Editor’s note: Here are late reviews from three concerts at the Society of the Four Arts. Technical difficulties prevented them from being posted earlier. Nordwest Deutsche Philharmonic (March 14) Visiting orchestras often come to our balmy shores this time of year; 20-city tours exhaust the best of them, riding on buses around the Florida peninsula. It was not so with the … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: March 31-April 1
Dance: Valentine’s Day has passed, but hopeless romantics have another opportunity this month to rekindle their relationships at Florida Classical Ballet Theatre’s staging of Romeo and Juliet. Young love, family feuds and great tragedy all are a part of William Shakespeare’s most-beloved story, set against the backdrop of sumptuous Renaissance Italy, and with one of Sergei … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: March 23-25
Music: Contemporary classical music has a surprising number of champions in South Florida, and that includes Tim Thompson of Palm Beach Atlantic University, who every year offers concerts of new pieces by faculty members, students, and guests. This year’s festival, called Frontwave, began last night with a concert by the piano team of Duo Gastesi-Bezerra, and tonight is the … [Read more...]
Will the iPad mean the end of the page turner?
Of all the jobs that computer-related technology has caused to disappear, one other may soon need to be added to the list: Page turner. Concertgoers are used to seeing a turner come on stage, trailing the pianist, then sit unobtrusively to his or her left, and rise to turn the pages of the music when the time comes. It’s a job that is small but vital for musical continuity, … [Read more...]
The View From Home 36: New releases and notable screenings, March 6-31
There may be no better way to tee off an evangelical conservative than to emblazon the bumper of your Prius with one of those “Jesus was a liberal” stickers. The politicization of the Son of God is a perennially popular topic, with both sides picking and choosing to support their theses. But in Martin Scorsese’s still-controversial The Last Temptation of Christ (Blu-ray, … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: March 10-14
Festival of the Arts Boca: The operatic world, unlike what many casual observers may think, is flush with youthful activity, as young singers try to scale the heights of musical Parnassus and see the stages of the world. Last night, the Boca Symphonia performed the soundtrack of the 1942 classic Casablanca with a showing of the film, but tonight the orchestra and conductor … [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...]
At the Flagler: Two standout string quartets
Editor’s note: Here are two late reviews of recent concerts at the Flagler Museum: The Moscow String Quartet (Feb. 21) Sitting in the magnificence of Henry Flagler’s Gilded Age mansion, Whitehall, I was struck by the ironic contrast of listening to a string quartet that began life in the old USSR. This was the Moscow String Quartet, four women whose exceptionally high … [Read more...]
The VIP Art Fair: E-commerce comes to the Salon
The Web has enabled the advent of the pajama-clad, online shopping experience, but can e-commerce work in one of the world’s most lucrative retail markets? The founders of the VIP Art Fair — James and Jane Cohan, owners of the James Cohan Gallery in New York and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Jonas and Alessandra Almgren — believe so. They’ve created the world’s first virtual, … [Read more...]
Theater’s Ingham bestows love of drama, language on students
By Tom Tracy With the aid of his daughter Francesca, who was assisting him on a recent Monday by queuing up the DVD player, Barrie Ingham introduced his students to a series of films clips from movies based on the writings of George Bernard Shaw. For Ingham, a veteran stage and television actor and Royal Shakespeare Company honorary associate, understanding great texts means … [Read more...]