Weekend arts picks: March 19-21

Art: You don’t have to go to art school to be an artist, or even be working at it all the time. Such is the case with Anthony Calicchio, who finds his inspiration in his culinary education and background as a second-generation restaurateur. In Café Frankie, he fashions masterful dishes with his basting brush, and the bistro’s walls are adorned with paintings he has created with his paintbrush.

As a chef, he has worked in top New York restaurants, such as Caravelle, and his inspiration evolves from food, music and fine art. “The colors, light and texture are created with my brush, as if I’m preparing a hearty Italian meal,” Calicchio said. “With multiple canvases in play and Carlos Santana on my stereo, painting is food for my soul. Miles Davis or Hash Brown may provide for the next basting of color, or Frank Zappa could point the way for me to add the spice to finish a canvas. So I eat, breathe and live art. Art drives my soul.”

His canvases are filled with expressionistic dashes of color and movement, exciting in their technique and execution. Calicchio’s work will be featured at a benefit Sunday for St. Mark’s Catholic Church at Café Frankie’s in Ocean Plaza at 640 E. Ocean Blvd. in Boynton Beach. The benefit lasts from 3 to 7 p.m. For information, call (561) 732-3834. — K. Deits

Theater: The saying “The show must go on” is alive and well in Palm Beach County, spurred by a health emergency by actor David Pendleton, who had the lead role in the Caldwell Theatre’s production of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. A week ago, Pendleton was hospitalized with complaints of acute numbness in his left leg and slight loss of feeling on the left side of his face. The diagnosis was a blood clot in his brain, for which he underwent surgery and remains in intensive care. Several performances of the lyrical retelling of the classic man-versus nature tale had to be canceled, but now Carbonell Award winner Gordon McConnell has stepped into the role and will complete the remainder of the play’s run, through March 28. For tickets, call (561) 241-7432. — H. Erstein

Film: Beginning Monday, March 22, for five days, it is the Fifth Annual Delray Beach Film Festival, the city-specific, home-grown event, created, run and financed by Dr. Michael Posner, a film aficionado and festival maven. This year’s event emphasizes documentaries and Jewish-themed films. Appearing during the festival and hauling off honors will be such B-list celebrities as Sharon Gless, Barry Bostwick and Jessica Walters. For more details, call (561) 381-3212 or visit www.dbff.us/shows.asp. — H. Erstein

Music: The husband-and-wife team of David Finckel and Wu Han operate a record company called ArtistLed when they’re not on the road together or with their separate projects. Finckel is the cellist for perhaps the greatest American string quartet working today, the Emerson Quartet, and this weekend he and his wife will be joined by Emerson violinist Philip Setzer for the two great piano trios (in B-flat, D. 898, and E-flat, D. 929), of Franz Schubert in a concert Sunday afternoon at the Society of the Four Arts. Finckel and Wu Han have been at the Four Arts before, memorably a couple years ago when they introduced a cello sonata by the Russian-born American composer Lera Auerbach. Chamber music devotees will want to be there. 3 p.m. Tickets: $10. Call 655-2776 or visit www.fourarts.org.

The Boca Raton Symphonia ends its season this Sunday afternoon with guest conductor Scott Yoo and American guitarist Jason Vieaux, who will perform the much-cherished Concierto de Aranjuez of Joaquin Rodrigo. Also on the program are the Music for the Theatre by Aaron Copland, and as a closer, the monumental Symphony No. 3 (in E-flat, Eroica) of Beethoven. Next season, the Symphonia will be conducted for three concerts by the fine French pianist Philippe Entremont, a frequent guest in South Florida, and one by composer and author Gunther Schuller. Alexander Platt, who ended his formal tenure at the Symphonia last month, returns for a guest appearance at the end of the season. Sunday’s concert is set for 2:30 p.m. at the Roberts Theater, St. Andrew’s School, Boca Raton. Tickets: $28-$49. Call 376-3848 or visit www.bocasymphonia.org.

Over at Palm Beach Atlantic University, professor and composer Tim Thompson is overseeing New Music ’10, a three-day festival of contemporary music that brings a great deal of fresh music to local ears. The series opened Thursday with student works, and continues tonight with the piano team of Duo Gastesi-Bezerra, consisting of Márcio Bezerra and his wife Estibaliz Gastesi. The duo will perform a tribute to PBAU’s Marlene Woodward-Cooper, whose fine music has been a staple of their repertoire. Woodward-Cooper’s Lost Reasons gets its world premiere tonight on a program with pieces by Terry Winter Owens, Ferdinando De Sena, Leonard Lehrman and Ricardo Tacuchian. Saturday night, the festival scores a coup by offering excerpts from an opera by American composer Richard Bradshaw, .Gabriel, which will get its world premiere this July in Australia. Soprano Tina Stallard is the soloist in this and songs by University of South Carolina professor Tayloe Harding; PBAU’s own Moon Sook-Park, also a soprano, sings Buru, by the South Korean composer Sukhi Kang, and Riddle Music No. 2 (Split the Lark), newly revised by its composer, Tim Thompson himself. Both concerts begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Persson Recital Hall on the PBAU campus. Tickets are $10. Call 803-2970 or visit www.pba.edu. – G. Stepanich

Dance: The Duncan Theatre’s dance series continues tonight and Saturday with Bebe Schweppe’s celebrated company, the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. On the program are Red Sweet (Elo/Vivaldi/Biber), Sue’s Leg (Tharp/Waller), Slingerland (Forsythe/Bryars), and Noir Blanc (Pendleton/various composers). Both shows, 8 p.m. at Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth. Tickets: $37. Call 868-3309 or visit www.duncantheatre.org.

Also this weekend, Colleen Smith’s Florida Classical Ballet Theatre mounts Giselle, the 1841 story of a peasant girl who rises from the grave to protect her lover from vengeful female spirits. With a timeless score by French composer Adolphe Adam. At the Eissey Campus Theatre, Palm Beach State College, Palm Beach Gardens. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets: $22-$32. Call 207-5900 or visit www.fcbt.org.— G. Stepanich

Opera: The Palm Beach Opera wraps its One Opera in One Hour series of 60-minute abridged operas tonight at the Harriet Himmel Theater, CityPlace, with its first English-language opera in years, and its first-ever staging of a work by Benjamin Britten. The opera is Albert Herring, written in 1947 and a comedy about a boy who becomes the May King of his little village, then hits the town after enjoying some spiked lemonade. He comes back ready to shake off his mother’s domineering ways, and it will be interesting to see what director Candace Evans of the Dallas Opera does with this charming score. At 9 p.m. Free admission, though VIPs are asked to contribute $15. Call 833-7888 for more information. – G. Stepanich