The Festival Beat

For 35 years, the Young People's Chorus of New York City has been altering the trajectory of children's lives, and demonstrating the power of music to uplift and transform.

Walt Disney was worried. It was 1936 and the popularity of his film company’s star and mascot, Mickey Mouse, was on the wane. Only eight years old at the time, Mickey was beginning to be eclipsed by the new kid on the block, the ever-feisty Donald Duck.

Festival of the Arts Boca is excited to announce the lineup for its 17th Season (March 3-12, 2023). This year, the Festival brings its nonprofit mission – delivering the best in the literary and performing arts to everyone in South Florida – to center stage, offering a season filled with youth and inspiration, with hope, heroism, and storytelling.

The legendary Nestor Torres returns to Festival Boca on March 13 as Season 16's closing act. We can't wait to have him back!

“Whatever genre it is, the only thing that really counts is if it has heart and if it’s sincere,” says Tiem for Three violinist Nick Kendall.

Urrea has made his literary career ­– which now includes 17 books, numerous awards – writing about places and peoples that few people see or understand, but that form an essential part of our country’s fabric and culture.

Don Pettit is America's oldest actively serving astronaut. And one heckuva great photographer.

Bill McKibben brings a very important voice to the study of our planet’s present and future, because all that he writes, all that he does, is grounded in hope.

It is pretty difficult not to look at our world today and pithily conclude that “it is a mess.” It would seem a time ripe for US leadership, yet it seems to be a time of “rejection of internationalism.”

If this whole opera thing doesn’t work out, Larisa Martínez always has her bachelor’s degree (with high honors) in Environmental Sciences to fall back on. But let’s be clear, the opera thing is going very well.

The Encyclopedia Britannica asserts that “Any attempt to arrive at a precise, all-encompassing definition of jazz is probably futile.” Replace the word jazz in that quote with the name Terence Blanchard and you have a statement that is no less true or beguiling.

Festival Boca took First Place at the SUNsational Awards in the category of Hybrid Event, for its presentation of Nadine Sierra and Friends, broadcast via live-streaming on March 6, 2021.