By Dale King Boca Ballet’s executive director, Dan Guin, feverishly pulled together copies of Dance Magazine covers from the past several years that were strewn across his desk. “He performed here,” he said, poking his finger at the photo of a familiar dance artist. “She did, too,” he said, pointing at another. Guin repeated this action again and again until he singled 27 … [Read more...]
Delray String Quartet, with new member, starts 12th season engagingly
The Delray String Quartet opened its 12th season this past weekend with a new member in the second violinist seat and a season of concerts full of unusual repertoire. The Uzbek violinist Valentin Mansurov, a familiar face to concertgoers in the area for several years now, has taken the chair occupied for years by Tomás Cotik, who in turn has joined Miami’s Amernet String … [Read more...]
FAU creates Theatre Lab; Tyrrell named director
By Dale King Louis Tyrrell is going back to school -- literally. The founding artistic director of the former Florida Stage in Manalapan who went on to create the Theatre at Arts Garage in Delray Beach following the previous venue’s 2011 bankruptcy, is launching a new educational initiative. Six months after resigning from his Theatre at Arts Garage post last March, Tyrrell … [Read more...]
PBCMF Concert 3: French flavors and a rare clarinet quintet
There is something about French musical culture that inclines it toward woodwinds — perhaps because of the sound of French language — and when it comes to the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, French music has played a powerful role in its 24 season of concerts. Two French rarities were featured Saturday night at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens during the … [Read more...]
Sol Theatre brings spirit of Dickens to Boca with ‘Edwin Drood’
Palm Beach Arts Paper Staff What happened to Edwin Drood? Has he disappeared? Been murdered by his uncle? Traipsed off to Egypt to pursue his studies? Or even gone incognito? Such is the plot of the Sol Children Theatre production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a play written by Rupert Holmes based on Charles Dickens’s last, unfinished novel. The answer will be up to the … [Read more...]
FGO’s ‘Consul’ revives worthy 20th-century work expertly
Gian-Carlo Menotti’s The Consul was a Broadway sensation in 1950, but in the decades since it’s dropped below the operatic radar. The current production by Florida Grand Opera of this Cold War work is as good an argument as can be made that the opera deserves to be restored to the mainstream, if not so much for the greatness of its score as its sheer effectiveness as theater. … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire, Piffaro offer absorbing evening of’ ‘Vespers’
The merging of a Renaissance wind band with 21st-century American choral music is an idea that may sound odd on the surface, but composer Kile Smith showed it could work, and work beautifully, when he composed his Vespers in 2007. The original-instrument band that commissioned the work, Philadelphia-based Piffaro, joined Patrick Dupré Quigley and his Seraphic Fire concert … [Read more...]
Flagler features art of an enigma-less master
In true dramatic fashion, he went from being the trendy artist everyone desperately copied to being something like the universal symbol for what to avoid. What else is new? The fame, popularity and recognition enjoyed by French academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau in the 19th century no doubt landed him in the history books. When else have America and Europe been on … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire provides excellent view of young Mozart in context
Composers are not like Athena, who burst fully formed and armed for battle from the head of Zeus. Forging an individual style is in part a reflection of who the composer is, but also who that composer has studied and listened to. Even someone as miraculous as Mozart had plenty of models for his work, and the Miami concert choir Seraphic Fire goes in search of those musical … [Read more...]
Seraphic Fire presents fine feast of contemporary American music
It’s heartening to hear the evidence of the continued good work being done in new American art music composition, much of it by composers just barely out of their studies, presented on Reincarnations, a recording released earlier this month by Seraphic Fire. The Miami-based concert choir opened its 13th season of concerts with selections from that disc, plus two other works, … [Read more...]