Tasting Notes
ChamberFest Canandaigua designs a concert around wine, the Finger Lakes Opera presents a Glimmerglass collaboration, and more summer arts coverage is upcoming in Rochester Overture.
ChamberFest Canandaigua kicked off its summer this week by bringing in the established and vibrant international harpist Bridget Kibbey, who joins the Eastman School of Music Faculty this fall, and continuing to link music with the area’s food and wine industry. For Rochester Overture this week, I interviewed the festival’s founding co-director Amy Sue Barston about how she and the other performers paired music with Ventosa Vinyards wines for a tasting concert this Sunday at 2 p.m.
You can read that here:
ChamberFest Canandaigua’s Concert Sunday Pairs Notes with Nodes
Rochester Overture also gave a glimpse of what’s in store for September’s ESL Rochester Fringe Festival – a circus arts extravaganza, among other performances for the festival’s 15th anniversary.
And if you’re looking for a summer getaway filled with music and deep listening, read about the 2026 Tanglewood Music Festival season here, in which I outlined some performances that may be of interest to Rochesterians, reviewed the opening weekend of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer season, and gave some recommendations for other sonic excursions in the Berkshires. It’s all only a four-hour trip from Rochester.
While there is a lot coming together in the background right now for Rochester Overture, here’s what’s immediately upcoming:
The Finger Lakes Opera presents the Weill/Brecht/Hauptmann musical Happy End tonight at Rochester Institute of Technology National Technical Institute for the Deaf’s Robert F. Panara Theatre, which has been making stops around New York State. After tonight, the production heads to the Glimmerglass Opera Festival in Cooperstown, New York, which means tonight’s an opportunity to hear a Glimmerglass opera in our backyard. I will report on the opera (where I’m looking forward to hearing the 2024 Lotte Lenya first prize winner, Ana Karneža, in the role of The Fly) as well as preview the FLO’s final main stage production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, which will enjoy two performances on Thursday, August 6 and Sunday, August 9, again at the RIT NTID Panara Theatre.
Additionally, I’m pleased to welcome a new writer to Rochester Overture who will be covering the Ames Amzalak Rochester Jewish Film Festival, which begins this weekend and extends through the next.
Thanks, everyone, for reading and sharing!
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