Music: One of the most interesting aspects of the current cultural Zeitgeist is its emphasis, particularly among the young, on marrying entertainment to social change. Thus cometh the first-ever Tortuga Festival hosted by the marine conservation group Rock the Ocean on Fort Lauderdale Beach this Saturday and Sunday. To focus attention on the plight of the world’s seas, organizers have brought an impressive lineup of rock and country stars to the effort, including Kenny Chesney, Eric Church, the Avett Brothers, the luminously beautiful Grace Potter, Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite, and even old standbys Lynyrd Skynyrd. They’ll have a good weekend for it, it’s a good cause, and it also provides a chance for concertgoers to hear some rising talents and bands just about to break into the really big time. The music begins on two of the three stages Saturday morning at 11:30 with indie folk-rocker RayLand Baxter (Sunset Stage) and country trio Gloriana (Tortuga Stage). For more information, visit www.tortugamusicfestival.com.
Juan Ponce de Leon might have been known only to historians of Renaissance Spain as an early governor of Puerto Rico had he not arrived 500 years ago this month on these shores (probably around Ponte Vedra Beach) and named the green and pleasant land he found Pascua Florida. Surely he didn’t foresee that the name Florida would become synonymous with bizarre crime and voters with poor processing skills, but let that pass. This week, the Seraphic Fire concert choir is returning listeners to the music Ponce de Leon and his compatriots would have known, in a concert featuring pieces by Francisco Peñalosa (1470-1528), Juan del Encina (1468-1529), and Juan de Antxieta (1450-1523), as well as numerous anonymous songs of the period. The group gave this concert last night in Boca Raton, and tonight it’s at First United Methodist in Coral Gables, followed by performances Saturday night at All Saints Episcopal in Fort Lauderdale and Sunday afternoon at Miami Beach Community Church. This is beautiful, rare music, and it gives us a greater understanding of the Western world in those days, when explorers were king and kings sent ships all over the world to conquer everything they could find. Visit www.seraphicfire.org or call 305-285-9060 for details.
Film: There’s a lot to like in Danny Boyle’s new film, Trance, even if you have to work hard to follow it and will probably have to see it at least twice to understand it all. In that sense, the movie it will most remind you of is Inception, which screwed with the audience’s heads in a similar way. You should just go see Trance without knowing much about it, but it is fair to say that it concerns a London auctioneer (James McAvoy) who is in on a heist of a near-priceless Goya painting. But during the robbery, he gets conked on the head and afterwards he cannot recall where he stashed the canvas. So he goes to a hypnotherapist (the very sexy Rosario Dawson) who mines his subconscious for the answer. Do not be concerned that I have spoiled the movie for you. All of the above happens in the first few minutes of Trance, before it gets really twisty, and not all of it turns out to be completely true. Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) gives the tale a great visual style and breezy pace, which only helps the puzzle. Opening this weekend at area theaters.
Theater: Slow Burn Theatre Company has already shown that it has an affinity for the works of Stephen Sondheim with impressive productions of Assassins and Into the Woods. Still, does the creative, low-budget company have the dramatic chops and resources to pull off the great composer-lyricist’s masterwork, Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street? Probably, since it has been up to almost every other challenge it has given itself. With a near-operatic score, the show is the saga of a wrongfully convicted tonsorial whiz, who returns to London from prison intent on seeking revenge on a corrupt judge, and executing his customers while he waits. Co-artistic director Matthew Korinko plays the title role, under the direction of his partner in crime, Patrick Fitzwater. Opens today and runs through Sunday, April 21. Call (866) 811-4111 for tickets.
Art: More than 175 documentary photographs from The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951 are on display at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. Members of the Photo League, such as photographers Berenice Abbot, Aaron Siskind, Barbara Morgan and Sid Grossman, focused on social reform and believed in the power of the photograph to motivate change. In that belief, they had plenty of evidence to back them up: It was the pioneering journalist and photographer Jacob Riis who had persuaded New York Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt to pursue reforms after seeing his revolutionary photos of the city’s misery in the 1880s. The league’s photos are in their way just as unflinching; they took their cameras to every part of the city, and documented its daily life in a remarkably honest way. The exhibition runs through June 16. The Norton is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is $12 for adults and $5 for students. For more information, visit www.norton.org.