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WSC Department of Music presents autumn recital

WESTFIELD �€” Westfield State College Department of Music presents a kick off to the autumn recital season Wednesday, September 23 7:30 with an evening performance by music department faculty. Established and acclaimed vocal and instrumental performers will offer works in jazz and classical styles. The event is free and open to the public.
Dever Auditorium is located in Parenzo Hall on the campus of Westfield State College, 577 Western Ave. Westfield, MA. Parenzo Hall and Dever Auditorium are handicap accessible.

At the Westfield Fair Grounds

50th Anniversary Horse Pull

WESTFIELD – On Sunday, May 17th, the “Cap” Porter Memorial Horse Draw will be held at the Westfield Fair Grounds. It has been held every year for the past 50 years. This year there will be special trophies awarded to commemorate this fact. Kenneth A. Porter ,”Cap” was a famed horse puller from Wyben. He was a fixture at local pulls in the 1940′s and early 50′s. He even won the prestigious New England Championship held at the Northampton Fair Grounds in 1944.
The Cap Porter Memorial is one of the first pulls of the coming fair season and has always had a good turnout of horse pullers who are eager to try their luck and talent after the long slow winter months, Loyal fans and spectators always enjoy the show. It is still an awe-inspiring sight to see a team of well-trained horses pulling a heavy load,
Some of Cap’s grandsons and great grandsons still compete with their own teams and many Porter family members help run the pull. There will be two classes of horses. The teams must be weighed in that morning, Teams weighing 3200 pounds or less will pull in the first competition class that begins at noon, The teams weighing 3200 pounds or more will pull after that,
The Fair Food Booth will be open all day selling refreshments. All proceeds from the booth go back to support the Westfield Fair. Admission is $5, with children under 12 free, Also on the grounds that day is the American Buckskin Horse Show.

Events for the Weekend (April 4, 2009)

Festival Chorus Celebrates �€˜09

WESTFIELD – The Festival Chorus of Westfield celebrates ’09 this Saturday, April 4 at 7:30pm Dever auditorium on the campus of Westfield State College.
The Chorus, a College Community organization, sponsored by Westfield State has provided local audiences with highly regarded performances of the finest choral literature for 25 years. Under the direction of founder and conductor Professor Theodore C. Davidovich, of Westfield State, the Chorus has performed throughout Western Europe, the Scandinavian countries, Australia, New Zealand and numerous times in Carnegie Hall.
Years ending in ’09 give us anniversaries of the births or deaths of many highly regarded composers. This performance with pay homage to two lesser known, yet highly skilled, composers Dudley Buck and Johann Georg Albrechtsberger as well as the very well-known Felix Mendelssohn.
Dudley Buck, a New England native, was born and raised in Hartford. After attending Trinity College he furthered his musical studies in Europe and after returning to the US established himself as a major composer and performer. He held important organist positions in Hartford, Boston and New York. In New York he served as assistant to Theodore Thomas the conductor of the then fledgling New York Philharmonic. Buck was quite a prolific composer and the Gloria in Excelsis is just a short sample of his vast output of sacred music.
Albrechtsberger was one of the leading composers and teachers of his time. In Vienna he was held in very high regard and the great Beethoven was one of his many students. His compositional output was also vast and included, among other works, numerous settings of the Mass in the style of the day well known to Mozart, Haydn and of course Beethoven.
Mendelssohn needs no introduction. The Westfield State College Chorale will sing two of his lovely part songs: Fruhlingslied (Spring Song) and Die Nachtigall (The Nightingale).
Lillian Buss Pearson will accompany, at the keyboard, the works by Buck and Albrechtsberger. Dr. Theodore C. Davidovich will conduct both the Festival Chorus and the Chorale.
The performance begins at 7:30pm in the handicapped accessible Dever auditorium on the campus of West)field State College. Admission is $5 with senior citizens and students $3. Parking is free and well lit. For more information please call 413 572-5356 or 413 572-5673.

As well as…

Blockbuster to sell, rent movies through TiVo

NEW YORK(AP) �€” Blockbuster Inc. plans to rent and sell its movies and TV shows through TiVo Inc.�€™s digital video recorders in the second half of this year.
The Dallas-based video rental company is playing catch-up to rival Netflix Inc., which already offers free instant streaming of its movies and TV shows through TiVo DVRs and other devices with its �€œWatch Instantly�€� service.
But unlike Netflix, Blockbuster�€™s fee-based TiVo offering will include new releases available two to four weeks after they hit video rental stores �€” ahead of pay-per-view. The deal is expected to be announced Wednesday.
TiVo users will be able to rent 10,000 Blockbuster titles for $1.99 to $3.99, and purchase movies for $14.99 to $19.99 each. The Blockbuster feature will be available for standalone users of the TiVo Series 2 and 3 units, TiVo HD and TiVo HD XL DVRs.
�€œThis is the first mass-market product that we will be inside,�€� said Kevin A. Lewis, senior vice president of digital entertainment at Blockbuster.
Blockbuster already has deals that build its video-on-demand technology into Vizio televisions and a media player by 2Wire. It plans to expand its VOD capability to mobile devices, Blu-ray players and other consumer electronics.
Netflix also offers video streaming through Xbox game consoles, Internet-capable Blu-ray players from LG and Samsung, as well as on the Roku digital video player.
Expanding its reach is a key strategy for Blockbuster, which has seen its video rental business decline as DVD-by-mail services and online video viewing rise in popularity.
The company posted a loss for the fourth quarter, but U.S. same-store sales at locations open at least a year rose by 4 percent, as sales of products such as video games, DVD players and other devices helped offset softer video rentals.
Blockbuster said it will sell TiVo DVRs at its retail stores and on its Web site.
Joe Miller, TiVo�€™s senior vice president of consumer sales and affiliate marketing, said the Blockbuster deal means the addition of �€œanother marquee brand in home entertainment.�€�
Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo has deals with Amazon.com and its software is licensed by Comcast Corp., Cox Communications Inc. and DirecTV Group Inc. for use with their set-top boxes. TiVo has 3.3 million subscribers, of which 1.6 million own standalone TiVo DVRs.
By DEBORAH YAO
AP Business Writer

An Arts Extra 3-21-09

Dino up for auction

NEW YORK (AP) �€” A bit of Jurassic Park is going on sale with a 150-million-year-old complete skeleton of a dinosaur going on the auction block in New York.
The I.M. Chait Gallery says the fossil of the 9-foot-long dryosaurus dating from the Jurassic era is one of only two of its kind in the world. The gallery said it could bring up to $500,000 at Saturday’s auction.
Gallery operator Josh Chait says the fossil was taken from private land in Wyoming in 1993 and is being sold by Utah-based Western Paleontological Laboratories.
The auction also included the 7-foot-tall complete skeleton of a 20,000-year-old, juvenile wooly mammoth, and the fossilized skeleton of 20-foot-long marine lizard.

Arts and Leisure 3-19-09

Paris exhibit celebrate Warhol’s portraits

PARIS (AP) �€” Smiling, cherry-lipped princesses, rock royalty, politicians, artists in eye-popping hues and, of course, Marilyn Monroe, her melancholy face reproduced over and over.
A vast new exhibition opening Wednesday at Paris’ Grand Palais brings together Andy Warhol’s iconic celebrity portraits and works of those who had $40,000 to spare for a set of commissioned canvases.
Warhol churned out an estimated 1,000 portraits �€” most of them commissions.
“He used to say, ‘I have to pay the rent; I have to bring home the bacon,’” says the exhibit’s curator, Alain Cueff, adding that he thinks the irreverent and often-flippant pop artist had something more serious in mind.
“Warhol mentioned that all the portraits should have the same size and that altogether they could form a portrait of society,” he said one recent day while the works were being hung.
Hence the name of the show, “Le Grand Monde d’Andy Warhol,” which translates as “Andy Warhol’s Big World.” It runs through July 13.
The show arranges the portraits of some 130 subjects by profession, so Mick Jagger, his famous lips a delicate baby pink, shares a room with Blondie’s Debbie Harry, with alarming cobalt eyes and her platinum mane painted bright pink.
A facetious portrait of a green-faced Richard Nixon �€” entitled “Vote McGovern” �€” is interspersed among the Maos, a 1972 series of paintings of the Chinese leader that includes a monumental-size canvas in blue and military drab.
The hall dedicated to movie stars brings together portraits of a leather-clad Marlon Brando �€” made from a still from his 1953 motorcycle movie “The Wild One” �€” Dennis Hopper, Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda and Sylvester Stallone.
A 1974 portrait of Brigitte Bardot was commissioned by her husband of three years, German playboy, Gunther Sachs, who also had himself painted, Cueff said.
“I always thought of it as gesture of gentlemanliness and panache, giving them to her after their separation,” Cueff said. “But in fact, he didn’t give them to her at all. He kept them.”