The Brevard Symphony Orchestra holds its second concert of the season at the King Center Saturday night, a program of Russian masters featuring Grammy-nominated pianist Terrence Wilson, a graduate of Juilliard. If Melbourne is a bit far, to paraphrase the British explorer Captain Robert Scott, you won’t regret the lesser journey to hear the Space Coast Symphony, which also plays Saturday night but at Vero High School’s Performing Arts Center. Topping the program is Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Sinfonia Antartica,” inspired by Scott’s disastrous effort to become the first man to reach the South Pole.
The program also includes Richard Strauss’ moving “Four Last Songs,” written in the last year of his life and performed here by Mary Anne Kruger. The American-born soprano sang for two decades in Germany after earning a master’s in vocal performance at Indiana University.
In a considerably less sobering segment, conductor Aaron Collins turns over the baton to renowned Central Florida trumpeter Gareth Pritchard to conduct Malcolm Arnold’s “Tam O’Shanter,” based on the Robert Burns poem about a man in the throes of drink.
The concert starts at 7 p.m.
Sunday marks the resumption of the blood feud that twice tore asunder Vero’s church music scene. Yes, Dr. Jose-Daniel Flores is coming back to town to challenge his brother Marcos Flores to determine which instrument is king, piano or organ. Jose-Daniel was the longtime music director of Vero’s Community Church; he left in 2014 to lead a large community choir in Albany, New York. Brother Marcos stayed behind in Vero; he is music director at Christ by the Sea Methodist Church. As before, big brother Eliut is flying in from Puerto Rico to try to keep the peace. Word is they’re even bringing their parents this time. Prepare the time-out room. The competition takes place in two concerts at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. at Christ-by-the-Sea.
Still no hope of a reunion tour of Crosby, Stills and Nash. In the meantime, we get more David: He’s performing at Stuart’s Lyric Theatre Tuesday and at Melbourne’s King Center next Saturday, Nov. 26. Crosby released two new albums, “Lighthouse,” a collaboration with Michael League of the Grammy-winning band Snarky Puppy; and a still-unnamed effort with his son James Raymond.
There is nothing snarky about the puppy that appears at the end of the remarkable play “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.” The national tour stops at West Palm’s Kravis Center this week. Based on the best-selling short novel by Mark Haddon, and directed by Marianne Elliott (who also directed and won a Tony for “War Horse”), “Curious Incident” won five Tony awards including Best Play. and this praise from the New York Times’ Ben Brantley: “One of the most fully immersive works ever to wallop Broadway.” I totally agree, having seen the NTLive simulcast from London two years ago; it debuted on Broadway six months later. The play, told in first-person in the novel, is about a brilliant and autistic 15-year-old boy who discovers a neighbor’s dog has been killed. When the mystery’s unravels it nearly undoes him.
The show runs at Kravis through a Sunday matinee.
With a potential presidential U-turn on travel to Cuba looming after last week’s election, Fort Pierce’s A.E. Backus Museum is providing an interim trip via the photography and sculpture of a private collector.
The exhibit, The Light in Cuban Eyes, is based on a monograph by the same title by Madeleine Plonsker, who with her husband Harvey has been collecting art from the recently accessible island for more than a decade. Her 2015 exhibit in San Francisco caught the eye of the Backus’ executive director, Kathleen Frederick, who arranged to meet Plonsker for three days in Chicago. There, Frederick selected the 75 works destined for this weekend’s opening, which includes a Cuban-themed donor party Saturday night and a public reception Sunday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
The exhibit marks the museum’s reopening after a five-month closure for renovation and expansion. It features works from Cuba’s so-called “special period” in the early 1990s following the fall of the Soviet Union when funds suddenly dried up for the island nation, leaving residents in dire poverty.
In West Palm Beach, an exhibit of photographs of a very American phenomenon spans the same era that saw the Cubans capturing their struggle on film. “Dead Images: Photographs of the Grateful Dead” opens this weekend at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre. The collection is from the archives of rock photographer Robbi Cohn. The show’s opening-night reception Friday from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The exhibit will be on view through Jan. 4. The center is part of West Palm’s City Center on Clematis Street.
