Schenectady, Schenectady County | featured news

Across several Oregon public school districts, Santa Claus will have a frosty reception this holiday. In particular, the Hillsboro School District, a western Portland-area public school system, requested that staff omit Santa Claus from the season's decorations in a memo released Tuesday.

*Why no anger when white officer is shot?
*Grateful for diverse choice of opinions
*Germans astonished by election of Trump
*Tonko should focus on affordable energy
*Protesters have good reasons to be upset
*Missing Christmas tree Rotterdam mall

By Zachary Matson
Gazette Reporter

After a year of flat tuition at State University of New York colleges, SUNY campuses will have the option to raise tuition as much as $300 each of the next four years, under a proposal approved by the SUNY Trustees on Wednesday.

In the vernacular of the season, Plug Power can’t wait to see what may be under the tree on Christmas morning. The benefactor isn’t jolly ol’ St. Nick, though, but the lame duck Congress currently meeting in Washington.

By Bill Buell
Gazette Reporter

Joe Jencks didn’t grow up in the turbulent Sixties, even though the way he wears his hair — curly and very long — might give you that impression. “I grew up in the Rust Belt in the 1980s,” said Jencks, who will share the stage with Pat Wictor and Greg Greenway when Brother Sun performs Saturday at the 8th Step at Proctors.

Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director Andris Nelsons will play his most prominent role to date during the 2017 season of Tanglewood, the music venue has announced.

By Bill Buell
Gazette Reporter

Portraying Lorraine Barrie in Christopher Luscombe’s adaptation of Noel Coward’s “Star Quality” is giving Jean T. Carney the opportunity to play a couple of different character types.
“I get to play somebody who is mercurial, who changes from being charming to someone who changes her tack to get exactly what she wants,” said Carney, a Glenville native who has been a steady presence for the Schenectady Civic Players both on stage and behind the curtain since 2009.

The Emerson String Quartet, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. The quartet will perform on Sunday as part of the Union College Concert Series.

Borrowing a Steve Earle song title, we all live in “Guitar Town” this week, when intrepid six-string axe-wielders parade across our stages. In fact, Friday marks a messy, three-venue collision of fret-work explosions — acoustic and electric, spanning folk to jazz to rock to the moon.

It’s a big show from a big artist in a big house. So it’s a big deal for local music fans — it’s Sawyer at the Swyer.