Next week brings two favorite cultural festivals back to Palm Beach County — the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, now in its 12th year, and the Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival, which is in its 26th year. Each brings its own perspective and interpretation to two different but similar art forms — contemporary poets and their oeuvre and contemporary filmmakers and … [Read more...]
Archives for January 2016
‘Pompadour’: The hair we were makes for fun show at Broward Stage Door
By Dale King Broward Stage Door Theatre welcomes 2016 with a show featuring a jukebox-style compilation of tunes that literally share a hairline theme. All the songs were hits by vocalists who sported pompadour hairstyles or coiffures of that ilk. Pompadour, subtitled Hits, Harmony & Hairspray, is a whimsical array of songs — full tunes and portions thereof — vocalized by … [Read more...]
‘Closed Season’: Desire among the human ruins
Closed Season is a spartan movie for a spartan time. It opens in a dusty kibbutz in Israel in 1970, where a young entomologist in a pressed shirt aims to question a stoic farmer named Albert about his past. He finally does, and the next 100 minutes or so re-create that past, in a secluded farm on the border of Germany and Switzerland. It’s 1942, and Albert (Christian Friedel), … [Read more...]
Escher Quartet remarkable in Bartok, Beethoven at Four Arts
The Escher String Quartet came to the Society of the Four Arts on Sunday, and everything about its performance was spotless and perfect. So spotless and so perfect, that at times it became bloodless, even while the foursome was demonstrating an astonishing display of musical excellence that was a triumph of instrumental wizardry and interpretive subtlety. This was a bigger … [Read more...]
Cornell feels call of the ‘Wild’ in nature-inspired exhibit
By Lucy Lazarony For Wild, opening Thursday at Old School Square’s Cornell Art Museum in Delray Beach, the inspiration is the beauty and wonder of the natural world. The 12 internationally recognized artists chosen for the exhibit, which runs through April 17, were invited by curator Melanie Johanson because of “their respect for nature, their fascination with animals and … [Read more...]
Kim leads Symphonia in slightly ragged glory of Bach, Piazzolla
Last season at about this time, the Symphonia Boca Raton brought Philadelphia Orchestra concertmaster David Kim to the conductor’s podium for an evening of Baroque showpieces, and in so doing, brought a new kind of energy to the orchestra’s profile. Kim was back again for a similar style program Saturday night at the Eissey Campus Theatre at Palm Beach State College in Palm … [Read more...]
Trinity Irish Dance: A bit over the top, but hard to resist
By Tara Mitton Catao Last Saturday night, the stage of the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts brimmed with the buoyant movement of the Trinity Irish Dance Company, reflecting not only a timeless appeal but a freshly invigorating approach. The bouncing curls and lightning feet of the young dancers filled the performing space with what is now being called “progressive Irish … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Jan. 9-10, 2016
Film: Last year’s Oscar-winning director, Alejandro Iñárritu (Birdman) is back with another tour de force saga, this time far from the urban canyons of New York City. It is called The Revenant, which means “one who returns from the dead.” Indeed, fur trapper Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is mauled by a bear in the bitter cold Old West wilderness and is left for dead by his … [Read more...]
Chamber Music Society adds three-concert series at Eissey
For three seasons now, the Mar-a-Lago Club has been home to more than a presidential candidate’s ambitions. The Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach, which debuted in November 2013 in a 193-seat room at Donald Trump’s island mansion, has welcomed an impressive series of musicians to its series, many of them rising stars of the classical music world such as guitarist Miloš … [Read more...]
At 92, artist Harwood still has a passion for creation
By Lucy Lazarony At 92, artist Bernice Harwood of Boynton Beach can do it all. She’s a painter, a sculptor, a printmaker and a writer, and has spent the past year writing stories from her life. “You have to laugh,” Harwood says. “You can’t let anything get to you.” In her teens, Harwood attended Girls Commercial High School in Brooklyn, where along with her academic … [Read more...]