qboro: Arts, Culture & Living

A few years ago, Jeff Orlick made frequent trips to a Jackson Heights momo shop — but he wasn’t there just for the popular Himalayan street food. “I thought the girl behind the counter was cute,” Orlick said. “So, I went there as a way to get to know her.”

Although a romance with the momo worker didn’t blossom, Orlick’s admiration for the South Asian dumpling stayed with him. He’s the founder and main organizer of the Jackson Heights Momo Crawl, an annual event that’s brought hundreds of foodies to western Queens to sample the best momos in New York City.

He’s played with the best of them, from Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland to Maria Callas and Luciano Pavarotti.

And now, Frank Donaruma is bringing his French horn to a concert at Flushing Town Hall, for one performance only, on Oct. 13 at 5 p.m. And, to top it all, it’s free, with no reservations necessary.

Music can often change how a person feels or sees the world — a fact Bayside frontman Anthony Raneri knows well. A musician, he adds, has a responsibility to use the power he has to be inside someone’s head and shape the listener’s outlook on all aspects of life — from love to coping with childhood difficulties.

For Raneri, he perhaps has not used that power in the best way over the past few years. “I was making music for sad people, and it would just make them even sadder,” he said in a recent interview.

Step inside Long Island City’s Secret Theatre between now and Oct. 6 and you will find yourself completely immersed in the world of Jonathan Larson’s “Rent,” the groundbreaking musical that depicts life in New York City in the early 1990s, when many of the city’s denizens were struggling for their very survival.

Although director Lauren Elder, in a note in the program, describes the show as “a period piece,” in many ways it remains as relevant today as it was when it originally burst upon the theatrical scene nearly a quarter of a century ago.

Without knowing the artists are Korean-American immigrants, the observer tries to find a common theme to each of the eclectic mix of artwork in the “Threads and Pigments” that opened on Sept. 13 at Flushing Town Hall. Threads and patchworked materials seem to emerge, sidetracked by a few paintings of landscapes and oceans, and huge three-dimensional structures mounted on a wall. But they are all expressions of the artists’ past lives in Korea and their present experiences in America.

Artist Dong Kyu Kim’s clever patchwork of faded receipts in “Shape of Memories #3” is an expression of his desire to record his every consumer purchase in America as a way to contrast the poverty he endured living in his hometown in Korea. A fashion designer of young men’s clothing, Kim also saw his observances of the demise of brick-and-mortar businesses inspire him to create “Everything Must Go,” a patchwork of Fed Ex and USPS packaging used to ship goods.

It’s two weeks before the big day, the opening performance in this season’s Twilight Concert Series by the Con Brio Ensemble.

The quartet that will be playing together at The Church-In-The-Gardens in Forest Hills on Sept. 22 is gathered at the home of the ensemble’s co-founder, Diana Mittler-Battipaglia, for an afternoon rehearsal. Their shoes are off, they’re seated comfortably around the piano, respective instruments at hand, and they’re ready to escape into their musical world.

Hospitality is coming to a museum near you.

Not that museums aren’t friendly already. But some can be a little intimidating — and others downright expensive.

Jethro Tull lead vocalist and flautist Ian Anderson hopes his upcoming show at Forest Hills Stadium is a better experience than the band’s 1976 concert at Shea Stadium.

Anderson, who was featured with guitarists Robin Trower and Rory Gallagher that day, remembers the constant barrage of planes from LaGuardia interrupting with noise. And he was playing in the middle of the field, which was a long way from the fans to begin with.

Unless you’re growing your vegetables yourself, you’d be hard-pressed to get them from a more local source than Hellgate Farm. Based in Astoria and Long Island City, the group offers its produce — along with fruit, honey, ketchup and four different hot sauces to spice things up with — every Saturday at Socrates Sculpture Park’s farmers market.

“It’s a perfect niche for us,” said Hellgate Farm founder Rob McGrath. “We do all small-scale farming, we do rooftop farming.”