Patrick Dupre Quigley rehearses the New World Symphony and Seraphic Fire in Steve Reich's The Desert Music. (from Facebook) The season now in its final weeks has been a particularly good one for Beethoven, but performances of contemporary music have been relatively rare. Which is why it was great fun Saturday night to be at the New World Center in Miami Beach, where … [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...]
Carpenter brilliant in launching new Kravis organ
Cameron Carpenter launched the new Kravis Center organ Wednesday night with American-style pomp and circumstance. The pomp was in the program he chose and the circumstance was the gala atmosphere surrounding what went on with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra playing alongside this lovable master of the new Opus 11 digital console organ, donated by generous philanthropist … [Read more...]
Seattle’s streetwise and New York’s street-style: Two sets of armors
Tiny, Halloween, Seattle (1983) by Mary Ellen Mark. Not if, but when you visit the ongoing photography exhibitions at the Norton Museum of Art and the Society of the Four Arts, look for beauty in expected and unexpected places. The subject of the photographs that make up Norton’s Tiny: Streetwise Revisited does not want us to pity her, but it can’t be helped. A teen should … [Read more...]
The empire returns: New ‘Star Wars’ film set to renew cultural touchstone
Palm Beach ArtsPaper Staff A mass-market cultural phenomenon is set to take place Dec. 18, with the release of the highly anticipated new Star Wars film The Force Awakens, the first in a new trilogy of the durable space operas, now directed by J.J. Abrams. While newcomers such as John Boyega and Daisy Ridley are on board, many of the original characters and actors are … [Read more...]
New Old School Square CEO has big plans for Delray Beach arts center
By Steven J. Smith Beating out nearly 100 applicants for the job, Rob Steele was recently chosen to take the reins at Old School Square — formerly the Delray Beach Center for the Arts — as its new president and CEO. Steele, 57, is originally from Flint, Mich. He earned an undergraduate degree in business administration from Adrian College and his master’s in business … [Read more...]
New work opens Seraphic Fire season in compelling style
The United States has a long, rich choral music tradition that extends from the Moravians to William Billings, from spirituals to Morten Lauridsen. And now there are a number of prominent younger composers diligently adding to this repertoire. Minnesota-based Jake Runestad, who is only 29, is among these creators, and his new cantata, The Hope of Loving, had its world premiere … [Read more...]
Danielpour’s new quartet outlines search for inner divinity
In 1995, the composer Richard Danielpour marked the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps in a string quartet he subtitled Psalms of Sorrow. That quartet, his third, featured a baritone singing texts from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of some of the Psalms. Last year, Danielpour returned to the string quartet for a seventh essay in that form, and also … [Read more...]
Masterful new concerto, rousing Beethoven make splendid farewell for ACO’s Robertson
Conductor Stewart Robertson’s final concert with the Atlantic Classical Orchestra at the Eissey Campus Theatre in Palm Beach Gardens on Tuesday afternoon was a memorable occasion. It had a world premiere of an excellent violin concerto, two “Scottish” works to celebrate the land of his birth, and a rousing performance of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Robertson was presented … [Read more...]
Intriguing new work and stellar Strauss at ACO
The Atlantic Classical Orchestra’s concert Tuesday in Palm Beach Gardens featured four works, one a world premiere, conducted by Stewart Robertson, who will retire after this season. Robertson opened this concert with a rarely heard Schubert overture, Die Freunde von Salamanka (D. 326), described in the beautifully prepared program as a singspiel, a German opera with spoken … [Read more...]