Since the opening of Japan to the West in 1868, the residents of that island nation arguably have sought more often to achieve excellence in Western styles of music instead of their own indigenous sonic heritage. But native Japanese music remains an important part of the culture, and this month, the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in western Delray Beach will bring it … [Read more...]
Archives for June 2017
In Detroit, Wynton Marsalis’s best piece
DETROIT — The compositions of Wynton Marsalis now extend to a substantial catalog in jazz and classical genres that includes many works for jazz ensembles, oratorios (Blood on the Fields, All Rise), a string quartet, sacred works (In This House, The Abyssinian Mass), numerous film and dance scores and four symphonies. This is a hugely impressive accomplishment, and the bulk … [Read more...]
Godden ballet intrigues at Harid’s season closer
Choreographer Mark Godden created his ballet Minor Threat, set to the first two movements of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20, some 20 years ago for Canada’s Alberta Ballet, but in a performance May 28 in Boca Raton, this allegory of courtship, love and birth came off with newly minted freshness. This well-designed modern ballet with a clever and moving punchline was the … [Read more...]
At 12, Gardens’s Ben Krieger already a stage veteran
What had you accomplished by the age of 12? Worked a paper route? Opened and run a lemonade stand? Ben Krieger of Palm Beach Gardens, 12, is already a veteran stage performer, having appeared in three national tours of Broadway shows. This Tuesday night, when he opens in Finding Neverland at the Broward Center, he will have notched some 250 performances in the past two … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 9-11
Music: The Mainly Mozart Festival in Coral Gables, which last month introduced audiences to violinist Liana Gourdjia, on Sunday welcomes the Ukrainian-born Canadian pianist Serhiy Salov in a program of two Mozart sonatas and the Fantasy in D minor, along with Debussy’s Des pas sur la neige and Salov’s own arrangement of Nocturnes. If that wasn’t enough, Salov also will perform … [Read more...]
Entertaining ‘Georgia McBride’ anything but a drag
Measured by the usual hard-hitting fare at GableStage, Matthew Lopez’s The Legend of Georgia McBride isn’t much of a play, but it does have the makings of one hell of a drag show. Sure, you could argue that the 90-minute evening is a celebration of the tawdry lower depths of show business and a look at how one unlikely cross-dresser gets in touch with his feminine side, but … [Read more...]
Core Ensemble explores gender, mystery of ‘Mona Lisa’
Write about the Mona Lisa, and chances are some variation of the word “enigma” will be pulled out of your authorial toolbox. Although Leonardo da Vinci probably didn’t mean to make Lisa del Giocondo (née Gherardini) mysterious when he painted the cloth merchant’s wife in 1503, it has always struck viewers that way, and no doubt that has helped encourage speculation about who … [Read more...]
Tony predictions: ‘Evan Hansen,’ ‘Dolly!’ likely to win big
Without a blockbuster hit like Hamilton to sweep the Tony Awards (broadcast this Sunday evening on CBS-TV, beginning at 8 p.m.), predicting this season’s winners is substantially more difficult. It was a year of many new musicals, but look for the awards to be split largely between Dear Evan Hansen and the hot-ticket revival of Hello, Dolly! In plays, the season was stronger … [Read more...]
‘It Comes at Night’ gives paranoia a grim, powerful thrust
In most genres, "it" is a benign pronoun. In horror, it is a manifestation of the indescribable — your worst nightmares incarnate. In Stephen King’s It, which will finally lurk onto the big screen in September, the title being is a clownlike manifestation of the inner demons of childhood. Larry Cohen’s cult curio It’s Alive! interpreted the pronoun more directly: That’s the … [Read more...]
Young writer’s stories of Florida raise her profile
Recently, Sarah Gerard started a new job at Books Are Magic, a Brooklyn bookstore owned by novelist Emma Straub. That was about the same time Gerard began touring in support of her second book, an acclaimed collection of essays titled Sunshine State. Gerard’s first book, the novel Binary Star, was a success, too, with rapturous reviews in The New York Times, and elsewhere, … [Read more...]