South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Festival of the Arts Boca will be free next year
For the first time in its 15-year history, the 2021 Festival of the Arts Boca will be free when it returns March 6 through 14, with an all-virtual and abbreviated bill of live music, authors and ideas.
In the long-ago, prepandemic era of 2019, of course, this would be unthinkable. Visitors typically paid for ticketed performances (remember those?) scheduled at the festival’s longtime home, Mizner Park Amphitheater. Instead, this year’s bash will be free with advance registration on the festival’s website, FestivalBoca.org, and zero concerts will be staged at Mizner Park.
Kicking off March 6 with a concert by Boca Raton native and Metropolitan Opera soprano Nadine Sierra, the festival will be topped by shows from Grammywinning violinist James Ehnes (March 7) and South Florida jazz flutist Nestor Torres (March 14).
All performances will take place without audiences at venues all over Boca Raton, including the Boca Raton Airport, Florida Atlantic University and Boca Raton Resort and Club.
Advance registration for the festival will open in January at FestivalBoca.org, although organizers are still finalizing a specific date. Once registered, festivalgoers
can stream programs live on the day of each performance, but no replays will be available.
The 15th annual spring bash also will honor festival co-founder Charlie Siemon, who died Sept. 24 and has been credited with bringing the stylish Mizner Park plaza to Boca, says Joanna Marie Kaye, the festival’s new executive director, in a statement.
“Charlie would have been thrilled to see that paradoxically, we have the opportunity to reach our biggest audience ever in 2021 with all of our events filmed and broadcast worldwide,” Kaye says.
Other highlights include a March 13 Festival of the Arts Boca All-Stars salon by conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos and orchestra members.
On the literary-minded front, author and retired four- star U.S. Admiral James Stavridis will deliver a talk on leadership at 7 p.m. March 8. The former NATO Supreme Allied Commander has earned more than 50 medals over his 37-year military career. Next, author Bruce Feiler will discuss his New York Times bestseller “Life Is In the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age,” a collection of stories about living life more purposefully, at 7 p.m. March 9.
Science journalist Sonia Shah will wrap the authors-and-ideas series with a 7 p.m. March 11 talk on climate change and her book, “The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move.”