For 14 summers now, René Reder has joined her colleagues in the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival as they transform a South Florida July into a sonic oasis. And the violist wouldn’t have it any other way. “It’s some of the most satisfying playing of my life,” said Reder, whose fulltime job is as a member of the viola section in the Alabama Symphony in Birmingham. “I can’t … [Read more...]
Archives for June 2015
Weekend arts picks: June 26-28
Music: Dean Peterson, a fine operatic bass with world-class credits (Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, etc.) whose work is familiar to South Florida audiences — most recently as Bluebeard in Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle for his new Opera Fusion company — is the subject of a fundraiser this Sunday at First Presbyterian Church in … [Read more...]
Theatre roundup: ‘Daniel’s Husband,’ ‘Summer Shorts 2015’
Daniel and Mitchell are a successful architect and a novelist who have lived comfortably and happily in a committed relationship for the past seven years. They are the very picture of an ideal gay couple, so what could possibly go wrong for them? From the opening scene of Daniel’s Husband, the latest world premiere by South Florida’s most prolific and acclaimed playwright, … [Read more...]
Community theater: ‘Sisters of Swing’ brings Andrews Sisters back, memorably
By Dale King Sisters of Swing, the musical biography of the famed Andrews Sisters now playing at the Broward Stage Door Theatre, is an entertaining bit of harmonious history, a tuneful testament to how three sisters from Minnesota broke free from the pack of mid-20th century vocal groups to create an unforgettable sound that captured the heart of a nation. The show wraps 20 … [Read more...]
‘A Little Chaos’ is all wood and no flowers
So far, Alan Rickman’s A Little Chaos is the year’s best candidate for Most Misleading Movie Title. Would that even a little chaos infringe on this calcified costume romance about nothing much more than the design of a water cascade and outdoor ballroom in the Gardens of Versailles in 17th-century France. This movie is what happens when the irrepressible thrills of modernist … [Read more...]
Dante-Liszt presentation ends Mainly Mozart in remarkable style
The Mainly Mozart Festival closed its 22nd season Sunday afternoon with a remarkably ambitious presentation that combined a medieval classic of world literature with a large work of Romanticism, and along the way featured a children’s chorus and a brand-new ballet. For sheer guts and imagination, the festival’s mounting of Franz Liszt’s Dante Symphony in a two-piano … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ ‘Casa Valentina’
Slow Burn Theatre forged its reputation producing offbeat, underappreciated musicals, like Bat Boy, Urinetown and Parade. Whether it is a switch of missions or simply a pause, the Boca Raton troupe recently served up the Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning Rent and is now having fun with the very entertaining Little Shop of Horrors — the 1982 hit that remains the most … [Read more...]
Dante, Liszt anchor multimedia finale for Mainly Mozart Festival
For the Romantics, the medieval Italian writer Dante Alighieri loomed large, nowhere more so than in his Divine Comedy. Manuscript copies of the first part of this vast three-part poem, Inferno, became available in 1314, or just over 700 years ago, and quickly attracted commentary and interest. By the time Franz Liszt began working on a symphonic interpretation of the poem in … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 19-21
Theater: Twenty years ago, Miami’s City Theatre began an annual festival of one-act plays, roughly 10 minutes in length. Over time, Summer Shorts has grown into one of the region’s most anticipated stage institutions. This year’s edition seems purposely downsized – only nine plays, performed by a versatile cast of six – but for once there is not a clunker in the bunch, either … [Read more...]
Wonderful ‘Inside Out’ another original triumph for Pixar
Most of us don’t spend our days thinking of where our thoughts come from, or how we think, or why we think. Pete Docter, the director of the Pixar masterpiece Up, isn’t like most of us. In his latest film, Inside Out, arguably the most existential title in the luminous Pixar canon, he has gone beyond thinking about the inner workings of the brain. He’s conceived an elaborate … [Read more...]