Kelly Lee Hussey and Daryl Willis in The Taming of the Shrew. (Jen Scott Photography) By Steven J. Smith JUPITER — Kermit Christman, founder and executive producer of the Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival, said his upcoming production of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew will be set within the pomp, wealth, apparel and amusing societal affectations of the Kentucky … [Read more...]
Frontwave new music festival opens; Oliveira inaugurates competition
WEST PALM BEACH —Palm Beach Atlantic University’s biennial concert series of new music, the Frontwave Festival, begins tonight at the college in West Palm Beach and runs through Saturday. The special guest for the festival is composer John Fitz Rogers, who teaches composition at the University of South Carolina. He holds degrees from Oberlin, Cornell and the Yale School of … [Read more...]
Festival of the Arts Boca’s 10th season gets underway
What to see first is the biggest challenge facing those planning to take advantage of the full roster of events at this year’s 10th Festival of the Arts Boca, which opens Friday in Mizner Park and runs through March 16. Conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos will open the festival by conducting the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra from the University of Miami’s Frost School of … [Read more...]
For Palm Beach Film Festival, 19th time may be the charm
To paraphrase Mark Twain, “Reports of the death of the Palm Beach International Film Festival have been greatly exaggerated.” Dismissing the naysayers who will tell you that the 19-year-old celebration of movies from around the globe is on the verge of folding, longtime PBIFF president and chief executive officer Randi Emerman insists, “You have to be a believer. Because of … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: March 7-9
Theater: Off-Broadway pioneer Israel Horovitz sets many of his plays in his adopted hometown of Gloucester, Mass., which is where the triangular tug-of-war, Fighting Over Beverley, takes place. But the story is more about cultural differences between England and the United States, as well as later-life love and liberation, than it is about the texture of the New England fishing … [Read more...]
Festival Boca preview: Perlman collaborator looks to chamber music for ‘Eternal Echoes’
It’s a 1950s Saturday in Tel Aviv, in the fledgling state of Israel, and the radio’s playing cantorial music, as it always does on Saturdays. It’s music that sticks with one person in particular, a young, prodigiously talented young violinist who will soon make his mark in the world as a teenage phenomenon. But through all the decades and accolades that followed, Itzhak … [Read more...]
Festival Boca preview: Anna Deveare Smith, on a search for grace
Anna Deveare Smith won’t be mounting a full production of her new one-woman show On Grace at the Festival of the Arts Boca. But she will be offering the one thing that might be better — a chance for the audience to become co-creators of the play. “I’m going to be doing excerpts from On Grace,” Smith said recently by phone. “This is a presentation, not a production. It’s still … [Read more...]
Sandoval, Goodwin headline 8th Festival of the Arts Boca
Jazz trumpet legend Arturo Sandoval and popular historian Doris Kearns Goodwin will be among the guests for this year’s Festival of the Arts Boca, which will return for an eighth season to the Mizner Park Amphitheatre. Festival officials unveiled the lineup Friday night in a media event that included a screening of I Am Not a Rock Star, a documentary by Bobbi Jo Hart that … [Read more...]
Festival makes case for enduring power of poetry
By Tom Tracy Miles Coon is aware that some people’s attitude toward poetry is less than welcoming. Perhaps they have indelible memories of having to recite a bit of rhyme in front of their eighth-grade class, something about “gate” and “fate” that they could never quite memorize. Maybe they were confused and baffled by a first encounter with Walt Whitman, singing endlessly … [Read more...]
Fine Brahms ends chamber festival in affirmative fashion
One of the joys of the annual Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival is its array of fresh programming, bringing little-known music out of the libraries and into the harsh light of the stage, there to make its way or not, as the case may be. And this 21st season of the festival has been no exception, with rarely heard works dominant, and the familiar making itself known only very … [Read more...]