Pablo Berger’s Blancanieves is an art-house trifecta: It’s black-and-white, foreign, and silent, triple the insurance that it will alienate the “average moviegoer.” Which is a shame, because the film, which rescues Snow White from its Disneyfied associations and restores to its Grimm foundations, is filled with exactly the kind of escapist excitement and pure imagination that … [Read more...]
News briefs: Maltz begins expansion; SoFla Symphony gets grant
JUPITER ― The Maltz Jupiter Theatre is celebrating its 10th anniversary by breaking ground on a new expansion project. Earlier this year, a $1.5 million donation was offered as a challenge grant by founding board member Roe Green and her foundation. The grant goes toward the $2.5 million needed to complete the renovation project. The Maltz has currently raised an additional … [Read more...]
Sundays: The game of friendship
By Myles Ludwig Writing about a friendship is a lot more difficult than it seems. Yes, one can write about the mutual gifts and the rewards. But writing about the thing, the stuff that holds it all together as one travels through life is a little like trying to define love or capture dark matter or a miasma in a photograph ― you know it’s there, but you can’t see it, touch it, … [Read more...]
New World’s bracing concert at Boca Fest deserved bigger audience
By Donald Waxman On the next-to-the-last evening of the 2013 Festival of the Arts Boca, Peter Oundjian, the Canadian conductor and violinist, led the New World Symphony of Miami in three early 20th-century works. The guest soloist was the Russian-American pianist Valentina Lisitsa, whose career in recent years has flourished in an unprecedented way. The program promised to be … [Read more...]
Sundays: Bandeau on the run
By Myles Ludwig There are lost opportunities in life, those moments when you wonder why you were oblivious to the possibilities. There are also lost friends, lost because of some difference of opinion that seems petty in retrospect or even a bond-busting betrayal that, seen through the telescope of time, seems no worse than the unruliness of trying to catch some sleep lying … [Read more...]
Corea and Fleck reunite for mutually enriching duo concerts
When iconic 71-year-old jazz keyboardist Chick Corea won two Grammy Awards in February, it ran his career total to 20, tied for seventh all-time. Banjoist Bela Fleck is a comparative pup in both age (54) and Grammys (with “only” 15), but he’s been nominated in more different categories — bluegrass, jazz, country, pop, classical, folk, spoken word, composition, and arranging — … [Read more...]
Organist Carpenter opens new musical paths for his instrument
Cameron Carpenter is on a mission to liberate the organ from the confines of the church, and bring this most hidebound of instruments into what he calls an “ecstatic future.” The brilliant young keyboardist and Peck’s bad boy of the organ world, who performs tonight at the Festival of the Arts Boca, is critical of the way the organ is understood in the world of music today, … [Read more...]
Maltz celebrates 10 years, and builds for a bigger future
In the midst of a theater scene where several significant stage companies have gone out of business lately, the Maltz Jupiter Theatre has been a remarkable success story — thriving critically, popularly and financially. And the rich keep getting richer. Saturday night, a gala celebrating the Maltz’s 10th anniversary raised $750,000 for the playhouse that has humble roots as … [Read more...]
Fine comedians, strong singers fire PBO’s ‘Cenerentola’
Sometimes there’s nothing quite as satisfying on stage as seeing a few good clowns do their best to make a Saturday night fly by. The Palm Beach Opera’s current production of Giaochino Rossini’s La Cenerentola has, in addition to a hugely impressive performance by the celebrated mezzo Vivica Genaux as the title character, some very fine comedy in its two and half hours. It’s … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘Caboodle’ and ‘Doubt’: Certain theatrical satisfaction
South Florida playwright Michael McKeever has cranked out so many well-crafted full-length stage scripts over the past two decades that it is easy to overlook that he has also quietly mastered the short play format. That should be harder to ignore now that he has compiled seven of his brief sketches into an evening he calls The Whole Caboodle. First performed from 1998 to … [Read more...]