A VIP party in the Boca Raton Museum of Art helped give them more visibility, but saxophonist Branford Marsalis and the opening of the 11th annual Festival of the Arts BOCA next door in the Mizner Park Amphitheater filled the seats.
“Hold onto your hats, it’s going to be a great concert,” said Joanna Marie Kaye, festival director, at the performance opening March 3 after an author talk the day before.
Marsalis joined The Symphonia Boca Raton for several numbers. But the standing ovation went to festival music director Constantine Kitsopoulos conducting a full symphony orchestra playing movie music by John Williams. They played “Catch Me if You Can,” “Star Wars” and a suite from “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
“I think they’re as good as a philharmonic,” said audience member Skeets Friedkin.
This year’s festival also included a Boca debut. Monica Mancini came in from California to sing a tune from “The Pink Panther.” Her late father Henry Mancini scored the 1963 movie shown at the festival on March 11. Kitsopoulos conducted the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music.
Also on the bill this year were Sarah Chang on violin and Daniel Hsu on piano March 10 and Sergio Mendes & Brasil 2017 closing out the festival March 12.
The semi-staged opera “La Boheme,” 13-year old jazz piano prodigy Joey Alexander in a double bill with 13-year old pianist Daniela Liebman were among the other performers.
“Our Authors & Ideas Program is extremely varied, exploring areas of politics, the arts, science and fiction,” Charlie Siemon, festival chairman and co-producer with Wendy Larsen, said in a statement. Four authors spoke this year, among them presidential historian Jon Meacham and Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker.
mshatzman@tronc.com
