Music: The British have a great classical music tradition, but their jazz chops are just as strong. The latest example is chanteuse Polly Gibbons, who makes her American debut tonight at the Arts Garage before continuing on to New York and Boston. She’s got one of those husky, dark singing voices that wraps nicely around a standard like “After Hours,” and it’s worth noting … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 27-29
Art: Kyoko Hazama is a contemporary Japanese artist who specializes in creating sculptures from washi paper, and she brings to her delicate art a wonderful sense of whimsy. From a Quiet Place, an exhibit of her tiny sculptures at the Morikami Museum running through Aug. 31, features many small scenes involving a winsome-looking Japanese girl in the company of extraordinary … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: June 6-8
Film: Filmed in exquisite, though bleak black-and-white by Polish writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski, Ida is a curious hybrid of Holocaust tale, road trip movie and odd couple drama. The title teenage character is a nun-in-training who is ordered to meet her only living relative, a distant aunt named Wanda, before she can take her vows. So Ida treks to meet Wanda and from her … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: May 16-18
Theater: The Wick Theatre has been anything but consistent in its debut season, but when it is good, it is very, very good. That describes its final show on the season, the Tony Award-winning Fats Waller revue, Ain’t Misbehavin’. It helps considerably that director-choreographer Ron Hutchins gathered a company of seasoned veterans of the show, then stuck closely to the original … [Read more...]
Essay: Remembering six area musicians
As a musician, I've come to the conclusion that playing music in a live setting works best when it parallels, well, life. There will be some of the inherent up moments, like harmony among the vocals and the instruments, and conversations both with and without words, plus some of the downs like mistakes that you have to recover and learn from. But being a veteran musician … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Jan. 24-26
Music: The jazz singer Kurt Elling famously turned away from a career in academia to reinvent himself as a vocalist, starting out at Chicago’s legendary Green Mill club while a graduate student and collaborating with pianist Laurence Hobgood. Late last year, the two musicians parted company to work on solo projects, and Elling is touring with his 1619 Broadway: The Brill … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Jan. 18-20
Film: Having delayed its opening until January, the month for dumping sub-par movies on the market, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit will get no awards or be taken the least bit seriously, but this reboot of the franchise based on the late novelist Tom Clancy’s CIA analyst action hero is still pulse-racing entertainment, far better than expected. Chris Pine, the young Captain Kirk of … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Oct. 26-27
Film: British director Steve McQueen is known for making films of brutality and excess, but now he has chosen a subject that matches his style. It is 12 Years a Slave, the fact-based saga of Solomon Northup, an African-American free man who lives with his family in upstate New York until he is lured to the nation’s capital, tricked into bondage and sold as a slave. The … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Feb. 23-24
Film: A new film based on a magic realism-infused novel by Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima, focuses on a small boy, Antonio (Luke Ganalon), who is introduced to the spirit world by his grandmother, Ultima (Miriam Colon), who is sort of a witch doctor, a conjurer of spells and an alternative healer. The compelling, if disorienting film is directed by Carl Franklin, probably best … [Read more...]
Weekend picks: Feb. 9-10
Theater: If, like me, you were floored by Maureen Anderman in Palm Beach Dramaworks’ A Delicate Balance, you will not need much coaxing to see her in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Doubt: A Parable, John Patrick Shanley’s clash of wills between a suspicious nun and an affable priest (Jim Ballard) who she is convinced behaved inappropriately with a 12-year-old male student. And this … [Read more...]