TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY
What: John Oates
Where: Jazziz Nightlife, 201 Plaza Real, Boca Raton
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: $60-$150 ($200 for meet-and-greet on Tuesday only)
Contact: 561/300-0730, jazziznightlife.com
Hall & Oates are still together after more than 40 years of recording and touring—a fact that suggests this world might not be falling apart at the seams. The duo, which only this year was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has sold more records than any duo in rock history, boasting 34 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 and gaining new audiences every year. But bassist John Oates is also an accomplished solo artist, with five albums to his credit. At these unusually intimate Jazziz concerts, he’ll play a number of songs from them, though expect the set to draw most heavily from the Hall & Oates corpus, including hits like “Maneater,” “When the Morning Comes” and “Las Vegas Turnaround.”
WEDNESDAY
What: “Bryan Drury: Terrestrial Visions”
Where: Boca Raton Museum of Art, 501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Cost: $10-$12
Contact: 561/392-2500, bocamuseum.org
Last weekend, the Boca Raton Museum of Art opened a handful of fall exhibitions, the most enticing of which appears to be this showcase by oil painter Bryan Drury. “Terrestrial Visions” is, indeed, a collection of portrait paintings, but you’ll be forgiven if you think you’re looking at high-definition photographs. Drury, a Cum Laude graduate of the New York Academy of Art, has developed a signature style of hyperrealism that, when applied to subjects’ faces, exposes every wrinkle, every acne scar, every bit of Botox and plastic surgery, as if placing them under an unforgiving microscope. This series focuses on rich industrialists and society figures, so there’s an element of class politics underneath the uncomfortably intimate surfaces, as well as a fundamental contrast between his subjects’ tactile physicality and their metaphysical souls. According to The New York Times, which reviewed Drury’s work in 2012, “the closer you look, the weirder [the portraits] seem.” The exhibition runs through Jan. 11.
THURSDAY
What: Deepak Chopra
Where: Congregation B’Nai Israel, 2200 Yamato Road, Boca Raton
When: 7 p.m.
Cost: $36-$150
Contact: 561/241-8118, cbiboca.org
If America were to appoint a national Multifaith Ambassador of Spirituality, Deepak Chopra would certainly be at the top of the shortlist. Born in India, raised in the world of traditional medicine, and eventually shown a different path via a yogi’s introduction to ayurvedic medicine, Chopra has become one of the world’s most outspoken voices in the fields of alternative healing and metaphysics. He’s also a telegenic pundit, able to wax beautifully on shows hosted by Oprah and Piers Morgan alike, on topics ranging from quantum theory and the God question to yoga, meditation, and the tragic life of his friend, Michael Jackson. So he’s a perfect fit for Congregation B’Nai Israel’s interfaith speaker series “CBI Talks,” in which he will discuss his new book, The Future of God: A Practical Approach to Spirituality for Our Times. Look for a recap of this event later this week at bocamag.com.
FRIDAY
What: “Rodney King”
Where: Broward College South Campus, 7200 Pines Blvd., Pembroke Pines
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $15
Contact: 954/201-8243, bsoca.org
What do Frederick Douglass, Bob Marley and Huey P. Newton have in common? As well as being vital figures in black history, they’ve also been portrayed and/or explored in riveting one-man shows by actor and playwright Roger Guenveur Smith. This versatile talent, whose film credits include such indelible Spike Lee “joints” as “Do the Right Thing,” “Malcolm X” and “Get on the Bus,” has managed to plumb the stories behind the stories of these notable African-Americans, and the same holds true for his latest subject: Rodney King, the unwitting martyr of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, whose victimization at the clubs of police officers became a defining cause celebre. According to Smith, King was “the first reality TV star,” and his performances will bring out the context and the complexity of both the man and his historical moment.
SATURDAY
What: “The Outrageous Sophie Tucker” screening and Q&A
Where: Movies of Delray, 7421 Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach
When: 1:15 p.m.
Cost: $6
Contact: 561/638-0020, moviesofdelray.com
This documentary explores the life and career of Sophie Tucker, the early 20thcentury jazz singer who forged her own comically risqué path across mediums ranging from vaudeville and Broadway to radio and television, influencing everyone from Mae West and Bette Midler to Roseanne Barr and Mama Cass. Director William Gazecki charts the early days of this bawdy, Flapper-era entertainer, who befriended figures as varied as Ronald Reagan and Joe DiMaggio while striving to make a living during Prohibition. In the process, we’re treated to amusing anecdotes (J. Edgar Hoover wanted to wear one of her dresses, naturally) and statements from interviewees such as Tony Bennett and Barbara Walters that properly canonize her in entertainment history. Last weekend, the movie premiered in South Florida—we got first dibs, even before New York and Los Angeles—and this week, producers Susan and Lloyd Ecker have stopped by for Q&As at select theaters, at no additional cost. They will also be attending the 1 and 4 p.m. screenings on Nov. 16 at Movies of Lake Worth, 7380 Lake Worth Road.
What: Chita Rivera
Where: Maltz Jupiter Theatre, 1001 E. Indiantown Road, Jupiter
When: 8 p.m.
Cost: $75-$500
Contact: 561/575-2223, jupitertheatre.org
This two-time Tony winner made history in 2002, when she became the first Hispanic woman and the first Latino American to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award. Seven years later, she accepted a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama. This capstone recognized more than six decades of work from this Broadway powerhouse, a triple-threat actress-dancer-singer who helped create such iconic parts as Anita, from “West Side Story,” and Velma Kelly, in the original cast of “Chicago.” In this rare cabaret appearance, Rivera will sing tunes from these shows as well as others from her extensive musical-theatre oeuvre, which includes “The Rink,” “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and “Pippin.” She’ll be backed by an 11-piece orchestra in an event that also serves as a fall fundraiser for Maltz Jupiter Theatre.
SUNDAY
What: Genie Milgrom
Where: FAU’s Wimberly Library, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton
When: 3 p.m.
Cost: $12-$20
Contact: 561/297-3921
Genie Milgrom has admitted being “obsessed” with her genealogy, and she has good reason to be. The 58-year-old president of a Miami-based export company was raised as a Cuban Catholic but already converted to Judaism when she discovered a box containing Jewish iconography that was bequeathed to her by her maternal grandmother. After shaking some family trees, she realized that her ancestors had Jewish roots stretching some 15 generations, many qualifying as “Crypto Jews”—meaning they masqueraded as Catholics to avoid persecution during the Spanish Inquisition. She turned her quest for identity into two self-published books, the page-turning, thriller-styleMy 15 Grandmothers and its helpful follow-up, How I Found My 15 Grandmothers: A Step By Step Guide. She hopes to inspire others to discover the secrets of their own cultural and religious past through lectures like this one, at FAU, titled “From the Spanish Inquisition to the Present: A Search for My Jewish Roots.”
What: Opening night of Miami Book Fair International
Where: Gusman Center, 174 E. Flagler Street, and Miami-Dade College, 300 N.E. Second Ave.
When: 5 p.m.
Cost: $30-$50
Contact: 305/237-3258, miamibookfair.com
Keeping the printed word off the endangered species list for another year, the Miami Book Fair attracts hundreds of local, national and far-flung authors to Miami-Dade College for discussions, signings, lectures and the popular street fair, which offers new, rare and bargain books. Confirmed guests for this year’s event, which runs through Nov. 23, should inject plenty of laughs, reflections and controversy, including Monty Python co-founder John Cleese, supporting his memoir So Anyway (7 p.m. Nov. 23); atheist polemicist Richard Dawkins, discussing his own memoir, An Appetite for Wonder (6:30 p.m. Nov. 22); cult filmmaker John Waters, discussing his Hitchhiking Across America (4 p.m. Nov. 22); and the bioethicist-turned-author Alexander McCall Smith, who will discuss his latest series mystery, The Handsome Man’s Deluxe Café (7:30 p.m. Nov. 16). At tonight’s grand opening, radio host Ira Glass and dancers Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass will perform an eccentric mix of hoofing and storytelling, including radio interviews restaged as dance pieces.
What: The Beatles’ U.S. Invasion: 50th Anniversary
Where: Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
When: 6 p.m.
Cost: $31.50-$119
Contact: 305/949-6722, arshtcenter.org
The major half-century anniversaries recognized over the past couple of years have been largely depressing: the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK. But it’s also been 50 years since the Beatles landed on the “Ed Sullivan Show” and ushered in rock music as we know it. In this unique program, the Miami Symphony Orchestra will honor the milestone with an evening of Beatles tunes from a classical perspective. Composer Sam Hyken’s 2011 piece “The Beatles Guide to the Orchestra” is a playful homage to Benjamin Britten’s “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” in which individual Beatles tunes introduce various instruments; i.e., “When I’m 64” becomes a tuba showcase. Next, you’ll hear compositions from “Beatles Go Baroque,” an acclaimed album by the Peter Breiner Chamber Orchestra that interprets songs like “Lady Madonna,” “Paperback Writer” and “Yellow Submarine” in the styles of Handel, Vivaldi and Bach, respectively. The program closes with the world premiere of conductor Eduardo Marturet’s “With A Little Help From My Friends,” a collaboration with the New Birth Baptist Church Choir.
