Just as Vero’s opera lovers have seized on the Giordani vocal competition, so should fans of jazz piano make a point of being part of a young and growing American Jazz Pianist Competition taking place this weekend at Florida Tech.
Vying for $15,000 in prizes is a field of 11 up-and-coming American pianists from the nation’s top conservatories and university jazz programs, all of whom play at “an incredibly high level,” says festival founder Brian Gatchell, himself a concert pianist and former professor of piano. He opened Atlantic Music Center in Melbourne in 1990.
The festival opens Friday night with Kenny Barron in a solo jazz concert starting at 7:30 p.m. Barron, a longtime instructor at Rutgers University, was nominated for a Grammy this year and called “one of the top jazz pianist in the world” by the L.A. Times and “the most lyrical piano player of our time” by Jazz Weekly.
And Saturday night, the Christian Tamburr Quartet, anchored by Tambour, a renowned pianist and one of the leading vibraphonists in the world, says Gatchell. Recently named Outstanding Solo Jazz Performer by Downbeat magazine and a featured artist of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Tamburr is artist-in-residence this year at Florida Tech. His group will be accompanying Las Vegas-based jazz vocalist Clint Holmes. He sold out Orlando’s 2,700-seat Disney Hall at Dr. Phillips Art Center touring with a tribute to Ray Charles last year.
Semi-finals are Saturday and are free to anyone who’d like to drop in and watch. Same goes for Sunday’s master class at 1 p.m., where two of the competition’s judges will be working with students from University of Central Florida’s jazz quartet. Then come the finals running from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. followed by the announcement of the winners.
Tickets are available on the web at Americanjazzpianistcompetition.com.
The Bolshoi Ballet boasts it is the only company in the world licensed to film and broadcast Balanchine’s three-part “Jewels.” In truth, it didn’t get the rights at all until 2012, long after most of the major companies of the world had the OK from the Balanchine Trust.
Sunday at Vero’s Majestic 11 Cinema, a performance recorded live in Moscow in January 2014 will be broadcast at 12:55 p.m. and repeated Wednesday at 6 p.m. The triptych is an homage to Balanchine’s own training, with each of the three jewels representing a style from different ballet schools in Paris, St. Petersburg and New York.
Tickets to the screening are $20.
Miami City Ballet opens its season this weekend at West Palm’s Kravis Center with two acts of Balanchine’s “Swan Lake,” as well as “Viscera,” created for the company in 2012 by the dance world sensation Liam Scarlett. And on a lighter note: “Fancy Free,” the whimsically pop piece about three sailors on leave in New York City, created by Jerome Robbins and later developed, with Leonard Bernstein, into the musical “On the Town.”
Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. with matinees Saturday at 2 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m. Tickets range from $20 to $189 and I can tell you from experience, the $20 are still fun – just bring binoculars. If you really want a deal, you can try to snag one on the day of performance – there’s a 20 percent discount on rush tickets 90 minutes before each show. Sixteen dollars, people!
A few years back, ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro became a YouTube sensation when without his knowledge somebody posted his version of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” It went viral before people had a name for that and today it’s been watched 14 million times. The bookings that followed came fast and furious – not unlike his legendary finger work; Rolling Stone magazine called him a hero for bringing the beauty of the uke to the masses.
Assuming the ripple effect of so much media coverage has made its way to Vero, Shimabukuro’s mid-November appearances at both the King Center in Melbourne and the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach will tempt the town’s music buffs to go hear him.
Ticket prices are $45 at the Kravis’s intimate Rinker Playhouse Sunday Nov. 15 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.; $29 to $39 on the King Center’s Main Stage Nov. 16.
