Great news from cellist Mike Block, director of Yo-yo Ma’s Silkroad Project’s Global Musician Workshop and beloved leader of Vero’s summer fiddle camp: He and his wife Hanneke Cassel are giving a free concert this Friday, (March 27) at Christ by the Sea Methodist Church, taking donations at the door for the camp’s scholarship program.
The Mike Block String Camp takes place in July over the span of two weeks. Block brings in an incredible faculty of string, vocal and percussion teachers who all play by ear, and can teach the improvisational technique for what is broadly known as fiddle music. Music students of all levels and of all ages come in from all over the country and even internationally. The first week, June 20 through July 4, has instruction for all levels, from classical violinists to rank beginners. Then July 6 through July 10, there’s a second week for more advanced students. Four concerts given during the two-week span will constitute the Vero Beach International Music Festival – the multi-concert format takes the place of last year’s 8-hour marathon.
The tuition is $550 a week, and to defray expenses for students in need, Block is giving this free fund-raising concert Friday.
The fundraiser will feature a mix of original compositions, and traditional fiddle music. And throw a few more bucks in the bucket for Block and Cassel hosting workshops at our public schools for two days this week. Mike tells us the concert is going to feature student ensembles from Vero Beach High School and Indian River Charter High. It starts at 7 p.m.
The rapidly evolving Ballet Vero Beach offers what should be a beautiful program this weekend, while in West Palm, Miami City Ballet stages a world premiere by the much talked-about choreographer Justin Peck.
First, a look at the locals: Ballet Vero Beach has set the barre high for its season finale, after a strong January program that featured the young company’s first Balanchine ballet and a beautiful new work of choreography by artistic director Adam Schnell. With this weekend’s program the company returns to the choreography of Marius Petipa and Samuel Kurkjian , both of whom were represented in its debut season last year. The 19th century classical ballet “Paquita” tells the story of a Gypsy girl who falls in love with a French nobleman that the Spaniards want offed by a Gypsy king. Ballet Vero Beach will perform the Grand Pas Classique and the pas de trois. The selections are said to be the company’s most ambitious production to date, with a large cast and elaborate “pancake”-style tutus.
Vivi DiMarco will dance the role that Petipa himself taught to the great Anna Pavlova. The French-born Petipa created most of ballet’s classical repertoire, including “Giselle,” “Don Quixote,” “Swan Lake,” and many more.
In a different, neoclassical vein, the ballet “Debussy Suite, or In Summer’s Wind,” is the late Kurkjian’s interpretation of Claude Debussy’s famed “Petite Suite.”
And the pas de deux from Vasily Vainonen’s “Flames of Paris” will feature Camilo Rodriguez, the company’s dance master – though after January’s gender-bending program, we can’t ever be sure who’s dancing which role, and Vivi DiMarco did tell me she isn’t the only one doing 32 fouetté turns.
Meanwhile, the loyal Kravis Center audience for Miami City Ballet – larger than the audiences in Miami or Broward – gets to be first to see “Heatscape,” a world premiere from Justin Peck, ballet’s latest wunderkind choreographer. The work includes a performance by soloist Patricia Delgado – who is also Peck’s girlfriend. It is set against original art by Shepard Fairey, the skateboard and street artist who designed the now iconic Obama “Hope” poster, and whose work is in the collections of the Smithsonian and the Museum of Modern Art.
“Heatscape” is one of four dances in a program called Points of Departure, the company’s fourth and final program this season, and a celebration of choreography that has taken dance in new directions.
Other dances are Balanchine’s “Raymonda Variations,” and the company premiere of “The Concert (Or the Perils of Everybody),” a comedic work by Jerome Robbins.
A couple of acts worthy of advance planning coming up at the King Center: the Canadian jazz contralto and pianist Diana Krall plays April 12; and John Mayall, the godfather of British blues, plays May 15.
Krall, whose 12 albums have sold 15 million copies, sang “Fly Me to the Moon” at astronaut Neil Armstrong’s memorial service three years ago. Mayall, now 81, has recorded more than 60 albums with his band the Bluesbreakers, with sidemen like Elton John and Mick Fleetwood. He got himself back in a studio recently and recorded another album, “A Special Life.”
April 10, the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Keith Lockhart, and featuring the ridiculously accomplished young pianist Charlie Albright, returns to Vero Beach’s Community Church through the Indian River Symphonic Association.
Lockhart has been conductor of the Boston Pops since 1995; he is also principal conductor of the BBC Orchestra.
Marcello Giordani gives his big Amado Mio Vero concert Saturday, April 11, following a week-long international vocal competition that has its finals the preceding Friday night. Giordani, who reprised the role of Radames in Verdi’s “Aida” at the Met last season, is staging his fifth vocal competition – this is the third time in Vero.
Variously calling his concerts “Serata d’Amore,” “Ti Amo Vero,” and now “Amado Mio Vero,” Giordani is making clear he likes it here – or he’s just coaching us in bilingual wooing.
The competition takes place during the day Monday through Thursday, April 6 through 9, beginning at the continentally reasonable hour of 3 p.m. and running right up to Vero’s bedtime, 8 p.m.
Tickets are $20 for any or all of those four days of competition and it’s great singing to great piano accompaniment by VBO’s own Bruce Stasyna. Friday, the finalists perform starting at 7 p.m. The Vero My Love concert, with Giordani and the competition winners, starts at 7 p.m. on Saturday.
Coming Up: Beautiful ballet and a Mike Block concert