By Robert Croan The splendid Chameleon Musicians ended the first season in their new venue in the Broward Center’s pleasant Abdo Room on April 29 with an intense, serious-minded all-Brahms program. With cellist and Chameleon founder Iris Van Eck joined by pianist Kemal Gekic and Michael Klotz (who alternated between violin and viola), the ensemble contrasted Brahms’s … [Read more...]
Danish String Quartet’s Beethoven superb at Broward Center
By Robert Croan There’s no getting around it. Beethoven’s string quartets are tough stuff: monuments of Western music, worth the effort to unravel their joys and depths and mysteries, but really tough stuff. They’re tough on the ears, on the intellect and on the psyche. Throughout his life, the iconic and complex composer sketched his musical thoughts first in his 32 … [Read more...]
‘Waitress’ proves a tasty entertainment at Broward Center
Diner waitress Jenna Hunterson is an artist. Her medium happens to be pies. Each day, in addition to the standard flavors, she bakes a specialty, like Deep Dish Blueberry Bacon Pie. And the joy her art brings to the customers almost lets her forget the miserable life she has with her abusive, redneck husband, Earl. Can her pies be the route to her freedom? … [Read more...]
Bell, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields splendid in familiar works
By Robert Croan England’s Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is arguably today’s No. 1 chamber orchestra, but it was likely the presence of its music director and violin soloist, Joshua Bell, that brought a sizable crowd to the Au-Rene Theater in Fort Lauderdale on March 25. This was the second of three concerts in the season’s admirable and valuable Broward Center … [Read more...]
Soprano Chambers makes a splendid Salome for FGO
By Robert Croan “A 16-year-old girl with the voice of Isolde.” That’s how composer Richard Strauss described the requirements for the title part of Salome, his magnificent one-act opera that shocked audiences at its premiere in Dresden in 1905. He was referring to the biblical daughter of Herodias, who danced for the lecherous Herod and in return demanded the head of … [Read more...]
Sharp performers pull off manic ‘Gentleman’s Guide’ at Broward Center
What’s with the class-conscious Brits and their enduring fables of impoverished blokes suddenly discovering that they are noble-born? That was the plot of 1937’s Me and My Girl as well as a more recent confection from three years ago, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. In the latter, commoner Monty Navarro not only learns of his exalted lineage, but also that he … [Read more...]
It’s not ‘Phantom,’ but you might love it just the same
The ads for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats used to claim “Now and Forever,” but it is his Phantom of the Opera that keeps running with no end in sight. Now in its 30th year on Broadway, the longevity record holder, this mega-popular musical has brought in an estimated $6.5 billion dollars worldwide. No wonder Lloyd Webber wanted to write a sequel to the tale of the horribly … [Read more...]
At 12, Gardens’s Ben Krieger already a stage veteran
What had you accomplished by the age of 12? Worked a paper route? Opened and run a lemonade stand? Ben Krieger of Palm Beach Gardens, 12, is already a veteran stage performer, having appeared in three national tours of Broadway shows. This Tuesday night, when he opens in Finding Neverland at the Broward Center, he will have notched some 250 performances in the past two … [Read more...]
Germany’s Gaechinger Cantorey riveting in Bach B Minor Mass
By Robert Croan Bach’s so-called Mass in B Minor is a paradox in musical history. Firstly, it’s not a mass for liturgical use. While the work covers the text of the Latin Ordinary – those parts of the mass for which the words remain the same throughout the liturgical year – it was never intended to be performed all together. It consists of several compositions dating … [Read more...]
Zoetic Stage is big winner at 41st Carbonells
It was a spread-the-wealth evening Monday, as nine South Florida theater companies took home Carbonell Awards at the 41st annual event at the Broward Center. Still, Miami’s Zoetic Stage was the big winner with six awards – three each for the Stephen Sondheim musical Passion and for Michael McKeever’s new play, After. Then again, judging by who walked off with the top awards, … [Read more...]