(Editor’s note: The posting of this entry was delayed by technical difficulties.)
Art: Boynton Beach settings have been transformed into vibrant paintings by the Palm Beach County Plein-Air meet-up group. The group’s work can be viewed in the Breeze into Boynton Beach: Plein-Air Exhibit on display on the second floor of the Boynton Beach City Library, 208 S. Seacrest Blvd. The public is invited to bid on the paintings with settings ranging from Boynton’s inlet shoreline and harbor marina to the boardwalk and cypress trees at Arthur Marshall Loxahatchee Preserve Park. Winning bids for the paintings will be announced April 11 at an artist reception from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. with a percentage of the proceeds benefiting The Friends of the Library and Art in Public Places programs in Boynton Beach. The exhibit runs through May 3. For more information, contact Debby Coles-Dobay, City of Boynton Beach Public Art Administrator at (561) 742-6026.
Film: Call it a quirk of timing or simply good fortune for filmmaker Neil Barsky, but his documentary on charming and abrasive New York City mayor Ed Koch arrives with a special poignancy a little over a month after his death. Called simply Koch, it focuses on his three terms in office beginning in 1978, a time when the city was virtually bankrupt. And by sheer determination and a bit of political brinksmanship, Koch secured the loan guarantees that turned New York solvent again. It is hard to imagine such a coup today with such governmental dysfunction, even with a charismatic leader like Koch. The mayor had his setbacks too, all well-chronicled in this admiring, but balanced film on an era that seems so distant now. Playing at Mos’Art Theatre in Lake Park and Living Room Theatres in Boca Raton.
Theater: The Kravis Center rarely has pre-Broadway productions, but it did in 1995 when a relatively unknown composer named Frank Wildhorn brought his pop anthem-filled take on Jekyll & Hyde to West Palm Beach before New York, where it played almost four years. Now the show is being recycled in a redesigned, reconceived revival starring Constantine Maroulis (of American Idol and Rock of Ages), as the scientist investigating the nature of evil and his alter ego self, and Canadian R&B singer-songwriter Deborah Cox as Victorian prostitute Lucy. Jeff Calhoun, hot from his high-stepping success with Newsies, directs and choreographs. Opening Tuesday, March 26, for a week. Call (561) 832-7469 for tickets.
Music: Usually, the solo concerto at an orchestral concert features a piano, violin or cello, but other instruments have had effective and lovely works written for them. This Sunday, flutist Jennifer Grim will demonstrate that in an appearance with the Boca Raton Symphonia when she performs the Flute Concerto No. 1 (in G, K. 313), of Mozart, one of two such works he composed for the Dutch amateur Ferdinand Dejean. Also on the program is Respighi’s The Birds, a suite based on 18th-century French music, and Carmen Suite, a rethinking of Bizet’s opera for the ballet, by the Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin. The concert begins at 4 p.m. in the theater on the campus of St. Andrew’s School. Tickets range from $33 to $59. Call 866-687-4201 or visit www.bocasymphonia.org.
If you’ve spent any time at the Ravinia Festival outside Chicago, you know how its atmosphere of green serenity is heightened by the knowledge of the decades of great music-making that has taken place there since the 1920s. This Sunday afternoon, the Society of the Four Arts welcomes six members of Ravina’s summer conservatory, the Steans Music Institute, for a program of chamber music. Violinist Angelo Xiang Yu, violist Ayane Kozasa, cellist Karen Ouzounian, pianist Rafael Skorka, soprano Deborah Selig and violinist Miriam Fried, who directs the program, are on hand for works by Beethoven (String Trio in G, Op. 9, No. 1), Puccini (Crisantemi), Fauré (Piano Quartet No.1 in C minor, Op. 15) and the Three Songs in French by the American composer Earl Kim. Tickets for the 3 p.m. concert are $15. Call 655-7226 or visit www.fourarts.org.