Sarasota kicks off festival of new works

Contemporary music, theater, dance and other art are on the agenda for a five-day festival starting today in Sarasota. Among highlights of the first On the Edge festival are the premiere of a work by pianist/composer Dick Hyman tonight as part of La Musica Chamber Music Festival at Sarasota Opera House. Hyman, who has scored many a Woody Allen film, will be the pianist in the work he has written for piano, bass and string quartet.

On the Edge comprises a mix of events presented at various venues by a dozen arts organizations. The aim is to cultivate audiences for new works.

"A good business invests in research and development as a way of ensuring a market for the future," said Leif Bjaland, artistic director of the Florida West Coast Symphony and a festival organizer. "We need to do the same in the arts."

Friday night, Bjaland will conduct a chamber ensemble in works of Reich, Berio, Crumb and Perle at Holley Hall. Stockhausen's Stimmung ("Tuning") will be performed Sunday afternoon by New Music New College at Sainer Pavilion.

For festival information, call the Sarasota County Arts Council at (941) 365-5118 or see the schedule online at www.ontheedgesarasota.org.

BAROQUE: Soprano Jennifer Sanchez is featured in songs of Faure and Debussy and a scene from Handel's opera Julius Caesar tonight at the Palladium Theater in St. Petersburg. It's part of a "Baroque Plus" program by the St. Petersburg Baroque Ensemble that also includes chamber music of J.S. Bach, Telemann and Saint-Saens.

Sanchez, making her debut with the ensemble, teaches at St. Peter's Cathedral. In January, she was in Eckerd College's Winter Sun Festival, turning in a dashing rendition of Bernstein's stratospheric homage to bel canto singing, Glitter and Be Gay. Tonight, she will be joined by Cory Hall, piano, in the Faure and Debussy, and Kevin Johnson, harpsichord, in the Handel. The concert is at 8 p.m. Tickets are $5-12. Call (727) 822-3590.

OPERA: Elizabeth Caballero, a soprano from Miami, performed Micaela's aria from Carmen and won the first prize of $3,000 in the Florida Suncoast Opera Guild competition for young professional singers Saturday at the Palladium. The $2,000 second prize went to soprano Jeanai Ratcliffe of St. Petersburg; third-prize winner Jamie Marie Gagliano of Deland received $1,000.

AMRAM: Composer David Amram leads a seminar from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. today at Webb Middle School, 6035 Hanley Road, Tampa. Amram will discuss his recently published memoir of the Beat generation, Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac, and Giants of the Night, his concerto for flute and orchestra commissioned by James Galway. Call (813) 872-5351, ext. 50.

AMATEUR: Tampa electrical engineer and pianist Franz Mantini has been selected to participate in the Van Cliburn Foundation's third International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs on June 3-8 in Fort Worth, Texas.

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