By Myles Ludwig Consider time. Time, as in “Hey kids, what time is it?” If you are part of my generation, you most certainly know the answer to that question. It was lodged in our collective frontal lobes. Why, its Howdy Doody time, of course: 5:30 p.m. on Monday-Friday everywhere in our East Coast world. Glowing twilight, descending darkness, time to dismount and park our … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2014
A wonderful night of Vivaldi from Europa Galante at Four Arts
The craze for the “early music” of the 17th and 18th centuries began with Arnold Dolmetsch in 1925. He was a recorder maker who started the Haslemere Early Music Festival in England, laying the foundation for the widespread interest that caught the public imagination. In America, recorder player Bernard Krainis linked up with musicologist Noah Greenberg to form New York Pro … [Read more...]
Humor, showmanship make for delight with Manasse, Nakamatsu
When two brilliant first-prize winners get together to form a duo, what you get is brilliant music making. Jon Manasse, principal clarinet of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, won top prize in Munich’s International competition for clarinet, and pianist Jon Nakamatsu won the coveted gold medal in the 1997 Van Cliburn International … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Feb. 21-23
Theater: The Wick Theatre in Boca Raton is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: You never know what you’re going to get. In its brief three-production history, the company has served up extremes of quality and lack of quality, but at least there are more of the former so far. So our fingers remain crossed for the Wick this weekend as it opens with David Yazbek’s sly, … [Read more...]
PB Opera turns to the timeless magic of Rossini’s ‘Barber’
Scratch the surface of a typical Rossini scholar you happen to meet and he or she will tell you that the Italian composer’s greatest contribution to the art of opera was in his serious works. It was there, the scholar will say, in works such as Elisabetta, Semiramide, Tancredi, Otello and Guillaume Tell, that Gioachino Rossini blazed a path that would be followed to great … [Read more...]
At Studio 18, a look at the secrets we keep, and don’t
By Colleen Dougher A Plexiglas house designed to hold secrets, a self-portrait based on a 30-year-old photograph, a powerful 20-chair installation, big drawings comprised of handwritten fears, insecurities and affirmations and a found mannequin with a hidden but beautiful world inside. These are among the treasures that can be found when Which Way Out: Personal Thoughts … [Read more...]
Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam to have Florida homecoming, of sorts
By Hilary Saunders Miamians can be a bit possessive. We like to claim things, and sometimes people, as our own when they give our city a better reputation, even if we’ve only adopted them. Pastelitos and cafecitos? Ours now. Lebron James and Dwayne Wade brought home trophies, so they are obviously ours. By this logic, then, Iron & Wine is a little bit ours, too. Frontman … [Read more...]
In the news: PB Opera plans world premiere in 2015; changes at Boca Museum, Norton Gardens
For the first time in its 53-year history, Palm Beach Opera next season will present a world premiere of an American opera. Enemies, A Love Story, with music by Ben Moore and a libretto by Nahma Sandrow, and based on the novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer, was seen in abridged workshop form in the company’s One Opera in One Hour series last season. Set in New York in 1948, it … [Read more...]
Violinist Kutik, conductor Cooper impressive at Symphonia
The young Russian-American violinist Yevgeny Kutik was the able soloist Feb. 9 in a concert by The Symphonia Boca Raton, under the guest baton of West Virginia Symphony Orchestra director Grant Cooper. Kutik was the soloist in a work violinists know better than audiences do: the Concerto No. 22 (in A minor) of the Italian violinist and opera conductor Giovanni Battista Viotti … [Read more...]
Keigwin show’s best energy comes at the end
By Tara Mitton Catao Six dancers, one choreographer and one very small stage — it is a lot like being under a microscope and it is all very intimate. One can’t get away with much. Every detail counts. Every transition and theatrical expression (or lack of) registers. Therefore, performing in a small theater is not a casual thing. So when a New York-based modern dance company … [Read more...]