Quick, name the youngest artist who performed on the main stage at Woodstock in 1969. No, it wasn’t Carlos Santana, Janis Joplin, Richie Havens, Sly Stone, Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix, or any of the members of the Grateful Dead, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, or The Band. It was an 18-year-old singer/guitarist named Henry Gross, who performed with doo-wop vocal ensemble Sha Na Na. … [Read more...]
Anderson and Roe make marvelous return to Palm Beach
I’m lucky enough to have heard three sets of piano duos in person in my lifetime: Cyril Smith and Phyllis Sellick in England; Arthur Whittemore and Jack Warren Lowe at a private concert given in honor of Alistair Cooke; and David Bradshaw and Cosmo Buono, who took Europe by storm in the 1980s with a little advice from yours truly. The young duo of Elizabeth Joy Roe and Greg … [Read more...]
Looking back at Fair Week: A deluge in the streets, and in the booths
By Sandra Schulman Expect the unexpected when it comes to Miami’s wild and woolly annual Art Week. This year featured torrential floods, an unprecedented act of violence in the main Basel tent, astronomical sales, and women artists (and dealers) in the spotlight. Mega-collectors have been shifting the dialogue for years now in Miami —as the enormous wealth and power they … [Read more...]
Comfort ye: A calendar of holiday music and dance for December
One minute it’s Thanksgiving, and the next, you’re stocking up on champagne to welcome the new year. The holidays go by in an instant, but we all try to steal a little time for the ceremony of the season, for its sounds, sights, aromas and traditions. Finding that time is difficult, especially with the growth in the past few years of South Florida’s arts season, which has … [Read more...]
Sound woes prove frustrating for Holdsworth, audience
No one inside the black box theater at the Mizner Park Cultural Arts Center in Boca Raton — not the overflow crowd of 300 or the reason they were there, the three instrumentalists led by veteran British jazz/fusion guitar great Allan Holdsworth — could’ve possibly been fully prepared for what they’d experience Saturday. Considering the reputation and incendiary talents of the … [Read more...]
Ebersole promises ‘fun and frivolity’ in benefit concert for Maltz
When two-time Tony Award winner Christine Ebersole (42nd Street, Grey Gardens) steps out on the Maltz Jupiter Theatre stage Saturday night, it should feel a little familiar to her. Told that the venue used to be the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre, she perks up on the telephone. “Oh, well, that’s where I worked,” says Ebersole in a flat Midwestern voice that suggests her … [Read more...]
New Old School Square CEO has big plans for Delray Beach arts center
By Steven J. Smith Beating out nearly 100 applicants for the job, Rob Steele was recently chosen to take the reins at Old School Square — formerly the Delray Beach Center for the Arts — as its new president and CEO. Steele, 57, is originally from Flint, Mich. He earned an undergraduate degree in business administration from Adrian College and his master’s in business … [Read more...]
Legendary fusion guitarist Holdsworth returns to Florida for first time in three decades
The unofficial title of “World’s Greatest Living Electric Guitarist” automatically eliminates late American contenders like rocker Jimi Hendrix, blues man Stevie Ray Vaughan, and the inimitable Frank Zappa. So the crown likely boils down to several prominent British veterans who’ve dipped at least a toe into challenging progressive music. Among them is the 1960s Yardbirds rock … [Read more...]
Actress Rothauser chronicles ups and downs in ‘Life. Who Knew?’
Palm Beach International Film Festival president and CEO Jeff Davis was very taken with Lisa Rothauser’s autobiographical one-woman show with music and thought it would be a good fit for his new and newly refurbished Palm Beaches Theatre in Manalapan. But he thought the title, Life. WTF?, was too crude for his venue and audience. So out went WTF and in its place came a new … [Read more...]
Composer Runestad offers message of love in new work for Seraphic Fire
Rather than hire a babysitter when they had choir practice at night, the parents of Jake Runestad simply took their son along to rehearsals. “I would just run around in the choir room, and I think a lot of that music seeped into my brain,” says Runestad (pronounced RUN-uh-sted), speaking last week from his home in Minneapolis. “There was just a lot of music in my own … [Read more...]