THE WORLD READS WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER — 8,324,077 VISITS IN ONE YEAR | 2,905,611 VISITORS VISIT 8,324,077 TIMES 3 TIMES EVERY DAY IN ONE YEAR. HIGHEST ACTIVITY IN WPCNR HISTORY.White PlainsCitizeNetReporter lifted its worldwide visits from unique visitors to wpcnr.com to 8,324,077,a 1,306,419 increase in visits in one year from 7,017,658 visits to the site last year which covers White Plains and Westchester County. The 8,324,077 visits were made by 2,005,611 unique visitors who visited wpcnr an average of 3 visits a day. ON JULY 20- -2026 visitors have accessed wpcnr and made 3,072 visits an average of 1.6 visits. In the last week 33,495 individual vistors made 54,458 visits, averaging 1.6 visits. In the last month, 152,940 visitors recorded 229,338 visits (1.5 visits)

Hail Zuri Full of Grace! Sister Zuri takes you to Heaven in WBT’s Sister Act Resurrection

Posted on April 13, 2018 by John Bailey

Zuri Washington is Delores Van Cartier on her way to Heaven in Sister Act. All Photos Courtesy Westchester Broadway Theatre by John Vecchiolla

WPCNR STAGE DOOR. First Rushes Theatre Review by John F. Bailey. April 13, 2018:

I just love young talent with all the future before them, just out there– seizing it!

They just take something old and dated wrangle it make it their own and SO new at the same time. The right star can make it shine. Zuri Washington is that performer.

Zuri Washington, takes over the Whoopi Goldberg role as Delores Van Cartier a disco singer on the run, hiding in a convent. She stars in the musical Sister Act based on the old Touchstone movie.She takes WBT audience higher and higher beating on your disco soul with a big bass drum.

Her lift-you-to-the sky crystal stained glass voice never quits and just fills the place with light that shivers the soul. I’d love to hear her sing in a real cathedral!

She Out-Dianas Ross, matches Donna Summer,and “Audra’s” McDonald. But she’s Zuri, Zip, Zing and Ginger—A new Diva for All Seasons. Lookout Broadway here she comes!

You can see her now and the rest of her Nuns who are knockout comics, mimics and shimmyettes like My Sister Kate. Look for the little redheaded nun’s (Lani Corson, far right) great solos of The Life I Never Led while delivering completely believable character growth from timid to total confidence.

The Monsignor O’Hara (played over the top by Ken Jennings) is a hilarious Catholic evangelist emcee especially when hosting the “Resurrection Fund” campaign (I loved that bit).

Mary Jo McConnell is the Mother Superior above is the Perfect Foil with attitude and correctitude with great tension and chemistry with Ms. Washington.

Sister Act has no overture. The disco beat starts deep grabs you deep with the pitch perfect Hustle parishioners in the WBT Band led by Bob Bray, with Jim Bowen, James Mack, Jordan Janez, Brian Uhl, Steven Bleifess, Wayne Teissa throbbing with that gotta-move-and-flow feeling bringing it all back.

Out struts and shimmies Ms. Washington singing Fabulous Baby about being bold and fabulous and a goddess and a star and boom! You’re back in Studio 54, the Limelight and those disco palaces of the 80s as she dances in her manager’s night club hoping for a big break.

When she stumbles on her manager (the menacing Philip Michael Baskerville) rubbing out a police informant. She has to go on the lam where an old school friend Eddie Souther, played engagingly by Danny Wilfred, gets an idea he can hide her in Queen of Angels convent.

Ms. Washington has The Bronx style and attitude and confidence that just is not going to work in Mother Superior’s tight ship of nuns. Smoking, taking two nun pals to a bar. Well, Zuri’s Delores Van Cartier is stirring up the nuns. Mother Superior assigns her to the choir because of her musical talent.

The nuns inform Delores in the very cute song, It’s Good to Be A Nun. But can’t take the diva out of the new nun.

Ms Washington takes the very dainty choir of nuns and sings you’ve got to Raise Your Voice, culminating in the signature song of the show Take Me to Heaven, (I wanted to take Brenda Starr sitting next to me out on the dance floor and give her a spin.)

Take Me to Heaven is a must-see-number. Never have I seen a WBT ensemble enjoy a number so much, work so hard, and dance out to the edge of the audience. All the steps, the gowns (habits in red, fabulous swank “habits with habadashery.”) Admiration to the former disco queen who put these threads together and cornered the spangles exchange,(Heather Carey)

The newest sound of the Queen of Angels Choir around coming out of the Queen of Angels church, which is in danger of being sold, starts to fill up the pews.

The show builds in Act II, with tense momentum. Monsignor O’Hara romps about in a red and white pastor’s robes with a microphone in between versions of Sunday Morning Fever performed by Zuri and the discoing nuns. Mass was never like this!

However a television appearance of the swinging nuns alerts the hoods looking for Delores where she is. They come to get Delores in the church and the nuns protect Delores. How does it all end up? Smashingly!

Special kudos to all the cohesive high energy actors, especially to the redheaded nun in the third row in the choir, Lani Corson (Sister Mary Robert) who does terrific solos on The Life I Never Led with her full rousing rising voice with emotional edge that carves out the essence of yearning, regret and resolve.

Donna Drake directed and choreographed the works and never has disco dancing entertained as strongly as this one here. Ms. Drake she made the show move—like Dancing With the Stars, ladies and gentlemen. Hand me down my white tuxedo, next week I’m coming back for more.

Jayson Elliot as Joey is hysterical in his come-on-to-women moves in act II as are his buddies Corben Williams as TJ and Jason Long as Pablo, who keep the audience chuckling at their long ago popular disco postures. You’ll remember some of these guys’ moves, guys, much to your embarrassment.

So Father John recommends you say a dozen Hail Zuri’s and see this show.

You’ll boogie all night after this mass. The only extravagance missing is communion at intermission.

Zuri Washington was so thrilled after the final number, as the applause rained down on the performers, she stretched out both her arms saying, (to the audience),

“You guys are fabulous. Just fabulous.”

That’s because she was. And is. And all the other performers, too.

Sister Act plays the WBT through July 1. For box office information go to www.BroadwayTheatre.com or call (914) 592-2268.

Masterworks with Commentary in Between the Notes at Library, April 22

Posted on April 12, 2018 by John Bailey

You won’t want to miss pianists Matthew Harrison and Vlada Yaneva who will perform on Sunday, April 22 at 2:00 p.m. in the Library Auditorium. Harrison and Yaneva—who performed here several years ago—have brought Masterwork Conversations to audiences since their inaugural Chopin series in 2010.

Their performances have taken them from stages in Europe to Carnegie Hall to the airwaves of WQXR. This open conversation recital format has brought new musical insight and enjoyment to audiences of every age and experience. In 2015, they released their debut CD, The Imagination of the Folk.

Their program on the 22nd is called “A Night in the Garden of Spain” and will feature a selection of Spanish composers, including Manuel de Falla, as well as composers such as Ravel and Debussy who were inspired by Spain. Join us for what will certainly be a delightful musical siesta.

“A Night in the Garden of Spain” is supported by the Friends of the White Plains Library.

200 Gather at Garden of Remembrance on Yom Hashoah Holocaust Commemoration

Posted on April 12, 2018 by John Bailey

Rememberers gathered at the Garden of Remembrance today in tribute and commemoration of the 6 million who died in the Holocaust from 1933 to 1945 under Nazi Germany in vicious acts of violence and in deliberate premedidated extermination/concentration camps in Europe.

Holocaust Survivor Agnes Vertes noted that fewer and fewer survivors of the Holocaust remain with us each year, closing her talk charging those in attendance it is their mission to never forget the Holocaust and to always remember it.

The remembrance program was highlighted by a procession of rescued Torahs, such as the one shown in the center of this picture above, as its bearer left the ceremony.

At the closing of the somber ceremony, Cantor Leslie Friedlander and Fredda Mendelson of Kol Hazzanim-The Cantors of Westchester performed the following evocative, haunting close. WPCNR shares it with you on this link:

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Union Cleaners Lose Jobs in Favor of Non-Union Workers in WP Downtown. Union Says Action Violates County Law

Posted on April 12, 2018 by John Bailey

Members and supporters of 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union protesting the firing of 7 of their union members by Caspi Development, owners of the building in the background, adjacent City Hall today in White Plains.

WPCNR MAIN STREET JOURNAL. From the Service Employees International Union with WPCNR Interview. April 12, 2018.Updated 9:45 A.M.

Seven union office cleaners were given notice within the last two weeks, when Caspi Development, owners of 235-234 Main Street, the building adjacent White Plains City Hall, changed cleaning contractors without notice.

Today the union held a protest on Main Street in front of City Hall. Tim McGrath, Field Supervisor for the Hudson Valley Region for 32BJ SEIU told WPCNR what Caspi did and what SEIU is going to do next in this WPCNR video at this link

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The union workers dismissed were making $15 an hour, plus health and vacation benets, and were dismissed in favor of Integrated Building Management workers whom Caspi would be paying less and were non-union, according to Frank Soults, a spokesperson for the SEIU 32BJ union.

Soults told WPCNR this morning the 32BJ SEIU had filed two complaints with the National Labor Relations Board on Monday of this week.

When the cleaners reported to work on Monday, April 2, the union says a new company was operating at their building site, and they were told they could not apply for their old jobs because they belonged to a union. The 32BJ SEIU states the action by the new company violates Westchester County’s Displaced Service Employee Protection Law.

The union held a protest today at 12:15 P.M. in front of 234-235 Main Street to demand the workers be reinstated and rehired by the new company, International Building Management, not necessarily at the same wage. “We want to negotiate with them,” Soults said.

Members of the Communication Workers of America joined the protest, as well as Assemblyman David Buchwald.

Soults said Caspi Development by law should have given the dismissed employees 60 says notice according to the Westchester County Displaced Service employee Protection Law, signed by former County Executive Robert Astorino after it had passed the County Board of Legislators, 16-0.

Soults said Westchester County could choose to take some kind of legal action under their (the county’s)own law.

“This is not the way to treat the people who have been cleaning this building for years,” Lenore Friedlaender, Assistant to the President of 32BJ SEIU, the workers’ union. “The owner not only violated county law, he has displaced longstanding and productive members of the local workforce and upset good relations with building tenants. Caspi Development can surely afford to behave decently. We are very grateful to elected officials and community members who are joining us to ask Caspi to do the right thing and bring these committed workers back on the job by requiring its contractor to comply with the law and hire these workers back.”

According to the Westchester County Displaced Service Employee Protection Law:

Under the DSEPL, a successor employer of building service employees is required to extend a written offer of employment to the predecessor employer’s incumbent employees and retain such employees for a period of 60 days, subject to the existence of just cause or a change in the number of employees needed to perform the applicable work.

At the conclusion of the 60-day period, the just cause protection no longer applies, and any continued employment shall be under the successor employer’s policies and applicable law.

In order to facilitate the successor employer’s retention obligations, the DSEPL requires that the awarding authority to provide certain notifications to the successor employer, affected employees and any collective bargaining representative at least 15 days before terminating any service contract.

The DSEPL is enforced through a private right of action in New York Supreme Court for employees who have been discharged or not retained in violation of the law.

The court may order injunctive relief, as well as a damage award that includes back pay, cost of benefits the successor employer would have incurred if it had complied with the law, attorneys’ fees and costs, and any damages caused by the awarding authority’s failure to comply with its obligations.