Film: Surely one of the best films of 2012 and a shoo-in for Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress is Zero Dark Thirty, the tense, suspenseful, well-researched and somewhat conjectural tale of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. It comes from filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow ― the only woman to win an Oscar for feature direction ― and screenwriter Mark … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Symphony season opens with high spirits, powerful playing
The Palm Beach Symphony opened a new era for itself Sunday afternoon with an effervescent, powerful concert of 20th-century orchestral works, performed by a newly restaffed ensemble that stands fair to carry out the group’s mission of expanded cultural influence. The group of musicians that took the stage of the Gubelmann Auditorium at Palm Beach’s Society of the Four Arts is … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Symphony reaches out to youth with Stravinsky
Time was, in the late 1950s, that a charismatic conductor could start a TV series in which he introduced young people to the world of classical music, and build himself a legend as well as permanently influence the lives of millions of those youths. But Leonard Bernstein is no longer with us, and neither is the middlebrow consensus that led to the televising of the Young … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Symphony commissions composer Muhly
The Palm Beach Symphony has commissioned one of the most celebrated young composers in the country to write a fanfare for the ensemble’s 40th anniversary in 2013. Nico Muhly, 30, a Vermont-born composer who studied at the Juilliard School, is perhaps best-known for his score for The Reader, the 2008 Stephen Daldry film starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes. He’s written … [Read more...]