If I haven’t sounded reveille enough in the review this week of Riverside’s new play, you really, really should try to make it to this final weekend of “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.” Playwright Christopher Durang’s seriously witty mash-up of Chekhov’s themes and characters has matinee and evening performances this weekend, but then that’s it. Sadly.
Considering that one member of the excellent cast, Stacey Logan, is a longtime part-time resident of Vero, it’s worth seeing just to claim this Broadway actress as one of our own. The play is part of Riverside’s Second Stage series and takes place in the smaller Waxlax black-box theater. I cannot stress enough the importance of supporting these fine Second Stage plays, if you want our hometown theater to continue to deliver more than Main Stage musicals.
Pack a picnic and a blanket for the Gosman Amphitheater in West Palm Saturday when Ladysmith Black Mambazo plays for the Kravis Center’s $20-a-ticket Peak series. The a cappella group from South Africa is best known for singing with Paul Simon on his album “Graceland,” but they’ve also recorded with Stevie Wonder, Sarah McLachlan, Josh Groban and Melissa Etheridge. Now in its 50th year, the Grammy-award winning group still bases its sound on the traditional Zulu music, in particular of those who work in South African mines. The show starts at 7 p.m.
And if you time it right, you can catch a little music, tuck your basket back in the trunk and then go inside Kravis’ Dreyfoos Hall to see Miami City Ballet’s Program Three at 8 p.m. This one features the work of Justin Peck, the New York City Ballet’s resident choreographer and soloist, “The Year of the Rabbit,” with classical orchestration based on Sufjan Stevens’ 2002 electronic album “Enjoy the Rabbit” which we heard in the piece’s premiere.
The program also includes one of Paul Taylor’s most stirring works, “Sunset,” which depicts six girls and six soldiers separated by war. And finally, Balanchine’s “Bourrée Fantasque,” a ballet of 42 dancers in four movements set to the music of Chabrée. It was one of the first dances he choreographed for the New York City Ballet.
At the King Center in Melbourne, there were still tickets at press time for Vince Gill and Lyle Lovett on Sunday. The two are on a 13-city tour with an act that evolves spontaneously, they say – they never know what they’re going to sing when, and they don’t know who will ad-lib what. Seated on stools with no band backing them up, Gill compared the back-and-forth to ping pong, with stories of their life experiences woven between solos and duets. The concert starts at 7:30 p.m.
Then next Thursday, March 3, Herb Alpert performs with his wife Lani Hall. Alpert’s jazz trumpet has awed even Miles Davis. Hall herself has a Grammy for Best Latin Pop Performance. That concert, also at King Center, starts at 7 p.m.
Sunday at 2 p.m. at Vero High’s Performing Arts Center, there’s a free concert of the music of Mozart by the Vero Beach Chamber Orchestra. The community orchestra that came together in 2007 has grown to 48 members, including both semi-professional and professional musicians and five promising high school students. It is one of the few cultural events in Vero that is free to the public, though a donation is suggested. The group uses those donations to buy its sheet music, which it then turns over to high school orchestras and students. It also provides scholarships for music instruction.
The orchestra is conducted by Page Howell, who has worked with the remarkably accomplished Vero Beach High School orchestra since 2006. And the very talented violinist Matt Stott, who for 15 years has been director of the school system’s orchestras, will perform Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major. Also on the program are the overtures to “The Magic Flute” and “The Adduction of Seraglio,” as well as “Symphony No. 39.”
And because it is such major news, one more plug for the Okeechobee Music and Arts Festival, which is literally putting central Florida on the map for music fans. Since I last mentioned this, the recent Grammy Awards and the news surrounding them has given the roster even more celebrity status. (Festival performers Kendrick Lamar, Skrillex, Future and Fetty Wap all either won an award or got people saying they should have.)
Just about every genre but classical will be represented on three stages over four days, starting March 3.
