and running, we will hold community listening sessions,� Smith said. “We won’t wait for the community to come to us, we will go into the communities and ask them what they need for their community and for themselves from Council.� Lightfoot, the Council’s vice president and most seasoned elected official of the at-large Council members the slate is looking to replace, said he is already doing those things. He noted that he opened an office on Jefferson Avenue that welcomes residents who want to talk about anything and everything, although it has been mostly closed during the pandemic. He said his Council colleagues are active in the same way. “I went around with Malik Evans and Mitch Gruber and held community sessions from when I was first elected until COVID happened,�

Lightfoot said. “We were doing them all around the city.�

In May, the Council received an “A� rating from the New York Coalition for Open Government for public

access during the pandemic. Rochester was one of four municipalities to be recognized, alongside Albany, Niagara Falls, and Binghamton. “Instead of people criticizing, I think they should look at us as trendsetters as far as us moving the needle forward,� Lightfoot said. Some of the immediate policy positions of the slate directly contradict those of the current City Council.

For example, the slate believes the city’s new Police Accountability Board should be independent of the City Council and set its own budget — a stance in line with the thinking of the board’s new executive director, Conor Dwyer Reynolds. Council members, however, have stated that the board is a subjugate agency of Council.  “When we think of accountability and transparency, we want to decentralize power and create institutions which are solely accountable to the people, and not to executive powers of government,�

Martin said.Â

PROGRESSIVE SOCIALISTS While The People’s Slate was born of the Black Lives Matter movement, its members stress that their goal is not to

legislate on the basis of racial lines. Sure, they would like to see more Black leaders.

But they are quick to note that many of the city’s ills happened under leaders who are Black — the mayor, the police chief, the president of the City Council.

Martin said the importance of shaping policy that addresses historically marginalized residents outweighs the color of a politician’s skin. “I don’t think just being Black is enough,� she said.

Not everyone in activist circles agrees with that sentiment. Miquel Powell, a former Police Accountability Board member, expressed outrage during the appointment process that Reynolds, a white man, was tapped to lead the PAB. He said the job should have gone to a Black person. Powell is also a candidate for an at-large Council seat. For the most part, though, as slate members see it, classism and the institutional racism perpetuated by unfettered capitalism are at the heart of the problems affecting everyday city residents. “We don’t want any divide,� Smith said. “The only ‘Us and Them’ should be capitalists and those of us who are for the people.�

The slate’s governing plan is simple: Identify a need, and meet it. Hardgers argued that philosophy was on display in 2020 at the protests across the nation, where organizers, including here in Rochester, offered free food and other necessities to demonstrators and the neighborhoods through which they marched.  “How many homeless people and children heard us coming for miles, and knew that they would eat, that knew they would get a hat, a pair of gloves, something to drink, across miles, cities, states, across the nation?� Hardgers asked. The People’s Slate’s first challenge will be getting the endorsement of the Monroe County Democratic Committee, which typically backs incumbents. Then, regardless of whether the slate’s candidates get the party’s designation, they will likely face a bruising primary that will require a relentless get-out-the-vote effort.

Smith acknowledged that the coming months would be a long road, but said she was confident people will see value in the mission of injecting new blood into the Council.  “We are tired of plans that sound good,� Smith said. “We need to start having plans that work, and feel good.�

roccitynews.org CITY 13

ARTS

James Noah Beers, aka rapper Noah Fense, has found redemption in his music and hopes you can, too.

PHOTO BY JACOB WALSH

14 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

NEW BEATS

NO OFFENSE AND NONE TAKEN Rapper Noah Fense just wants to move on

BY FRANK DE BLASE

T

FRANK@ROCHESTER-CITYNEWS.COM

he rapper leans back and waits, first for the strings to drop with a velvety descent, then for the drums to come in and the keyboard to rise up. Then he intones from on top: “Forgiving ourselves and each other will set us free. Let it be. You never know, you never know.”

The song is “Call and Response” and the words are flowing from the mind of and mouth of Noah Fense, who knows a thing or two about forgiving himself and others.

He grew up with friction at home, dropped out of school, had brushes with the law, grappled with drug use and mental illness, lived on the streets, and did time in prison.

But through his music, he found redemption. Now, at 27, he says he hopes his sound can help lead anyone in his audience struggling with their own demons to reclamation.

“I feel like I just kind of want to be living proof that you can turn things around,” Fense says.

Noah Fense was born James Noah Beers and raised in Rochester and Penfield. He describes his earliest memory as his parents’ divorce, which he says had a profound effect on the direction his early life took. By his teenage years, as Fense tells it, he was skipping school, running with the wrong crowd, and a dabbling with drugs had devolved into addiction. Sedatives led to painkillers. The painkillers led to heroin.

He was 18 when he was charged with and pleaded guilty to a lowlevel felony assault that landed him on probation. When that obligation overwhelmed him, he beat feet for the highway and went on what could be described as a vision quest or a walkabout for more than two years.

“I eventually stopped showing up to probation and embarked on a journey across the country,” he says.

As Fense tells it, he camped and couch-surfed up and down the East Coast, mostly in the South, bouncing from musical festival to music festival.

He recalls the experience as “life changing,” saying he met people who taught him about concepts like collective

consciousness and self-realization. He unlearned destructive behaviors, and learned about healing his mind with psychedelic drugs and meditation and healing his body with yoga.

“It was a spiritual journey and a complete transformation,” Fense says.

“During this time, I began healing soul and mind, my family relationships, and my understanding of myself.”

The irony was that the criminal justice system back home was supposed to help him do all that. After he skipped town, the court issued a warrant for his arrest.

“The police were still looking for me, and thinking that I was actually a dangerous person,” he says. “On paper, it looked like I was, but I really wasn’t.”

That wouldn’t matter to a court, though. Not long after he returned to Rochester and contemplated turning himself in, knowing he couldn’t start his new life without confronting his past, what he calls “divine intervention” stepped in.

He got pinched by police outside a bar when officers asked to see his identification after a friend he was with got into a fight. It didn’t take long for police to figure out Fense was wanted and place him under arrest. A judge would sentence him to state prison. He was 21.

“It was a huge relief, honestly,” Fense says.

State criminal justice records show Fense served eight months in Wyoming Correctional Facility — “with the big dogs,” as he says — a medium-security prison next door to the infamous Attica.

Fense recalls whiling away the hours of tedium there reading, meditating, practicing yoga, writing music, all of the things he learned on the road, only this time to appease the criminal justice system and start anew. He was released on parole in February 2016 and completed his sentence in October 2018, records show.

“This was the beginning of who I am today,” Fense says. “This was when I finally had a completely blank canvas to paint a new picture with all of my new experiences.”

He emerged not as James Noah Beers, but as Noah Fense. No offense

and none taken, let’s just move on.

Fense had been writing raps for 10 years at that point. But it wasn’t until shortly after he was released from prison, looking at the world through fresh eyes, a clear head, and a clean heart, that he performed live for the first time.

It was on a lark, when a local band, Upward Groove, summoned him on stage to rap over one of their songs during a sold-out show at Three Heads Brewing. He recalls feeling natural and excited on stage, the way a free man feels after bouncing back from rock bottom.

“That moment really gave me a taste of connecting with an audience through my music,” Fense says.

Despite his portfolio of raps, Fense hadn’t considered himself a creative musician until then. The experience moved him to connect with his friend, Alex Vine, a multi-instrumentalist songwriter and vocalist to inquire about collaborating.

They paired up as an acoustic hip hop duo called Pine Needle Soul and set about infusing political consciousness and emotion into their work.

Vine says there was no telling what might come out of Fense’s mind and mouth on stage.

“Live shows with him and I are definitely a toss-up,” Vine says.

“We could be throwing down on an acoustic set of original tunes, covering a hip hop artist with a live band, or throwing down with a hip hop, electronic, rock vibe.”

Fense credits Vine with helping him push the artist and musician in him to a new level.

“He was the catalyst that propelled me into a new reality, allowing me to feel confident in my writing and my musicianship,” Fense says.

His lyrics are direct and unobscured by the music. Consider these lines from “Call and Response.” They are at times infused with vice and advice . . .

I smoke so much that I barely get high / Life’s a paradox and a very good lie / I’m here to find the truth underneath where it hides / Upstate NY where the sun barely shines . . . and are as worldly as they are

worldly-wise . . .

Love the people you’ve got / ’Cause you won’t have ’em forever / So just give ’em a call and tell ‘em whatever / And tell ’em you love ’em, and know that they know it / ’Cause it ain’t how you say it / It’s the way that you show it “The message of the song is simple,” Fense says. “You never know the last time you are going to see someone, so treat every moment with love and compassion.

“Each life is so precious,” he went on, “and with everything going on in the world today and the pressure of just trying to make enough money to pay the bills and eat, it’s easy to get distracted and take things and people for granted.”

To help pay the bills, Fense started his own landscaping company, Foresee Lawn Care, last spring as the pandemic took hold.

Fense was completing the studio version of “Call and Response” when he says he felt compelled to give the song a “live feel.” So he assembled a lineup of musicians — Marco Cirigliano on drums, Joe Stehle on keys, Zahyia Rolle on backup vocals, Ben Chilbert on Bass, Katie Knudsvig and Ela Kodzas on violins, Kathleen McFarland on viola, and Anna Groesch on cello — to record a video at Wicked Squid Studios.

The video, which can be viewed on Fense’s Facebook page, was filmed as Rochester was erupting with demonstrations over the death of Daniel Prude. In the video, Fense wears a black T-shirt that reads “Daniel Prude Needed Help.”

Until you get a chance to catch Fense live, there’s a ton of stuff in his back catalogue for you available on streaming services — a full-length album, five singles, and four music videos. He also expects to release a single each month until the summer, when he anticipates dropping another full album.

“Really,” he says, “I feel like I am just beginning.” roccitynews.org CITY 15

ARTS

A CLASSIC CHOICE

Andreas Delfs has been named the 13th music director of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. PHOTO BY JACOB WALSH

MAESTRO, PLEASE! RPO’s new conductor, Andreas Delfs, is a conservative choice with a progressive record

BY DANIEL J. KUSHNER

A

ndreas Delfs, the seasoned maestro who the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra named in January as its new music director, is a conventional choice to lead the organization into its centennial year. But there will be something unconventional waiting in the wings of each concert.

“After a long performance, a beer very much revitalizes and reenergizes me,” he said. “I normally have a deal with the stagehand to have one ready for me right when I come offstage. I haven’t established that rapport here yet.”

16 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

@DANIELJKUSHNER

DKUSHNER@ROCHESTER-CITYNEWS.COM

Delfs, 61, leaned back in his chair as he spoke over coffee in the Strathallan Hotel bar, a knee resting on a table, a blue sweater over a dress shirt with French cuffs, projecting an air of casual refinement and the confidence of a conductor at a point in his career at which, as he put it, he has nothing to prove to himself or others.

Born in Germany and educated at Juilliard, Delfs studied under such famed conductors as Christoph von Dohnányi, Lorin Maazel, and Dennis Russell Davies, served as music director of the esteemed European opera

companies Hannover State Opera and Bern Opera, and conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.

Delfs has also enjoyed sustained success in North America, with a fruitful tenure as music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra from 1997 through 2009, during which time the symphony performed in Havana, marking the first visit to Cuba by an American orchestra in 37 years. By that time, he had also made his conducting debut at Carnegie Hall.

His appointment in Milwaukee also sparked a turnaround for the orchestra there. Once reportedly accustomed to a few sellout audiences a year, the orchestra reportedly sold out 30 shows within a year of his arrival.

Now in Rochester, he succeeds the Pittsford native Ward Stare, who at age 32 in 2014 became the RPO’s youngest director ever in its nearly 100-year history. Stare announced his intention to step down in 2021 two years ago.

He has a history in town. In 1994, he made his debut with the RPO as a guest conductor, performing what is arguably history’s most famous

classical composition — Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

Since that collaboration, Delfs has led the orchestra on several occasions.

Even with his familiarity with the ensemble, he said he is hesitant to make drastic changes swiftly.

“The important thing is for a new music director not to come in with a sledgehammer and say, ‘Everything has to be different now,’ but first say, ‘Okay, first season, we do a little bit careful, a little bit conservative maybe,’” Delfs said. “Because I need to get to know this community, and the musicians, too. As you know, I’ve been here many times, but this is a different thing now.”

A CONSERVATIVE CHOICE The appointment of Delfs is a conservative move by the notoriously hidebound RPO, at a time when the nation and its cultural organizations are reassessing their commitment to addressing issues of racial and gender inequality.

According to a 2016 report by the League of American Orchestras, of which the RPO is a member, just 21 percent of conductors in the United States are people of color. Among music directors, the statistics were roughly the same, with 22 percent of people of color holding the post.

The gap between male and female conductors was at a similar ratio, with men outnumbering women four to one, while the gender disparity among music directors was at 90 percent male.

Ingrid Stanlis, who was the RPO’s board chairperson from 2017 to 2019, led the search committee for the new music director. Though she helped to determine a short list of candidates, the final decision had not been made before her tenure ended.

Seeing the search through were Betsy Rice, a current board member, and Rebecca Gilbert, the RPO’s principal flutist.

“The search led us to an exceptional musician and artistic leader, one who is well-known to our musicians and to Rochester audiences through more than 25 years of guest conducting here,” said Ross Lanzafame, the RPO's current board chairperson.

Stanlis said the committee considered what she called “a very broad swath” of candidates, including several women. But, she added, none of the women the board considered expressed interest. She recalled that Delfs was a leading candidate.

“Mr. Delfs rose to the top quickly, in terms of what is the first order of business with a music director, which is superb musicianship, leadership abilities, the ability to pull a community together, and have it become enthusiastic — if it’s not already — about its local orchestra,” Stanlis said. “He had all the qualities in that respect.”

She said racial diversity is scarce among music directors and conductors, in part because honing their craft takes years and access to opportunities not historically afforded to people of color.

“It’s not easy to find either musicians or music directors — in the classical world — of color, in particular,” she said. “And I think we need to understand that in order to have people become classical musicians and potentially music directors, they need to start early in life.

“Music education is so critical to developing the next generation of musicians, and to the extent that our schools and our civic organizations have neglected early music education, we’re seeing the results of that now.”

Delfs acknowledged that the musicians typically hired by orchestras do not mirror the diversity of the community for which they perform.

He said that he and the RPO have begun to discuss how to combat racial inequity, and that the issue must be addressed long before musicians get to the conservatory level.

“I would love the Rochester Philharmonic to be a banner carrier for this approach,” Delfs said. “Orchestras have to do much more to help young people, children that grew up in a social environment where classical

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

music is not natural, but they might be musically very talented. And we have the school system to help us to find them. And that’s where I think an orchestra needs to foster more.”

A PROGRESSIVE VISION Delfs suggested a program in which each RPO musician gives free music lessons to a local student in need.

In the short term, Delfs’s programmatic decisions for the 2021-22 season — which is expected to be released in full on Feb. 4 — suggest a subtle move toward more equitable representation in terms of gender and race, with regard to guest performers and featured living composers. Of the guest soloists to perform in the upcoming season, half of them are women.

Musicians of color to appear with the RPO include conductors Joseph Young and Lina González-Granados (in their debuts with the ensemble), soprano Nicole Cabell, and pianist Awadagin Pratt.

All of the contemporary works to be presented by the orchestra were written by female composers or composers of color. These include world premiere concerti by Roberto Sierra, a longtime collaborator with Delfs, and violinistcomposer Jessie Montgomery.

“Montgomery is certainly somebody I want to watch and prepare an inroad with the audience and the orchestra to appreciate her music,” Delfs said.

The conductor said he is also excited to introduce Rochester audiences to the music of Sarah Kirkland Snider, whose orchestral song cycles draw from pop and rock idioms and often conjure dream-like dystopias.

Though Snider’s piece “Something for the Dark” is a 15- to 20-minute instrumental work, Delfs hopes to commission a longer composition from her in the future.

“We know that all good music comes from the natural feeling of melody and the human voice,” he said.

“And Sarah is wonderful with that. She writes for voices like no other composer of her generation right now.”

The new music director’s affinity for vocal music by American composers extends well beyond contemporary compositions, and classical music, for that matter.

“I love American vocal music very much,” said Delfs, who has kept a home just outside of Ithaca for more than 26 years. “In my house, you hear very little classical music because that’s my job. That stays out of the house.

You hear a lot of Ella Fitzgerald doing the Cole Porter songbook, and things like that.”

Delfs also described himself as a “big opera fan” with a deep and abiding connection to vocal music — one that stretches back to his childhood in Flensburg, Germany, where he joined the roster of the Flensburg Municipal Theater as a conductor when he was 17.

But it was when he was 8 that he saw his first opera, “Hansel and Gretel,” and it stoked something inside him.

“We all have this one time in our lives where something that later becomes our great passion strikes us like lightning,” he said. “And that was it for me.”

roccitynews.org CITY 17

ARTS

REVEL IN THE DETAILS

"I Can Be Your Pogo Baby," left, and "No Desire To Be Known" by Rebecca Soriano. PHOTOS PROVIDED

SEND IN THE CLOWNS Rebecca Soriano’s anxious artwork is the perfect portrait of our collective trauma

BY REBECCA RAFFERTY

A

@RSRAFFERTY

rtistic responses to the events of 2020 are vast and varied.

Creatives have lambasted the former president, reacted to matters of social justice, and recorded the fear, sorrow, and loneliness of the pandemic.

Like that of her counterparts everywhere, the work of Rochester artist Rebecca Soriano is imbued with the bewilderment that has befallen all of us over the last year, like superimposed sock and buskin masks symbolizing comedy and tragedy in the theater.

Her portraits are exaggerated, 18 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

BECCA@ROCHESTER-CITYNEWS.COM

semi-abstract faces that are more reflections of a human’s inner world than the carefully guarded faces we wear around. Her people are grotesque or they’re beautiful, but either way, something’s off with them. Whether delicate, detailed graphite portraits or violent sprays of airbrushed pigment forming floating clown heads, each work is filled with an anxious, unnerving energy that conveys complex but relatable emotion.

In a recent conversation with Soriano, I asked her to share her

inspiration. She later sent me an artist statement that oscillated between grappling with dread and the mixed relief and trauma of catharsis.

“The string on a cheap Halloween mask snapping,” the statement read. “Steam rushing to escape a pressure cooker. The breathless tension of watching glass shatter. The struggle and exploration of identity.

Repression. Depression. A silent scream. The moment before a needle pierces an eye. Service with a glazed over expression. Tears pooling into the

corners of upturned lips. Self-soothing through fire.”

Her work, the statement continued, is a form of chaotic self-therapy, an exploration of abstract concepts and feelings. Her portraits are reflections “of the silent but violent struggle to exist.

The process of developing these visceral images feels like unclenching my emotional jaw, if only for a moment.”

Soriano was born in the Philippines, where she lived until she was 3 and her family moved to California. Her fourth birthday was celebrated, in an

MUSIC REVIEWS

Rebecca Soriano. PHOTO PROVIDED

appropriately American style, she says, at a Chuck E. Cheese’s.

“The dream,” she said, laughing.

“It was like, fully getting into the American lifestyle.”

An art school drop-out, Soriano had taken a stab at the fashion design and costuming program at Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in San Diego, and later studied fine art printmaking at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She was drawn in particular to lithography, which she simultaneously calls a “tedious, punishing format” and impractical and expensive process. But she still tries to incorporate various printmaking techniques — working with layering and separations — into her current work.

Life changes made San Francisco’s already unreasonable and rising cost of living untenable, and she relocated to the more affordable Rochester almost seven years ago.

Today Soriano is a serious materialsphile who experiments with different paper textures, charcoal, graphite, gouache, acrylic, and airbrush in her drawings and paintings. Some of her recent work is a series of semi-abstract portraits that seem like nods to classical statues, but are characterized by a repetition of features, particularly eyes.

One has a line of peepers stacked up the face and off into the blank space, as if Picasso got his hands on a Bernini marble sculpture. Others have melting features, inscrutable expressions, adorned with droplets of sweat and tears

or crowned by a spray of glass shards.

“When I make them it feels like a representation of trying to find your identity and pin it down, like presenting yourself trying to look normal or trying to fit a mold, but not quite getting there,” she said.

Soriano had experience using an airbrush to decorate cakes at various bakery jobs, and said that for a while she’d been obsessed with the idea of using the tool for art. She began what she called “silly, quick exercises,” amusing herself by applying clown makeup to acrylicpainted shapes on paper.

True to the divisive nature of clowns, the drawings are at once jarring and playful; they’re silly but subtly sinister.

They’re garishly neon, with exaggerated smirks, beady eyes, and baby teeth.

And she says they’ve been surprisingly popular. “I didn’t realize so many people have a clown appreciation,” she said.

Local artist M. Storms recently commissioned a clown painting from Soriano, and said that while Soriano’s paintings make her happy, she also sees the “humorous and terrifying” portraits as the spirits of our current times.

“We have the best, brightest spectacles and the most luxuries ever afforded to humanity, yet our wailing and existential horror at the absurdity of it all grows greater and louder,” she said.

Many artists have lamented their inability to create over the past year, commiserating on social media over the practical excuses but also nearly universally pointing to a nameless ennui that blocked their muses. Soriano said she felt the same at different points during the pandemic, particularly when she was facing and then recovering from a surgery in the fall.

But she said she eventually realized that being productive helped alleviate stress and anxiety, and that sharing her work on Instagram and other social media platforms helped her connect to people.

Aside from working two jobs — as a baker at Voula’s Greek Sweets in Rochester and a server at Lulu Taqueria in Fairport — Soriano has kept busy experimenting with new materials, and drawing nearly every day.

“People talk about the shutdown being the introvert’s dream, staying home,” she said. “But being home and alone with your thoughts and feelings, and kind of being forced into isolation, I don’t know, you can either wallow in it, or get weird by yourself.”

“THE PAC-MAN EP”

BY THE WORM QUARTET

“ALMOST NOTHING”

BY PUBLIC PRISM There’s something subversive about the hook-laden pop sound that Rochesterian Rob Massar creates for his solo project Public Prism — particularly on the 2021 EP “Almost Nothing.”

It could be Massar’s melodramatic crooning. He hits every note with a confidence that borders on being knowingly self-indulgent, overly enunciating words with elongated vowel sounds that would rival Morrissey’s decadent delivery. But it could also be the way Massar pits acoustic instrumentation against unwieldy synths and effects-laden electric guitar, exploiting the tension between the timbres before merging them and making them indistinguishable.

The three songs exude an earnestness that’s brilliantly undercut by musical themes that shift unpredictably underneath Massar’s hypnotic chanting — a vocal delivery that achieves nearly trance-inducing levels on “Wash Away.”

“Almost Nothing,” Public Prism’s second EP in as many years, showcases Massar as a mercurial musician with seemingly limitless potential. — BY DANIEL J. KUSHNER

“TOLEDO WILL” BY ZERO LEVEL Zero Level, a band that’s relatively new to the Rochester punk rock scene, released its EP “Toledo Will” back in July.

But it’s worth revisiting — a three-pronged attack that rolls out the songs with enough variety that they sound as if they were performed by three separate groups.

Drummer Dusty Payette, bassist Al Beaman, and guitarist Phil Tharp recorded “Toledo Will,” courtesy of Vanishing Zenith Records, at Watchman Studios in Lockport — where the majority of the Flour City’s heavy bands go — with co-producer Doug White at the wheel with the band.

They maintain attitude over three songs: a loosely executed “Big Legged Woman,” with its lyrical nod to Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog”; “Always Trouble Me,” with its trippy guitar; and “Must Learn To Ghost,” a sludgy serving of straight-up punk rock.

Want more? This spring, Zero Gravity anticipates the release of a full-length album, “Fantastic Disaster,” which will include the three songs from “Toledo Will.”

— BY FRANK DE BLASE

With a project called Worm Quartet that’s actually a one-man band consisting of a musician going by the moniker Shoebox, it’s not hard to see that nonsensical fun, bordering on craziness, awaits your ears.

The latest Worm Quartet release from Shoebox — whose real name is Timothy Crist — is a synth-driven, 11-track collection called “The Pac-Man EP.” Featuring clever, rapid-fire lyrics, the songs are full of acerbic wit and juvenile humor capable of making you shoot milk out of your nose.

“I’ve got a pocket full of quarters and I’m going to the arcade,” Crist sings on “Pac-Man Fever,” as if he were St. Michael, about to slay the dragon. The EP is a loving, if irreverent homage, as indicated by the song “I Had Sex With Pac-Man.” Amidst the swirling goofiness, Crist manages to pack in some remarkable instrumentation — like when the brief solos on “Pac-Man Fever” recall the violent electro-distortion of Nine Inch Nails. This is nothing but fun. Game on. —

BY FRANK DE BLASE

“I KEEP ON COMING BACK TO YOU” BY THE MIGHTY HIGH AND DRY It was just a matter of time before Rochester’s band of roots-rock raconteurs, The Mighty High and Dry, broke into country music territory. It seems as though that twangy mood was lurking all along.

Released in late December, the new, self-released single “I Keep on Coming Back to You” is a beautiful song that’s almost a country ballad. Vocalist-guitarist Alan Murphy, bassist Kyle Vock, drummer Alex Coté, and guitarist Eric Katerle know when to get out of the way of a good song that is already in touch with its own divinity. There are some grievous angels on the band’s shoulders and in the rafters on this track. Arresting, soulful, and righteous.

— BY FRANK DE BLASE

roccitynews.org CITY 19

MUSIC //

With evolving NYS guidelines for live music, events are highly subject to change or cancellation. It’s wise to check with individual venues to confirm performances and protocols.

ACOUSTIC/FOLK

Annie Wells. Virtual Little Cafe, online.

thelittle.org/music. Sat., Feb. 27, 7:30 p.m.

John McCutcheon. Livestream, online. goldenlink.org. Thu., Feb. 4, 7:30 p.m. $5-$30.

Virtual Sing Around. Golden Link Folk Singing Society, online. goldenlink.org.

Tuesdays, 7:30 p.m.

BLUES

Lunar New Year with Hanna PK. Virtual

Little Cafe, online. thelittle.org/music. Fri., Feb. 12, 8 p.m. Details here.

CLASSICAL

Alden Wright, Aeolian pipe organ.

George Eastman Museum, 900 East Ave. eastman.org. Sun., Feb. 28, 3 p.m. w/ museum admission: $5-$15.

Bach: Cantatas. Eastman School of Music, online. esm.rochester.edu/live.

Sun., Feb. 28, 3 p.m.

Beethoven & Prokofiev. Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, online. rpo.org.

Through March 12. Prokofiev’s Quintet in G minor, Op. 39 and Beethoven’s Septet in E-flat major, Op. 20. $25.

Classical Guitar Night. Virtual Little Cafe, online. thelittle.org. Sun., Feb. 14, 7 p.m.

Delfs & Tchaikovsky. Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, online. rpo. org. Through March 10. Andreas Delfs conducts Grieg’s Holberg Suite and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade in C Major, Serenade for Strings. $25.

Eastman Philharmonia. Eastman School of Music, online. esm.rochester.edu/live.

Wed., Feb. 24, 7:30 p.m.

Eastman School Symphony Orchestra.

Eastman School of Music, online. esm. rochester.edu/live. Mon., Feb. 22, 7:30 p.m.

Eastman Wind Ensemble. Eastman School of Music, online. esm.rochester. edu/live. Fri., Feb. 19, 7:30 p.m.

Eastman Wind Orchestra. Eastman School of Music, online. esm.rochester. edu/live. Wed., Feb. 17, 7:30 p.m.

ECMS General Recital. Eastman School of Music, online. esm.rochester.edu/live.

Fri., Feb. 5, 7 p.m.

ECMS Showcase Recitals. Eastman School of Music, online. esm.rochester. edu/live. Sat., Feb. 13, 3:30 & 5 p.m.

Faculty Artist Series: Masumi Per Rostad, viola. Eastman School of Music,

online. esm.rochester.edu/live. Sun., Feb. 21, 3 p.m.

Friends of Eastman Opera Competition.

Eastman School of Music, online. esm. rochester.edu/live. Fri., Feb. 19, 8 p.m.

Joe Blackburn, Aeolian pipe organ.

George Eastman Museum, 900 East Ave. eastman.org. Sun., Feb. 7, 3 p.m. w/ museum admission: $5-$15.

Jorell Williams. Livestream, online. fingerlakesopera.org. Thu., Feb. 18, 7 p.m.

Kearstin Piper Brown. Livestream, online. fingerlakesopera.org. Thu., Feb. 25, 7 p.m.

20 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

Margaret Anne Milne, Aeolian pipe organ. George Eastman Museum, 900

East Ave. eastman.org. Sun., Feb. 21, 3 p.m. w/ museum admission: $5-$15.

Morning Chamber Music. Eastman School of Music, online. esm.rochester. edu/live. Sat., Feb. 6, 11 a.m.

Mozart, Brahms, & Saint-Georges.

Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, online. rpo.org. Feb. 6-March 23.

Chevalier de Saint-Georges’ Overture to L’Amant Anonyme, Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major, K. 218, and Brahms’ Serenade No. 2 in A major, Op. 16. $25.

Piano Department Recital. Eastman School of Music, online. esm.rochester. edu/live. Sat., Feb. 20, 11:30 a.m.

Steve Kelly, Aeolian pipe organ. George Eastman Museum, 900 East Ave. eastman.org. Sun., Feb. 14, 3 p.m. w/ museum admission: $5-$15.

Voice & Opera Department Spring Recitals. Eastman School of Music,

online. esm.rochester.edu/live. Wed., Feb. 10, 5 p.m.

CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL

Film Department: Visual Music 3.

Eastman School of Music, online. esm. rochester.edu/live. Thu., Feb. 4, 7:30 p.m. fivebyfive: Composer Chats. Livestream, online. fivebyfivemusic.com. Sat., Feb. 27, 1:30 p.m. Feb 27: “Twenty Answers”

by Pamela Z. Live performances, video premieres, and chats with host Evan Meccarello.

Musica Nova. Eastman School of Music, online. esm.rochester.edu/live. Fri., Feb. 26, 7:30 p.m.

JAZZ

Laura Dubin & Antonio Guerrero.

Livestream, online. Ongoing, 8:30 p.m.

Live on FB. Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, online. rpo.org.

Feb. 20-April 6. Jeff Tyzik, conductor. $25.

Student Degree Recital: Cole Summers, jazz saxophone. Eastman School of

Music, online. esm.rochester.edu/live.

Fri., Feb. 26, 7:45 p.m.

Student Lecture Recital: Chase Ellison, Jazz percussion. Eastman School of Music, online. esm.rochester.edu/live.

Fri., Feb. 12, 7 p.m.

POP/ROCK

Amanda Ashley: Afternoon Cocktail.

Livestream, online. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, 1 p.m. Live on FB.

VOCALS

Student Degree Recital: Carolena Lara, voice. Eastman School of Music, online.

esm.rochester.edu/live. Sat., Feb. 27, 5 p.m.

Student Degree Recital: Sarah Luebke, voice. Eastman School of Music, online.

esm.rochester.edu/live. Sat., Feb. 27, 2 p.m.

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VISUAL & PERFORMING ARTS [ Opening ]

Arts Center of Yates County, 127 Main St. Penn Yan. Making the Look

Beautiful. Feb. 23-April 2. Photography

by Howard LeVant, paintings by Cherry Rahn. (315) 536-8226.

Bridge Art Gallery, URMC, 300 Crittenden Blvd. Youth for Racial

Justice: Not A Moment, But a Movement. Feb. 1-April 30.

BridgeArtGallery@URMC.Rochester. edu.

Cobblestone Arts Center, 1622 NY 332. Jason Dorophy. Feb. 25-April 11.

Feb 25, 5-7pm: Opening reception.

Viewings by appointment. 398-0220.

George Eastman Museum, 900 East Ave. eastman.org. Dutch Connection

(Feb 5-28) | Stacey Steers: Night Reels (to Jun 6) | Carl Chiarenza: Journey into the Unknown (to Jun 20) | One Hundred Years Ago: George Eastman in 1921 (to Jan 2022). Feb 12, 1pm: Online Exhibition Talk with Guest Curator William Green.

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Geisel Gallery, 2nd Floor Rotunda, Legacy Tower, One Bausch & Lomb Place. The Wildroot Group. Mondays-

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Sylvan Starlight Creations, 50 State St., Bldg C. Pittsford. Dwight

Myers: Abstract Art. Through Mar 31. sylvanstarlightcreations.com.

Yates County History Center, 107 Chapel St. Penn Yan. A Dangerous Freedom:

The Abolitionists, Freedom Seekers, & Underground Railroad Sites of Yates County. Through Jun 30. By appointment only. yatespast.org.

Film

Virtual Little Theatre, thelittle.org.

Daily Virtual Screenings. Ongoing.

Visual Studies Workshop, 31 Prince St. vsw.org. A History of Police

Readings & Spoken Word

Bertha VB Lederer Online Gallery, SUNY Geneseo. The Misogyny Papers:

A

Unmasked: Self-Portraits 2021.

Through Feb. 12. Open First Fridays 6-9pm & by appointment. 269-9823.

NTID Dyer Arts Center, 52 Lomb Memorial Dr. This is Not Normal: Deaf

[ Continuing ] Art Exhibits

1

Studio 402, 250 N Goodman St.

Brutality & Accountability Initiatives in Rochester from the Portable Channel Archive. Ongoing.

Modernist Sensibilities. Ongoing. rit. edu/ntid/dyerarts-center.

PUZZLE ON PAGE 46. NO PEEKING!

Changemakers: Rochester Women Who Changed the World. Through May 16. $14/$16. rmsc.org/changemakers.

International Art Acquisitions, 3300 Monroe Ave. Linda Kall: Chenille. Feb.

1-28. 264-1440.

CROSSWORD PUZZLE ANSWERS

Rochester Museum & Science Center, 657 East Ave. (rmsc.org). The

Saturdays. Works by Robert C. Whiteside, Peter Monacelli, George Wegman, Nancy Anne Holowka, & William Holowka. Through Feb 25. thegeiselgallery.com.

Ama Codjoe: “Blood of the Air “.

Thu., Feb. 11, 7:30 p.m. Virtual Writers & Books, wab.org Registration required.

Corey Sobel: “The Redshirt”. Thu., Feb. 25, 7:30 p.m. Virtual Writers & Books, wab.org Registration required.

Deborah Paredez: “Year of the Dog”.

Tue., Feb. 2, 7:30 p.m. Virtual Writers & Books, wab.org Part of Tuesdays with BOA. Registration required.

Maggie Smith: “Keep Moving”. Thu., Feb. 4, 7:30 p.m. Virtual Writers & Books, wab.org. Registration required.

Art Events

Main Street Arts, 20 W Main St. Clifton Springs. Constellations.

Cocktails with the Creators: Tom Kalinske. Thu., Feb. 25, 6 p.m. Virtual

Memorial Art Gallery, 500 University Ave. 276-8900. Season of Warhol.

ExhiBits: Women Running Rochester.

Through Feb. 26. Paintings, prints, and installation works by Sara Baker Michalak, Bill Santelli, & Mizin Shin. mainstreetartscs.org.

Through March 28.

NTID Dyer Arts Center, 52 Lomb Memorial Dr. Palettes of Nature.

Ongoing. A collaborative exhibit with deafgreenthumbs. rit.edu/ntid/ dyerarts-center.; Black is Black: Blackity AF. Ongoing. Part II: Generational Oppression. rit.edu/ntid/ dyerarts-center.

Pat Rini Rohrer Gallery, 71 S Main St. Canandaigua. Emerging Artists and

their Mentors 2021. Through Feb. 27. prrgallery.com.

Pittsford Fine Art, 4 N Main St. Pittsford. Trio of Guest Sculptors: Jay

Seaman, Dexter Benedict, Mary Taylor.

Through Apr 1. pittsfordfineart.com.

RIT City Art Space, 280 East Main St.

Beyond Addiction: Reframing Recovery | Felix Gonzalez-Torres: “Untitled” (L.A.). Through Feb 21. cityartspace. rit.edu.

Strong National Museum of Play, museumofplay.org Kalinske is former CEO of Mattel, Sega of America, Inc., & Leapfrog. Registration required.

Tuesdays Livestream. Registration required JLF@rochester.edu.

Comedy

Ted Baumhauer: Comedy Acts of Derring Do. Feb. 4-7. tucsonfringe.org.

Dance Events

BIODANCE at Home. Feb. 19-March

21. biodance.org.

Rochester City Ballet: “Sleeping Beauty”. Feb. 12-21. $15. rochestercityballet.org.

Theater

Blackfriars Couch Concert s. Tuesdays, 7 p.m. blackfriars.org.

Constellations. Feb. 26-Mar.6: Fridays, Saturdays, 7:30 p.m. Out of Pocket, Inc $15. muccc.org.

Dixie’s Happy Hour. Feb.12-21: Fridays-Sundays. OFC Creations $38 & up. ofccreations.com.

FEBRUARY HIGHLIGHTS WXXI-TV PBS l WORLD l CREATE l WXXI-KIDS 24/7 l AM 1370 NPR l WXXI CLASSCIAL l WRUR 88.5 l THE LITTLE

Award-winning journalist Joan Lunden hosts public television’s national healthcare series, Second Opinion with Joan Lunden. A trusted voice in American homes for more than 30 years, Joan engages a panel of medical professionals and laypeople in honest, in-depth discussions about life-changing medical decisions. The season tackles a variety of health issues, including heart disease in women, racial disparities in health, Alzheimer’s disease, and millennial health. The series airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on WXXI-TV.

Second S dO Opinion i i with Joan Lunden

A & Q

Thursdays at 8 p.m. on WXXI-TV

with Joan Lunden

Second Opinion with Joan Lunden executive producer Fiona Willis recently connected with Joan to ask her a few questions about the show.

Q. Why did you want to take on the series as host?

A. When something comes in front of you and you think, this couldn’t be more perfect. It’s disseminating health information – my core passion. It’s interviewing experts.

That’s my expertise. And, it’s on PBS, a place of utmost credibility.

Q. What was it like taping a show amidst COVID-19?

A. I’m really proud of the producers and WXXI and how they safely were able to bring a team of professionals together during a pandemic to produce 10 episodes flawlessly.

Q. What is the best part of working on the show?

A. I love helping people understand health. I want to help them navigate the health industry and at the same time recognize what’s not working in the health industry. The whole idea behind Second Opinion is to come behind and explain it. I’m there with Dr. Lou Papa, who is fantastic, and primary care physicians providing viewers with helpful, valuable information.

Q. What do you hope for the show five years from now?

A. I would like Second Opinion to become the epitome of the “go-to place” for anyone who wants to better understand their health, disease, and how to navigate the medical industry.

To watch the full interview, in which Joan shares what it’s like being the mom of seven, why she got into journalism, and how she always follows her passions, visit SecondOpinion-tv.org.

Second Opinion with Joan Lunden is produced by WXXI Public Media and the University of Rochester Medical Center and is made possible with support from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

Pictured: Host Joan Lunden with Dr. Lou Papa and EP Fiona Willis | Credit: Max Schulte

!

WXXI-TV • THIS MONTH

Norm & Company: Giovanni LiDestri Thursday, February 4 at 8:30 p.m. on WXXI-TV WXXI President Norm Silverstein sits down with Giovanni “John” LiDestri, CEO of LiDestri Food & Drink to talk about his experience immigrating to Upstate NY from Italy, his Fairport-based business, and life in Rochester. Watch online after the broadcast at WXXI.org/normandcompany.

Super Drama Sunday Sunday, February 7, starting at 12 p.m. on WXXI-TV If watching the big game isn’t your cup of tea, spend the afternoon with James Herroit and his adventures as a veterinarian in 1930’s Yorkshire in All Creatures Great and Small. Enjoy the first four of seven episodes back-to-back, starting at 12 p.m.

(Then you’ll be all caught up to resume watching the series at its regular timeslot, Sundays at 9 p.m.) At 4 p.m., stay tuned for The Chaperone on Masterpiece, which follows the diffident chaperone to dancer Louise Brooks.

(Photo: Male Bighorn sheep Credit: Courtesy of © Lee Hoy)

Nature: The Big Bend: The Wild Frontier of Texas Wednesday, February 10 at 8 p.m. on WXXI-TV Witness the wildlife and serene beauty of America’s Wild West.

Nature takes you on a journey through the Rio Grande’s Big Bend alongside its iconic animals, including black bears, rattlesnakes, and scorpions.

24 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

Death is But a Dream Monday, February 22 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV People who are close to death often report dreams or visions of deceased loved ones at their death beds, usually “invisible” to others in the room. Dr. Christopher Kerr (pictured) and the research team at Hospice Buffalo are rigorously studying this phenomenon known as End of Life Dreams & Visions.

CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY

400 Years Taking the Knee

The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song Tuesdays, February 16 & 17 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV Tracing the 400-year-old story of the Black church in America, this two-part series reveals how Black people have worshipped and, through their spiritual journeys, improvised ways to bring their faith traditions from Africa to the New World. They did so while translating these traditions into a form of Christianity that was not only truly their own, but a redemptive force for a nation whose original sin was found in their ancestors’ enslavement across the Middle Passage. Part 1 repeats 1/20 at 4 p.m. and part 2 repeats 1/27 at 4 p.m.

American Experience: Voice of Freedom Monday, February 15 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV On Easter Sunday, 1939, contralto Marian Anderson (pictured) stepped up to a microphone in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

Inscribed on the walls of the monument behind her were the words “all men are created equal.” Barred from performing in Constitution Hall because of her race, Anderson would sing for the American people in the open air. Hailed as a voice that “comes around once in a hundred years” by maestros in Europe and widely celebrated by both white and Black audiences at home, her fame hadn’t been enough to spare her from the indignities and outright violence of racism and segregation. This film interweaves Anderson’s rich life story with this landmark moment in history, exploring fundamental questions about talent, race, fame, democracy, and the American soul.

(Credit: Courtesy of Science History Images/Alamy Stock Photo)

In honor of Black History Month, WXXI presents a variety of programs featuring the men and women who have shaped the Black experience. For a complete list of specials, please visit WXXI.org/bh.

Saturday, February 13 at 4 p.m. on WXXI-TV Writer and BBC radio presenter Dotun Adebayo narrates the many stories of Black resistance to oppression. From the Jamaican national hero Nanny of the Maroons, to the NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick (pictured), the documentary celebrates individuals who fought and struggled against colonialism, slavery, and their legacies.

Independent Lens: Mr. SOUL! Monday, February 22 at 10 p.m. on WXXI-TV Celebrate SOUL!, the public television variety show that shared Black culture with the nation. Ellis Haizlip developed the series in 1968 as one of the first platforms to promote the vibrancy of the Black Arts Movement. Its impact continues to this day.

(Photo: Ellis Haizlip with the J.C. White Singers on the set of SOUL! Credit: Courtesy of Alex Harsley)

Kindred Spirits: Artists Hilda Wilkinson Brown and Lilian Thomas Burwell Thursday, February 25 at 8:30 p.m. on WXXI-TV This film explores the unique relationship between an AfricanAmerican aunt and niece who became accomplished artists and educators despite the hardships of the Great Depression and the inequities of racial segregation.

(Pictured: Third and Rhode Island by Hilda Wilkinson Brown Credit: kindredspiritfim.com)

AKOMA: 25 Years of Gospel Sisterhood Friday, February 26 at 8:30 p.m. on WXXI-TV Learn more about Rochester’s African-American Women’s Gospel Choir and its 25-year history. The gospel sisterhood, AKOMA, which means patience, endurance, consistency, and faithfulness, is a vocal and spoken word ministry rooted in the African-American sacred song and oral tradition. The choir is dedicated to serving the community, mentoring young women, and presenting annual scholarships to female high school graduates of African descent. roccitynews.org CITY 25

TURN TO WXXI CLASSICAL FOR MUSIC PERFECTLY TUNED TO YOUR DAY Center Stage from Wolf Trap 2020 Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on WXXI Classical 91.5 FM Center Stage from Wolf Trap showcases live performances from some of today’s finest chamber musicians. Recorded in the acoustically superb Barns at Wolf Trap, just outside of Washington D. C., the series is presented by co-hosts Rich Kleinfeldt and Lee Anne Myslewski (pictured), who bring you inside the world of chamber music, sharing backstage stories and stories from the stage. This year’s series is curated by Wu Han and features her in performances with her husband David Finckel and friends, Michael Sumuel, Philip Setzer, Paul Neubauer, Joseph Conyers, Gloria Chien, and Gilles Vonsattel.

Music from Tanglewood

Lift Every Voice: A Musical Story from Sorrow to Justice

Mondays at 8 p.m. on WXXI Classical 91.5 FM With Tanglewood closed this past summer, host Susan Prince brings us a series of nine, one-hour concerts from the archives of the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Tanglewood Music Center Fellows, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and visiting artists who performed in the Shed and Ozawa Hall. Visiting performers include pianist Peter Serkin, the Emerson String Quartet, soprano Ely Ameling, the Julliard String Quartet, pianist Lang Lang, bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff, and pianist Claudio Arrau.

Five Thing of Note about John Andres WXXI Classical Weekend Host 1. What did you want to be when you grew up?

As a youngster, I wanted to be a teacher, a bus driver, a game show host, and work in radio.

(Credit: Everett Collection)

Wednesday, February 10 at 3 p.m. on WXXI Classical 91.5 FM On the birth anniversary of internationally acclaimed opera singer Leontyne Price, WXXI Classical presents a collection of powerful songs, stories and interviews with some of today’s most acclaimed Black Artists and Scholars.

Julie Amacher and Tesfa Wondemagegnehu co-host.

2. Who is your favorite composer?

My favorite composer is Mozart. All the others are in second place.

3. What are three things you can’t live without?

I couldn’t live without family, classical music, and a good history book.

4. What was your first job in radio?

My first paying job was in 1971 at WHEC-AM Radio. I read the local news every half hour.

5. What was the last concert you went to?

Last year at the Eastman Theatre with violinist Joshua Bell and conductor David Zinman.

Photo credit: Richard Ashworth 26 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

Greater Rochester Choral Consortium Virtual Prism Concert Wednesday, February 17 at 3 p.m. on WXXI Classical 91.5 FM Since the 2021 Prism concert will not happen this month, WXXI brings you an encore of this virtual concert with recorded selections from many of the member ensembles. The program is co-hosted by Dan McInerney, treasurer of the GRCC Board and journalist Norma Holland, who was to be this year’s Master of Ceremonies.

AM 1370, YOUR NPR NEWS STATION + WRUR-FM 88.5, DIFFERENT RADIO Mystery Train with Mark Grube

FIVE FACTS ABOUT WXXI NEWS’ DENISE YOUNG

Wednesdays at 6 p.m. on WRUR-FM 88.5 Join host Mark Grube (pictured) as he takes you on a journey through the vast landscape of American music, where one genre rolls seamlessly into the next. Mark links artists and songs from the past and present in unique and interesting ways, sequenced to inspire a new appreciation for the familiar and a sense of anticipation for what’s around the next bend.

1. Your role in the newsroom: I’m an editor who works with reporters on daily copy and longerform enterprise stories.

2. Favorite podcast: WTF with Marc Maron.

Photo credit: Richard Ashworth

Witness History: Black History Month Special Sunday, February 7 at 9 p.m. on AM 1370 In this special you’ll hear from the daughter of the man named in the court case which became a turning point in the battle for civil rights, plus the sister of a teenage girl killed in a racist bomb attack. We learn how the winning performance of an all-Black basketball team helped change White American’s attitudes to segregation in sport.

Then you’ll hear about Rodney King, whose attack by police in 1991 was caught on camera and seen by millions - the later acquittal of the officers sparked days of rioting. Finally, Bilal Chatman, who was sentenced to 150 years in prison under the 1994 ‘three strikes law’ which disproportionately affected Black Americans, shares his story.

Kanaval: Haitian Rhythms and the Music of New Orleans Sundays, February 7-21 at 10 a.m. on WRUR-FM 88.5 Much of what distinguishes New Orleans today from (Photo credit: GTS Productions) other American cities can be traced back to deep French and African influences from the Caribbean Island now called Haiti. NOLA’s Haitian cultural influence began two hundred years ago when 10,000 free and enslaved people fled the uprising in the French colony of Saint Domingue. The city’s multi-cultural DNA is what has made New Orleans famous and is reflected in the food, architecture, art, and most notably, its music.

This three-part documentary series explores the continuing impact of this Caribbean island nation on the Crescent City.

3. College degree: Syracuse University, magazine journalism. Fun fact: I’ve never worked for a magazine.

4. Three things you can’t live without: My family, my animals, and my iPad. 5. Favorite news story you’ve produced: I’ve worked with so many reporters on so many amazing stories for nearly 30 years, it’s impossible to pick just one!

TED Radio Saturdays at 3 p.m. on AM 1370 Can we preserve our humanity in the digital age? Where does creativity come from?

And what’s the secret to living longer? Every Saturday host Manoush Zomorodi explores a big idea through a series of TED Talks and original interviews, inspiring us to learn more about the world, our communities, and most importantly, ourselves.

Support public media.

Become a WXXI Member!

Whether it’s television, radio, online, or on screen, WXXI is there with the programs, news, and information – where you want it and when you want it. If you value PBS, NPR, PBS Kids, WXXI News, WXXI Classical and so much more, consider becoming a member.

Visit WXXI.org/support to choose the membership that works for you. There are many membership levels with their own special benefits, including becoming a sustaining member.

roccitynews.org CITY 27

FOOD & FLICKS

Sign up for The Little’s E-Newsletter Become an e-pen pal with your friendly neighborhood Little. Sign up at thelittle.org/ newsletter for up-to-date information on private screening rentals, Food and Flicks events, movies streaming at The Virtual Little, online discussions, and more.

A Little favorite returns.

The concept is simple: We love movies, and we love food. Paired together they’re truly an unstoppable force. While our original Food and Flicks series (which ended in 2014) was hosted inside The Little, we’ve had to get a bit creative this time around due to our pandemic-related temporary closure. What is it: Food, paired with a film, plus an online discussion. The theme of the meal is inspired by the movie. You can pre-order the food in advance (via Little Online Shop), pick it up in person at The Little, take it home and watch the film, and then join an open discussion group about it the next day.

Meal and movie details can be found at thelittle.org.

28 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

The Little Online Store

Swoon-worthy gifts for a loved one, Little clothing for your favorite indie film lover, and so much more. The Little Online Store is open all year at shopthelittle.org.

Popular items include: Movie certificates, gift memberships, The Little’s signature fleece, tote bags, stickers, and buttons.

ABOUT TOWN Activism

I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg & The Rule of Law. Thu., Feb. 11, 6 p.m.

Livestream, online. Chili Public Library.

Registration required libraryweb.org.

a.m.-6 p.m. Genesee Country Village & Museum, 1410 Flint Hill Rd Mumford $55/group (up to 6). gcv.org.

Owl Moon. Fri., Feb. 26, 5:30-8 p.m. and Sat., Feb. 27, 5:30-8 p.m. Genesee Country Nature Center, 1410 Flint Hill Rd Mumford $15. gcv.org.

Take Flight Exhibit Celebration. Feb. 6 & 7. Strong National Museum of Play, 1 Manhattan Sq. (museumofplay.org) w/ museum admission: $18-$23.

Web of Life Winter StoryWalk. Sundays, 10 a.m.-4 p.m Genesee Country Nature Center, 1410 Flint Hill Rd Mumford gcv. org/explore/nature-center/nature-walks.

A Nation of Joiners: Ritual, Regalia & the History of Fraternalism in America. Sat.,

Recreation

A Conversation with Dr. Carol Anderson: Voter Suppression, Inequity, & Racism.

jewishrochester.org/events.

Rainbow Dialogues 2021: Lessons Learned From An Unequal World. Sat.,

online. Honeoye Falls-Mendon Historical Society 624-5655.

Thu., Feb. 25, 7 p.m. monroecc.edu/lifeat-mcc/mcc-events.

Feb. 27, 10 a.m.-noon. Virtual Central Library. Registration required 428-8370.

Responding to Racist Remarks. Wed., Feb. 17, 6:30 p.m. $5-$10 suggested. surjroc.org/workshops.

Truth Over Fear: A Guide for Christians & Muslims Working Together. Wed.,

Feb. 24, 7 p.m. Dr. Charles Kimball, presented by Nazareth College Hickey Center for Interfaith Studies & Dialogue.

Registration required jewishrochester.org.

Black History

Black History Month Celebration. Sun., Feb. 21, 12-4 p.m. Virtual Memorial Art Gallery, mag.rochester.edu $5 suggested.

Black Toys & Toymakers: The Story of Shindana. Fri., Feb. 26, 1 p.m. Strong

National Museum of Play, 1 Manhattan Sq. (museumofplay.org) .

Charles Ethan Porter: Artist & Community. Wed., Feb. 10, 6 p.m. Virtual Central Library, libraryweb.org.

Dox Thrash: From Tenant Farmer’s Son to Artist at the Pennsylvania Federal Art Project. Wed., Feb. 24, 6 p.m. Virtual Central Library, libraryweb.org.

Parallels Between the Civil Rights Movement & the Vegan Movement.

Sun., Feb. 21, 7 p.m. Milton Mills, MD rochesterveg.org.

A Tale of Two Cities: Redlining & Racist Policies in Rochester. Wed., Feb. 10, 5

p.m. jewishrochester.org/events.

UR MLK Commemorative Address: Ibram X. Kendi. Wed., Feb. 24, 7 p.m.

rochester.edu/college/omsa.

Venus Noire: Black Women & Colonial Fantasies in 19th-Century France. Tue.,

Feb. 9, 2 p.m. Conversation with author Robin Mitchell. Parr of RIT’s Women’s & Gender Studies Speaker Series. clawgsprogram@rit.edu.

Lectures

16th Annual Reshaping Rochester Lecture Series. Wed., Feb. 24, noon.

Sara Bronin, Esq., Land-use Law Professor at University of Connecticut on zoning. cdcrochester.org.

Arrest & Trial of Susan B Anthony.

Wed., Feb. 10, 7 p.m. Livestream, online.

Webster Public Library. libraryweb.org.

Caring for Nature, Yesterday & Today.

Wed., Virtual Genesee Country Village & Museum. Feb 3: Murderous Millinery with Brandon Brooks. Feb 10: Nature Conservation at the Museum with Adam Henne $10 each / $15 for series gcv.org.

Encouraging Nature in Your Own Backyard. Thursdays, 7 p.m Feb 4: The

New American Garden: Ethical Choices for Sustainable Gardens. Feb 11: BirdFriendly Backyards. Feb 18: Creating a Landscape for Pollinators & Other Insects. Feb 25: First Frogs in Our Own Backyard. libraryweb.org.

Kiddie Cabbage Walk. Sat., Feb. 20, 10

Jack Kowiak: The Story of Valentine’s Day. Thu., Feb. 4, 7:30 p.m. Livestream, Jerry Miller: The Great Bear Rainforest, Home of the Spirit Bear. Wed., Feb. 10,

7 p.m. Genesee Valley Chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club adk-gvc.org/ our-chapter/monthly-meeting.

Lighthouses & Lobsters: A Week DownEast. Thu., Feb. 11, 7 p.m.

Feb. 13, 10:30 a.m.-noon. Virtual Central Library. Part of the Mourning in the Morning series. libraryweb.org.

Orkney Islands Nature. Fri., Feb. 12, 7:30 p.m. Burroughs Audubon Nature Club. bancny.org.

Rochester’s Rich History: The History of Rochester’s Latino Community. Sat.,

Feb. 20, 1 p.m. Virtual Central Library.

Julio Saenz of the Ibero-American Action League, Poder 97.1, & RIT. libraryweb.org.

Signs in the Sewage: Monitoring Wastewater for Coronavirus. Thu., Feb.

4, 7 p.m. Dr. Katrina Smith Korfmacher, Director of UR’s Community Engagement for the Environmental Health Sciences Center (EHSC). Part of RMSC’s Science on the Edge lecture series rmsc.org.

To(o) Queer the Artist: An Aesthetics of Self-Making. Thu., Feb. 25, 11 a.m.

Part of RIT’s Women’s & Gender Studies Speaker Series. Registration required clawgsprogram@rit.edu.

Winter Walking Tour. Sat., Feb. 27, 11 a.m. Mount Hope Cemetery, 1133 Mt Hope Ave. fomh.org.

Literary Events & Discussions Blackfriars Book Club. Thursdays, 7

p.m Each play title will be announced on the Friday previous to the discussion.

Registration required blackfriars.org.

Book Discussion Group: BA Shapiro’s “The Muralist”. Thu., Feb. 18, 2 p.m.

Livestream, online. Penfield Public Library. libraryweb.org.

Eco-Book Club & Hike. Wed., Feb. 3, 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. “Winter World,” by Bernd Heinrich Cumming Nature Center, 6472 Gulick Rd. Registration required. rmsc. org.

Exploring Winter. Fri., Feb. 12 and Sat.,

Feb. 13. Sterling Nature Center, 15380 Jenzvold Rd Sterling Feb 12 & 13, 1pm: In-person walks. Feb 13, 10am: FB live presentation. Registration required (315) 947-6143.

Family Nature Walk: Pine Pond. Sun., Feb. 7, 10 a.m. Letchworth State Park.

Meet at Trailside Lodge. Registration required 493-3682.

Full Moon Ski. Sat., Feb. 27, 5-8:30 p.m.

Cumming Nature Center, 6472 Gulick Rd. $5 per person/$15 per family. rmsc. org.

Nature Walk: Duck, Duck, Swan, Owl?.

Mon., Feb. 15, 10 a.m. Ontario Beach Park, 4799 Lake Ave Registration required by Feb 13 gvaudubon.org.

NordicFest. Sat., Feb. 13, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Cumming Nature Center, 6472 Gulick Rd. $5 per person/$10 per family. rmsc.org.

Power of Frozen Water Walk. Sat., Feb. 20, 1 p.m. Letchworth State Park. Meet at Humphrey Nature Center. Registration required 493-3682.

Valentines Walk in the Woods. Sat., Feb. 13, 9 a.m. Mendon Ponds Park.

Meet at the Nature Center parking lot. Registration required by Feb 11 gvaudubon.org.

Winter Bird Walk. Sat., Feb. 6, 1 p.m. Letchworth State Park. Meet at Humphrey Nature Center. Registration required 493-3682.

Kids Events

Book & Beast at Home. Fourth

Wednesday of every month, 11 a.m.noon. Feb 24: “River Otter’s Adventure”

by Linda Stanek. Seneca Park Zoo online, senecaparkzoo.org Jan 27: “One Wolf Howls” by Scotti Cohn. Registration required.

Special Events

The Birds & the Bees. Fri., Feb. 12, 7-8 p.m.

Seneca Park Zoo online, senecaparkzoo.org Registration required $15.

ROC Game Fest Online Show. Sat., Feb. 20, 12-5 p.m. Livestream, online. rocgamefest.com.

Love it.

axomhome.com 661 south ave

Volunteers needed: E-cigarette users

The Hoopla Huddle: Ian McEwan’s “The Child in Time”. Mon., Feb. 22, 6 p.m.

Livestream, online. Irondequoit Public Library. Registration required libraryweb. org.

Winter Bug Walk. Sat., Feb. 27, 1 p.m.

Letchworth State Park. Meet at Humphrey Nature Center. Registration required.

493-3682.

Winter Tracks & Scats Walk. Sat., Feb. 13, 1 p.m. Letchworth State Park. Meet at Humphrey Nature Center. Registration required 493-3600.

Earn $100 by participating in our study!

Two visits ($50 per visit).

The second visit will be 6 months after the first. There will be lung function test and blood draw (two tablespoons), saliva, breath condensate and urine collection at each visit.

Call our Research Coordinator at 585-224-6308 if you are interested or if you have questions. Thank you! roccitynews.org CITY 29

ARTS

KING OF CROON

Miché Fambro performs at the Tango Cafe. PHOTO BY AARON WINTERS

MICHÉ FAMBRO AND THE MEANING OF SUCCESS

BY ADAM WILCOX

I

first saw Miché and the Anglos at the old Jazzberry’s on Monroe Avenue in 1985. Their fusion of The Police and latter-period Roxy Music crooning was awesome, and I had a new favorite local band.

An Anglos show had it all: shenanigans, lights, and catchy songs.

But most of all, there was Miché Fambro, the lead singer, lead guitarist, and charisma incarnate, who died in 30 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

December of cancer at the age of 64.

I was sure they’d be big, successful by every measure.

Many years later, I got to know the strange, warm, and thoughtful Fambro.

He went by Mick. Where’d “Miché” come from? Mick said he’d spelled “Micky” that way on a lark, someone pronounced it “me-SHAY,” and the rest became history.

Clifton Michael Fambro was born

on Nov. 6, 1956, and raised with his siblings in West Philadelphia without much. His mother, Vivian McCord, says, “When Mick was a baby, he was quiet . . . when he was a little boy, he was quiet . . . when he was a young man, he was quiet.”

Mick’s theoretical grasp of music was staggering, and he could articulate it thoroughly. But he was self-taught, “in life as well as music,” as his wife,

Wendy, says. A pair of grandparents had been Vaudeville performers, but they actively discouraged his interest in music. Their experience being exploited had made them cynical about the entertainment business. He started with drums, but when Mick saw a guitar in a pawn shop window, he was off and running, preferring the company of his guitar to most social interaction.

Miché and the Anglos, circa 1980. PHOTO PROVIDED

He played the guitar upside-down and left-handed. At art camp, an instructor insisted he turn the guitar over and play it properly. Mick already knew how to play one song his way and refused. That was that for lessons.

An early influence for him was Sid Mark’s “Friday with Frank” radio program out of Philadelphia featuring the music of Frank Sinatra. Mick would forever love Sinatra, and find further inspiration in Hugh Masekela, the Philly sound, Motown, and the band, Chicago.

He eventually “lied his way into a hotel band” touring the Holiday Inns of America, Wendy says. It was awful, and on a stop in Geneseo, he decided to stay. He found work at Buzzo’s music shop and with his first band, The Deserters. That band became legendary with a certain slice of Rochester and led to Miché and the Anglos.

Were the Anglos a success? “‘Successful’ is kind of a slippery slope,” Anglos drummer Jim Conner says.

He tells the story of the band’s origins this way: “Well, Freddie (Anglos guitarist Fred Kentner) and I had seen The Deserters, and we were just really taken with this kid.” The “kid” was Mick.

Conner and Kentner tracked him down at Buzzo’s and convinced him to jam with him in Conner’s mother’s basement. “Maybe he liked that we weren’t selling anything,” Conners says.

They played for hours, and two weeks later opened a show at Scorgie’s.

The momentum built from there. The initial spontaneity and willingness to try anything was what drove them. “We couldn’t stop writing,” Conner recalls.

The band practiced two or three times a week and played to good crowds. “Getting shut down by the fire marshal, that kind of thing,” Conner says. “We tried to make it more than music, like a real show.”

There were brushes with “success”: Chuck Mangione’s lawyer wanting to sign them; Spyro Gyra inviting them over; an encouraging letter from Peter Gabriel. They tried many approaches to get to some “next level.”

There was no bitter breakup, maybe just a loss of energy and too many personnel changes. “Mick was always completely committed to this life, to being a professional musician,” Wendy

says. “It was hard to get that same commitment from everyone.”

Fambro got sick for the first time.

The bandmates all had children.

Things changed.

“The most heartbreaking thing isn’t that we didn’t get big,” Conner says, “but that so many songs never saw the light of day.”

So Miché went solo with a new style and sound. He’d seen José Feliciano on TV and thought, “If that ugly old guy can make a living doing this by himself . . . .” But Miché on a nylon-string guitar was unique. He borrowed some Flamenco technique but added drumming on the body of the guitar. You could spot newbies in a Miché audience realize they’d never seen anyone play like that.

Then out came a voice like a postmodern version of Nat King Cole’s.

It was a frequent comparison. Mick could sound like Cole: understated, with a honey-rich low end. And like Cole, he could go inside a song, push its meaning into you slowly, carefully.

But he could also wail like a great blues singer. He told hilarious, off-kilter stories between songs. This was Mick “being Miché,” as Wendy says.

About a year before he died, Mick agreed to perform at tribute to Richard Thompson at Abilene Bar and Lounge in Rochester, despite not knowing the English singersongwriter’s work well. He asked me to suggest a song, and even though he needed a cheat sheet to get through the words, managed to bring the house down with his performance. At

another local event, he turned Neil Young’s folksy “Sugar Mountain” into a Motown banger and had the audience on their feet. The man could light up a room.

“His idiosyncratic, yet highly natural way of playing acoustic guitar, his smooth, warm, and silky voice that reminded me of Nat King Cole and Sinatra,” wrote promoter Augustin Wiedeman, who brought Miché to Germany for an international guitar festival. “The wit of his arrangements, his storytelling, his supernatural charisma — all added up to one of the most fascinating and underrated American musicians of the last decades.”

Wiedeman continues, “I had big plans. Miché would have played at some of Europe´s biggest guitar festivals. Like many great American jazz musicians, he would have found the fame and recognition he deserved in Europe. Story of the prophet in his own country.”

Why isn’t Miché Fambro a household name? Many industry types saw him and acknowledged his offthe-charts talent. A NYC club wanted him as a music manager. A Hollywood producer wanted him as a show host.

But there wasn’t a section in the record store for his music. And Mick didn’t like being put in any box.

There’s a story in Mick’s career about how America treats artists; about jazz and its place in our culture, about the incredible fruits of the American melting pot.

He was a Black artist who started in

New Wave bands and married a white woman. How did race factor into his career? Wendy stresses that Mick’s take on that was not stereotypical. She says the notion of her husband being “notblack-enough-for-black-audiences-buttoo-black-for-white-audiences” wasn’t an issue for him, and that he wasn’t interested in race as any sort of excuse.

But the couple encountered racism.

“We learned early on that I should go alone at first to look at possible rentals,” she says. “And one time, I got a call that someone thought my car was stolen because it broke down and Mick was walking around it.” She recalls those stories without noticeable bitterness.

Their daughter, Michael, loves her interracial identity. “I always felt it was awesome,” she says, “like I was this nature-made bridge between.”

A couple of stage characters Mick developed over the years — psychedelic bluesman Alvin Ray and irascible jazz “great” Mo’gan Willems — show that issues of race were on his mind, however.

Scott Bradley, who played many gigs as Mick’s pianist, said, “I’ve worked with a lot of great Black musicians, but Mick taught me what whiteness is.” He means that Mick made him think.

“Mick and I,” Bradley went on, “would have debates that went something like this”: Mick: I’ve never thought of myself as a singer but rather as an actor. My character has to sing several numbers.

Since I have confidence in my acting ability, I’m able to sing confidently.

Scott: So imagine this: your character is Muddy Waters, and you sing about how your “woman done left you,” then slay on guitar. Crowds will go wild!

CONTINUED ON PAGE 32

roccitynews.org CITY 31

Miché with his daughters, Naomi Fambro, left, and Michael Fambro. PHOTO PROVIDED

Miché with his granddaughter, Leona Swanson Fambro. PHOTO PROVIDED

Mick: No. I’d see this as selling out.

“I wanted him to cash in on being Black and he wasn’t having it,” Bradley says. “I apologized and we moved on.”

Perhaps race was a part of the “which box?” issue Miché had with The Business, but it wasn’t The Story.

“All we ever wanted for Mick,” Conner says, “was to be happy with who he was and what he’d done.”

Was he? I felt joy around Mick: in his work, around his family.

“I wouldn’t necessarily call him happy,” Michael says. “Certainly not satisfied.”

But, she quickly adds, her father never brought that discontent into his relationship with her or her sister, Naomi. “He was always so present with us, so interested and hopeful about what we were doing,” she says.

He certainly was happy as “Papa” to Michael’s girls, Leona, 7, and Kiki, 3.

“When he met Leo, he was just smitten,” Michael says. He gave Leona daily piano lessons, then added math and geography.

She recalls how he walked at the girls’ pace, no matter how slowly. It spoke to his gentle, caring nature.

32 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

Michael Fambro is a writer, director, and actor, and she and her dad worked together on some of his theatrical ventures, like his variety show, “Miché Today.” They even wrote a musical, “The Dress Rehearsal,” when Michael was just 16. “Even my friends thought Dad was the coolest,” Michael says, laughing. “But he could be a little bit of a diva,” she remembers. “He was so used to being the boss.”

On “Miché Today,” a series of shows he staged that were a throwback to the old-fashioned variety show format, he was a crooning combo of Flip Wilson and Johnny Carson. Much effort went in, the return wasn’t great, and Mick could get salty when he didn’t like the situation. “One time at the Little Theatre, he stopped the show and told off the audience,” Bradley says. “It took a while to get paid.”

That outward frustration was an outlier, though. Those who knew him best recall Mick as sweet, a great listener, a wonderful human being. “Meeting him in person in Germany,” Wiedeman wrote, “I found he was one of the nicest

and (most) loveable human beings that I have ever encountered.” Or this from Bradley: “If he’d been tone-deaf and completely untalented, I would have loved him.” Me, too.

Over time, Mick showed less interest in playing guitar, and more in crooning. “He found a bit of success doing jazz gigs,” Bradley says. At one point, he lived and sang in clubs around Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Later, he sang on cruise ships.

He would take work where he could find it, and sometimes it was serendipitous.

“I got a call for a gig in Brooklyn,” Argentinian bassist Andres Rotmistrovsky remembers. “Miché was the singer and I was amazed. The next week, he played guitar and I was blown away.”

Rotmistrovsky introduced Mick to percussionist Marcelo Woloski, and the short-lived, but exceedingly excellent Forward Trio was born. They talked of tours, but two recording sessions and a couple of gigs were all that happened.

The Forward Trio became another “not quite” among many.

Money never came easily. “That was hard on Mick,” Wendy says. “If I’d been the artist and he’d been the breadwinner, nobody would have batted an eye. But the gender thing makes that hard on men.” Mick’s life gave the lie to the notion that if you follow your passion and work hard, a living will follow.

Wendy says they were jealous of how Canada supports its artists.

In 2016, Mick staged a retrospective around his 60th birthday. He played solo, with a version of the Anglos, and with a big band led by Bradley. Conner

says they had vague plans to continue.

Same with Bradley.

“But we wouldn’t see him,” Conner explained. “And then it would be like, ‘Oh, are you back from Sweden? How’s your health?’”

As Wendy puts it, “For 30 years doctors had said Mick was dying.”

First, sarcoidosis. Then liver disease.

After that, diabetes. “But Mick always showed up,” she says. “No matter how he felt, he would get on stage and ‘Be Miché.’” After one great performance in Europe, she recalls, he collapsed in a hotel, leaving Wendy to sightsee alone.

When I spoke with Mick by Zoom in September, I came away worried. He didn’t complain, but he looked tired and ill. When the news came that Mick had died on Dec. 19, I was shocked, but not surprised.

The miracle of Mick Fambro was his humanity.

“It bugs me when people talk about ‘talent,’” Bradley says. “Ellington was ‘talented,’ but people like Oppenheimer were ‘geniuses.’ Mick was a genius. But it’s hard to make it while still being a committed husband, father, grandfather; while still being a good person. He was all that, and it probably kept him from being more successful.”

By some measures, “success” eluded Mick Fambro. But talking to people who knew and admired him, intimately or at a distance, it’s hard to see him as anything but a gift to the world.

If that’s not success, perhaps we need a better definition.

LIFE

The Rev. Myra Brown, of Spiritus Christi Church, wields as much influence at City Hall as she does with the city's activist community.

PHOTO BY MAX SCHULTE

34 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

PUBLIC LIVES

BY GINO FANELLI

@GINOFANELLI

GFANELLI@ROCHESTER-CITYNEWS.COM

The Rev. Myra Brown’s calling

A

sk the Rev. Myra Brown, the pastor at Spiritus Christi Church in Rochester, where the roots of her faith first took hold, and she’ll tell you the story of the teacher, the mother, and the paddle.

It was the early 1970s, and Brown was in second grade at a rural Orleans County school. In those days, misbehavior wasn’t remedied with a trip to the principal’s office or detention, but rather the swift swing of a paddle along the backside. No student was said to be spared, but to Black students like Brown, it seemed, the hand that swung the paddle was a little more eager.

Such was the case when Brown’s teacher, a Ms. Jackson, gave her a paddling for asking permission to use the bathroom. Later that day, Brown’s mother, who, like her husband was a Southern Baptist from Arkansas who made her way north as a fieldworker, marched into the school and demanded directions to Jackson’s classroom.

“The principal said, ‘What do you want with her?’” Brown said. “She said, ‘She paddled my second-grader, and I’m going to let her know what that feels like.’”

Brown neither received another paddling nor saw much of Ms. Jackson after that.

The story is one that Brown recounts fondly because, for her, it encapsulates the maxims of the Christian faith in which her parents taught her to live: stand up for the oppressed and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

“My mother modeled speaking truth to power, and being able to cut it into what was just, and what’s unjust,” Brown said. “She never flinched, her and my dad, in taking on a system that was harming vulnerable groups of people.”

For Brown, 55, those lessons from her parents, as well as key tenets of the Bible, had a lasting impact. She doesn’t just model her pastoral work at Spiritus Christi on them. Those teachings of justice, of fairness, and of standing up for others fuel her work on local antiracism efforts, behind which she is a driving force.

The Rev. Myra Brown confronts Rochester police officers to broker a peaceful resolution to their standoff with Black Lives Matter protesters on Sept. 16, 2020. PHOTO BY MAX SCHULTE

That work ultimately thrust her into the public eye this past September, when she placed herself between officers and demonstrators during the peak of nightly protests over the death of Daniel Prude at the hands of Rochester Police Department officers.

A PREACHER, A COP, AND A MAYOR WALK INTO A ROOM…

Brown’s church, Spiritus Christi, is a progressive house of worship in the Catholic faith. She was ordained a priest in 2017 and began leading the congregation two years later, becoming the third Black woman to helm an independent Catholic church in the United States.

Women are not allowed to be priests in the Catholic church. But then, the Vatican doesn’t recognize Spiritus Christi as a church.

That feat aside, most residents of Rochester became familiar with Brown through the central role she came to

play as an arbitrator between protesters, police, and CIty Hall last year as tensions erupted over the news of the death of Daniel Prude.

She stepped into that role on Sept. 5, 2020, when police launched a barrage of PepperBalls and tear gas canisters into a sea of demonstrators whom Brown was marching alongside on State Street.

Brown led some of the protesters to safety in her church on nearby Fitzhugh Street, where a team of medics were there to tend to injuries. Believing the protest was over and having yet to write her sermon for the next day’s Mass, Brown went home around 10 p.m.

But through the night, the remaining protesters were pushed onto the one block strip of Fitzhugh where Spiritus Christi sits across the street from City Hall. The church became a sanctuary for protesters seeking refuge from the chaos. Police officers formed a line outside the church. Demonstrators who attempted to leave faced

PepperBalls and possible arrest.

Graham Davis, the church’s operations manager, was in the church that night.

“Everyone was basically forced back into the church,” Davis said. “When the riot police got up to the church, they didn’t stop, they kept going. Once the riot police got past City Hall, we started telling everyone to get into the church, get into the sanctuary.”

Davis called Brown and relayed the situation. She said she was furious, and immediately attempted to call thenChief La’Ron Singletary. He didn’t pick up, so she called Mayor Lovely Warren. After the conversation with Warren, Warren gave Singletary a call, and Singletary picked up when Brown dialed again.

“I said, ‘La’Ron, I want you to guarantee they’re not going to bother those protesters, I need them to get to their cars, and I need your officers away CONTINUED ON PAGE 36

roccitynews.org CITY 35

from my church,’” Brown said.

Over the next few hours, protesters were let out in small groups to make their way home. It took until 1 a.m. before the last protester left the church.

Brown was still angry at the events of that evening, and in the coming days, convened a meeting with herself, Warren, and RPD’s top brass on how future protests would be handled. That meeting culminated in the “Elders” program, a group of prominent community leaders who would effectively serve as a barrier between police and protesters.

“In that conversation, my only goal was to provide space for protesters to have some relief, to stop being bullied by police,” Brown said. “To stop being retraumatized by the lack of cultural and systemic humility that didn’t understand if their system is the author of harm, their system has to be the author of healing. Get out of the darn way.”

A STUDENT OF HUMILITY Brown recalls an instance when she was a young woman, of a Jamaican man chatting her up and asking her out on a date. It was the first time in her life, she said, that she realized she held some prejudice.

“I watched enough of those movies where they had the dreads and the AK-47s and all of that, that somehow, as a young woman, I realized I was prejudiced against Jamaicans,” Brown said.

Brown built a belief that all people, regardless of ethnicity, hold some form of bias. That realization formed the foundation for anti-racism initiatives she helped spearhead. One of them is the Spiritus Christi Anti-Racism Coalition (SPARC), a hodgepodge of people from different walks of life who aim to root out racism in Rochester.

Racism, she believes, persists because people often are not humble enough to question themselves. A major goal of SPARC is to initiate those tough, often uncomfortable reflective conversations. Brown and company offer talks with everyone from colleges to candidates for political office to navigate them into confronting their own biases.

“The first reaction is defensiveness, because to name it as racism is to connect that person to racism, which 36 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

The Rev. Myra Brown says if you're not dismantling systems of inequity, "Get out of the darn way." PHOTO BY MAX SCHULTE

feels like a violation of their selfidentity,” Brown said.

She believes that the system of policing has been hardened against the critical self-reflection necessary to confront biases, subtle or overt. As a result, she said, systemic racism has been allowed to run rampant.

“It’s designed to think a certain way about people of color, and how they move, and how they think, and how they feel, and what they’re entitled to,” Brown said. “It’s why we saw a different response from that same system to a predominately white protest in Washington than to the protests we saw over the summer.”

In 2017, Brown spent a week traveling across cities that were catalysts for racial justice, like Selma, Alabama.

Through conversations with police, she found officers, even those who may have come in with the best of intentions, were ultimately worn down by the system they worked within.

“Policing in this country was never set up to give all people public safety,” Brown said. “We talk about it that way now, but that isn’t what its purpose was then, and it’s really not what its purpose is now. From a system

perspective, that’s why it doesn’t matter if you have a Black police chief, a white police chief, an Asian police chief, you’re talking about a system that has its own ideologies.”

A CALLING, NOT A CAREER Brown first officially joined the church following a series of losses. Her husband, mother, and grandmother all died in 1991, and Brown, desperate for guidance, found her path through the parish.

Simeon Banister, the vice president of community programs at the Rochester Area Community Foundation, met Brown through the church at a young age. He said what sets Brown apart is she lives her words.

“I really think Myra sees her work as a calling, not a career, and she really embraces that,” Banister said.

“Whether she’s on Joseph Ave. or at City Hall, that’s what I’ve always appreciated about her, she’s consistent.”

Davis, who has worked for Brown for two years, echoed that sentiment.

He said Brown often will “stop her entire day,” side-tracked for hours by a happenstance meeting on the street where someone needed help, and she

was moved to give it.

“She really lives out the gospel teachings, and she leads by example,” Davis said. “Working here is inspiring, because I feel like I have a leader I can genuinely follow, and she always challenges me to be better.”

Brown sees her purpose as a community arbitrator, someone who can get the ball rolling on confronting long-standing societal ills, and she’s willing to put her own body on the line to get that job done. A photograph of her standing toe-to-toe with an RPD officer outside City Hall during the heated protest has become an enduring image of Brown and the demonstrations.

Brown was not just negotiating.

She was telling the officer if they were going to arrest anyone, to arrest her first. She likens the mission she is on to that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a faith leader with a calling to serve on the frontline with those seeking justice.

“It was a similar call, he spent his whole life preaching to his congregation and his people that there was a problem,” Brown said. “And that we need to be part of the solution.”

LIFE

WHAT ALES ME

Homebrew kit sales have spiked at Henrietta's Sunset Hydroponics since the start of the pandemic. PHOTO GINO FANELLI

AS HOMEBREWING GROWS, THE CLUB THAT MADE IT BIG STALLS

BY GINO FANELLI

I

@GINOFANELLI

n the early days of the pandemic, when our social lives as we knew them were more or less reduced to a computer screen, homebrewing enjoyed a surge in popularity that has held fast as the health crisis enters its second year.

“We’ve definitely seen an increase in sales, and a lot of new faces,” said Noelle Batterson, a sales associate at Sunset Hydroponics in Henrietta, which specializes in homebrewing equipment. “We’re a small shop, so we normally are just seeing our regulars come in.”

Batterson said sales of extract homebrew kits, which converts a saccharine, syrupy liquid into beer through the magic of yeast, have been particularly robust. Those sort of kits

GFANELLI@ROCHESTER-CITYNEWS.COM

are typically an entry-level product for people working their way into brewing straight from grains.

But the spike in local beer lovers taking up the craft hasn’t translated to growth in a critical piece of homebrewing culture. That is participation in the Upstate New York Homebrew Association (UNYHA).

The organization used to hold monthly meetings and blind taste tests of members’ brews at Swiftwater Brewing Company in Rochester prior to the pandemic. The gatherings were a forum for hobbyists to meet each other and learn something new over a couple of pints.

Like everything else, UNYHA meetings have gone virtual. But the growth in homebrewing hasn’t meant

an increase in participation in the meetings. Indeed, even members who were regulars at the meetings have fallen away.

President Steve Zoller, a long-time homebrewer, figures the drop off has to do with not being able to easily sample other members’ creations. He said an internal survey found that UNYHA members were brewing less than they did before the outbreak.

“It’s a social experience, I think what we’re seeing is we have people less interested in brewing beer if you aren’t able to share it with people and compare with what they brewed,” Zoller said.

The organization has been around since 1979, long before the craft beer craze of the 21st

century, and typically boasts 150 members, making it one of the largest homebrewing clubs in the country.

Yearly membership ranges from $30 for a single patron to $50 for two patrons in the same household.

The importance of UNYHA on the Rochester-area beer scene can not be overstated. The organization has acted as accelerator for many, if not most, of the region’s preeminent brewers, including Swiftwater, Mortalis, Prison City, and K2 Brothers Brewing.

For the brewers that started those businesses, UNYHA gave a platform to test out new brews, compete in competitions, and hone their craft from a simple pastime to a potential livelihood.

“I think it’s safe to say Swiftwater wouldn’t be here if UNYHA hadn’t existed,” Cook said.

Cook acknowledged that he hasn’t attended many of the association’s virtual meetings. One aspect of the in-person meetings Cook found particularly important and useful was the blind tasting, a process in which a person samples different beers from different brewers, and chooses their favorite based solely on smell and taste.

He said blind tasting is the purest way to evaluate the merits of a beer, when the drink is stripped of its packaging and its consumer is deprived of seeing its color and passing judgment.

“I think the tough thing about the pandemic is that (the meetings) can’t happen, where you pass somebody a beer, have them taste it and tell you what you think of it,” Cook said.

It’s a paradox. On one hand, there are more people practicing brewing beer. On the other, the people who have been doing it for years are doing it less.

In the end, it’s the health of an important local organization that suffers.

When the pandemic draws to a close, Zoller is hopeful that the association’s first meeting will be met by not just some new beers, but new members to taste them.

“We’re looking forward to the day when we can all be together again and share some beers,” Zoller said. roccitynews.org CITY 37

LIFE

RANDOM ROCHESTER

THE GOOD SHEPHERD OF LINDEN STREET

BY DAVID ANDREATTA

@DAVID_ANDREATTA

DANDREATTA@ROCHESTER-CITYNEWS.COM

A

small group of people gathered outside St. Boniface Catholic Church in the South Wedge on an overcast day in January to remember a friend to the neighborhood.

Her name was Margaret Nordbye, and that day would have been her 102nd birthday had she not died the previous August. Those gathered shouted out “independent,” “devoted,” “grateful,” “giving,” and “beautiful” when prompted for words to describe her.

They came to dedicate in her memory what might seem the most trivial of objects — a shepherd’s crook about 8 feet in height — but it was a fitting tribute to Norbye, who had spent some 60 years keeping watch over the neighborhood from her home on Linden Street.

“It symbolizes the good shepherd, and she was a good shepherd to all of us,” said Joseph Pasquarelli, who lived across the street from Nordbye.

The crook was affixed to the empty and outstretched right hand of a statue of St. Boniface that, until recently, had spent nearly 60 years on a pilgrimage of epic proportions after being knocked off its perch outside the church by a fire that gutted the house of worship in 1957.

The return of the statue to the church in 2016 made headlines because the story of its travels was so incredible. After having been carted away with the rubble from the fire and reportedly placed in storage to “rise again,” the statue disappeared.

It was only later pieced together that, over the years, the 800-pound effigy had stood in the garden of a Penfield home, on an auction block to benefit public television, as a novelty outside a Livingston County antique shop, and who knows where else.

The odyssey of the statue was not unlike that of the real St. Boniface, an English monk who surfaced here and there in what is now Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, introducing Christianity to the masses before being killed by marauding robbers in 754.

38 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

His eponymous statue, originally a sheen of ghostly white, was at some point painted red and white, giving it the look of a gargantuan garden gnome or a scraggy Santa Claus, and the Bible clutched in its right hand was painted black.

But when the statute was returned to the church by the antique dealer who researched its provenance and donated it to the parish, the outstretched right hand of St. Boniface was empty — its staff, or what is known in the church as a crozier, having apparently been lost to time.

Nordbye, a devout Catholic and parishioner at St. Boniface since moving to the neighborhood in 1953, couldn’t get enough of the story of the statue’s sojourn. She loved her church and carried with her memories of that terrible fire in a mind that her neighbors described as a steel trap.

All the years that the statue was missing, Nordbye acted very much like the real St. Boniface, ministering in her own way to thousands of people in and around Rochester, including countless in the South Wedge.

Nordbye (pronounced nord-BEE) delivered hot lunches and cold dinners as a volunteer with the Visiting Nurse Service’s Meals on Wheels program for 45 years, many of those years spent simultaneously shuttling meals and helping coordinate the agency’s 900 volunteers. Before she died, she was recognized as a “lifetime volunteer.”

“She just is someone who can always be counted on,” the agency’s director of volunteer services, Carol Zoltner, said of Nordbye in 1991.

“If there’s a need for someone, she is

The statue of St. Boniface, outside of St. Boniface Catholic Church in the South Wedge, with it's new staff dedicated to Margaret Nordbye, was remembered as a shepherd of the neighborhood.

PHOTO BY DAVID ANDREATTA

always right there to fill it.”

Nordbye also gave of her time at the Girl Scouts, Monroe Community Hospital, the Rochester Psychiatric Center, and the Genesee Conference of Senior Citizen

Directors, an organization that advocated for the aged.

In her later years, though, her neighbors said, it was from the front porch of her Linden Street home that she continued her outreach. From

Margaret Nordbye with her neighbor and friend, Joseph Pasquarelli. PHOTO PROVIDED

there, they said, that Nordbye drew neighbors into each other’s orbits with greetings, stories, news of the neighborhood.

She was a fixture on that porch, often with a friend of hers, Jessie Reuter, who had a reputation for driving her Chevrolet Impala around the neighborhood to make sure all was in order. The pair were known to some as “the shepherd” and “the sheriff.”

“I don’t know if ministering is the right word, but I would say she ministered from her porch daily,” said Kristana Textor, who lives across the street from where Nordbye resided.

“She would sit on her porch and engage with passersby in almost a lost art of conversation.”

“The porch,” Textor added, “almost became a magical place.”

Nordbye was born Margaret Gillen on Jan. 14, 1919, and raised one of nine

children in an Irish Catholic family in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, a small town outside Scranton.

Her independent streak manifested itself early, when as a teenager she did something few women of her generation did — moved away and went to school.

She relocated to New York City and attended Browne’s Business College in Brooklyn. From there, she found work in 1942 at the former American Water Works and Electric Co. in Manhattan, where she met the man who would become her husband, Earl Nordbye, according to their engagement announcement in The Scranton Times.

He was a soldier in the Army Signal Corps from North Dakota with experience in radio repair and electrical work. She was a Gray Lady with the American Red Cross, doing then what she would do in some form the rest of her life — being a friend to the sick and

injured. Perhaps fittingly, they were married at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Manhattan.

The Nordbyes never had children, but their lives were full with work and volunteering and friends and family until Earl died unexpectedly in 1976.

Years before his death, the newspaper in Scranton reported that they had taken in an ailing aunt of hers who would die in their home.

Nordbye never remarried and lived alone for the remaining 44 years of her life in the house they bought together.

But, as her friends recalled, she was rarely lonely.

She helped neighbors shovel driveways and rake their yards, and when she became too frail, a new generation of neighbors did hers for her. When they did, they could expect a handwritten thank you card in penmanship as neat as a pin.

Nordbye prayed for her neighbors, too. Even the unfaithful, neighbors said, found solace in her company on the porch, where she sat seemingly to them around the clock, spinning yarns, welcoming strangers, being a good neighbor.

Pasquarelli, who knew Nordbye for 29 years, said she embodied a life of service.

When she died, he recalled, neighbors wanted to do something to memorialize her, but nothing they considered seemed like the right thing.

The right thing would dawn on Pasquarelli during a walk past St. Boniface Church, where the outstretched hand of the patron saint of Germany beckoned something to hold, something to lean on, something to help him shepherd the neighborhood.

roccitynews.org CITY 39

LIFE

FOLLOW YOUR NOSE

Terrell McLean, the co-owner and chef at Bubby's BBQ, sprays down racks of ribs on his giant smoker, "Goliath." Inset, the Fly Bird sandwich. PHOTOS BY JACOB WALSH

SMOKESHOW ON SOUTH AVENUE A brick-and-mortar Bubby’s BBQ is open for business in The Wedge

BY CHRIS THOMPSON

@CHRONSOFNON

BUBBY’S BBQ

489 SOUTH AVE. THURSDAY THROUGH SUNDAY, NOON TO 5 P.M. OR WHEN SOLD OUT 585-363-5453; BUBBYBBQROC.COM INSTAGRAM: @BUBBYBBQ

T

here’s a hulking new fixture in the South Wedge that you’ll smell before you see, whose aroma of wood fire and seasoned, slow-cooking meats will have barbecue lovers floating Looney Tunes-style to its source in a 40 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

courtyard near the corner of South and Alexander.

That would be “Goliath,” an imposing, custom-built smoker whose 500-gallon drum and charcoal black smokestack is the star attraction of Bubby’s BBQ, which opened in December in the storefront that had been John’s Tex Mex. Bubby’s is a venture of co-owner and chef Terrell McLean, who moved to Rochester from Queens in 2017 with his wife Leslie in search of a more

laid-back lifestyle and to be closer to family in western New York.

“If it wasn’t for Rochester, I wouldn’t have this,” McLean said as he sprayed down and flipped a rack of ribs smoking on “Goliath.” “You know what I’m saying? This is my home right now.”

The bright and cheerful space has a limited weekly menu at the moment, due to the pandemic affecting some availability of supplies, and indoor seating was not available

during my visits. But a full menu drawn up on a chalkboard-painted wall teases what is to come when the health crisis winds down. In the

meantime, Bubby’s is open for takeout, and McLean said guests will be able to order online by February.

I’ve said it before, and I stand by it: I don’t trust a barbecue joint unless it has a whiteboard or chalkboard menu with at least two items crossed out — a casual indication that the food is so good you’ve got to get there early.

Bubby’s is that type of place.

I ordered bird-based meals on two visits to Bubby’s. My first was a half-chicken ($12), with a side of collard greens and smoked turkey ($6), and some cornbread ($1).

Goliath’s slow cooking process gave the chicken a crispy outer layer that encased tender meat inside infused with a deep mustard and hickory flavor. The half-bird’s portions were such that I got two meals out of it, and the greens were tangy and salty with flecks of turkey. The cornbread is a small honey and cornmeal scented cube that is as sweet, light, and fluffy as a dessert cake. I bought two pieces; neither survived the walk to the car.

On my second trip, I got the Fly Bird ($12), the mac ‘n’ cheese ($6), and again, the cornbread, which I resolved to bring home this time.

The Fly Bird sandwich is a fried chicken thigh topped with lettuce, pickles, a fried green tomato, and a mustardy Texas-style sauce with a bite. The mac ‘n’ cheese was made with huge elbow noodles held together with a thick, creamy cheese sauce that coats the taste buds. The cornbread made it through two traffic lights this time.

It is worth noting that these meals are a family affair. While McLean concocts all the sauces and meat recipes, the sides are Leslie’s creations.

Bubby’s was born of a family tradition of Sunday barbecues in the McLean household. McLean was born in Delaware and moved to New York City as a teenager. But he hails from a lineage of Texans and South Carolinians and he has blended those two barbecue styles into a signature of his own. McLean said he dreamed of opening a restaurant that offered food you’d find at a family cookout.

In the fall of 2019, he founded his brand, dubbed “Bubby’s” in tribute to his late father’s nickname.

“I didn’t know until after he passed away that he always wanted a takeout spot,” McLean said. “So I decided when I started it up, I’d name it after him.”

He opened an Instagram account, made a logo, drew up a menu, and marketed mouthwatering meals through the app, available for pick-up each Sunday. The hustle evolved into pop-ups at local venues, which helped spread the word and boosted his business’s popularity.

Getting laid off from his office job in March 2020 motivated McLean to make Bubby’s more than a parttime pursuit. He scheduled pop-ups at Triphammer, Embark Cider, Blue Toad, and The Penthouse on East and Main.

“I was like, all right, I’m going to start barbecuing, selling plates from the house,” McLean said as he tended to chicken wings on a nearby grill in the courtyard. “That’s what happened.

And social media helped out.”

But it was a chance meeting during a pop-up at Viticulture Wine Bar that changed the trajectory of the business.

There, McLean met his partner and co-owner, Demetrius Ellison, a real estate developer and entrepreneur. Ellison envisioned Bubby’s a brick-and-mortar barbecue and homed in on the old Tex-Mex joint on South Avenue.

It was a perfect partnership. As McLean focused on the menu and engineered “Goliath,” Ellison set about sprucing up the interior with a kitchen renovation and a new paint job. Except for the windows, the space is barely recognizable from its former persona with its color scheme of barbecue red, charcoal black, and bone white. The reddish-brown walls have a way of whetting your appetite for the bouquet of brisket, ribs, pork, and chicken slow-cooking in McLean’s signature sauces.

As summer gave way to autumn, Bubby’s BBQ pop-ups slowed as the restaurateurs prepared to open.

When they did on the first weekend of December, there was a line of customers out the door.

Expect lines like that again soon.

Chinatown wings, top, and racks of ribs. PHOTOS BY JACOB WALSH

With reporting from Jacob Walsh.

roccitynews.org CITY 41

LIFE

BLUE PILL DINNER

Left, champagne and oysters from the Erie Grill in Pittsford. Right, shrimp skewers by The Saucey Chef.

PHOTOS BY JACOB WALSH

THE VALENTINE’S DAY HUNT FOR PASSION, WITHOUT A PRESCRIPTION In search of aphrodisiac foods that get the juices flowing

BY VINCE PRESS

C

@VLPRESS

ouples looking to cap Valentine’s Day with an amorous conclusion could do worse than sample the special menus of meats, seafood, and decadent desserts offered by some Rochester restaurateurs over the holiday.

But indulge with a grain of salt. The list of foods purported to induce sexual 42 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

arousal is as long as the research into their legitimacy is hard, er, complicated.

Very few have been proved scientifically to have a libidinous effect on any part of the body other than the taste buds.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t romance and a whole lot of fun in trying foods with aphrodisiac status.

The term “aphrodisiac” is derived from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and all things pleasurable. Fruits, root vegetables, spices, seeds, crustaceans, chilies, and even ground up animal horns have all been cited throughout history as enhancers for such things as fertility,

sex drive, stamina, blood flow, and energy. Second-century Roman physician Claudius Galen categorized certain foods as aphrodisiacs if they were warm and moist — in hindsight, perhaps not the most scientific criteria. By that measure, a slice of greasy pizza would qualify.

But in modern times, countless nutritionists and food scientists have attempted to better measure sexual responses to food and the connections between aroma, emotion, and sensual experience. What they have mostly uncovered is that, while there are strong links between scent and sexual attraction, the business of aphrodisiacs is largely subjective.

The phallic symbolism of some fruits and vegetables of suggestive shapes, like bananas, carrots, and asparagus, are enough to propel them to the top of the list of erotic foods for some people. For others, peppers can mimic the quickened pulse and sweating of sexual arousal.

Oysters, of course, have long enjoyed a reputation for imparting sexual prowess, although the science backing that up is as murky as Long Island’s Great South Bay at low tide. Perhaps their standing is derived from the fact that they’re high in zinc, which studies have shown boost sperm count. Maybe that oysters have historically been thought to resemble the female genitalia has something to do with it. Or it could just be the sensual way the slippery shellfish is consumed — with a tilt of the head and a slurp.

Alcohol is widely considered an aphrodisiac for obvious reasons — for many, it has the effect of loosening us up enough to shed our inhibitions. Pair your favorite libation with other aphrodisiac foods, and you’re in for a fun filled evening (or morning, if avocado toast and mimosas are your jam). Try oysters with champagne (or a gin martini), dark chocolate and merlot, or hot honey fried chicken and a double IPA. What if your entire meal was loaded with ingredients associated with provoking passion? Or better still, what if you could plan the type of experience you want to have based on what you consume? How great would a small, mood-altering superfood confection be?

Some venues are trying.

For the past five years, Mondays have meant $1 oyster night at the Erie Grill (@eriegrill). Located at the Del Monte Lodge in the Village of Pittsford, the grill offers two varieties every Monday (4 to 9 p.m. or until sold out) and they may shuck up to 800 of the magical mollusks on a given evening. The bubbly list includes cava, prosecco, and moscato at $5 a glass.

Truffles from Hedonist in the South Wedge.

PHOTO BY JACOB WALSH

The Saucey Chef's "Tacos 4 Lovers" are beef queso tacos, served with a dipping consommé.

PHOTO BY JACOB WALSH

“Ice cold oysters and a glass of sparkling seem to always elevate any evening making the experience special and indulgent,” Executive Chef John Freezee said.

The Erie Grill has offered nearly 200 varieties of oysters, including Raspberry Point from Prince Edward Island with 3-inch cup, Beasoleil from Miramichi Bay, New Brunswick (a cocktail oyster with a 2.5-inch cup), and the extra large Pemaquid oysters from the Damariscotta River in Maine that grow up to 6 inches.

“Our restaurant’s ambiance paired with oyster night really enhances an intimate setting for all guests,” the

grill’s food and beverage manager, Laura Hyland, said, referring to the Erie Grill’s modern and elegant Nantucket motif. “We see a variety of gatherings ranging from couples, to small groups of girlfriends, moms and daughters, father and sons, or just a few guys enjoying an evening out. It’s a fantastic way to get together while maintaining social distancing.”

For Valentine’s Day weekend (Friday, Feb. 12 and Saturday, Feb. 13), the Erie Grill is offering multiple specials that will include NY Prime Steaks, fresh seafood specials and decadent desserts as well as their usual nice selection of wines. For Valentine’s Day, which falls on a Monday, a brunch special will be served until 2 p.m. That menu will include oysters.

Doing business as The Saucey Chef and working from a commissary kitchen, (@thesauceychef), Margherita Smith (known as “Saucey” to just about everyone) offers some of the sexiest takeout food in Rochester. Smith has not only raised the bar for elevated carry out cuisine, but she’s built a sensual brand based on innuendoes, risqué graphic design, and photos of her food that’ll get you salivating.

For Valentine’s Day, Smith is dropping a menu peppered with aphrodisiac ingredients, including chilis, honey, asparagus, strawberries, and chocolate. She’s planned out five entire-experience meals complete with catchy monikers and made to

share with a date. The “Netflix & Chill” entrée features steak and nudes — marinated flank steak and garlic noodles coupled with twin 5 oz. fried lobster tails, veggie fried rice, and two of Smith’s signature chili sauces.

Naturally, the meal comes in Chinese take-out boxes, with chopsticks and zodiac placemats.

Another option is the “Tacos 4 Lovers,” which includes six birriastyle beef queso tacos, served with an addictive dipping consommé, chips, salsa, and queso. This labor of love takes two days of slow cooking the beef in a guajillo chili marinade.

There is also the “Bucket of Love,” an entrée of buttermilk-fried chicken served with hot honey, creole mustard-baked mac ‘n’ cheese, collard greens, and biscuits. Another is “The Lady & the Tramp” — spaghetti, sausage, and meatballs, with spicy Calabrian chili marinara to share.

There’s also a few “Love Potion” cocktail mixers and a dessert course aptly named “Happy Endings.”

“We are serving an unforgettable food experience from a modest kitchen,” Smith said. “It’s a restaurant without four walls or limits. I am not limited to the confines of any food style or a setting that dictates what I serve.”

Chocolate’s reputation as an aphrodisiac has been exaggerated, according to food researchers, but there is no argument among them that its properties are pleasurable and romantic.

That cupid combination can be found at Hedonist Artisan Chocolates (@hedonistchocolates) in the South Wedge. Owner Jennifer Posey has created a classic French-style custom truffle packed with passion. It is built on a white ganache mixed with fenugreek, pistachios, saffron, ginkgo, and local honey all covered in dark chocolate and dusted with cacao powder. The flavors are a perfect balance of sweet, salty, and bitter, with a hint of mystery.

“We imagined a seductive treat with components we’ve experimented with over time, but this time all in one piece.

Each ingredient has its own aphrodisiac benefits that we hope everyone will enjoy,” Posey said.

The truffles will be sold in 5-ounce bags for $20 — and no prescription is needed. roccitynews.org CITY 43

LIFE

HANDS-ON REPORT

Shawn Belles, of Pain Relief Massage & Wellness in Penfield, works on a client. PHOTO BY RYAN WILLIAMSON

A YEAR WITHOUT TOUCH What happens when we become touch deprived?

BY REBECCA RAFFERTY

D

@RSRAFFERTY

uring the three months last year that he was forced to shut his massage therapy practice, Shawn Belles received some heartbreaking phone calls.

“I had some clients reach out to me begging me to just see them for one day,” Belles said. “I had one client call me crying, saying they’re in so much pain. And I was like, ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t. I can’t open. I could lose my license.’”

Belles, the owner of Pain Relief Massage & Wellness in Penfield, has been practicing massage therapy for 10 years and has a client roster of more 44 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

BECCA@ROCHESTER-CITYNEWS.COM

than 100 people, many of whom seek his help in alleviating their chronic pain.

Pain or no pain, though, people need to be touched.

Touch is the first sense to develop.

Researchers have found it to be critical in the physical and emotional development of children and the mental well-being in adults. When our hearing and sight begin to fade, touch remains.

A prolonged absence of physical contact can lead to something called touch deprivation, which has been found to exacerbate depression and weaken the immune system.

Licensed massage therapists in

New York were allowed to reopen last summer and, in some cases, saw their business boom.

“So many people were dying to come back in,” Belles said. “I probably referred well over 20 people to other massage therapists just because I couldn’t fit people in.”

But people who rely on massage to either manage pain or for touch that they cannot find elsewhere in their lives are not getting as much as they should, and at a time when everyday handshakes and hugs are off the table.

More stringent cleaning protocols have forced therapists to reduce

the number of people they can accommodate on any given day.

Some therapists remained closed, having been unable to weather the economic fallout of the pandemic, while others reworked their business models to touchless therapy, citing health concerns. Many have taken to teaching self-massage techniques in lieu of a visit to their office.

Dr. Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute of the University of Miami Health System, has called touch “the mother of all senses” and argued in her groundbreaking 2001 book, “Touch,” that Americans

Suzannah Lake, of Go to Health in Rochester. PHOTO BY JACOB WALSH

in particular had become inordinately touch deprived through a series of “no-touch” policies and practices that permeated society, from prohibiting hugs between teachers and students to an over-reliance on painkillers.

Her team conducted a survey in April 2020, about a month after the pandemic really took hold in the United States, and found then that 68 percent of respondents felt they were touch deprived. Even of those who were “bubbling” with a partner, only a third acknowledged touching their partner with any frequency.

“And only 23 percent of people were living alone,” Field said. “So that means a lot of people who are living with other people were also touch deprived, which is sort of shocking.”

Data for long term effects of the loss of touch don’t really exist, Field said, but said that aggression has been found to be a byproduct of touch deprivation.

More than a tool for relaxation, massage is serious health care. It’s considered a medical necessity for people with chronic pain, which includes 1 in 5 Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Belles said that in the 10 years that he’s been practicing, he’s seen massage increasingly considered to be health care for people instead of just something they do on vacation. “I believe that all massage is medically necessary,” he said. “Because even that relaxation massage could be enough to get those endorphins up, particularly if you haven’t been touched in a while.”

How many times over the past year have we seen a typed-out wail posted on social media, the writer lamenting how much they miss hugs? We’re social creatures, after all.

“I think we all agree that touch is really important for people’s health,” said massage therapist Suzannah Lake, whose practice, Go to Health, in Rochester has been shuttered since March.

Personal health issues have kept Lake from seeing her 60 or so clients just yet. But she said she plans to reopen in the late spring, with some changes that include shorter sessions with an eye toward limiting contact.

“We’ve had to put that aside and that’s okay,” Lake said. “But I’m hoping that we’ll be able to find another way to address the issues that lack of touch brings up.”

TOUCH DEPRIVED? 5 THINGS YOU CAN DO If you feel touch deprived, considering tapping these helpful tips from massage therapists Shawn Belles and Suzannah Lake:

1. Communicate regularly with loved ones. “It’s having that sense of community and talking to people, it really can help your sense of just normalcy,” Belles said.

2. Get massage tools online and learn some basic techniques for face massage.

While you wash your face every day, give yourself a little bit of a face massage — you get some lymphatic draining from your face, which helps clear sinuses and aids in sleep.

3. Drink a lot of water to help flush your system.

4. If your body loves to be warm, give yourself a warm space to dwell this winter.

Take warm baths, or if you can, go to a sauna. Just sitting comfortably and relaxing can do the trick.

5. Stretching and increasing body-awareness is key. Think about all of our body parts and what hurts, and work on improving your posture.

Among those issues, she said, was the emotional burden shouldered by people who live without being touched, particularly those who live with chronic pain. Touch, she said, can make pain bearable.

“Our nervous system can kind of switch from, ‘I’m in pain, and I’m afraid,’ to, ‘I’m in pain, but I’m not alone, and I think I’ll be okay,’” Lake said. “We can move into a more healing phase.”

There were 13,324 licensed massage therapists in New York as of last year, according to the state Department of Labor, which in recent years has issued

about 600 new licenses annually. How many of those therapists are practicing is difficult to pinpoint. But anecdotally, many saw their businesses derailed by the pandemic.

It’s hard to imagine a person more in need of the pain relief and relaxation that a massage can provide than a hospital nurse working in an intensive care unit during COVID. Emma Reilly is one of them. She cared for coronavirus patients in the ICU at Strong Memorial Hospital before relocating to Chicago last summer for graduate school, and now works in an ICU there.

Reilly was a client of Lake’s before the pandemic struck, and hasn’t had a massage since. She said she hasn’t sought out a new therapist in part because she works with COVID patients and is potentially exposed to the virus.

Another of Lake’s clients came to her specifically because she didn’t want to take the regimen of pills offered by doctors to treat her fibromyalgia. Diagnosed in her mid20s with the debilitating chronic inflammation disorder, Anjolee de Maroux said her pain changed her life completely.

“It took me out like a freight train,” she said, adding that she didn’t feel like herself on the medications.

De Maroux has been a client of Lake’s for close to five years, and paired therapeutic massage with movement and strength training to ease her pain. But both of these treatments disappeared when COVID arrived.

At the same time, restaurants were shuttered, and de Maroux went from working 60 to 80 hours a week to being laid off. She suddenly couldn’t afford her treatments, had they been available to her, and her pain returned, such that she could barely get out of bed.

She has since been treating herself with diet modifications and massage techniques she learned from Lake and another therapist.

Lake said she’s daunted by the volume of people who have had the coping mechanism of touch taken away all at once.

“I’m anticipating going back to work and having everyone just be fully locked up,” Lake said. “All of my clientele, they need touch more than ever. And they’ve gone without it for maybe longer than they ever have.”

Lake said when she returns to work, she’ll need to downsize her client roster.

She’s planning to work out of her home, with a higher focus on teaching clients how to work on themselves over virtual sessions.

“My goal going forward is not just to help people see the importance of touch, but to value touch to the point where they’ll actually actively seek it out,” Lake said. “That’s not something we can get back to immediately, but seek out things that give them the same comfort. It’s not something we can just lose entirely, we have to find a way.” roccitynews.org CITY 45

LIFE

AFFECTIONATE AFTERTHOUGHTS

ACROSS

Answers to this puzzle can be found on page 22

Dai

PUZZLE BY S.J. AUSTIN & J. REYNOLDS

Puzz

1. Greek word for 122-Across 6. Japanese buckwheat noodles 10. Fully satisfy 14. Predictable and unremarkable, slangily 19. Domesticated 20. Voice of Troy and Lionel on “The Simpsons”

1

2

3

23. Visual outline for a filmmaker 25. Stationery for a lawsuit 27. Ages 28. Show time 30. Windy City airport code

33

34

43

44

45

54

48. Gets up 51. “Isn’t _____ bit like you and me?”

(Beatles lyric)

38

39

46

48

62

65

66

67 72

78

96

106

107

80

109

123

88 94

98

110

103

104 112

120

124

99

111

119

118

81

93

97 102

108

74

92

101

64

68

73

87 91

50

63

79

86

90

49

57

61

95

35 41

60

71

26

40

56

77

13

30

47

55

70

12

25

32 37

11

21

29

37. Sponsor for Cristiano Ronaldo and Serena Williams

46. Medically subdued

10

28

85

43. The Cards, on a scoreboard

9

27

76

41. McKellen or Fleming

8

24

33. It might go next to the mac on the BBQ table

39. Vinegar: Prefix

7

23

32. 2012 Ben Affleck historical thriller

36. Column by Jamelle Bouie or David Brooks

6 20

31. French bean?

34. A friend in need is a friend _____

5

19

21. Artwork venerated in Orthodox churches 22. Dog on “The Jetsons”

4

125

113

121

Across 1.14 Word that 15 follows 16 the start of each starred answer 5.22 On the ocean 10. "...hear ___ drop" 14. Pound of poetry 15. Tips 16. Russo31 of "Outbreak" 17. Chop ___ 36 18. *** Edward Teach, familiarly 42Asia's ___ Sea 20.

21. Dark time for poets 51 22. Lets up 23. Many four-doors 25.

58Billionaire 59 Bill 28. The Braves, on scoreboards 30. Middle of many German names 31. "Go on ..."

69 34. March 17 honoree, for 75short 38. Close to closed 40. Mine, in 82Marseiille 41. *** Cold comfort 89Ones born before 44.

Virgos 45. Jessica of "Dark Angel" 46. "___ Johnny!"

47. Hosp. areas 100 48. ___ Jeanne d'Arc 49. Stimpy's cartoon pal 105 51. Some college students 53. Greets114 115 nonverbally 58. Popular typeface 122 61. Gallery display

126

127

128

129

130

131

132

133

134

135

1

2

17 14

3

4

18

18

20

21

23

24 28

34

57. Landlocked West African country 58. One of 150 in the Hebrew Bible 60. Classic BBC sitcom, to fans 61. Orb 63. Sort of 65. _____ Marie, the so-called “Ivory Queen of Soul” 66. French 101 pronoun 67. Particular feature 69. Vitamin amts.

70. More irritated 72. Snack chip called the nickname of its creator, Ignacio Anaya 46 CITY FEBRUARY 2021

74. What many a meeting could have been 76. Pole, e.g.

78. Small scent hound bred to hunt hares and rabbits 80. Thick liquid distilled from wood or coal

35

36

42

44

45

47

48 51

52

58

59

60 53

64

65

68

69

71

72

63. Rough breathing 64. *** Place for miscellaneous stuff 67. Baja's opposite 68. "If all ___ fails 83..." 84 69. Vow taker 70. Farm sounds 71. Beliefs 72. Common thing?

73. "Green Gables" girl Down 1. Tablelands 2. Blue shade 3. "___ you loud and clear" 4. Eric Clapton love 116 song 117 5. Optimally 6. Mah-jongg piece

95. Golfer’s benchmark

120. Mythical beast

96. Section dropped from the SAT in 2021

122. All you need, according to the Beatles; or a lead-in to the first word of each italicized clue

101. Hirsute television cousin

123. Aspirational adjective for cabinets, fireplaces, electrical outlets, etc.

102. Fragrant compound

126. Laid out by the flu, say

85. Birth month for Joe Biden and Chadwick Boseman

104. Caps’ partners on a desk—or opponents on the ice

128. Sunny prefix

87. Regard with pleasure

106. Price

129. Count _____, villain in “A Series of Unfortunate Events”

89. Aggressively forward

109. Accustomed

130. Toll hwy.

90. Final Oldsmobile model

112. Enthusiasm

131. Overdo it onstage

91. Adolescent

114. Certain prosecutors, for short

132. Construct

93. Charged particle

118. Lead-in to boy or girl

82. Amanda Gorman and Maya Angelou, for two

38

41

119. Everest, e.g.: Abbr.

100. Calendar abbr.

29

37

94. Sight, or foresight

98. Clinical forgetfulness

6

15

17

54. Fictional Belgian detective 56. Electronic rock band _____ Soundsystem

5

66

7. Wh 8. Ab 9. Inq 10. Fi 11. Po 12. A 13. B 19. "_ 24. D 26. Pe 27. A 29. Se 31. M 32. __ 33. Pa 34. Pr ev 35. B 36. M 37. C 39. Tr 40. "W bu

133. Name of at least six people in the New Testament 134. Starter for a geranium or gardenia 135. Less foolish

DOWN 1. One way to be lost 2. Cousin of a croc 3. ____ Us, quarantine video game craze 4. Individual 5. Creator of the original Rocky Road ice cream

15. Actor Kutcher

59. Grave

16. Pricey

61. Avenue crossers

17. Absolutely furious

62. Competed, as the tortoise against the hare

18. Like some racist language 24. Common bicycle accessory 26. Grunge rocker Vedder 29. Like some tongues or scores 35. Animated explorer 38. Map line indicating barometric gradients 40. Turn over 42. Venomous serpents

6. Ruined

43. Petty quarrel

7. Winner of five consecutive Canadian Screen Awards for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series

44. Words before and after “or not”

8. Hoping to see a grosbeak or an eider 9. See 73-Down 10. Mum 11. Dramatic end to a tennis match 12. From head _____ 13. _____ nous 14. Mos Eisley or Martini’s, for two

97. What’s left of the tree by the end of “The Giving Tree” 98. Lots and lots 99. Ignited

64. 24-hour banking option

101. Slanted typeface

68. Something to be memorized in Professor Snape’s class

103. Poorly ventilated

71. Flow partner 73. With 9-Down, Hawkeye’s portrayer on “M*A*S*H” 75. _____ Way, classical road south from Rome 76. Acronym for the federal aid initiative formerly know as food stamps

45. One of 14 colorful candies in a roll

77. Song title parodied in Weird Al’s “Yoda”

47. Dog food brand

79. Length times width

49. 1970s tennis champ Nastase

81. “Rule, Britannia” composer

50. Lacking pretense or deceit

83. “O Brother, Where Art _____?”

51. Takes care of a thing

84. Auld Lang _____

52. Snow queen in “Frozen”

86. Champagne name

53. Iowa college town

88. Silent theatrical technique

55. Went long

92. Observed closely

57. Go well together

94. Central European capital

105. Deli selection 106. Trove 107. None of the above 108. Entrance for a subway or a stadium 110. Civil rights opponent Thurmond 111. _____ Gay (W.W. II bomber) 113. 17th century philosopher 115. Dimwits 116. “Let’s put it to _____” 117. Rocker Bob 121. Suffix with violin or sex 124. Sister of the Warner Bros. on “Animaniacs” 125. Rowboat implement 127. Use a needle and thread

roccitynews.org CITY 47

FEBRUARY 2021