Delray’s signature art fair returns, an indie-rock fest debuts in Lake Worth Beach, and FAU’s jazz band salutes the Beatles. Plus, “Tosca,” Pulitzer winner “Sweat” and more in your week ahead.
TUESDAY
What: San Salvador
Where: Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: $25-$45
Contact: 561/832-7469, kravis.org
Handclaps, tambourines, drums and, most importantly, their impressive vocal cords: That’s all that San Slavador, a polyphonic vocal sextet from the nether regions of southwestern France, needs to mount an electrifying concert. The group, which formed among friends around 2015, seems positively out of time. The vocalists sing in an obscure—and endangered—Indo-European dialect of the Occitan language, connecting with their audiences not through linguistic understanding but through the trancelike swarm of pure rhythm. By the end of their gigs, one of the members told a journalist in 2020, “we’re drained—but exhilarated.”
THURSDAY
What: FAU Jazz Orchestra: “Come Together, Right Now, Over Me!”
Where: University Theatre at FAU, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton
When: 7 p.m.
Cost: $10
Contact: 561/297-6124, fauevents.com
For Dr. Courtney Jones, artistic director of jazz ensembles at FAU, the title of his spring student showcase has more than one meaning. As you might expect, the program will feature the music of the Beatles, part of Jones’ contribution to expanding the jazz canon outward into other musical modalities. “It’s hip, it’s fun, and the Beatles made some really good music,” he says. “We’ll be showcasing the gifts they provided us regarding vibrational frequencies.” He tells Boca magazine that the evening will include both hits and some of the Fab Four’s more obscure tunes. But the concert also provides for the community to “come together” to, as Jones says, “invest in the department. I always invite a high school to join us onstage, to build the community, to bridge the gap. This year we’re inviting Dreyfoos School of the Arts. … I want a sold-out house. I want people to see what our students are doing here, and to be standing room only.”
THURSDAY AND SATURDAY
What: Florida Grand Opera’s “Tosca”
Where: Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 S.W. Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: $23.94-$228
Contact: 954/462-0222, browardcenter.org
Remarkably, when Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca” premiered in 1900, critics were less than enthused. One musicologist called it a “shabby little shocker;” another called it “three hours of noise.” These days, with “Tosca” having earned its stature as one of the most-performed operas in the world, it’s fair to say the consensus eventually found its way to the correct response. Which isn’t to say it’s a passive few hours at the theater: Set during Napoleon’s invasion of Italy, “Tosca” contains torture, murder and suicide—all before the final act even begins. Another day at the operatic office, you might say, but this is an especially intense romantic drama, which Florida Grand Opera will present for the first time in nine years. Lead performer Toni Marie Palmertree makes her FGO debut as Floria Tosca.
FRIDAY
What: Opening night of “Sweat”
Where: Studio One Theatre at FAU, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton
When: 7 p.m.
Cost: $25
Contact: 561/297-6124, fauevents.com
Celebrated playwright Lynn Nottage’s 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner is set in a bar in Reading, Pennsylvania—one of the poorest cities in America at the time Nottage researched her play—where a group of factory workers, facing the Rust Belt’s exodus of heavy industry, face layoffs and in-fighting. Labor, race and politics coalesce in Nottage’s sweeping work, which captures the erosion of the American dream during an eight-year period. This FAU student production runs through April 23.
FRIDAY AND SATURDAY
What: Postcards From Paradise festival
Where: Propaganda, 6 South J Street, Lake Worth Beach; and Rudy’s Pub, 21 South J Street, Lake Worth Beach
When: 6:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.
Cost: $30
Contact: eventbrite.com/e/postcards-from-paradise
This inaugural festival is the sister fest to the late-summer shindig Bumblefest, both produced by the taste-making West Palm Beach zine PureHoney. Presented at two of Lake Worth Beach’s favorite venues, Postcards From Paradise welcomes 18 bands over two days of revelry, and is headlined by a national act each night. On Friday, catch Frankie Rose, whose work with Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls and Vivian Girls in the late aughts and early 2010s enshrined her as indie-pop royalty. Since her start with these seminal acts, Rose has released seven ethereal synthpop albums under her own name, and is touring in support of her latest release, Love is Projection. Saturday’s headliner is the Seattle glam rocker Scott Yoder, who will perform an intimate solo set. Visit purehoney.com to check out the entire lineup.
FRIDAY TO SUNDAY
What: Delray Affair
Where: Atlantic Avenue in Downtown Delray Beach
When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday
Cost: Free
Contact: 561/278-0424, delrayaffair.com
With more than 500 artists and crafters cramming 12 city blocks in downtown Delray Beach, the 61st-annual Delray Affair is among the largest arts and crafts festivals in the Southeast. Though the vendors come from everywhere, the Affair specializes in the quirky and the whimsical, traits that help define the Delray mystique: Think vibrant watercolors, mixed-media sculptures and funky artisanal housewares. It’s easy to spend the day on the Ave and not see everything, especially if you partake in the supplementary diversions—the live music at the Old School Square Beer Garden, the food vendors, the official merchandise booth with branded Delray Affair swag. Which is all the more reason to come back the next day.
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