DELRAY BEACH — A holiday music tradition that began in Australia makes its debut Saturday in Old School Square when three major pop performers of the 1970s and 1980s will headline an outdoor concert.
The Little River Band (Cool Change, Reminiscing), Stephen Bishop (On and On) and Kim Carnes (Bette Davis Eyes) will perform songs of the season as well as other hits in the concert, called Carols by Candlelight. The musicians will be joined by singer-songwriter Greg Barnhill for the 7 p.m. event, which will end in the lighting of 2,000 candles.
Proceeds from the concert, which costs $15 for adults and $5 for students, will benefit children’s programs in Delray Beach. For more information, call 243-7922 or visit oldschoolsquare.org.
Maltz opens $30M drive to become major regional
JUPITER — The Maltz Jupiter Theatre has launched a fundraising drive that seeks to expand the playhouse into a major regional theater.
“We believe the Maltz Jupiter Theatre can not only be the best regional theater in Florida, but one of the best regional theaters in the nation,” said Andrew Kato, Maltz chief executive and producing artistic director, when plans were announced Oct. 24.
The proposed expansion, which would cost between $25 million and $30 million, would make the theater’s stage 10 feet deeper and 6 feet wider on either side, which would allow the venue to host pre-Broadway and national tours. Also coming would be a second performance space for new material, a third-floor rehearsal studio and a doubling in size of the theater’s Goldner Conservatory of Performing Arts.
Officials hope to have the fundraising complete by the end of the 2017-18 season, and construction finished by November 2019. The project’s designer is the Delray Beach-based firm of Currie Sowards Aguila Architects. An interactive display featuring videos and a detailed model of the expansion is now on view in the theater’s lobby.
Winner of numerous Carbonell Awards, the theater recently completed a $2.5 million expansion and renovation and has secured a $10 million endowment. Annual subscriptions at the 617-seat theater have topped 7,700, and attendance has exceeded 100,000 patrons. Information and donation opportunities can be found at www.jupitertheatre.org/believe.
Festival of the Arts Boca announces performers, writers
BOCA RATON — Jazz masters, young prodigies and a full opera will be part of the musical offerings at the Festival of the Arts Boca this season.
The festival, scheduled for March 2-12 at Mizner Park, also will feature author talks from Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad) on March 2; New Yorker comics editor Bob Mankoff on March 4 and physicist Brian Greene (The Elegant Universe) on March 7; and historian Jon Meacham will discuss the American presidency March 6.
Giacomo Puccini’s perennially popular La Bohème will be presented March 4 in a semi-staged production from Chatham Opera featuring a cast of younger singers, and on March 11, the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra based at the University of Miami will accompany a showing of the 1964 comedy The Pink Panther, which was scored by Mancini.
Jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis performs with The Symphonia Boca Raton on March 3 in music by John Williams, while teenage pianists Joey Alexander and Daniela Liebman share the Mizner Park stage March 5. Brazilian pop master Sergio Mendes is in concert March 12, and on March 10, the young pianist Daniel Hsu solos in the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto on a program that features a mystery violinist (name TBA in January) in the Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1.
Tickets are available by calling 571-2787 or visiting www.festivaloftheartsboca.org.