There are composers, and there are compositeurs, and there are Komponists, but few of them working today have anything like the buzz that surrounds young Nico Muhly. At just age 32, Muhly (whose Twitter page uses the Icelandic word for composer, tónlist), has the kind of monstrously busy, high-profile, engaged career that would be the envy of any artist, not just contemporary … [Read more...]
New western Delray theater opening with ‘Sounds of Simon’
By Dale King South Palm Beach County’s cultural arts scene is getting a new theatrical and general use venue. Gary Waldman and Jamison Troutman of Florida Theater Productions Inc. will open the Delray Square Performing Arts Center tonight with a reprise of their Sounds of Simon show, a compilation of Paul Simon songs that enjoyed a couple of runs last year at the Cultural … [Read more...]
Looking back: Booming Art Basel full of energy, surprise
When the Art Basel Miami Beach week ended Dec. 8, more than 75,000 people had visited the show in the Miami Beach Convention Center, and many of those 75,000 had visited the five main fairs that have sprung up around it: Art Miami, Design Miami, NADA, Pulse and Untitled. There was plenty of star power, too. At Art Miami’s opening Dec. 3, a horde of no less than 13,500 VIP … [Read more...]
Sundays: What made, and didn’t make, the Cloud in 2013
By Myles Ludwig The annual list of best and worst seems lame. I prefer a listicle of the Liked, UnLiked, ReLiked, Archived, Deleted, Spammed and Trashed. It seems more appropriate. As the pope noted, who am I to judge? But if not me, then who? Liked Edward Snowden Pope Francis Claire Danes Don Jon and Barbara Sugarman Michelle Obama Justin Timberlake Kate … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Dec. 20-22
Music: It’s the last weekend before Christmas, and if you haven’t had enough of the usual seasonal ear-tide, here’s your chance for a little bit more semi-sacred Gemütlichkeit before it’s on to the homefront. Tonight, Seraphic Fire comes to St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Boca Raton for its annual reading of Messiah, George Frideric Handel’s hit from 1742 that is as much a … [Read more...]
Eve of self-destruction: ‘Llewyn Davis’ bleak but inspired
I imagine the reason Inside Llewyn Davis has gotten more critical buzz than any Coen Brothers picture in recent memory is because it’s pure, distilled Coens. It doesn’t have the commercial concessions of a Ladykillers or a True Grit or even a Fargo. It’s not the “fun” Coens of The Big Lebowski or O Brother, Where Are Thou? This is the Coen Brothers of Barton Fink and A … [Read more...]
Michael Fagien: Dr. Jazz sells music, magazines and a lifestyle
There are few stories in the local arts as unusual as that of Michael Fagien, M.D. The Boca Raton radiologist lives in two worlds, one of medicine, and one of the jazz music he’s loved since his youth in Hollywood, where he moved with his family in 1969 from New Jersey. As a medical student at the University of Florida in 1983, he founded Jazziz magazine, for which he … [Read more...]
Unusual repertoire stands out at chamber fest’s final fall concert
By Donald Waxman Music quiz: You are presented with a single page of an upcoming chamber music concert in South Florida listing the titles, composers and instrumentation of the works to be played, but no mention of the name of the chamber music series or who are the performers. The program consists of Tomaso Albinoni’s Concerto in C for trumpet, oboes and bassoons; André … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Nov. 23-24
Music: The Master Chorale of South Florida began life as the chorus for the Florida Philharmonic, providing massed vocal heft when it was time for the Beethoven Ninth Symphony or Belshazzar’s Feast. The orchestra dissolved 10 years ago, but the chorus has continued, and in that decade it’s had three different directors. Now it’s on its fourth, young Brett Karlin of Boca Raton, … [Read more...]
Sundays: You can’t hide your prying eyes (and ears)
By Myles Ludwig I’d like to thank the CIA for paying part of my telephone bill this year. Unfortunately, that subsidy has come at a cost of the increasing deflation of what the Supreme Court decided in 1967 as one’s reasonable expectation of privacy according to the Fourth Amendment of the U. S. Constitution. No wonder Nixon was worried. He apparently forgot he was taping … [Read more...]