If you’re a lover of Celtic music or the modern strain of bluegrass played by Bela Fleck and others, your Vero Beach summer is about to go from laid back to high strung, when the Mike Block String Camp offers a free concert with world class musicians.
The camp itself commences Monday and it’s the sixth year in a row that Block has graced us with his own talent and that of his brilliant musician friends.
Block is a phenomenal cellist who has played for many years with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project; the hand-picked faculty he brings to Vero each summer includes nationally-known fiddlers, cellists, bassists, guitarists, percussionists and vocalists. They teach more than 100 musicians of all levels and ages, half of whom come from Vero and the rest from around the country and the world.
In addition to leading all-day workshops and jamming with the students at night at the Prestige motel (the old Aquarius motel which changed hands last fall), the instructors give a free performance for the public (donations to a camp scholarship program are accepted).
In prior years, those concerts have been remarkable: world-class examples of all kinds of string-based improvisation: folk, rock, Appalachian and Celtic, as well as classic and abstract jazz. They also stretched into hours-long marathons – nirvana for the fans but hard on the fannies parked on the metal folding chairs of First Presbyterian Church’s education wing, where the camp is held. So this year, Block is spreading out over four days the performances comprising what he calls the Vero Beach International Music Festival.
The main faculty performance is on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. Then Saturday, the Fourth of July, the students take the stage around 3 p.m. and cap their recital off with a barn dance.
The following week is for advanced students and that Wednesday, July 8, and Friday, July 10, they perform alongside the faculty. Those concerts start at 7:30.
For a look at the astonishing roster of artists, which includes new talent this year, google Mike Block String Camp and click on “faculty.”
If your style is straight-ahead country, Dierks Bentley brings his Sounds of Summer tour to the Coral Sky Amphitheatre in West Palm next Friday. The July 3 concert celebrates Bentley’s latest album, “Riser,” nominated for a Grammy, with the title single by Travers Meadows getting plenty of attention. It was just written about in Rolling Stone Country after Bentley performed the stirring anthem at Nashville’s CMA Music Festival the week before. The magazine predicts a rash of “Riser bird” tattoos – based on the artwork on the album cover.
The heat isn’t doing much to whet appetites beyond cold beer, but just in case you need something crusty to mop up the juices of a nice salade de tomates, Patisserie Vero Beach is opening its doors with tours of Chef Mark Edmunds’ pre-dawn inner sanctum – the kitchen, and a long table of samples as part of the nationwide Bread Bakers’ Guild Open House. Along with samples, Chef Mark Edmunds is giving the first in his summer series of bread-making classes. Saturday’s session will have students working with ancient grains; the next class, July 18, involves pâte à choux, a really useful tool for éclairs and hors d’oeuvres; and July 25’s class teaches how to make shaped breads like rolls.
The Space Coast Orchestra is beefing up its 32-member wind ensemble with added saxophones to back a 30-voice all-female chorus in its America the Beautiful concert Saturday afternoon. It’s the eighth year for the free summer offering of patriotic music; it takes place not at Vero’s high school (as before) but at First Presbyterian Church, ensuring a massive impact in closer quarters. From the film scores of John Williams to the marches of John Phillip Sousa, conductor Aaron Collins has chosen a rousing program in advance of the Fourth of July. In lieu of fireworks, he’s looking for ambiance in the audience by asking people to wear red, white and blue – maybe he’s got a flag wave in mind. The concert starts at 2 p.m.
All the people I know who made it up to Melbourne’s Henegar Center last month to see the remarkably musical version of John Waters’ “Cry-baby” at the Henegar Center are really happy they did. With a little more research and another trek north, they might understand why Henegar’s Hank Rion is having to work so hard: the competition in community theater in Brevard County is intense. The Historic Cocoa Village Playhouse is staging Jonathan Larson’s “Rent,” a contemporary musical based loosely on Puccini’s “La Boheme.” The musical follows a group of starving artists living on New York’s Lower East Side and coping with the reality of HIV/AIDS. The show opens Friday and runs through July 5.
