7960375273?profile=originalJohn Davidson serenades Susan Pincus of West Palm Beach at Atlantis Country Club on Valentine’s Day. Kurtis Boggs/The Coastal Star

By Thom Smith

     The last time Jose Carreras performed in Palm Beach County, in March 2009, a persistent cough forced him to cut short a concert at the Kravis Center. He apologized to the audience and said he would like to return when he was in better health. That eventually became March 7, the opening of the Festival of the Arts Boca, part of a five-concert U.S. tour.
    It’s off. With no reason given, the Spanish tenor, 65, canceled the tour, including a March 2 date in Tampa. The only hint, a notice published Feb. 13 on an unofficial Carreras website, (http://josepcarreras-tenor-breakingnews.blogspot.com): “The US tour, based on five dates has been cancelled due to organizational problems.”
    Nevertheless, the festival will press ahead.
    With this crazy primary season, presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is all over TV these days, but on March 18 she’ll be in the flesh talking about presidents past and present under the big tent at Mizner Park Amphitheatre. A winter resident of Boca, Goodwin serves as the festival’s Distinguished Writer in Residence.
    Another face familiar to political TV junkies is Mika Brzezinski, co-host of Morning Joe on MSNBC and daughter of former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. She’ll speak March 12.
    The festival offers a broad spectrum, with jazz by Patti Austin and Tony DeSare (March 15), a screening of Casablanca with live accompaniment provided by the Boca Raton Symphonia conducted by festival music director Constantine Kitsopoulos (March 9), and pianist Valentina Lisitsa performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Lynn University Philharmonia (March 14). For information, www.fesitvaloftheartsboca.org or 866-571-2787.
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    Whoa! Double take! Is that who I think it is, Senada Adzem asked herself early on the Sunday afternoon of Feb. 19 as she was leaving the Boca Raton Resort & Club. Indeed, it was former President Bill Clinton, natty in light gray suit and surrounded by Secret Service.
    “The security detail was incredible,” said Adzem, a local Realtor, noting that she was not allowed to snap a photo. “But the buzz was incredible! People love him. He looked terrific.”
    A few hours later, the Prez, had changed clothes and joined Carnival CEO and Miami Heat owner Micky Arison at the Heat’s stomping of the Orlando Magic. No problems with photos at the game, and afterward Clinton met the players and the game officials, whom he told, “No one in this building, other than me, has been second-guessed more than you guys.”
    Clinton’s visit to the Boca Resort, however, was so low-key that some members of management didn’t even know he was there, much less why. A spokesperson at Clinton Foundation offices in New York had no comment.
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    7960375670?profile=originalLeola Bell is African-American, she’s 27 and her dad is a Seventh-Day Adventist minister.
Nevertheless, she’s Playboy’s “Miss February. The Boynton Beach-based beauty is proud of her heritage, her age and her family support, saying the magazine has become more representative and she is especially proud to be one of the “older girls.” As for her parents, the Maryland-born Bell, who’s studied psychology at Florida Atlantic University, told Bustedcoverage.com. “I don’t think that this is the career choice he (her father) would have chosen for me, but he’s happy for me. My mom loves it! She wants to wear my (Playboy) necklace.”
    Bell, who has been modeling for years, hooked up first with Playboy’s Girls of Golf, entertaining golfers at Playboy golf events. That earned her a trip to the Playboy Mansion, where she played dominoes with Hef.   
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    It’s hard to believe John Davidson turned 70 in December. He may feel it once in a while after a bad game of golf, but the star of stage, screen, TV and records doesn’t look it as he continues his second season of cabaret at Atlantis Country Club west of Lake Worth.
    “I’m not a song stylist, Davidson said. “I use music to move people to either laugh or cry or be inspired about something. I’m an entertainer.”   
    And the show is entertaining for audiences and for Davidson, who moved with his wife, Rhonda, to Atlantis to be near his daughter Jennifer. His ex-wife also lives in Atlantis. Show and dinner (Thursday-Saturday) are a steal at $48. (965-5788)
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    Easy come, easy go.  No decision yet as to who or what will replace the destination restaurant Michelle Bernstein at The Omphoy. Now just The Restaurant at The Omphoy, hot, hot, hot Miami chef Michelle Bernstein is gone.
    “The menu is the same,” a restaurant employee said, “and we’re currently interviewing. We’ve had applicants from all over, but management is taking their time with it to get the best possible chef.”
    Bernstein hasn’t commented on her departure, nor executive chef Lindsay Autray, a Bernstein protégé, who was on leave competing on Bravo TV’s latest edition of Top Chef.  Autray should have little problem finding work, and Bernstein stays busy with her Miami restaurants plus Check, Please!, her popular restaurant review show on WPBT-Channel 2. Plus, think how much she’ll save in gas.
    Also gone after only a few months on the job: Glen Manfra at SpoonFed in Delray and Roy Villacrusis at Kapow! Noodle Bar in Boca’s Mizner Park.     
    For the peripatetic Manfra, who made his name two decades ago in Palm Beach and later returned at Vic and Angelo’s in Delray, the arrangement with AMG Restaurants just didn’t work out. He had a good staff and he liked the three meals a day concept — although that can be tiring.  
    Villacrusis, he of the two-toned hair and the multi-toned palate, has checked out of Kapow! Noodle Bar in Boca’s Mizner Park after only a few weeks. Apparently his Asian fusion menu ideas didn’t coincide with those of the somewhat more conservative patrons, so he took a hike.
    Meanwhile, Villacrusis has teamed with The Traveling Plate, a Fort Lauderdale-based movable feast that raises money for charity. On April 5, he’ll create the menu and oversee the festivities at Girls’ Club Collection, a gallery dedicated to and for women.
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    Wonder what congressional candidate Adam Hasner was discussing with former Delray City Council candidate Nick Loeb one recent afternoon at Coffee District on Second Ave? A donation perhaps? Loeb does have some deep pockets. Or possibly a campaign appearance by Loeb’s squeeze Sofia Vergara for Republican Hasner who would face a tough fight with former West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel?
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    Mixed media. First to shut down was Florida Stage. Now the Caldwell Theatre Company is facing, at minimum, bankruptcy, or worse, curtains. Artistic Director Clive Cholerton says South Florida’s longest-running regional theater is trying to restructure its debt and doesn’t intend to shut down.
    No doubt the builders of Broadstone at North Boca Village wonder what will happen. Alliance Residential Co. LLC of Phoenix, Ariz., had planned to make the Caldwell an integral part of its new 384-unit townhouse and apartment complex rising just to the south, even providing 126 parking spaces for the theater. A fitness center, putting green, yoga studio, business center, video game room, demonstration kitchen, cyber café, personal massage salon, wine and cigar room, and resort-style swimming pool area already are planned. Why not a theater, too!
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    But you win some and you lose some. In Florida Stage’s old space at Manalapan’s Plaza del Mar, Alan Jacobson, who ran Florida Jewish Theatre in West Palm, brought in A Chorus Line legend Donna McKechnie to inaugurate his Plaza Theatre Company. Next up, the songs of Neil Sedaka with Breaking Up Is Hard To Do from March 8-25. It’s light and isn’t going to challenge patrons like Waiting for Godot or A Streetcar Named Desire, but any show is better than no show.
    After shutting down Florida Stage, which had made its ill-fated move to West Palm Beach, Lou Tyrrell promises to continue challenging audiences in Delray’s Arts Garage. February was dedicated to a master playwright series of readings with the writers themselves — Israel Horovitz, John Pielmeier, John Guare and William Mastrosimone, followed March 1-4 by a New Play Fest with readings of new plays by Mastrosimone, Horovitz, Lauren Gunderson, Jessica Goldberg, Marsha Norman and Bruce Graham.
    The first actual production will run March 16 to April 8. Woody Sez opens just in time for the centennial of the birth of the show’s namesake, folk music icon Woody Guthrie.
    Of course, theatrical productions are just one facet in the Arts Garage diamond. On March 4 it offers One Opera in One Hour, an abridged version of Daniel Catan’s  Florencia en el Amazonas, that will be performed by Young Artists from the Palm Beach Opera.
    Some of the whackiest movies of the ’70s and ’80s are on tap for the Garage’s Icon Film Series including Blazing Saddles (March 8), Harold and Maude (March 23), Pink Flamingos (April 6) and The Big Lebowski  (April 20); The Jazz Project offers Rose Max (March 9) and Davis & Dow (March 24). (artsgarage.org or 450-6357.)
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    Those who turn up their noses at South County culture could learn a lesson from the 2012 Muse Awards presented at the Kravis Center Feb. 9 by the Palm Beach County Cultural Council as five of eight awards will be displayed in Boca and Delray.
    Stephen Backhus, outreach program manager at the Milagro Center in Delray Beach, was named outstanding arts educator; Palm Beach Poetry Festival, outstanding organization with budget less than $500,000; the Morikami’s annual Bon Festival, outstanding art or cultural program; and Carol Prusa, artist and art professor at FAU, received the Hector Ubertalli Award for Visual Arts.
    “I read in Art in America that Palm Beach was the next hot place, and I asked myself could that be?,” Prusa said. “So I packed my bags and moved down here. And I haven’t regretted it.”
    The Boca Raton Museum of Art was named the county’s outstanding arts and cultural organization for programs with budgets more than $500,000. 
    These are heady days for the Cultural Council, which moved into its new digs in Lake Worth in January and now has mounted its first show.  Foundations, which includes works by Prusa and such veteran local artists at Paul Aho, Bruce Helander, Kathleen Holmes and Katie Deits, runs through April 14. The exhibition is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
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    Party on … and on … and on … annnnnd  …
    St. Patrick’s Day falls on a Saturday this year, which is good, since celebrants will have all of Sunday to recover. Delray’s 44th annual salute to the International Fire Fighters will include firefighters from 13 states plus a contingent from Australia. Parade starts on Atlantic at 2 p.m, March 17; after-party at 3:30.
    Stressing more green — and a smaller carbon footprint — Boca will inaugurate the “Off the Green” Downtown Golf Cart Parade, starting at noon from Mizner Park to Royal Palm Place and back. Families, neighborhoods, country clubs and golf courses, schools, community organizations and visitors are urged to decorate golf carts. Entry fee is $25. (Call 393-7827.) Parade will be followed by Irish festivities all afternoon and a free concert by Celtic band Seven Nations at 6.

Thom Smith is a freelance writer. Contact him at thomsmith@ymail.com.

7960375497?profile=originalFeatured comedian Sebastian Maniscalco brings the house down during the Laugh with the Library Chapter 6 event at the Delray Beach Marriott on Feb. 3. The event, attended by about 400 people, raised more than $50,000 to enhance the Delray Beach Public Library’s outreach programs for children and teens.  Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star









 

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