Buffalo NY Best of WNY Band, Music and Entertainment Event News

Click on Photo for Larger View

Norris-Whitney Communications, publisher of Canadian Musician, Professional Sound, Professional Lighting and Canadian Music Trade magazines is hosting the first ever Niagara Music Forum. The 1-day event is an opportunity for Toronto, Hamilton/Halton, Niagara, and Buffalo and area music industry practitioners to get informed about the Niagara music community and connect with the best and brightest of Niagara’s growing music scene. The Forum takes place Saturday, October 18 at the Four Points Sheraton (Brock Room) 3530 Schmon Parkway, St. Catharines, Ontario. Attendance by registration is at a cost of $35 plus gst. Registration information is available at www.niagaramusicforum.com.

The Niagara Music Forum is an opportunity to hear from industry’s experts from local and national organizations. It is a chance to connect and get connected with the different areas of the music industry. Participants can get informed about some of the resources available in the Niagara music community. The Niagara Music Forum is an event for everyone who plays or works in the music community and is interested in learning more about the industry or the Niagara music scene.

The Forum provides a unique learning experience with industry knowledge on a range of topics and will answer the questions being asked by the next generation of music practitioners. It is also to provide an opportunity for the music community to connect with each other and meet inspiring people in an atmosphere of harmony and fun. All participants will have exclusive access to the database of all Forum attendees. Attendance is limited and by registration only.
The Forum speakers bring decades of industry experience and a wealth of knowledge in their presentations. Speakers include The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), American Federation of Musicians (AF of M), St. Catharines and area Arts Council. There will be additional speakers from radio, festivals, media and communications, live performing and more.

Featuring former Miss Alabama and Nashville recording artist Denise Davis

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus says, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” Since 1961, the international Good News Jail & Prison Ministry has been witnessing to inmates and their families, aiding in a physical and spiritual rehabilitation of men and women upon their release from an institution, and providing educational programs to encourage continuance of formal education among inmates.

From its inception, the organization has been primarily funded by the gifts and donations of interested individuals, businesses and churches, with occasional support from foundations and grants. Throughout its history, the ministry has not accepted any financial support from federal, state or local tax revenues, but rather has provided annual services worth hundreds of thousands of dollars at no cost to the local tax-paying citizen.

To assist the Good News Jail & Prison Ministry in its mission, Yme? Productions will present a fundraising concert Saturday, Oct. 11, at Lockport High School. The show begins at 7 p.m. in the auditorium at 250 Lincoln Ave. The evening’s headliner is Denise Davis, a former Miss Alabama and CMT star – and a treasure-trove of good news.

Several years ago, Davis was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which caused her to lose sight first temporarily in her left eye and then completely in both eyes. Doctors didn’t know if she would ever see again.

“I had anticipated having to learn to use a wheelchair because of the MS, but the thought of being left permanently blind was devastating,” Davis says. “I didn't know what the future held, but the one thing I was sure of was that I needed to have God close to me.”

She says that's when having a personal, one-on-one relationship with God became her sole desire in life. Davis finally said the words she believes God had been longing for her to say: “I give up.” She fell to her knees in desperation and cried out to her heavenly father that whatever He wanted her life to be was what she wanted it to be.

After several months, her sight returned – along with a desire to sing Christian music.
Today, Davis is a recording artist in Nashville. She has opened for John Anderson, Lee Greenwood, George Jones and The Gatlin Brothers, and has two albums (“I Refuse to Be Afraid” and “Eternally Grateful”) with songs in regular rotation on inspirational and praise and worship radio stations.

Tickets for the fundraising event are $12 and can be purchased at the following locations: Middleport Family Health Center, 81 Rochester Road, Middleport; Firth Jewelers, 2435 Military Road, Niagara Falls; Benders Christian Bookstore, 8550 Sheridan Drive, Buffalo; Pathways Christian Bookstore (in Lincoln Square), 1181 Lincoln Ave., Lockport; and The Beacon (in The Summit), 6929 Williams Road, Wheatfield.

For more on Davis, visit http://www.denisedavis.com/. To learn more about Good News Jail & Prison Ministry, visit http://www.goodnewsjail.org/.

Over the past three years, Yme? Productions, a branch of Yme? Ministry, has produced more than 10 charity concerts, raising in excess of $120,000 for groups such as Canine Helpers for the Handicapped, House of Hope and the American Cancer Society.

Buffalo, NY—Just Buffalo Literary Center is pleased to announce the following poetry events throughout the month of October 2008. Unless otherwise noted, all events are free and open to the public. For more information, please visit http://www.justbuffalo.org/.

Wednesday, 10/1: Just Buffalo/Center for Inquiry present Center for Inquiry Literary Café featuring Earth’s Daughters, at 7:30 p.m. at Center for Inquiry, 1310 Sweet Home Rd., Amherst.

Earth’s Daughters is the longest-running extant feminist literary journal in the United States. It is run by a collective of women who volunteer their time and passion to supporting poetry. Five of the local editors will be reading from their original works: Kastle Brill, Jennifer Campbell, Joyce Kessel, Janna Willoughby, and Ryki Zuckerman.

Monday, 10/6: Exhibit X Fiction and Prose Fiction Reading with Bragi Olafsson, at 8:00 p.m. at Karpeles Manuscript Museum, 220 North St. at Elmwood, Buffalo.

Presented by Just Buffalo, SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo State College, and Talking Leaves Books.

Bragi Ólafsson was born in Reykjavik, and is most well known for playing in Björk's first band, The Sugarcubes. He is the author of several books of poetry and short stories, and four novels, including Time Off, which was nominated for the Icelandic Literature Prize in 1999 (as was The Pets), and Party Games, for which Bragi received the DV Cultural Prize in 2004. His most recent novel-The Ambassador-was a finalist for the 2008 Nordic Literature Prize and received the Icelandic Bookseller's Award as best novel of the year. Bragi is also one of the founders of the publishing company Smekkleysa (Bad Taste), and has translated Paul Auster's The Glass City into Icelandic.

Saturday, 10/11: Just Buffalo Interdisciplinary Performance Series: Music and Poetry, featuring One World Tribe, Vonetta Rhodes, and Marquis B. Burton AKA Ten Thousand, at 8:00 p.m. at The Tralf, 622 Main St., Buffalo. Tickets are $5 General Admission, $3 Students/Seniors, and Free for members of Just Buffalo. For tickets, call The Tralf box office at 852-2860 or Just Buffalo at 832-5400.

Just Buffalo kicks off its Interdisciplinary Series mixing words and music with a performance by One World Tribe, one of the area's most popular live bands and a major proponent of reggae-funk-world beat music. In between sets, enjoy the high-energy spoken word sounds of Vonetta Rhodes and Marquis B. Burton, AKA "Ten Thousand." This performance is cosponsored by the New York State Council on the Arts—Special Arts Services and the New York State Music Fund.

Wednesday, 10/15: Just Buffalo/Hallwalls/Earth’s Daughter’s Magazine present The Gray Hair Series reading featuring Don Mitchell and Ruth Thompson at 7:30 p.m. at Hallwalls Cinema, Babeville, 341 Delaware Ave. at Tupper, Buffalo.Don Mitchell grew up on the island of Hawai’i. Although as a Stanford undergraduate his professors encouraged him to attempt a career as a writer, he went to Harvard for an anthropology PhD instead.

As a graduate student and professor at Buffalo State he specialized in ecological anthropology, but in the mid-nineties he turned his attention to the emerging field of humanistic anthropology, winning the Society for Humanistic Anthropology’s Poetry and Fiction prizes. Along the way he has been a photographer, marathoner and ultra-marathoner, professional road race timer, computer programmer, and renovator of old houses. His poetry, fiction, and photographs have appeared in Humanistic Anthropology, Green Mountains Review, New Millennium Writings, Discover, Boston Phoenix, and elsewhere. His story "Dog Food" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and "Slip Pivot" won second place in the New Millennium Writings competition. Much of his work is based on years of living among the Nagovisi people of Bougainville (Papua New Guinea). He is working on a novel set on the island during its brutal decade-long secessionist war. He divides his time between Colden and Hawai’i.

Ruth Thompson grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and spent her working life in Los Angeles. In 2007, her poem "Fat Time" won the New Millennium Writings Award and her poem sequence "Family Album" won second place in the William Faulkner/Pirate's Alley poetry contest. Other work has appeared in Sonora Review, Comstock Review, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, River Styx, 13th Moon, and elsewhere. Ruth received a BA from Stanford and a Ph.D. in American literature from Indiana University, and has been a university professor, librarian, community network organizer, college administrator, yoga teacher, and poetry editor of The Eclipse literary magazine. In 2005 she left academia to live in a farmhouse in Colden, New York with her long-lost college sweetheart, teach yoga and meditation, and work on her first book of poems.

Wednesday, 10/15: Just Buffalo/Poetics Plus/SUNY Buffalo present a performance by Bruce Andrews at 8:00 p.m. at Karpeles Manuscript Museum, 435 Porter Ave., Buffalo.Bruce Andrews is a poet and performance artist and the author of over 30 books of poetry and of Paradise and Method: Poetics and Praxis, a collection of innovative critical essays.

Andrews was co-editor, with Charles Bernstein, of The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book. Andrews has taught Political Science at Fordham University since 1975 with a focus on global capitalism, U.S. imperialism and the politics of communication.

Thursday, 10/16: Just Buffalo/Small Press Poetry present Poetry Reading by Kim Rosenfeld and Marie Buck, at 7:00 p.m. at Rust Belt Books, 202 Allen St., Buffalo.

Kim Rosenfield is the author of three books of poetry; Good Morning--Midnight-- (Roof Books 2001), which won Small Press Traffic's Book of the Year award in 2002, Tràma (Krupskaya 2004). and re: evolution (forthcoming from Les Figues press 2008). She lives in NYC with her husband, poet Robert Fitterman and their daughter, Coco.

Marie Buck's first book, Life & Style, is forthcoming from Patrick Lovelace Editions. A chapbook is available online at <http://www.beardofbees.com/>, and she also edits a little mag, Model Homes, with Brad Flis.

Saturday, 10/18: Federman @ 80: A Celebration. In celebration of world-renowned fiction writer, poet, and critic Raymond Federman's 80th birthday, writers and critics from around the country will offer a day of appreciations of Federman's writing. There will be panels during the day featuring contributors to the forthcoming SUNY Press book on Federman's work, and a star-studded evening reading tribute, featuring Federman himself. Sponsored by Just Buffalo, Starcherone Books, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Medaille College, the Department of Romance Languages at University of Buffalo, and the following endowed chairs at the University of Buffalo: the Melodia E. Jones Chair of Romance Languages, the David Gray Chair of Poetry and Letters, the James H. McNulty Chair of English, and the Samuel P. Capen Chair of Poetry and the Humanities.

Daytime Activities - Poetry/Rare Books Room, 420 Capen Hall, University at Buffalo North Campus, Amherst: Contributors to the forthcoming SUNY Press collection of essays, Federman at 80: From Surfiction to Critifiction.

1:00-2:30 p.m. - "A Life in the Text," with Dr. Larry McCaffery, Dr. Menachem Feuer, and Dr. Ted Pelton.3:00-4:30 p.m. - "Laughter, History, and the Holocaust," -- with Dr. Susan Rubin Suleiman and Dr. Marcel Cornis-Pope.Works by artists Harvey Breverman and Terri Katz Kasimov, with Raymond Federman as subject, will also be on exhibit in the Poetry/Rare Books Room, 420 Capen Hall.Evening Activities, Medaille College, Main Hall, Foyer and Lecture Hall, 18 Agassiz Circle, Buffalo.8:00 p.m. - An Evening of Laughterature, Surfiction, and Playgiarism in Tribute to Raymond Federman. Readings and performances in order of appearance: Ted Pelton, Christina Milletti, Geoffrey Gatza, Michael Basinski, and Stephen McCaffery; a brief intermission; Charles Bernstein, Simone Federman, and Raymond Federman.

The reading will be followed by a reception and an 80th birthday toast.

Thursday, 10/23: Just Buffalo/Medaille College Write Thing Reading Series features Write Thing Presents: Christopher Schmidt, at 7:00 p.m. at The Library at Huber Hall, Medaille College, 18 Agassiz Circle, Buffalo.

Christopher Schmidt's first book of poems, The Next in Line, is forthcoming from Slope Editions in 2008. He is currently a doctoral candidate in English literature at CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. Recent poems and essays can be found in Tin House, Court Green, La Petite Zine, and Canadian Poetry.

Friday, 10/24: Just Buffalo/Poetics Plus/SUNY Buffalo present Erica Hunt at 8:00 p.m. at Karpeles Manuscript Museum, 453 Porter Ave., Buffalo.

Eric Hunt writes, "It is in the non-instrumental language of poetry in which the lapidary, the spare, mysterious, disjunctive, molecular, muscular, anagrammatic (and so on) provide previously undetected links to thinking and acting on alternatives and to building a just society.” Her books and chapbooks include Arcade, Piece Logic, and Local History. Currently, she is the President of The Twenty-First Century Foundation.

Tuesday, 10/28: Exhibit X Fiction and Prose presents The Alabama Boys and the Apocalypse: Fiction Readings with Allen Shelton and Charles McNair, at 7:00 p.m. at Hallwalls Cinema, Babeville, 341 Delaware Ave. at Tupper, Buffalo. Sponsored by Buffalo State College, SUNY Buffalo, Talking Leaves Books, and Just Buffalo Literary Center.

Charles McNair’s Land O' Goshen (St.Martin's Press, 1994) is “part allegory, part horror tale, and part apocalyptic prediction set in Alabama in the near future at a time when the Christian Soldiers are fighting the Rebels.” The novel received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for fiction. He’s currently Book Editor at Paste Magazine, a nationally distributed culture and music publication. His writing has appeared in Saturday Review, Paste, Southern Living, The Black Warrior Review, and Negative Capability. His literary reviews have appeared in the London Times Literary Supplement.

Allen Shelton is an associate professor of sociology at Buffalo State College. He worked previously on AC Shelton's Angus Farm and with the Arthur Rollin’s carpentry crew in northeastern Alabama before taking an appointment as a lecturer at Auburn University in the winter of 1988. His new book Dreamworlds of Alabama 2007 from the University of Minnesota Press "striates threads from the author's childhood with invocations of Kafka, Marx, and Benjamin."

Tuesday, 10/28: Just Buffalo/SUNY Buffalo/Poetics Plus present Alan Halsey at 8:00 p.m. at Karpeles Manuscript Museum, 435 Porter Ave., Buffalo.Alan Halsey ran The Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye from 1979 until 1996. Since then he has lived in Sheffield, still working as a specialist bookseller and editor of West House Books. His many books include The Text of Shelley’s Death (1995), Marginalien (2005) which collects his poetry, prose and graphics 1988-2004, and a selected poems, Not Everything Remotely (2006).

Thursday, 10/30: Just Buffalo/SUNY Buffalo/Poetics Plus present Geraldine Monk at 8:00 p.m. at Hallwalls Cinema, Babeville, 341 Delaware Ave. at Tupper, Buffalo.Geraldine Monk was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, a former industrial cotton mill town in the North of England. Her major volumes of poetry include Interregnum (1995), Noctivagations (2001) and Escafeld Hangings (2005).

Event: Judy Collins
Event Date: Thursday December 4, 2008
Event Time: 6:30pm doors/ 7:30pm show
Venue: Tralf Music Hall www.tralfmusichall.com
Promoter: ESI
Price: $38.00 Day Of Show
Price: $42.0018 and over

Tickets available: All Ticketmaster outlets / 716-852-5000/ www.ticketmaster.com / Tralf Box Office

Buffalo, NY 09/11/2008- Judy Collins will be performing at the Tralf in downtown Buffalo, NY, on Thursday December 4, with a special guest.Judy Collins was one of the major interpretive folksingers of the '60s. A child prodigy at classical piano, she turned to folk music at the age of 15 and released her first album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, in 1961 when she was 22. That album and its follow-up, The Golden Apples of the Sun, consisted of traditional folk material, with Collins's pure, sweet soprano accompanied by her acoustic guitar playing. By the time of Judy Collins #3, she had begun to turn to contemporary material and to add other musicians. (Jim, later Roger, McGuinn tried out his first arrangements of "The Bells of Rhymney" and "Turn, Turn, Turn" on this album, before using them with The Byrds.)

Collins's musical horizons were expanded further by 1966 and the release of In My Life, which added theater music to her repertoire and introduced her audience to the writing of Leonard Cohen; it was one of her six albums to go gold. Her first gold-seller, however, was 1967's Wildflowers, which contained her hit version of "Both Sides Now" by the then-little-known songwriter Joni Mitchell.

By the '70s, Collins had come to be identified as much as an art song singer as a folksinger and had also begun to make a mark with her original compositions. Her best-known performances cover a wide stylistic range: the traditional gospel song "Amazing Grace," the Stephen Sondheim Broadway ballad "Send in the Clowns," and such songs of her own as "My Father" and "Born to the Breed." Collins recorded less frequently after the end of her 23-year association with Elektra Records in 1984, though she made two albums for Gold Castle. In 1990, she signed to Columbia Records and released Fires of Eden, her 23rd album. A move to Geffen preceded the 1993 release of Judy Sings Dylan...Just Like a Woman; Shameless followed on Atlantic in 1994. Six years later, Collins released the Christmas album All on a Wintry Night.

Wednesday Night Concerts (September 3 - November 5 schedule)
@ Allen Hall Theatre
(UB South Campus - 3435 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14214)
FREE + ALL AGES + OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Doors at 7:30pm, broadcast begins at 8:00pm sharp!

September 3: NO PERFORMANCE (Labor Day week)

September 10: ARMCANNON
www.armcannon.com + www.myspace.com/armcannon
video game music / progressive / metal

September 17: Roger Bryan & the Orphans
www.harvestsum.com + www.myspace.com/rogerbryan
indie rock

September 24: W.A.K.O.S.
www.myspace.com/wakos4
rock / jam band

October 1: Tracy Morrow and the Magi Chippie & Ellen West (double bill)
www.myspace.com/tracymorrow
www.myspace.com/ellenwest
indie folk

October 8: Rhubarb
www.myspace.com/rhubarbsucks
funk / jam

October 15: Dave Ruch & friends
www.daveruch.com
historic folk

October 22: NO PERFORMANCE

October 29: the Rabies
www.myspace.com/therabies
gothic rock

November 5: Fresh Guac
www.myspace.com/freshguac
hip hop

(Buffalo, NY) It‘s been 5 consecutive years, since Ida Goeckel, a local female musician and breast cancer survivor, started organizing the annual Female Musicians Fighting Breast Cancer music benefit. The 6th of these annual fundraising events is once again set to raise awareness and funds for Roswell Park Cancer Institute’s Breast Care Center. The event is to be held during Breast Cancer Awareness Month on Sunday, October 12th, 2008, at Macaroon’s Nite Club (576 Dick Rd., Depew, N.Y..) Doors will open at 1:30 p.m. with four area bands, featuring female members, donating their talent to perform starting at 2:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m. This year’s performances will be the finest eclectic gathering of the best WNY area has to offer in each respective musical genre. They are: The acoustic solo stylings of Ms. Noa Bursie, the funky rock flavor of Cold Sweat (formerly of the Barking Spiders), the down home country of Copperhead Road, followed by WNY’s favored and award winning rock band, Hit N Run, as the headliner.

Prizes generously donated by local and national merchants will be raffled off throughout the show with larger ticket items in a silent auction, as well as 50/50 splits will be run twice throughout the show. Admission to the benefit to witness all this talent under one roof will be just $10.00.

This unique fundraiser, sanctioned by the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation and Team Cure, donates 100% of the proceeds to Roswell Park’s Breast Care Clinic and Resource Center located at Elm and Carlton St. in Buffalo, N.Y. The mission of this benefit is dedicated to the diagnosis, treatment, and care of breast cancer patients. The center provides patients with resources, research information, and treatment options related to breast cancer. In 2003, the program expanded its efforts to St. Mary’s Hospital in Lewiston. Statistics now indicate that 1 in 8 women will be effected by breast cancer at one point in their lives. A smaller number of men are at risk as well. It is also the second leading cause of death in US women. Many strides and advances have been made in both the early detection and subsequent treatment for breast cancer patients. Continued studies and research, just within the last 10-12 years, have greatly reduced the risk of recurrence and have given thousands of women and men diagnosed with breast cancer new hope for a bright future.

With greater concentration on pinpointing its cause and developing a cure, perhaps the next generation will no longer needlessly have to be concerned about the risk of breast cancer. In the meantime, it is important that those who have diagnosed receive the compassionate care and treatment that Roswell has to offer at its Breast Care Clinic, as well as arm themselves with the available up-to-date information at Roswell‘s Resource Center. The entire community is invited to support this worthy cause. For further information contact the F.M.F.B.C. benefit founder and organizer, Ms. Goeckel, at: fmfbc@aol.com and be sure to visit www.myspace.com/fmfbc.

Solé
5110 Main Street
Williamsville, NY 14221
(716) > 362-0356.

Friday, September 5th, 7:30-11:00
Friday, September 12th, 7:30-11:00
Friday, September 19th, 7:30-11:00
Friday, September 26th, 7:30-11:00

DjamBossa (jam-boss-a) -Djambossa is inspired by the late great gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. We start our name, like he did. Djambossa is highly improvisational, we love to "jam". Djambossa infuses latin styles like bossanova into our set. A sometimes soft and sometimes scathing acoustic mélange. An eclectic mix of ethnic folk - gypsy jazz, bossanova, flamenco and even blues. Coming soon to a bar stool near you.