Country crossover star Jake Owen is giving a fund-raising concert at Vero Beach High School Friday night, after an announcement last week that his planned two-day music festival, thwarted by Hurricane Matthew, won’t take place until December 2017. The Nashville-based, Vero-raised Owen has a new album out, “American Love,” his first recording in three years apart from the single “Real Life” in 2015.
Raw Space at Edgewood, the downtown Vero gallery, is having an opening reception Friday for a group exhibition of Miami-based Cuban artists who go way back together. “We’ve known each other since we were 14 years old in Havana,” says Gustavo Acosta. The 58-year-old artist will show his paintings based on the cityscapes of Havana and Miami alongside the work of his generational peers José Bedia, Rubén Torres Llorca and Rogelio López Marin.
Organized by Vero-based independent curator Silvia Medina, the exhibition will continue through January. Raw Space is in the plaza on the corner of Old Dixie and 18th Street.
If you haven’t already discovered Stuart’s Ground Floor Farm, Saturday evening is the perfect time to visit. From 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., the free-spirited, healthy lifestyle-themed marketplace and event venue is hosting the annual Holiday Night Market, with community performers, an outdoor food and drink market, a craft market inside and things set up for the kids to do.
With an instructional kitchen, Ground Floor Farm is known for its food-related workshops – there’s one coming up Dec. 12 on fermented condiments like hot sauce and mustard making. That isn’t to say the Farm doesn’t grow things. It certainly does, using small-plot-intensive farming techniques and selling the produce every Wednesday at its on-site farm stand as well as at the Stuart Green Market Sunday mornings at City Hall. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings, Ground Floor Farm is open for food and drinks. Beyond that, you can hire the space for your own classes or events.
In West Palm, more than 100 musicians will assemble along the Intracoastal Saturday afternoon for a 90-minute free concert of opera arias, a hint of what’s ahead in the upcoming Palm Beach Opera season.
The program features Australian opera star Stuart Skelton, who opened the Metropolitan Opera’s season this year in the title role of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.” Skelton is the featured guest artist, performing along with the opera’s young artists, apprentice artists, orchestra and chorus.
This is the fourth year in a row for the Opera@The Waterfront. People bring chairs and blankets and picnic with their friends – food and beverage trucks are also on site. Palm Beach Opera has found it’s a great way to introduce new people to opera and they offer translations and information about each selection live on their website. There’s also a V.I.P. tent with Champagne and hors d’oeuvres, and a meet and greet with the stars after the concert. The event starts at 2 p.m. at the Meyer Amphitheater at the end of Evernia Street.
And may I just suggest to James Corden that Stuart Skelton would make a great Carpool Karoke. The two could be brothers.
Rivaling that would-be pairing is one that began on Craigslist, when stride pianist Evan Palazzo answered the same ad as ragtime jazz singer Elizabeth Bougerol. The ad was for a traditional jazz jam taking place near Times Square. “It was like everyone else in the room just faded away while we geeked out,” says the Paris-born Bougerol. Geek indeed. She holds a master’s degree from the London School of Economics. Palazzo went to the progressive humanist Waldorf School, then the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Together they formed a Roaring Twenties-themed act, the Hot Sardines, touring the country and stopping at West Palm’s Kravis Center on Monday night.
They have played for 6,000 at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night’s Swing on Bastille Day, and for 25,000 at the Festival d’Ile de France. They’ve played the Montreal International Jazz Festival and Boston’s Symphony Hall with the Boston Pops.
Also in West Palm, at Palm Beach Dramaworks, Rob Donohoe plays Truman Capote in the one-man play “Tru,” written by Jay Presson Allen and directed by Lynnette Barkley. The play concerns the scandal that erupted toward the end of Capote’s life, when Esquire magazine published the story “La Cote Basque 1965,” and a number of his high-society friends recognized themselves – and not in flattering ways.
The play runs through Jan. 1.
Roam if you want to. Roam around the world, but if you can just get to Fort Lauderdale this weekend, you can catch the B-52s, appearing at the indie-music Riptide Music Festival. Hard to believe the B-52s are celebrating their 40th year as a band. Just goes to show how stable a career New Wave music can be. Also playing: Earth Wind and Fire, minus of course, the late Maurice White, their beloved founder who died earlier this year.
