The 21st edition of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival opens Friday night at the Persson Recital Hall on the campus of Palm Beach Atlantic University, and with its arrival we can say that the summer season in South Florida is truly in full swing. This year’s four programs feature some discoveries, including rare works by Alexandre Tansman (Septet for trumpet, viola and … [Read more...]
School of Rock brings band, dreams to Philly, Cleveland
For every kid who learns to play an instrument or sing (or both) in hopes of joining a rock band, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is the pinnacle. Just ask the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who formed in Hollywood, Calif., in 1983 -- the same year the hall was established in Cleveland -- and got enshrined during its 27th annual induction ceremony last month. But even for the members … [Read more...]
Chamber fest’s Schoenberg falls short of transfiguration
As one of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival’s performers rightly said in her remarks from the stage, the name of Arnold Schoenberg is “box office poison” for a lot of people, but that really shouldn’t apply to his early string sextet, Verklärte Nacht. This important, beautiful work was one of the major events of the programs in the first weekend of concerts presented in … [Read more...]
PB Shakespeare Festival returns to magic of ‘The Tempest’
Twenty years ago, in Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival’s second season, the company took its first crack at The Tempest, the tale of an exiled Milanese duke who seeks revenge on his enemies through sorcery. Playing young Prince Ferdinand back then was 20-year-old Kevin Crawford, in his first involvement with the play, “back when I could still get away with playing young … [Read more...]
Film festivals cover varied ground, from indie to Andy
Palm Beach County used to be film-festival challenged, but now we have a glut of options for moviegoers who want to get away from a steady diet of studio fare and perhaps rub shoulders with some of the filmmakers. It is, after all, not a hard sell to get directors and actors to come to Palm Beach in the final, frozen days of winter. Tonight kicks off the 16th annual Palm … [Read more...]
Jewish film festival thriving as it turns 21
At a time when film festivals are either shrinking or simply disappearing, the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival is expanding as it turns 21. The annual celebration of Jewish culture on celluloid from around the world, a program of the Jewish Community Center of the Greater Palm Beaches, unspools beginning this evening, Dec. 1, with 34 films from 12 … [Read more...]
Chamber festival’s closer features effective Dahl and premiere
In the years just before and after World War II, Southern California became an oasis of sun, refuge and economic opportunity for several of the era’s most important European composers, Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schonberg chief among them. Ingolf Dahl was another one of those composers, and in the fourth and final program of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, his lively … [Read more...]
Florida festival brings best films from La Belle France
Fortunately, Patrick Giminez lives in Boca Raton. As a result, Palm Beach County residents do not have to travel to Miami this weekend to feast on French films. Of course they could, because the French cineaste who has been distributing films for the past 25 years is kicking off his fifth annual France Cinema Floride at the Tower Theatre in Miami. But those same 11 films -- … [Read more...]
Shakespeare fest finds itself living a ‘Dream’
Eighteen years ago, the fledgling Palm Beach Shakespeare Festival first performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the crowd-pleasing comedy that the company returns to this year to inaugurate the new Seabreeze Amphitheatre in Jupiter’s Carlin Park. “It’s unheard of for a Shakespeare company to go that long without reviving this play,” says Kevin Crawford, a founding troupe member … [Read more...]