Season 1 Featured Artists
Arts InFocus is a collaboration with several PBS stations across the country – sharing content with each other to spotlight the amazing arts and cultural scenes of communities nationwide. The series airs Fridays at 8:30pm on WXXI-TV and on select PBS stations across the country, and serves as a perfect lead-in to Friday night’s PBS Arts block. PBS Arts programming presents a series of programs that highlight music, theater, performers and artists. Arts InFocus repeats Saturdays at 6:30 p.m. on WXXI-TV and is available on demand on this web site.
Arts and arts organizations featured in WXXI-produced segments of Arts InFocus include:
- From the Top, the popular NPR series that presents musical performances of America's outstanding young classical musicians, recently traveled to Rochester’s Kodak Hall at the Eastman School of Music to tape a live show that featured Rochester-area students. We’ll meet Alexander, NY soprano Emily Helenbrook and Pittsford cellist Annie Jacobs-Perkins.
- Vijay Iyer, one of jazz’s great young musicians returned home to Rochester last summer to perform at the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival.
- Tru Art, a dance group comprised of talented inner-city urban youth dedicated to making a change and difference in their community through dance and instruction to a younger generation.
- Joey DeFrancesco, a Grammy-nominated musician, who gave an energizing performance on his organ during the 2014 Xeorx Rochester International Jazz Festival.
- John Gurche, a paleo artist and author of a new book called Shaping Humanity. His book tells the human evolutionary story with art, especially sculpture. John is Artist-in-Resident at the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, New York.
- Ward Stare, Rochester native and music director of the Rochester Philhamornic, described as "one of the hottest young conductors in America" by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and "a rising star in the conducting firmament" by the Chicago Tribune.
- John Ballou, a letterboxer, sells hand-carved stamps through his company JackBear Stamps.
