With its starting dates moved up a couple weeks this season, the 12th annual Festival of the Arts Boca opens Feb. 23 with a renowned American operatic singer and closes March 4 with a classic Steven Spielberg movie accompanied by a live orchestra. Opening the festival at the Mizner Park Amphitheater will be soprano Kathleen Battle, a five-time Grammy Award winner who will … [Read more...]
Archives for February 2018
SNL’s G.E. Smith to lead Boca benefit to promote fair pay for musicians
Any concert featuring guitarist and former Saturday Night Live musical director G.E. Smith — with an all-star band of former Johnny Winter vocalist Jay Stollman, British blues guitar and vocal icon Matt Schofield, Boynton Beach-based Mark Telesca on bass, and Jeff Beck bandmate Jonathan Joseph on drums — is a benefit for attendees. Throw in an opening act like singer/guitarist … [Read more...]
MCB’s Robbins retrospective sees exquisite dancing
Without a doubt, the highlight of Miami City Ballet’s performance at the Kravis Center on Feb. 3 was Jerome Robbins’ In The Night. Beautifully cast and exquisitely danced by each of the three couples, it was a standout moment of excellence in an all-Robbins program marking the centennial of the choreographer’s birth, a perfect convergence of the best of MCB and the best of … [Read more...]
St. Lawrence SQ’s Haydn, Beethoven persuasive at Four Arts
It’s not a bad idea to try to educate an audience about the music they’re going to listen to, and certainly in this year of the Leonard Bernstein centennial, that’s something many classical music groups are surely considering. An audience at the Four Arts on Sunday got a substantial helping of good-for-you information about Franz Joseph Haydn from the first violinist of the … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Feb. 10-11
Film: The Donald Ephraim Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival concludes this Sunday evening with an exceedingly clever documentary about the many Jewish composers and lyricists who wrote our most popular, secular Christmas carols. You know about Irving Berlin penning “White Christmas,” but what about Mel Tormé’s “Christmas Song” – a string of winter images including chestnuts … [Read more...]
BalletBoyz proves sensational at Duncan
If you missed seeing BalletBoyz this past weekend at the Duncan Theatre, you missed a terrific show. First off, they weren’t really boys, or even Boyz for that matter. Composed of 10 handsome men whose lean and chiseled bodies moved in a way that was completely intoxicating, this outstanding British dance company gave a stunning performance that enthralled the Duncan’s sage … [Read more...]
Fierce punch of ‘Cabaret’ still lands
It’s tawdry and sleazy, and you wouldn’t want it any other way. That describes director Sam Mendes’ take on the hard-hitting, yet melodic, leer at the rise of Nazism in pre-war Berlin, Cabaret, now playing at the Kravis Center through Sunday. Harold Prince staged the original 1966 Broadway production of the John Kander-Fred Ebb-Joe Masteroff show based on the … [Read more...]
At 91, Tony Bennett shows he can still make magic
An adoring capacity crowd greeted the artist formerly known as Anthony Dominick Benedetto on Monday as the ageless, 91-year-old vocalist confidently strode onstage at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts’ Dreyfoos Hall in West Palm Beach. And why not? As Tony Bennett, the singer has earned 20 Grammy Awards, the most recent for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for Tony … [Read more...]
Skilled Dramaworks cast energizes undemanding ‘Golden Pond’
More so than most plays that have been adapted into movies, On Golden Pond has been under the shadow of its popular 1981 film. Not only did it win Oscars for stars Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, but the father-daughter conflict at the work’s core mirrored that of Fonda and his own daughter, Jane. Perhaps that is why Palm Beach Dramaworks attempted to distance itself … [Read more...]
Sheng concerto proves admirable feature of Lynn Philharmonia concert
By Dennis D. Rooney South Florida is extremely fortunate to have the Lynn Conservatory of Music. The all-scholarship school attracts outstanding students internationally. Their studies are punctuated by participation in public concerts. The Lynn Philharmonia is the institution’s student orchestra. It offers six programs per season under the musical directorship of … [Read more...]