Jazz trumpet legend Arturo Sandoval and popular historian Doris Kearns Goodwin will be among the guests for this year’s Festival of the Arts Boca, which will return for an eighth season to the Mizner Park Amphitheatre.
Festival officials unveiled the lineup Friday night in a media event that included a screening of I Am Not a Rock Star, a documentary by Bobbi Jo Hart that chronicles eight years in the life of Marika Bournaki, a French-Canadian pianist now completing her master’s at the Juilliard School in New York. Bournaki followed the screening with a performance of works by Schumann (Fassingschwank aus Wien) and Poulenc (Trois Novelettes).
Sandoval will appear March 8 in a tribute to the bebop legend Dizzy Gillespie. He’ll be accompanied by the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra, which is based at the University of Miami. Mancini’s daughter, Monica, also will appear.
The festival’s closing night March 15 will feature the Florida premiere of Forte, an operatic tenor trio of Josh Page, Sean Panikkar and Fernando Varela, who met on the reality show America’s Got Talent. The Symphonia of Boca Raton will again be the house orchestra, led by returning festival conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos. They’ll perform two concerts March 6 and March 9 with two soloists yet to be named.
The festival will begin with a preview concert March 5, with Cuban pianist Jorge Luis Prats performing the Concerto No. 2 (in C minor, Op. 18) of Sergei Rachmaninov, accompanied by the Orchestra of the Americas, the El Sistema-style youth orchestra founded in 2001.
On the literary side, Goodwin will be returning for a fourth year to the Authors & Ideas programs. In her March 13 appearance, the part-time Boca Raton resident will discuss her new book, The Bully Pulpit, an examination of the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the rise of muckraking journalism.
Veteran journalist and editor James Fallows (The Atlantic) will speak at the Cultural Arts Center on the afternoon of March 8, giving a talk called “What Shall We Think About China.” Dr. Daniel Levitin, author of the best-seller, This is Your Brain on Music, will appear with Kitsopoulos on March 10 in a lecture-demonstration about the effect of music on the brain.
Comedian, actress, performance artist and playwright Anna Deavere Smith will give a talk called “Reclaiming Grace in the Face of Adversity” on March 11. Barbara Schmidt, founder of the Peaceful Mind Peaceful Life organization, will discuss Viktor Frankl’s classic Man’s Search for Meaning in an appearance March 9, and on March 12, writer Geraldine Brooks (March) will address the topic “The Art of the Historical Novel.”
Two more athletic events also will be held during the festival. The much-honored modern dance troupe, the Bill T. Jones /Arnie Zane Dance Company, will perform March 7, and on March 14, the acrobatic troupe Cirque de la Symphonie will bring aerial flyers, acrobats and contortionist, all accompanied by the festival orchestra.
For the first time, the festival is offering early-bird ticket pricing at $39 through Dec. 31, for events in the amphitheater. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 561-368-8445, 866-571-ARTS (2787), or visit: www.festivaloftheartsboca.org.
The Festival of the Arts takes place Mar. 6-15, 2014 at the Schmidt Family Centre for the Arts at the Mizner Park Amphitheater, 500 Plaza Real, and the Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center, 201 Plaza Real, Boca Raton.