The Arrival (2008), by Jose Alvarez.Art: The Norton Museum of Art has opened an exhibit of contemporary art featuring works by artists whose perception of the world around is refracted in unusual but precise ways. Altered States, which opened Saturday and runs through July 17, shows work by four artists – Jose Alvarez, Yayoi Kusama, Fred Tomaselli and Leo Villareal – who express this through painting, collages and light installments.
New York-born Alvarez, whose work is simultaneously on display at Palm Beach’s Gavlak Gallery, is also well-known for his years of performance art in which he “channeled” a 2,000-year-old shaman called Carlos. Japan’s Kusama decorates her paintings with what she calls “infinity nets,” which reflect years of hallucinations that featured similar patterns.
Fear of Death (2008), by Yayoi Kusama.Tomaselli, a Los Angeles native, uses materials such as pills and plants in his collage-paintings, and Albuquerque-born Villareal employs his own software and programmed LEDs to make his distinctive light installations. Curated by the Norton’s Cheryl Brutvan, the exhibit offers viewers a chance to move away from representational art for a kind of creation in which the toggle switch of reality gets a serious jiggle.
The Norton is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $12; call 832-5196 or visit www.norton.org.
Saiorse Ronan in Hanna.Film: It was only a matter of time before the movies figured out a way to eliminate the narrative and replace it with two hours of chase scenes. In the case of Hanna, a stylish example of pure kinetic energy, Saoirse Ronan (Atonement) is a teenage killing machine and Cate Blanchett is the icy cool pursuer who is not opposed to using all lethal means to get her prey. Credit director Joe Wright (Ronan’s Atonement helmer) with the arty editing and global location sites. It is not until three-quarters through the film that we learn why Hanna is such a cold-blooded creature and why she is being sought, but by that time, motives and back story have been trumped by the dizzying pace and sinister mood. Opening in area theaters.
Clockwise from top left: Michael Serratore, Nick Santa Maria, Kim Ostrenko and Kim Cozort in God of Carnage.
Theater: Picture playwright Yasmina Reza’s Art on steroids and you have a sense of the dark, manic comedy of her newer work of bad manners, God of Carnage, beginning previews at the Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton on Sunday. In it, two well-heeled, civilized Brooklyn couples meet to discuss an act of playground violence between their 11-year-old sons and, before long, they are acting even more childishly than their offspring. Kenneth Kay guides a cast that includes two of the area’s appealing Kims – Cozort and Ostrenko – and two out-of-state actors – Nick Santa Maria and Michael Serratore – in this choreographed exercise in mayhem. For tickets, call (561) 241-7432.
Soyeon Lee.Music: The Boca Raton Symphonia closes its fifth season this weekend with the young South Korean pianist Soyeon Lee in the Concerto No. 23 (in A, K. 488) of Mozart in a concert conducted by guest director David Commanday. The founder of the Peoria, Ill.-based Heartland Festival Orchestra will keep the focus on the key of A major with the Mendelssohn Fourth Symphony (No. 4, Op. 90, Italian), and also pay tribute to the world of film, with Aaron Copland’s Music for Movies. Copland assembled the suite in 1943 from three of his scores: Of Mice and Men, The City and Our Town. The concert starts at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Roberts Theater on the campus of St. Andrew’s School in Boca Raton. For tickets, call 376-3848 or visit www.bocasymphonia.org.
Michael Mizrahi.The world of classical music is in a state of ferment these days, and one of the best reasons is the number of young composers who are out writing things in a way free of the academic restrictions of the recent past. The music of two young Americans, Judd Greenstein and Missy Mazzoli, will be featured on a concert Tuesday night by pianist Michael Mizrahi, a professor at the Lawrence University conservatory in Appleton, Wis. Mizrahi, who co-founded New York’s NOW Ensemble with Greenstein and others, will play Greenstein’s First Ballade and Mazzoli’s Isabelle Eberhardt Dreams of Pianos. Mizrahi also will play the Beethoven 32 Variations in C minor, Schumann’s beautiful Arabeske (Op. 18), the late Sonata in A (D. 959) of Schubert, and the Ballade No. 1 (in G minor, Op. 23) of Chopin. Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. concert Tuesday at the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse are $30. Call 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org.
Baritone Joseph Lattanzi, seen here competing in the2010 Palm Beach Opera Grand Finals, will be in the contest again this year.
This Sunday, 13 young opera singers will take the stage at the Kravis Center for the Grand Finals of the Palm Beach Opera’s annual Vocal Competition. This event is one of the most enjoyable of the season, with a parade of fresh talent and the atmosphere of a competition – American Idol-style, too, with audience members texting their votes for favorites at the end of the show. The finalists, announced earlier today, are:
Advanced division (ages 24-30): R. Kenneth Stavert, baritone (Fullerton, Calif.); Margaret Mezzacappa, mezzo-soprano (Euclid, Ohio); Suzanne Vinnik, soprano (Las Vegas); John Holiday, countertenor (Rosenberg, Texas); Jeanine De Bique, soprano (Trinidad and Tobago); Joo Won Kang, baritone (Seoul, South Korea); Laura Wilde, mezzo-soprano (Watertown, S.D.)
Junior division (ages 18-23): Brandon Cedel, bass-baritone (Hershey, Pa.); Joseph Lattanzi, baritone (Mableton, Ga.); Emmett O’Hanlon, baritone (Manhasset, N.Y.); Danielle Adams, soprano (Cincinnati); Marco Stafani, tenor (Pleasanton, Calif.); Betsy Diaz, soprano (Miami).
Tickets for the 3 p.m. concert Sunday at the Kravis Center’s Dreyfoos Hall start at $20. Call 833-7888 or visit www.pbopera.org.