Portrait of Mlle. Hortense Valpinçon (c. 1871), by Edgar Degas. I recently got to walk inside the Norton Museum and ask something I rarely get to ask: Where to the van Gogh and the Degas? It felt good. I can understand why any museum that owns a masterpiece makes use of its bragging rights every change it gets and despite the local crowd’s tendency to take it for granted. … [Read more...]
Danielpour quartet makes strong impression at Delray SQ
The string quartet remains the vessel into which composers since the days of Haydn have poured their deepest thoughts, perhaps because there is something about the intimate, confessional sound of the four instruments that encourages it. On Sunday afternoon, the Delray String Quartet offered a fine contemporary example of serious string-quartet writing with a performance of the … [Read more...]
Postcard From Broadway No. 4: Theaters dark, but Legos illuminating
Mondays are even harder to find a show to see than Sunday nights. In fact, with most of the city’s museums closed, it was shaping up as a day without art. Until... After breakfast, I was walking the streets around Times Square when I spied a poster for the Discovery Museum and “the world's largest display of Lego art.” It seems there is a guy named Nathan Sawaya, a lapsed … [Read more...]
Often-surprising ‘Prisoners’ makes us fellow travelers to the abyss
Prisoners opens like an episode of Law & Order: SVU and concludes, some two and half hours later, like a gothic horror film that would have won the approval of Edgar Allan Poe. Somewhere along the way, as the audience ascends film’s spiral staircase of twists and turns, with its many false leads, red herrings, blown fuses and unanswered questions, it nearly achieves the mythos … [Read more...]
Community theater: Standout cast makes ‘In the Heights’ sizzle
By Dale King In the Heights is a festive, tune-filled musical celebrating the toils and triumphs of the hard-working, money-strapped denizens of a largely Dominican neighborhood in north Manhattan. The show is pleasing midsummer-night audiences at the Lake Worth Playhouse. The play features a young, energetic and talented cast that brings a strong Latin touch to the … [Read more...]
Jenkins’ ‘Peacemakers’ makes engaging debut at St. Paul’s
By George S. Brown The Peacemakers, a cantata by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins, had its world premiere in January 2012 at Carnegie Hall, and its South Florida premiere earlier this month in Delray Beach. The work, which sets words of peace from such figures as Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., texts from the Bible and Qu’ran and quotes from people ranging … [Read more...]
Schubert Ensemble makes long-overdue visit to Florida
Britain’s Schubert Ensemble came to the Flagler Museum for a night of music-making Tuesday; two familiar works and a couple of rarities made up their program. As winners of the coveted Royal Philharmonic prize, Best Chamber Group Award in 1998, and shortlisted in 2010, this led to high expectations. There’s no greater honor in British music. The Royal Philharmonic Society, … [Read more...]
Music roundup: Weiss offers rare, worthy toccatas; Zukerman leads splendid RPO
It isn’t every pianist who’s going to encore with a Keith Jarrett improv from the early 1980s, but Orion Weiss has the kind of omnivorous approach to music that makes such things possible, and enjoyable to boot. In his recital appearance Wednesday afternoon at the Duncan Theatre’s Stage West, the 30-year-old pianist from suburban Cleveland gave his appreciative audience not … [Read more...]
Planck science makes gripping art at Photo Centre
By Tom Tracy Walking into the main gallery of the Palm Beach Photographic Centre this month might best be described as a large-scale Rorschach test designed to reveal something about your own Freudian mindscape. That’s because through the end of the year the Photographic Center on Clemetis Street is hosting Images of Science, an exhibit of 40 photos from scientific research … [Read more...]
Mozart quintet makes graceful memorial at chamber fest
A sweetly radiant reading of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet added a poignant touch to the closing half of the third concert in the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival’s current summer season. The quintet (in A, K. 581) was dedicated to the memory of the Rev. Perry Fuller, father of festival co-founder Karen Dixon. Fuller died earlier this month of liver cancer, and Dixon has bowed … [Read more...]