By Sandra Schulman Art Week Miami has wrapped for another year, leaving huge sales and visual overload in its wake. The main fair, Art Basel Miami Beach, was a stunner this year and began with a bang last Wednesday as many galleries reported selling out their entire booths within hours of the opening day. The enormous new convention center was literally unwrapping lobby … [Read more...]
Archives for December 2018
Two premieres add breadth to Seraphic Fire Christmas
Seraphic Fire’s Christmas concerts have become more than a South Florida tradition over the Miami choir’s 17 seasons. This year’s holiday program was first heard in Vermont and Connecticut at the beginning of the mnnth before the group returned home and opened a long series of Christmas concerts that will last through Dec. 16. The singers opened their Florida shows Thursday … [Read more...]
Community theater: ‘1940s Radio Hour’ proves stylish entertainment at DB Playhouse
By Dale King If you’re searching for a slice of holiday entertainment that’s sweet as a Christmas cookie, smooth as a glass of eggnog and nutty as the proverbial fruitcake, The 1940s Radio Hour is colorfully packaged and ready to regale you at the Delray Beach Playhouse through this weekend. This engaging production created by Walton Jones includes a variety of World War … [Read more...]
Character is fuel for Kessler’s new ‘House on Fire’
The gravitational pull – and push – of family is at the heart of Lyle Kessler’s comic drama, House on Fire, now receiving its world premiere at Palm Beach Dramaworks after years of in-house development. Prodigal son Colman reluctantly returns to his Fishtown Philadelphia home, a baseball memorabilia-cluttered abode, after 10 years away from his toxic father. But now the … [Read more...]
Abundant energy at Miami Art Week (part 1)
By Sandra Schulman Miami has been buzzing with world-class art events since early this week, with museums and fairs getting the jump on the action. The renovated Bass Museum held a swank brunch Tuesday morning to show off its new exhibitions. Fantastical creatures by the Haas Brothers animate two spaces on the ground floor with furry sci-fi critters that cross boundaries … [Read more...]
‘Breadcrumbs’ skillfully explores deteriorating memory
As artistic director Keith Garsson’s Primal Forces stage company returns to Boca Raton this season, he is up to his usual opaque theater tricks with the area premiere of Jennifer Haley’s two-character play, Breadcrumbs. The audience is disoriented from the start as we meet Alida (Angie Radosh), a writer struggling with her thoughts, grasping to find the words she wants … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Symphony launches season with rich menu of “pops”
By Dennis D. Rooney The term “Pops Concert” suggests to some a program in some way inferior to the program of a symphony orchestra, which unfortunately sometimes has been true when an orchestra is asked to play arrangements of music not originally for orchestra. But the term also particularly applies to orchestral music of a lighter character that is not often programmed … [Read more...]
Soloist Xu’s Beethoven stands out at SoFla Symphony opener
By Dennis D. Rooney Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, centerpiece of the opening program in the South Florida Symphony’s 21st season, was by far the most interesting performance of the evening Saturday at the Spanish River Worship Center in Boca Raton. The soloist, 28-year-old Angelo Xiang Wu, a native of Inner Mongolia, was educated at the Shanghai Conservatory and won a … [Read more...]
Soloist Bournaki, conductor Schwarz get Symphonia season off to smart start
The Canadian pianist Marika Bournaki made something of a splash back in 2012 with the release of a documentary about eight years of her young musical life as an emerging classical pianist. I am Not a Rock Star was an interesting look at the life of a talented child, and later woman, from the suburbs of Montreal who goes to Juilliard to pursue her dream of becoming a concert … [Read more...]
Daniel Chimowitz: Art fashion for a global tribe
By Sandra Schulman The wildly exotic mashup of his “walking canvases” are conjured up by artist Daniel Chimowitz from his international background. Born in London to a mother from the Tlingit tribe of the Pacific Northwest, he was raised in the DIY punk-liberal atmosphere of San Francisco, where he also absorbed his Jewish heritage. He spent summers in Europe, mostly in … [Read more...]