It’s no secret that music education in the public schools is not what it was decades ago, when there was a middlebrow consensus that it was a good thing for an educated person to know the rudiments of music and major figures of the Western classical tradition. In our time, there are few concerts anymore that are not also educational, in which presenters and performers make … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2017
For writers Greene and Egan, time is of the essence
Time weighs heavily on the mind of both theoretical physicist Brian Greene and Pulitzer-prize winning author Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad. Both writers are part of the Author & Ideas Program at this year’s Festival of the Arts Boca, which runs from March 2-12 in Mizner Park. For Greene, author of The Elegant Universe and Icarus at the Edge of … [Read more...]
Festival of the Arts Boca set to open 11th edition
The annual Festival of the Arts Boca, now in its 11th season, returns to Mizner Park from March 2-12, with musical performances and author discussions at the Mizner Park Amphitheater and the Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center. “We are so excited to present the 2017 Festival of the Arts Boca season and we think the audience will be, too,” said Charlie Siemon, co-founder and … [Read more...]
BodyTraffic brings another challenging program to Duncan
Two years ago, in a fresh and gutsy program, the audiences at the Duncan Theatre in Lake Worth got to experience BodyTraffic, an upwardly-mobile contemporary dance company that hails from Los Angeles. Earlier this month, the company returned and presented a program of new works by different choreographers that was perhaps less fresh but equally gutsy. Founded in 2007, … [Read more...]
Nielsen symphony makes best impression at South Florida Symphony
By Dennis D. Rooney It was 85 degrees on Feb. 19 when I arrived at the FAU campus and entered the Student Union that houses Kaye Auditorium, a detail meaningful only on account of the first work on the ambitious program of the South Florida Symphony that I was there to hear: A suite from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Snegourochka (The Snow Maiden). An odd juxtaposition in South … [Read more...]
Chen’s brilliant Mendelssohn recalls Menuhin
One hundred and five musicians make up the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, or The Bavarian State Philharmonic. Calling itself a touring orchestra, it covers a wide swath of South Germany with concerts, and on Feb. 12 it stopped in at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach. The Bamberg did not downsize for the opening Don Giovanni overture of Mozart and consequently instead of … [Read more...]
Oscar predictions: A whole lotta ‘La La Land’
The preliminary awards – you know, the Golden Globes, the SAG awards, the BAFTAs, etc. – have narrowed the field for Sunday evening’s 89th annual Academy Awards, making the job of prognosticator much easier. In fact, the Las Vegas oddsmakers are calling most of the top categories to be statistical runaways. Still, nothing is ever completely sure at the Oscars, though this … [Read more...]
FAU’s ‘Spitfire Grill’ finds winning balm in Gilead
By Dale King The Spitfire Grill, the lively contemporary musical that completes its two-weekend run at the Studio One Theatre on the campus of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton on Sunday, is not a humorous show, despite the up-tempo, often knee-slapping rhythm of its score and an aw-shucks ending that drops on the audience like the plummeting temperature of a … [Read more...]
Berlioz’s epic take on ‘Romeo’ set for weekend at Lynn
Sitting at a table in a new Boca Raton diner, Guillermo Figueroa opens his cloth-bound, dark blue Bärenreiter edition of the music and points to a page, marked with various colored pencils. The score he’s pointing to, explaining the perils of this or that passage, is the playbook for this weekend, when the violinist and conductor will lead the Lynn Philharmonia, the Master … [Read more...]
Tharp evening needed more highlights of her work
I imagine that I was not the only one who went to the Kravis Center to see the Twyla Tharp 50th Anniversary Tour show on Feb. 17 with the expectation that I would see an array — a sampler — of her best hits. But instead, there were just two works on the program: Preludes and Fugues, which was created especially for the tour, and Nine Sinatra Songs (1982) which is probably … [Read more...]