For the past 25 summers, local musicians have come together in three different parts of Palm Beach County for a four-week series of 12 concerts of chamber music, much of it unusual and rarely heard, though always worthy. The Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, which debuted in 1992 at the Duncan Theatre, returns for another summer starting tomorrow night at the Persson … [Read more...]
Miami Music Festival’s fourth season includes Heggie opera, orchestral bash for Fourth
Starting tonight, the Miami Music Festival begins presenting productions from its Opera Institute, opening with Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. The opera repeats Saturday and alternates Friday night and Sunday afternoon with Leos Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen. Both operas will be presented at the festival’s home base at Barry University in Miami Shores, but … [Read more...]
Mainly Mozart closes with evocative, engaging ‘Jewish Bride’
For the past four years, the Mainly Mozart Festival in Coral Gables has ended its summer concerts of chamber music with a multimedia, multidisciplinary finale that includes video, guest artists and world premiere dances choreographed by a member of the Miami City Ballet. For as ambitious as that sounds, it’s a workable formula. Audiences show up in large numbers on a late … [Read more...]
Eloquent Debussy stands out in pianist Salov’s recital
By Dennis D. Rooney A Ukrainian native now residing in Montréal, Québec, Serhiy Salov’s shoulder-length hair and all-black dress bore more than a casual resemblance to Franz Liszt. But that virtuoso pianist composer’s music was not on the program of Mozart and Debussy that Salov played at the Mainly Mozart Festival XXIV on June 11 at the Alhambra Ballroom in Coral Gables’s … [Read more...]
Morikami to teach traditional Japanese instruments at summer camp
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...]
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...]
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...]
Heart’s Ann Wilson brings solo show to Fort Lauderdale, Fort Pierce
Ann Wilson’s soaring soprano was one of the voices that defined rock music through the 1970s, as her Seattle-spawned band Heart pre-dated that city’s heralded grunge movement by nearly two decades. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, Heart’s ’70s hits included “Crazy On You,?” “Magic Man,” “Barracuda,” “Heartless,” “Dog & Butterfly,” and “Straight On,” … [Read more...]
10-piano tribute to Rand impressive but underwhelming
Interpreting a piece of writing through music without going through the medium of the theater is a tricky thing to do: How do you get across what the book said to you? And maybe it’s even trickier if you try to express it with 10 pianos. Then again, maybe not. At the New World Center on May 13, pianist and entrepreneur Mia Vassilev and nine of her fellow Miami Piano … [Read more...]
New Fort Lauderdale opera company launches Saturday
By Robert Croan It isn’t every day that three friends get together over a glass of wine and decide to start a new opera company in Broward County. Even less often do they go through with the project, apply for funding and get some excellent young singers to follow through with them. But that’s what happened one evening in the summer of 2016, when Jack Gardner, a … [Read more...]