Art: The American version of Impressionism is perhaps best-known in the work of painters such as Mary Cassatt and Childe Hassam, but there is a rich tradition that comes from eastern Pennsylvania, and today the Society of the Four Arts opens an exhibition that brings that tradition to a wider audience. Painting the Beautiful contains more than 60 paintings from the James A. Michener Museum, located in the author’s hometown of Doylestown, Pa. Featured artists include Edward Redfield, Harry Leith, Kenneth Nunamaker and others, who bring a diversity of techniques to their paintings of nature and village. The exhibit lasts through Jan. 20. Admission is $5. Call 655-7227 or visit www.fourarts.org.
Also Painter and East Coast Surfers Hall of Fame member Dan Mackin’s paradise-themed artwork including two, hand-painted surfboards, is on display at The Pop Culture Vault, located at 250 E. Atlantic Ave. in downtown Delray Beach. Mackin is famous for utilizing only six colors in hundreds of combinations to create a water and tropical paradise pallet in his artwork. Mackin’s paintings on display at The Pop Culture Vault includes a new collaboration with singer/songwriter Brian Wilson titled That Lucky Old Sun!, which Mackin painted for Wilson’s studio album of the same name. Mackin will be visiting the gallery today from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. For more information, visit www.PopCultureVault.com.
Theater: If you enjoy musicals, chances are you have already seen and have affection for Meredith Willson’s The Music Man, but you have probably never thought of it as much of a dance show. Well, the new Maltz Jupiter Theatre production should change that view, thanks to light on his feet Matt Loehr as pseudo-professor Harold Hill, the traveling salesman/con man who arrives at River City, Iowa, intent in swindling the town out of money for musical instruments and uniforms for a boys’ band. Loehr again teams with director Mark Martino and choreographer Shea Sullivan ― the Carbonell Award-winning collaborators on Crazy for You two seasons ago ― to give the show a younger, more kinetic feel. Everything about the production is first-rate, and is likely to put a constant smile on your face and your whole family’s. Continuing through Sunday, Dec. 16. Call (561) 575-2223.
Film: Movies about mentally unstable people are nothing new and they are often awards magnets. Certainly David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook has Oscar nominations written all over it. It stars Bradley Cooper (of the Hangover movies), doing his best work yet on film as Pat, a guy with anger issues, who is newly released from a mental hospital. He moves back in with his parents (Robert DeNiro, Jacki Weaver), intent on reconciling with his former wife, when he is introduced to Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence of The Hunger Games), a young woman with her own emotional issues. OK, they’re both crazy as loons. But that is what makes them so right for each other in what is ultimately a dark romantic comedy. Expect DeNiro to gain another Oscar nomination as an obsessive football fan/bookie, who is only slightly less nuts than his son. At area theaters.
Music: We know him for his perennially popular operas, but Giacomo Puccini was the fifth generation of professional church musicians in the Italian city of Lucca. The Delray Beach Chorale performs the composer’s early Messa di Gloria at 3 p.m. today at the First Presbyterian Church in Delray Beach. Soloists are tenor Jorge Toro and bass William Stafford. Conductor Eric Keiper also will lead the community chorus in songs of the holiday season.
And four young students at the Lynn University conservatory will perform with the Lynn Philharmonia under dean Jon Robertson this weekend after winning the school’s concerto competition. Winners were pianist Hsin-Hui Liu, violinist Yaroslava Poletaeva, violist Jesse Yukimura and clarinetist John Hong. Placing as an alternate winner was pianist Aneliya Novikova.
Performances are scheduled for 7:30 tonight, with Liu playing the Ravel Piano Concerto and Poletaeva playing the Havanaise of Saint-Saens, and at 4 p.m. Sunday, with Hong in the Mozart Clarinet Concerto and Yukimura in the Rhapsodie of Bohuslav Martinu. The concerts take place at the Wold Performing Arts Center on the Lynn University campus. Tickets range from $35-$50. Call 237-9000 or visit events.lynn.edu.
And two other Lynn personnel, pianists Tao Lin and Catherine Lan, perform two big duo-piano sonatas Sunday afternoon on the Piano Lovers series at the Steinway Gallery in Boca Raton. On the program are the Sonata for Two Pianos (in D, K. 448) of Mozart, and the Sonata for Two Pianos of Brahms (in F minor, Op. 34b), the two-piano version of the Piano Quintet. The concert starts at 4 p.m. Sunday; tickets are $20 in advance, $30 at the door. Call 573-0644 for more information.