The gods must be crazy, indeed. When the husband-and-wife founders of Lake Worth-based band Positively Africa (www.positivelyafrica.com), Julius and Julia Sanna, formed their group in 2007, it was to promote their native continent's rich culture and music. In their minds, the band’s name countered the cliched images of war and famine they’d seen on evening news broadcasts since … [Read more...]
‘Moonrise’ a fable for auteurs and regular audiences
It is perhaps fitting that Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom is opening in select theaters the same week that Andrew Sarris, one of the most important film critics in American history, died at age 83. Sarris’ legacy, immortalized in his book The American Cinema, was to apply the auteurist ideas of the 1950s French critics to such neglected American directors as Raoul Walsh, … [Read more...]
On Broadway, a bad year for musicals, a good one for plays
This Sunday evening, when the American Theatre Wing hits the airwaves with the 66th annual Tony Awards show ― Broadway’s prime national marketing tool ― it will put on its bravest face and claim that the commercial theater is better than ever. In fact, by most subjective opinions ― including mine ― this was the worst season for new musicals in decades. Even the Tonys’ … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: From a classic French novel to contemporary American whimsy
Hardly broken and certainly not in need of fixing, the hugely successful epic musical of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables turned 25 a couple of years ago, so producer Cameron Mackintosh celebrated the milestone of the international hit by lavishing a new, redesigned and restaged production on it. The work of directing team of Laurence Connor and James Powell is more conventional … [Read more...]
Postcard from New York No. 6: Frank Wildhorn, and wild ‘Guvnors’
Thursday morning, I schlepped way downtown, near the former site of the World Trade Center where a steady stream of people arrived to view the new 9-11 memorial, for an interview. In a nearby high-hrise apartment lives composer Frank Wildhorn, whose cult hit Jekyll & Hyde is about to get a re-conceived major revival starring Constantine Maroulis (American Idol, Rock of Ages) … [Read more...]
For Pink Martini, masters of retro elegance, the beautiful comes first
Thomas Lauderdale, founder, pianist, composer and arranger for genre-defiant big band Pink Martini, was preparing for the second of a two-night run in Oklahoma City on the afternoon of March 24. And while he may have been focusing on that evening’s concert, he had more immediate concerns when he answered his cell phone. “I’m walking over to get my dry cleaning,” he said. “I … [Read more...]
Chopin winner Huangci set for recital, Boca Symphonia
The bicentenary of the birth of Frederic Chopin in 2010 was observed all over the classical world, not least in Miami, where the U.S. version of the Chopin Competition was held. The winner of that February competition was Claire Huangci, a daughter of immigrants from Beijing who grew up in Philadelphia and graduated from the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in her … [Read more...]
Artist Cervetti brings color, spirituality to her work
By Tom Tracy If you were to stroll past Talia Cervetti’s studio on Lucerne Avenue in artsy downtown Lake Worth earlier this year, you might have found her seated low to the floor, listening to an old Sade CD while stitching a design into one of her acrylic paintings. Or she might have been drawing one of her abstract figurative series in black-and-white using pencil, graphite … [Read more...]
Veteran stars take roles in Maltz’s ‘Hello, Dolly!’ reworking
Sure, Hello, Dolly! is one of the landmark musicals of the so-called Golden Age of the 1960s, racking up a then-record high 2,844 performances on Broadway. But ever since, the Jerry Herman show has been under the hammerlock of its originating star, Carol Channing, who has clung steadfastly to Gower Champion’s Tony Award-winning staging and choreography. When Maltz Jupiter … [Read more...]
For 25 years, Duncan Theatre has been cutting-edge
If you lived in Palm Beach County 25 years ago, to get your culture fix you went to the Duncan Theatre in Lake Worth or the “leaky teepee,” the familiar name for the West Palm Beach Auditorium, which earned that name from its pointy roof and less-than-watertight conditions. The leaky teepee lives on in lore and memory, but the county’s cutting-edge performing arts house, the … [Read more...]