With “Crazy for You” still blazing on Riverside Theatre’s main stage, in the intimate black box theater next door, a one-man show opens Tuesday. “Underneath the Lintel” is directed by Allen Cornell, Riverside’s executive producing director. The play, written by Glen Berger, is about a Dutch librarian who discovers an overdue library book – 123 years overdue. He’s bound and determined to track down the borrower and give him “the fine of his life.”
With a massive season to oversee, this is the only show he is directing; he has also designed the sets. The Second Stage series is his baby – he loves the chance to mount straight drama at Riverside. The next show in the series is a revue, “Side by Side By Sondheim” in March.
“Underneath the Lintel” runs through Feb. 8. Tickets start at $45. “Crazy for You” runs only through Sunday, with “West Side Story” opening Feb. 17. Go to www.riversidetheatre.com or call the box office at 231-6990.
There were still a few grand tier seats available at press time for Jackson Browne at the King Center in Melbourne, Wednesday, Feb. 18. In case you’re unsure of his standing these days, check out his latest album, “Standing in the Breach,” which has garnered great reviews. Go to www.kingcenter.com.
Twenty-time Grammy winner Vince Gill, a country hall of famer, appears Feb. 10 at the Plaza Live Theatre, near downtown Orlando. He’s playing with the Time Jumpers, everybody’s favorite back-up band that is stepping out front these days. And on Feb. 20 at Plaza Live: Al Di Meola, the jazz fusion and Latin jazz guitarist who played with Chick Corea’s band in the 1970s, and collaborated with the likes of John McLaughlin and Jean-Luc Ponty. March 6, it’s the brilliant “newgrass” banjoists Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn; and Delbert McClinton plays his blues rock March 21. The Plaza Live is an easy hour-and-a-half drive from SR 60 and I-95, and is probably the closest venue to find first-rate artists out of the mainstream, from blues to electronica to Ru-Paul. Go to www.plazaliveorlando.com.
Another niche musician – this one world famous – is playing at the Vero Beach Museum of Art next Sunday, Feb. 8. Ian Clarke, who has a veritable cult following among flutists for his highly innovative technique and compositions, is coming from London to give an afternoon concert in the Leonhardt Auditorium as well as a workshop that concert-goers are welcome to stay and watch. (See accompanying article.)
Tickets are $50 for museum members; $60 for non-members. Go to www.verobeachmuseum.org or call 231-0707.
Thursday, the noted student orchestra of St. Olaf College plays at a remarkably affordable ticket price – $10, and it’s free for students. The St. Olaf Orchestra is playing at the Vero Beach High School Performing Arts Center. The acclaimed group of 96 students, led by Steven Amundson for the past three decades, performs in the St. Olaf Christmas Festival broadcast each year on PBS, along with the school’s more famous vocal counterpart, the St. Olaf Choir. The evangelical Lutheran liberal arts college in Minnesota is well known for its music program. Both the choir and the orchestra have performed internationally and have been featured frequently on Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” radio show.
The concert starts at 7 p.m. Go to stolaftickets.com or call 1-800-363-5487.
Get out your leather and lace for the annual Flametree Clay Gallery Sexpot show, the X-rated display of erotic pots, sculptures and wall hangings. Staged by one of the more outrageous of the downtown galleries, the artists attend in costume (we presume, but then again …) and encourage guests to do the same. The works themselves, conscientiously sequestered in a back room complete with flashing red light, range from the ridiculous to the divine – it’s sex, after all. Last year more than 1,000 people attended.
The show is part of the monthly downtown gallery stroll. This Friday there’s an interesting innovation: you have the option of strolling on wheels. Gallery 14 co-founder and co-owner Lila Blakeslee has convinced the county to provide a Go-line bus on a trial basis to circle through the area, making stops along the way, with home base the (absurdly underutilized) public parking lot across from the (entirely unused) diesel plant, otherwise known as the Jetson’s lot. Blakeslee, an artist herself, is largely to thank for starting the hugely popular strolls five years ago. She is also behind the recent addition of art-themed banners that line the district’s streets.
If you’re strolling Ocean Drive this weekend, stop in at the Admiralty Gallery where the impeccably executed and evocative landscapes of Luke Steadman are on display. Steadman, a 2005 award-winning graduate of the Ringling College of Art and Design, is one of Vero’s youngest artists, and one of the best. The Admiralty is at 3315 Ocean Dr.
And if the intersection of I-95 and State Road 60 looks like a crazy quilt of road construction these days, it’s going to be even crazier this weekend when an expected 1,000 quilting fanatics descend on Vero from around the state – and beyond.
Organizers for Quilt:Beach*, a modern quilt conference taking place in Vero this weekend, say last year, when the event was held at First Presbyterian Church, they had an estimated 1,200 visitors. “We stopped counting at 1,000. And we were expecting about 200,” says Shelagh Nichols Traill, who founded a Treasure Coast chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild a year and a half ago along with Ruth Thomas.
This year, they’ve expanded to two days instead of one, and moved the event out west of town to the Vero Beach Inn on State Road 60, just before I-95.
Instead of Skyping in nationally recognized quilters, as they did last year, the experts will appear in person. Los Angeles-based art quilter Luke Haynes will be leading an all-day workshop in person. So will Victoria Findlay Wolfe, who will appear at a Saturday night cocktail party to sign her new book, “Traditions Made Modern.”
Florida quilter Carole Lyles Shaw, president of the Sarasota chapter, will also be here showing her quilts. The show will feature quilts for viewing and for purchase.
For more information, go to www.quiltbeach.com.