The Art of Performance -- Rochester Style

The Genesee River High Falls

You would never mistake the Rochester Fringe Festival for the Edinburgh Fringe. Among the many differences is participation in the Festival by some of the city's most established cultural organizations, including the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and the Rochester City Ballet. But as long as I was going to visit, why not go when there were Fringe shows to be seen?

The Genesee River High Falls in downtown Rochester served as the site of our first Fringe experience. After donning ear phones, we walked to the center of the bridge directly opposite the Falls. The "performance" was a ten minute podcast about Sam Patch aka "The Yankee Leaper."

Patch's biggest claim to fame was living to tell the tale after he jumped off a raised platform adjacent to Niagara Falls. But he also jumped twice off a platform erected next to Rochester's own High Falls. To give you a sense of scale, the teeny tiny white dots to the left of the Falls are people. His first leap took place on a cold November day. It was a success, but Patch found the profits from his plunge less than impressive. And so he decided to do an encore performance on Friday, November 13, 1829. Patch stood on the platform in his signature white suit and stepped over the edge. When he failed to emerge from the icy water, the 8000+ spectators thought it  was just a show business prank. That speculation was put to rest when his frozen body emerged down river the following spring.

Kodak Hall at the Eastman Theatre

The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra was a first time participant in the Festival, and we were there. What made the concert wholly contemporary -- if not exactly"fringe-y" -- was the performance of four works by living composers. John Adams' Scheherezade 2 was the centerpiece of the evening. It was not to my taste. I did, however, enjoy Mothership by Mason Bates. The composition included both improvisation and electronic music. I could practically see a strange aircraft hover over the stage and left the concert hall feeling the urge to watch the movie "Arrival" again. To hear Bates talk about the piece and listen to a performance, click here.

Maggie and I with Susan B. 

While not a performance per se, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the cocktail gathering Maggie and I attended to thank supporters of the Susan B. Anthony House and public radio station WXXI. Susan B. herself was there, having toddled down from the nearby Mount Hope Cemetery. She carried a surprisingly pristine copy of her book "Failure is Impossible." (The title comes from her famous quote, "Wherever women gather together failure is impossible.")

While we didn't visit the Susan B. Anthony House this year, it's a tour worth taking if you're in the Rochester area. With the 100th anniversary of the enactment of the 19th Amendment nearly upon us, it's more timely than ever to remember how hard suffragists worked to obtain the right of women to vote. For more info about the Susan B. Anthony House, click here.

The most over-the-top performance we attended was a concert by Randy Rainbow of YouTube fame. The event was not part of the Fringe, although its timing happily coincided. Always on top of things, Maggie had ordered duplicates of Randy's trademark pink glasses for the evening.

The energy at the Kodak Center was high from the moment we walked into the venue. Photo opps abounded with what were effectively "get out the vote" vintage posters.  They set the mood for an evening of political satire that made me think of the expression "if you don't laugh, you'll cry."

The evening was more or less Randy singing some of his greatest hits with videos playing in the background. He kicked off with a rousing version of "You've Got Trouble Right Here in America" that had the crowd in peals of gleeful laughter.

Maggie and me with Randy Rainbow

The night went on from there with a series of faux interviews and songs that included "chats" with Kellyanne Conway that segued into "Microwaves (Are Watching You)" and Jeff Sessions that led into "Putin and the Ritz".  My favorite of the night, though, was  "Cheeto Christ Super Czar," a song that lampoons Trump's endowment upon himself of the dual titles of the King of Israel and the Chosen One. (You really couldn't make this stuff up.) Rainbow even worked in a reference to Trump's desire to buy Greenland. Click on the names of any of the songs to watch Randy in action. 

The evening was a blast. But there was a definite post-concert letdown. The cumulative effect of being smacked in the face over and over with the craziness of our current Administration was depressing.  And this was before Trump took it upon himself to trade U.S. assistance for political dirt on the Bidens. How has our country come to this place? 

Thanks once again to Maggie for putting together an action-packed itinerary for my visit to Rochester. The pressure is on to design an equally fun schedule for her trip to Sarasota in February. I'm confident my culture-rich city is up to the challenge.