If New Yorkers won’t come to New York, the city will come to them, in the form oil paintings, watercolors and oil pastels with impressionist, cubist and realist tones. A rich selection of works depicting the pros and cons of the booming city makes up Industrial Sublime, which opened March 20 at the Norton Museum. The gallery rooms are filled with cityscapes by famous and … [Read more...]
Flagler silver exhibit takes us back to Age of Acquisition
Nobody uses a 137-year-old silver set of 1,250 pieces from Tiffany & Co. to eat lunch anymore or gets a glossy water pitcher as retirement gift. A pen and porcelain plates will do. Sometimes it takes such a decline in popularity to make an art exhibition happen. If it wasn’t for silver’s falling demand, the current show at the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum may not have … [Read more...]
PB Opera turns to the timeless magic of Rossini’s ‘Barber’
Scratch the surface of a typical Rossini scholar you happen to meet and he or she will tell you that the Italian composer’s greatest contribution to the art of opera was in his serious works. It was there, the scholar will say, in works such as Elisabetta, Semiramide, Tancredi, Otello and Guillaume Tell, that Gioachino Rossini blazed a path that would be followed to great … [Read more...]
At Lynn, the sound of an orchestra transformed
Someone over at the Lynn Conservatory of Music got the memo. After three very middling concerts in which the student orchestra at Lynn University’s music school sounded haphazard, unfocused, and in its brass section, something shy of competent, the orchestra turned it all around Feb. 8 and gave a rousing performance of three well-known orchestral virtuoso pieces. Not … [Read more...]
Boca Museum’s ‘Pop Culture’ gives us images of what we really are
Like a giant slap in the face, the new Pop Art exhibition at the Boca Museum of Art wakes us up from a long hibernation filled with compulsive consumerism habits, celebrity infatuation and overindulgence. The effect, however, is momentary. It may not be enough to change our ways, but faced with a giant hot dog made of mosaics, a thought does come to mind: How did we get to … [Read more...]
Jewish Film Festival gets fresh direction, looks for growth
Ellen Wedner, a veteran of the arts scene in Miami for two decades, has moved two counties north to direct the Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival. Running eleven days from Jan. 16 to 26, the 24-year-old festival will screen 37 films in western Delray Beach and Palm Beach Gardens. Hap Erstein spoke with Wedner about her festival philosophy and the changes she is … [Read more...]
Atlantic Classical Orchestra debuts in PB County with free rehearsal, world premiere
Not so many years ago, conductor Stewart Robertson made a point of saying that he was determined to bring his Atlantic Classical Orchestra down from the Treasure Coast into Palm Beach County. That intention is finally to be realized Wednesday afternoon when the Fort Pierce-based chamber orchestra opens its 24th season with the first of four free rehearsals at the Eissey Campus … [Read more...]
‘AGT’ standouts take acts to Kravis stage
By Dale King Like a blast from television’s variety show heyday, America’s Got Talent Live, the post-season, cross-country tour of finalists and favorites from the popular summer TV show, took the stage at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach last Saturday for a single-night performance. Lacking only the likes of Ed Sullivan and Topo Gigio, the show that is now on a westward … [Read more...]
Harid marks 25 years with three celebratory programs
Reared in the orphanages of rural southwest Brazil, Gleidson Vasconcelos found his future one day as he looked into a window he was passing, and saw a girl dancing to the sound of a music box. “’She must be having a really great time doing what she is doing. She is so beautiful and free,’” Vasconcelos remembers thinking. Seen at the window by a dance teacher, the 10-year-old … [Read more...]
Chameleon ends season with worthy revival of forgotten composer
It’s surely the case that most of the readers of this review have never heard of the Swedish woman composer Elfrida Andrée (1841-1929), whose career ran into the standard gender roadblocks of the Victorian era into which she was born. But Andrée’s music is well worth hearing, and last Sunday (May 12), the Chameleon Musicians chamber music series in Fort Lauderdale closed its … [Read more...]