Ballet Palm Beach: Let me be among the first to tell you that this is the new name of the 12-year-old Florida Classical Ballet Theatre. Artistic Director Colleen Smith announced this from the stage of the Eissey Campus Theatre at Palm Beach State College before the premiere of the company’s new ballet, Wonderland, on Saturday. It is a clever adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2013
PB Opera gives us a ‘Salome’ with a conscience
Richard Strauss’ Salome has earned its reputation for decadence not just because of its Oscar Wilde source, the time of its composition in the overripe-civilization years of the early 20th century, or its score, with its strange, unexpected sounds at every turn. It has also earned it because of the story itself, which ends in a parody of Wagnerian bliss, with a cruel but … [Read more...]
Jackie Tufford: When the objects become the art
By Colleen Dougher As a college student, artist Jackie Tufford wasn’t sure about trying to make a living as an artist. So while majoring in anthropology and psychology, she continued studying art and eventually realized that the elements that drew her to her majors were the same things she loved about art. “It just boiled down to [being] very interested in understanding … [Read more...]
Sundays: Bandeau on the run
By Myles Ludwig There are lost opportunities in life, those moments when you wonder why you were oblivious to the possibilities. There are also lost friends, lost because of some difference of opinion that seems petty in retrospect or even a bond-busting betrayal that, seen through the telescope of time, seems no worse than the unruliness of trying to catch some sleep lying … [Read more...]
Pianist Feltsman provides poetry at Four Arts
The piano is easy to play badly, and hard to play well, and when it comes to playing well, there are a wide variety of approaches that could fit comfortably under that description. But true master pianists have one great attribute that others lack, and that’s control. When a player can control every element of his or her performance so that the interpretation comes vividly to … [Read more...]
Exuberant approach enlivens Euclid Quartet concert at Duncan
For all the praise that has been lavished on Franz Schubert’s shade for the past two centuries, his skill at string quartet writing is sometimes underappreciated. The earliest of his quartets are often dismissed as half-successful attempts at imitating Beethoven and Haydn, but I’ve yet to hear any quartet of his that didn’t contain some substantial moments of freshness and … [Read more...]
The Rilke Project: Repeated encounters with Dali
In the fall of 1907, the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke returned to Paris to continue his work with the sculptor Auguste Rodin. While there, he repeatedly visited a memorial exhibit of works by the painter Paul Cézanne, who had died the year before. Those letters informed his only novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, as well as his subsequent poetic work, and have … [Read more...]
Corea and Fleck reunite for mutually enriching duo concerts
When iconic 71-year-old jazz keyboardist Chick Corea won two Grammy Awards in February, it ran his career total to 20, tied for seventh all-time. Banjoist Bela Fleck is a comparative pup in both age (54) and Grammys (with “only” 15), but he’s been nominated in more different categories — bluegrass, jazz, country, pop, classical, folk, spoken word, composition, and arranging — … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks, March 15-17
Music: Tonight at the Festival of the Arts Boca, the much-loved Ukrainian pianist Valentina Lisitsa, who’s been an area favorite for years, joins the New World Symphony for the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Op. 45) of Rachmaninov, and doubtless she’ll do an encore, too. But the concert, which will be led by Toronto Symphony director Peter Oundjian, also contains a rarely … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: Terrific ‘Millie’; sensational ‘In the Heights’
The musical theater, that uniquely American invention, has come a long way in the past 90 years. But if you yearn for the good old days when musicals made little sense and their cartoonish plots were little more than excuses to get from one production number to the next, then, boy, has the Maltz Jupiter Theatre got a show for you. It is Thoroughly Modern Millie, based on the … [Read more...]