Atlantic Classical Orchestra’s mostly Florida-based musicians are joined by a German piano duo at next week’s concert. Sebastian and Barbara Bartmann took the bronze at Miami’s most recent Dranoff International 2 Piano competition. The husband-and-wife duo also took the Audience Favorite award and three Best Performance prizes. Here, they’ll play the Mozart Concerto for Two Pianos. The concert is Thursday, March 12 at 7:30 p.m. at St. Edward’s School with a pre-concert lecture at 6:40 p.m. given by the soon-to-retire artistic director Stewart Robertson.
Vero Beach Opera’s annual Resident Artists concert takes place Sunday at 3 p.m. A high-end version of a hometown talent show offers grand music and great talent, and it always has the audience roaring for its favorites. This year, the Performing Arts Center of Vero Beach High School will be particularly packed because both VBHS Symphony Orchestra and the VBHS Philharmonic will be playing, both under the direction of Matt Stott.
Christ-by-the-Sea Methodist Church’s musical director, Marcos Flores, will accompany the opera singers, then, for the jazz and Broadway show tunes, he’ll be joined by St. Edward’s School’s band director, Pete Hengen, who plays trumpet, and Gully Shell, a local percussion teacher.
As for vocalists, there’s Vero’s own Mary Broughman, a 23-year-old mezzo-soprano who just graduated from UCF with a vocal performance degree – in the top 1 percent, no less. Broughman was the recipient of scholarships from both Vero Beach Opera and the Indian River Symphonic Association.
Edmund Nalzaro, who sings with Central Assembly of God church, is a veteran of the Resident Artists concerts; he’s also a veteran of the Broadway show, “Miss Saigon,” having shared the stage as Thuy with Lea Salonga in the role of Kim. He went on the show’s national tour played Thuy in Riverside’s “Miss Saigon” last year – and dozens of other productions around the country.
Nalzaro will be joining VBO’s artistic director, Roman Ortega-Cowan, in a sentimental rendition of “Besame Mucho.” No telling who’ll be doing the besame-ing, but it ought to be entertaining (for the audience, too.) Ortega-Cowan was trained in opera in his native Cuba and continued to sing here in Florida for many years.
Ortega-Cowan will also sing with his daughter Tania, who doubles as emcee.
And there’s a young newcomer this year; operatic tenor Matthew White, who recently performed as Tinka in VBO’s “Il Tabarro.” Anxious to make a career in opera, he’s currently working in Palm Beach County installing wood floors. He certainly floored the crowd at the “Il Tabarro” after-party at Grand Harbor.
Then on Wednesday, the famous Yale a capella group the Spizzwinks are coming to town, hosted by Space Coast Orchestra. The Spizzwinks are oldest underclassmen a capella group in the country, formed in 1914 as a light-hearted counterpart to the Whiffenpoofs. (The name Spizzwinks refers to a mythical creature said to have brought about the corn blight of 1904.) The group tours internationally and they are no small potatoes, these. Among the better known Spizzwink alums are Bobby Lopez, co-creator of “Avenue Q” and “Book of Mormon”, and Joshua Malina who plays Will Bailey on “West Wing.”
The Spizzwinks will be giving a master class to the Vero Beach High School choral students, and then they’ll give a free concert at the school’s Performing Arts Center Wednesday evening.
With “West Side Story” still mid-rumble on Riverside Theatre’s main stage, the same director, DJ Salisbury, is staging “Side by Side by Sondheim” in its black box theater, a revue of the songs of Stephen Sondheim, considered by many to be the best lyricist in the history of show business, and the writer of the lyrics of “West Side Story.” Mentored by Oscar Hammerstein and a very serious student of composition at Williams College, where he graduated magna cum laude, Sondheim was only in his mid-20s when he auditioned with Leonard Bernstein to write “West Side Story.” That musical was his first real gig; he wrote the lyrics to the gorgeous melodies already laid out for him by Bernstein. He also wrote the lyrics to “Gypsy,” and the words and music to the songs in “Into the Woods,” “Sweeney Todd,” “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “Follies,” “Company,” and many more Broadway shows and films.
A narrator walks us through the songwriter’s life, giving us context for the songs. “Side by Side by Sondheim” even includes the duet, “A Boy Like That/I Have a Love” from “West Side Story,” though most are from “Company,” “Gypsy,” or “Follies.”
The show opens Tuesday and runs through March 22.
And if you want still more Sondheim lyrics, the Vero Beach Theatre Guild gives us “Gypsy,” which, like “West Side Story,” was also written by Arthur Laurents. This time, though, it isn’t Bernstein but Jules Styne who wrote the music. The show is directed by long-time Vero director Jon Putzke – he claims this is his 100th show here. His wife Marg designed the sets.
Putzke, who, by the way, just opened a new Broadway revue at his Theatre-go-Round dinner theater the Quilted Giraffe, regularly uses Beth McKenzie-Shestak and Eleanor Dixon, both of whom are involved with “Gypsy.” Shestak is musical director; Dixon stars as the stage mom Rose.
“Gypsy” runs through March 29.
And in Melbourne, the King Center just announced that the Grammy-award winning Gipsy Kings are coming June 12. The French-born Gipsy Kings, whose members are the sons and nephews of the great flamenco artist Jose Reyes, got their start a quarter century ago playing fancy parties in St. Tropez, and ended up taking their funk-tinged Catalan rumba around the world.
