The gallery stroll downtown includes the grand opening of a new gallery that promises to be a breath of fresh – and exotic – air in the district. Neli Santamarina’s new Raw Space at Edgewood gallery at 1785 Old Dixie has a reception planned to both introduce itself to the community and to honor a roster of excellent Cuban-American photographers. They include Flor A. Mayoral, a Coral Gables dermatologist and much-lauded photographer; Lissette Solorzano, whose work was featured in a 2015 show at New York’s Robert Mann Gallery; and Neireda Garcia-Ferraz, who curated the six women and two men in the show. The reception, open to the public, is from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Also on stroll night, a second reception for artist Dawn Miller, a favorite on the gallery scene, who has had a show all last month at the Center for Spiritual Care. The show – aptly named “Touching Dust,” since for the past 20 years that’s how she makes her gorgeous landscapes and interiors, with soft pastels – is on display through April 26.
Next Thursday, April 7, the Atlantic Classical Orchestra’s final guest conductor of four featured this season in its effort to find a new artistic director is David Handel, principal guest conductor of the Moscow Symphony-Russia Philharmonic. The concert features a celebrated young violinist and former Juilliard School faculty member, Giora Schmidt. Handel spent 14 years conducting the National Symphony Orchestra of Bolivia and at the same time was involved with orchestras in Argentina, Guatemala and Chile.
Handel was engaged as guest conductor in Moscow immediately after his sold-out debut there in 2010.
In Vero, the concert is at St. Edward’s School. The pre-concert lecture starts at 6:40 p.m.; the concert is at 7:30 p.m. The decision on ACO’s new conductor is expected later this month.
This is the weekend that West Palm’s Kravis Center hosts the extraordinary, all-new production of Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” staged by the Miami City Ballet as the culmination of its 30th season. Shakespeare’s tale has been reimagined as taking place underwater, with a set designed by Miami native Michele Oka-Doner. It’s getting fabulous reviews and deserves a drive down. Performances run through a Sunday matinee. The production moves to Broward the following weekend, before heading to New York, where the company makes its Lincoln Center debut April 13 and 14.
Lunafest, a traveling national festival of short films made by women and about women, is on tap Saturday at the Richardson Center at Vero’s campus of Indian River State College. Established in 2000, the festival’s shorts are curated from around the world, billed as a “fund-raiser in a box” for their 175 hosts. In Vero, proceeds go to The Center for Spiritual Care, Friends with Diagnoses and other cancer-related causes. Doors open at 12:30 p.m. The event includes speakers and goes until 4 p.m.
The Vero Beach Choral Society has its spring concert in two venues this year: Friday at 7 p.m. at First Presbyterian, and Sunday at 4 p.m. at Community Church. With the theme “If Music Be the Food of Love,” selections range from Mozart to Leonard Cohen, and singers include the 14 who were in Vero Beach Opera’s “Die Fledermaus” in January.
Also Sunday at 3 p.m., Christ-by-the-Sea’s Marcos Flores teams up again with classical guitarist Miguel Bonachea and another guitarist, Ivan Rijos. Rijos studied at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.
Heads up on a promising concert April 13, when folk and bluegrass singer Amy Helm is playing at Stuart’s Lyric Theatre. Helm is the daughter of the late Levon Helm, legendary drummer for The Band, with whom she played for 10 years. She’s recently released a roots album, “Didn’t It Rain,” and is now playing with a band called The Handsome Strangers.
And if you want to start heaving a sigh of relief now that the season’s winding down, save a little air for April 10, when the Laura Riding Jackson Poetry Barbecue takes place on the beautiful grounds of the Environmental Learning Center. This is the unofficial Vero arts community’s ritual unwinding, and it’s always enriching at the same time.
This year’s poets include three women. Sidney Wade, a professor of creative writing at the University of Florida, where she has taught for 23 years, is a New Jersey native who studied philosophy at the University of Vermont, and earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Houston. She is the president of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The New Republic and Southern Review.
South Carolina’s Laurel Blossom, an avid swimmer who has put together an anthology of writings on the subject, has published five books of poems, the latest – “Longevity” – came out last fall. Her chapbook “Any Minute” was nominated for the Elliston Prize. She is on the board of trustees of the Laura Riding Jackson Foundation.
In addition to four chapbooks, Alice Friman has also published six collections of poems; her fifth, “Vinculum,” won her the Georgia Author of the Year Award in Poetry. In 2012 she won a Pushcart Prize. She is poet-in-residence at Georgia College in Milledgeville.
