By Dale King
The big tent that covers the Mizner Park Amphitheater in Boca Raton is back in place.
The newly painted stage doors are prepared to open shortly to ignite nearly a dozen evenings of dancing, music and speeches by famed lecturers and authors. Food booths vending hot dogs, beer, soda and other audience snacks are ready to go.
The 16th Annual Festival of the Arts Boca will soon be open for business again, preparing to entertain thousands with various programs that run from Friday, March 4, to Sunday, March 13.
“We are very excited about being back live,” said Festival Director Joanna Marie Kaye.
Two years ago, Boca Festival managed to complete its final show – a concert by Postmodern Jukebox – on a chilly Sunday evening. “The Amphitheater was packed, and no one had any inkling of the pandemic on the horizon. Then, just two days after Festival Boca 2020 ended, lockdowns began to be imposed across the U.S. and the world,” she said.
It forced last year’s event to contract and go virtual. “We did four concerts and several lectures all over the city. We had small crowds at several venues – sponsors who came by invitation only. Otherwise, we presented programs virtually.”
As it turned out, the Festival’s 2021 cyber-presentation was “a success across the board, financially and artistically,” said Kaye.
Shows reached people all over the U.S. and the world who never knew the Festival existed. In fact, a show featuring American soprano Nadine Sierra – a former Delray Beach resident who graduated from the Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach – won a Florida Festivals and Events Award for a hybrid performance. The show was performed live to a limited audience at the Boca Raton Airport and was also live-streamed.
The 2022 Festival isn’t ignoring the ongoing COVID situation.
“We are committed to the health and safety of everyone involved in its events, from attendees to artists,” she said. All shows this year will be presented at the Amphitheater, an open-air tented venue. Kaye said social distancing will be observed, with chairs placed about four feet apart. The audience is allowed to move seats closer together for groups.
One production planned this year has already been moved to 2023 due to COVID. The Festival normally presents a classic film – usually one with familiar music – with the Symphonia Boca Raton peforming the soundtrack live.
This year, Walt Disney’s Fantasia was planned for March 11. “It was to be a big family event,” she said. “With so many wrenches thrown our way, we couldn’t pull it together.”
Kaye said the Festival will pay tribute Saturday to its co-founder, Charles Siemon, who died in September 2020.
“We’re going to present Charlie’s favorite piece of music, Aaron Copland’s ‘Fanfare for the Common Man,’” Kaye said. Dick Schmidt, head of the Schmidt Family Foundation that funds the annual festival, will also speak about Siemon’s contributions to the arts in Boca Raton.
The 16th annual Festival opens Friday at 7:30 p.m. with a show featuring two-time Oscar nominee and five-time Grammy-winning trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard. This concert is presented in partnership with FAU/Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters.
Blanchard steps in for Bobby McFerrin, who had to withdraw for health reasons. Blanchard comes to Boca with his acclaimed band, the E-Collective, and the two-time Grammy-winning Turtle Island Quartet, in a program featuring music from his new album, Absence.
Other Festival highlights include an Opera Gala Concert on Saturday, featuring soprano Larisa Martinez, who regularly appears with Andrea Bocelli, and with her husband, violinist Joshua Bell. Martinez, along with some special guests, will appear in an evening of opera favorites with the Festival Orchestra Boca (the Symphonia) under the baton of Constantine Kitsopoulos.
“A Night at the Ballet” on Sunday will feature stars from American Ballet Theatre and the New York City Ballet performing excerpts from shows such as Don Quixote, Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet.
Time for Three, a classical string trio known for straddling Americana, modern pop and classical music, returns to the Festival on Saturday, March 12, as does South Florida favorite, Latin jazz flutist Nestor Torres and his band, who close out the schedule March 13.
The Authors & Ideas lecture series features Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order, and James Stavrides, author and retired four-star U.S. Naval officer. The two will join in a discussion about global events on Monday, March 7.
The series will also feature award-winning and internationally acclaimed global warming expert and author, Bill McKibben, who will talk about climate change on March 8; NASA astronaut Donald Pettit on March 9 and novelist Luis Alberto Urrea (Nobody’s Son: Notes From an American Life) on March 10.
Tickets for the Festival range from $15 to $150 per person and are available at festivalboca.org or by calling 561-757-4762 from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. For more information visit festivalboca.org or call 561-571-5270.