Written by C.B. Hanif | 14 March 2010

South Florida has not lacked for jazz festivals over the years, but the road to musical fulfillment for local fans of this great art form has been rocky.

Consider the once-promising Riviera Beach Jazz and Blues Festival, which from 2002 to 2008 drew people from around the Southeast before getting away from its simple musical formula and falling victim to financial mismanagement and political infighting.

When bad weather one year forced a shivering Patti LaBelle from the stage, it could have been seen as an omen of the ills that would shortly sink the festival.

Jazz aficionado Robbie Littles, who helped orchestrate the Riviera festival, remembers when things were different, particularly because of the presence of trumpeter Melton Mustafa, his groups, and the bands he brought in.

Littles recalled being “pleasantly surprised when I saw as many kids from the high school level, particularly black, into jazz and performing down at the Melton Mustafa set.” Littles said that Mustafa, ever the educator, “also would come up and do clinics for the kids at Suncoast High School. We would invite kids from Palm Beach Lakes, Palm Beach Gardens and other high schools, and it was always extremely positive.”

All of which is proof that Mustafa's roots in South Florida run deep, back to the Afro Arts festivals in West Palm Beach that Littles helped spearhead between 1973 and the late 1980s. And that may explain why Mustafa's own festival has been going strong for 14 years now.

“There’s so little live jazz down in South Florida that I’ve just been hungry for it,” Yolanda English said after the Melton Mustafa Jazz Festival closed its two-day run Feb. 13. “I had a night’s full tonight. Just to be able to hear live jazz, period — and especially the orchestra, my goodness, the big band — that’s really priceless down here,” added the Broward County resident, who was back for her second year.

“I’ve been coming since the beginning,” said her friend Brenda Rivers of Miami. What did she like best this night? “For me it was the youth band. I always like to see the talent of the future, and it really was a pleasant rendering we got tonight,” she said, also complimenting the “comfortable atmosphere.”

The long-running event on the campus of Florida Memorial University proved again to be no less than a South Florida jewel, featuring internationally renowned artists assembled by Mustafa, Florida Memorial’s director of jazz studies, in the school’s cozy Lou Rawls Performing Arts Theater.

Miami native son Mustafa not only is a gifted trumpeter, arranger, composer, bandleader and producer. He’s been a headliner at various international jazz festivals, has performed with Count Basie’s, Duke Ellington’s and Woody Herman’s orchestras, and leads his own small groups and big bands.

As in past years, the event on the Miami Gardens campus featured another stellar lineup: trumpeter/composer Charles Tolliver, drummer Victor Lewis, pianist Edward Simon, bassist Ed Howard, saxman Jesse Jones Jr.

“Among the greatest jazz musicians in the world, barring none,” observed Mustafa.

He should know, having played alongside innumerable numbers of the best, from Billy Taylor to Frank Sinatra, Idris Muhammad to Nestor Torres. His festival routinely hosts them. Some are noted music educators themselves to which the university has awarded honorary doctoral degrees, such as James Moody and the late Grover Washington Jr.

In fact, the education aspect is just another that distinguishes the two-day festival. On Friday each year are master workshops during which aspiring students, participating band directors and registered guests learn from some of jazz’s greatest artists. This year’s sessions were streamed live online at theglobaljazznetwork.com.

Saturday’s climax kicked off with the Dillard Performing Arts High School Jazz Band. One might have expected Director Christopher Dorsey’s kids to come off like deer in the bright lights. But they clearly were in their element as they went to work performing such big band standards as the Duke Ellington Orchestra ballad After All.

“We need go down to Dade County and let them see how we swing up here in Broward County,” Dorsey said he had told his students. They proceeded to a rendition of Stolen Moments, featuring various members of the ensemble exhibiting their improvisational skills.

Several of the same kids sat in as the Broward College Jazz Ensemble next took the stage, performing such tunes as the classic On the Sunny Side of the Street.

As always, the Florida Memorial University Presidential Jazz Band, which is supervised by Mustafa, was impressive. The group included two steel pans, three vocalists, a trumpet and rhythm section, and started off with the late trumpeter Freddie Hubbard’s Red Clay. Their soaring, lengthy rendition allowed room for all the musicians to show out, while the steel drums, carrying the melody, added a unique, stirring texture.

Yet the evening was just warming up to an unexpected treat: the Jesse Jones Jr. Quintet, featuring South Florida vocalist Yvonne Brown. Jones’ flute and his alternately sweet and funky alto sax were impeccable. When Mustafa’s brilliant trumpet joined in, the musical magic only heightened.

Following another brief intermission to get things set up came what everyone had waited for: Mustafa’s all-star jazz quartet with Simon, Howard and master drummer Lewis. The set, which featured several original Victor Lewis compositions, concluded with his Hey, It’s Me You’re Talking To, which he said pianist Kenny Barron had inspired.

Even after the jazz legends had forged rhythm and harmony into light, there was more. To cap the night, the quartet morphed into a big band directed by Tolliver. That ensemble delivered with performances such as 'Round Midnight, featuring Tolliver’s trumpet solo. Among other fine renditions was I Want to Talk About You, the Billy Eckstine tune from his big-band days that was immortalized by John Coltrane.

Amid all the joyful noise was one sign of why this is Miami’s longest-running jazz festival: sitting on the back row of the bandstand was the unpretentious Mustafa, who through the years has not been averse to taking a back seat to his invited guests. Next to him was Yamin Bilal Mustafa, his son and another accomplished trumpeter. The evening’s engaging emcee, in fact, was another son, Melton Rashaan Mustafa, music teacher at Broward’s Parkway Middle School and himself a noted saxman.

During a reception following the concert, several Dillard High School apprentices spoke of what it meant to have watched jazz theory in exquisite practice.

“It was pretty amazing,” said saxophonist Brandon Lubin. “I got to see some good players you don’t get to see every day. I got to see Jesse Jones. I appreciated him the most. He had a beautiful sound.”

Fellow saxman Anthony Burrell, on why he was there: “Came here to play, came here to listen to some good music.” And how did it go? “It was fun playing onstage, we got to play some tunes. And we heard some bands. The bands were tight. The last big band was just off the chain. Victor Lewis, killing it. One of the best drummers I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“I was blown away,” said Markus Howell. “I would say as a saxophone player, I liked Jesse Jones, just like Brandon. His sound. What jumped out at me was I could tell he was influenced by Cannonball Adderley, one of my main influences. The big band, Victor Lewis, Melton Mustafa, everyone. I’m just blown away.” Howell aspires “to become a college professor, teach the music, tour.”

Bassist Russell Hall said the Saturday workshops “were a real learning experience. It was great to actually have a one-on-one session with someone who is actually out there and doing it for their living.”

But the masters too appreciated those sessions. “Yesterday I saw some guys of the future,” drummer Lewis said regarding the Saturday workshops. “It’s the same that the older cats saw in me when I was that age, and meanwhile I’m saying, ‘I’m not worthy, but I love this, maybe I’ll get a shot at it.’ And the older cats saw that in me, and they would take a minute to give me a little wisdom, and I’d get some mileage out of it.

"So I saw guys yesterday that don’t even know right now that they’re part of the future of this music. I had to work hard to hold back the tears.”

Littles said Mustafa, Florida Memorial and the current and future legends of jazz have been in a solid groove since the beginning.

“Just as he always put together solid aggregations to bring up to the Riviera Beach Jazz Festival — whether his small group, quartet, or his 18-piece orchestra — at the Florida Memorial set he’s always had, at least the at ones I’ve attended, an array of solid, stellar entertainers. That’s a consistent thread with him: Surround himself with the sharpest people who are available.”

That included that kids, on a night when the underlying theme was increasing support for jazz and other arts programs.

“I was very pleased and awestruck by so much talent on one stage,” said Dr. Sandra Thompson, Florida Memorial’s president, who added that she was tired of hearing the festival called South Florida’s best-kept secret. “The kids were fantastic. Can you imagine as they grow and mature even more? The talent is just phenomenal.”

Said Lynn Fenster, a university trustee: “I thought it was probably about as good as you’re going to see anyplace in this country. I sat here crying to think that we can have such fabulous kids and nobody would know it. And tonight a lot of people knew it. There wasn’t anybody on that stage tonight, even the young orchestras, who couldn’t go anyplace and play. It was scary. I think our music school can really put us on the map.”

Sumner Hutcheson, vice president for institutional advancement, noted that the university “is very proud of the fact that we have such professional artists as Melton Mustafa, and Dr. Dawn Batson (chair of the visual and performing arts department), who are excellent performers in their own right but also are encouraging the students.”

Hutcheson expressed excitement about the university winning an $80,000 Knight Foundation challenge grant to support scholarships. But he also encouraged alumni, friends and friends of jazz “to help support these fine programs and mostly the students.”

Throughout the evening, Mustafa echoed that appeal.

His focus continues to be on promoting his fellow legends while they’re still here, and on delivering classical African-American music to new generations to be kept alive and pure.

And his gem of a South Florida festival, in the midst of its second decade and dear to music lovers as diverse as humanity, continues to be a credit to that music, to its music makers and to their fans.

For more on the festival, visit www.meltonmustafa.com or www.msmartsinc.org. For more on The Global Jazz Network, visit www.theglobaljazznetwork.com.

C.B. Hanif is a writer, editor and consultant at www.cbhanif.com.

Written by Palm Beach ArtsPaper Staff | 12 March 2010

Art: From capturing firework-like sprays of red lava in Hawaii to the cool icebergs of Iceland, Lewis Kemper’s masterful photographs are some of the best that can be captured of the natural world. An exhibit of his dramatic landscape photographs, Capturing the Light, opens Saturday night (5:30-7 p.m.) at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre and runs through June 5.

The show’s theme illustrates the California-based Kemper's rules for photographing nature: “Be patient, be ready all the time and be prepared to walk away with nothing.” Patience with nature pays off in this series of brilliant photographs. The Photo Centre is located at the City Center municipal complex at 415 Clematis St. in downtown West Palm Beach. Hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday–Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 1–5 p.m. Sunday. For more information, call (561) 253-2600 or visit www.workshop.org or www.fotofusion.org.

More photographs by Tequesta’s fine art photographer Wheaton Mahoney are on display at Mary Mahoney, 351 Worth Ave., Palm Beach. Wheaton, who is represented by Mulry Fine Art, is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and her work reflects a strong knowledge of composition, lighting and technical ability. But her vision is defined by originality and a classical, Zen-like simplicity. Wheaton’s work will be on exhibit through April 30. For information, call Fecia Mulry at (561) 832-8224.

For your contemporary art fix, don’t miss the Whitebox opening at the Whitespace Collection tonight, where Kara Walker-Tomé of Showtel fame has chosen four regional Florida artists to exhibit.

“Nicole Gugliotti, Bethany Krull, Rick Newton and Ryan Toth make artwork with an evident connection to nature, but nature is not their subject matter,” according to Walker-Tomé. “Rather than a traditional approach of depicting the beauty found in the natural world for its own sake, their artwork is meant to provoke a more abstract reading. To be sure, these artists borrow from the beauty of nature in the depiction of its forms, but each is utilizing those forms as interpretive material, and by employing this contemporary approach, they are achieving conceptual results.”

Tonight’s opening reception lasts from 7 to 10 p.m. with a $7 admission, including a complimentary drink ticket. Other public dates are by reservation only on Saturday, March 27, and Saturday, May 8, from 10 a.m. to noon with a $12 admission. Group tours are also available. Whitespace is a private museum showing the collection of Elayne and Marvin Mordes. Partial proceeds benefit the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties. For information, call (561) 842-4131. - K. Deits

Film: What the Emerging Cinemas network, with local outlets in Lake Park and Lake Worth, is known for is bringing films of interest here that would have otherwise been relegated to DVD because they fell through the distribution cracks when compared to larger, louder studio fare. A case in point is the fascinating The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, written and directed by Rebecca Miller -- daughter of Arthur, wife of Daniel Day-Lewis -- based on her own novel. Robin Wright Penn stars in the title role of a 50-ish dutiful housewife to a much older power publisher (Alan Arkin), who has moved them to a senior community in Connecticut. The enigmatic Pippa finds herself slowly growing insane in her new surroundings, so she has an affair with an aimless convenience store clerk (Keanu Reeves) instead. Also in the cast are Winona Ryder, Maria Bello and Monica Bellucci, and still it only got minimal theatrical bookings. Very odd. -- H. Erstein

Theater: “Jukebox musicals” such as Mamma Mia! or All Shook Up are dramatically lazy and often sloppily assembled. No wonder expectations were low when it was announced that a musical was being assembled about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, featuring their golden oldie pop hits. But Jersey Boys surprised Broadway, because first-time musical script writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice told the fascinating back story of the group, director Des McAnuff staged it with unusual theatrical thrust and the show walked off with the Best Musical Tony Award for 2006. The road company opens this weekend at West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center for a run-through March 28 and tickets are very scarce. But even if you are not a Baby Boomer reliving your teen years, this is a show worth the money. Call (561) 832-7469 and offer your first-born for seats. -- H. Erstein

Music: The Festival of the Arts Boca comes to a close Saturday night with a dance-and-music program that features two stars from the American Ballet Theatre. Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovksy will join the Russian National Orchestra on the last night of the festival for the White Pas de Deux from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, Splendid Isolation 3, a dance by Jessica Lang set to the Adagietto from Mahler's Symphony No. 5, and a dance to music from Bizet's Carmen. Also on the program for this Russian closeout are two surefire hits: Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (in the Ravel orchestration) and the 1812 Overture (Op. 49) of Tchaikovsky. No word on what's being used for the cannon fire. 7 p.m., Count de Hoernle Amphitheater, Mizner Park, Boca Raton. Tickets: $25-$150. Call 866-571-2787 or visit www.festivaloftheartsboca.org.

On Sunday down in Miami, a touring production of George Gershwin's great opera Porgy and Bess comes to the Miami-Dade County Auditorium for one performance only. This performance, which stars Patrick Blackwell as Porgy, Kishna Davis as Bess and Reggie Whitehead as Sportin' Life, comes from producer Michael Capasso, general director of New York's Dicapo Opera Theatre, who has a five-year deal with the Gershwin estate to mount performances of the 1935 opera, which marks its 75th anniversary this year. The touring orchestra of 18 is being augmented by Elaine Rinaldi's Orchestra Miami for the performance, which begins at 3 p.m. Tickets range from $25 to $65. Call Ticketmaster at 800-745-3000, or the auditorium box office at 547-5414.

Closer to home on Sunday, Keith Paulson-Thorp's Camerata del Ré joins forces with the St. Paul's Episcopal Choir for a concert of music about life and death, including a rare performance of Missa dos Defuntos by the 19th-century Brazilian priest and composer José Maurico Nunes Garcia. Also on the program is the Judex movement from Gounod's now rarely heard Mors et Vita oratorio, and two pieces commemorating the Holocaust: Donald McCullough's Holocaust Cantata and Ben Steinberg's We Remember Them. 4 p.m., St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Delray Beach. Tickets: $15-$18. Call 278-6003 or visit www.stpaulsdelray.org.

Also on Sunday, two chamber music events: The Hugo Wolf Quartet, a veteran foursome from Germany, performs quartets by Haydn (Op. 20, No. 3, in G minor), Janacek (No. 2, Intimate Letters), and Brahms (No. 3 in B-flat, Op. 67). 3 p.m. at the Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach. Tickets: $10. Call 655-2776 or visit www.fourarts.org. And down in Fort Lauderdale, the Chameleon Musicians group founded by Iris van Eck presents piano trios by Rachmaninov (No. 2 in D minor, Op. 9), Mozart (in G major, K. 496), and Debussy (his early Trio in G). 3 p.m., Leiser Opera Center, Fort Lauderdale. Tickets: $30. Call 954-761-3435 or visit www.chameleonmusicians.org. -- G. Stepanich

Written by Greg Stepanich | 12 March 2010

In his recent study of Sergei Prokofiev's Soviet career, the musicologist Simon Morrison reveals that the composer was a huge movie buff, and that for one tantalizing moment, had a chance to do a film score in Hollywood for Paramount.

It didn't happen, but Prokofiev never stopped trying to write theater and film scores in the Soviet Union, and with Sergei Eisenstein in 1938, he crafted a soundtrack that stands up quite well as absolute music, which is why the cantata he fashioned from it shows up on ambitious symphonic programs.

At the Festival of the Arts Boca on Wednesday night, that Prokofiev-Eisenstein collaboration, Alexander Nevsky, was seen in its entirety while the score was played live by the Russian National Orchestra. The Seraphic Fire concert choir sang the choral parts, and the young mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor offered a beautiful reading of the solo aria that appears toward the end of the film.

Presenting the movie as the focus of an orchestral concert was an interesting and largely successful idea, and came a couple months after a similar event this season: a showing of Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, with a live Shostakovich score played by an augmented Palm Beach Symphony. But that film is silent, and while Nevsky doesn't have an overwhelming amount of dialogue, there are long patches of musical silence while the characters above act out the 13th-century story of how an early defender of the Russian homeland thwarted an invasion by Germanic tribes.

Those pauses made things somewhat awkward at times, also affected some of the playing, with some intonation lapses as instruments were warmed back up. But for the most part, the RNO played well under conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos. Much of the Nevsky score is big and bustling, and the orchestra gave it the appropriate gusto as it accompanied battle scenes, celebrations and religious blessing ceremonies on the screen above.

Seraphic Fire sang its hymns to Mother Russia (Arise, Russian people, for one) with a kind of brute strength that was very appropriate for the music and the drama, and at times it had you wishing for a performance of the cantata to hear this music at a closer remove. Most compelling of all was O'Connor, whose dark, smoky voice added poignancy to the aria Respond, bright falcons, a lovely tune that Prokofiev made sure to repeat in the orchestra afterward.

O'Connor's appearance was necessarily much too brief, and like Seraphic Fire, her singing increased the appetite for more of them and less of the film.

The audience followed the Nevsky film carefully, it seemed to me, sticking with it despite its stilted, declamatory acting and its nakedly propagandistic purpose. But there doubtless were many in the audience with memories of World War II, and surely it seemed prophetic to them; when the film was made, the Soviets fully expected to have to fight the Third Reich, which was then taking over Czechoslovakia and casting its malevolent eye at Poland.

And indeed it was the difficult weather and the vast, stubbornly defended terrain that ultimately defeated Nazi Germany's attempt to subjugate the Soviets a few years later, which should have made Nevsky required viewing in the halls of the German high command.

The performance was marred by some sort of structural element for the tent that repeatedly banged against the metal in Wednesday's high winds, making it that much more difficult to keep your attention during moments of cinematic quiet, and one hopes that's been fixed for the remaining nights of performances.

The concert opened with a world premiere, a setting for chorus and orchestra by the American philanthropist and composer Gordon Getty of Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Getty's overture Plump Jack was a feature of last year's Boca festival, and this year's contribution was, like the overture, mildly interesting.

Getty's tonal language here was modern but conservative and evoked the gloom of the poem's famous lines -- The sedge has wither'd from the lake/And no birds sing -- with slow, stern phrases and the kinds of harmonies that were similar to Prokofiev's, especially when heard back-to-back. Seraphic Fire conductor Patrick Dupré Quigley led the respectful, well-sung performance.

Tonight's performance at the Festival of the Arts Boca 2010 features 15-year-old American pianist Conrad Tao in the Rachmaninov Third Concerto (in D minor, Op. 30), and the Kyrgyz-born jazz phenomenon Eldar Djangirov in his own Iris and music by Duke Ellington. Constantine Kitsopoulos conducts the Russian National Orchestra in the concert, which also includes music by Shostakovich (Festive Overture, Tahiti Trot), Rimsky-Korsakov (the overture to May Night) and Bernstein (Slava!) 7 p.m., Count de Hoernle Amphitheater, Mizner Park. Tickets: $25-$150. Call 866-571-2787 or visit www.festivaloftheartsboca.org.

Written by Katie Deits | 11 March 2010

Sometimes, the universe opens a window to a new world: If we step through it, our lives are changed.

And sometimes, we just have to return a pager.

Dr. Marvin Mordes was doing his neurology residency in Philadelphia, and had to bring a pager to his co-resident, who happened to be at an art gallery.

"After I met my co-resident, I couldn’t leave the gallery because the skies opened up. It was like a hurricane outside,” Marvin said. “The gallery owner talked to me for two hours, and I felt an epiphany, like something deep down inside me was uncovered. I ended up buying a Mark Toby drawing on paper for $4,500.”

His wife Elayne remembers her husband's epiphany well.

“When he brought the drawing home, I told him to take it back," she said. "That was more money than he earned in a whole year.”

Nothing doing, as it turned out. “That was in 1975, and that was the beginning of the infectious disease of collecting art,” Marvin said, chuckling.

Since that day 35 years ago, the couple has become leading collectors of contemporary art, patrons and donors to museums, and speakers at art fairs. They even conduct their own international art tours -- called Art Adventures -- for a select number of friends, collectors and curators.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about the Mordeses is that three years ago they reconfigured their personal living space into a private art museum. Elayne drew on her training in art and architecture to convert an old dental laboratory on Australian Avenue in West Palm Beach into their space for living and for art.

On the windowless street-side is the museum, and the living quarters are positioned at the rear, and more private, area of the building, which has 11,605 square feet of space.

The museum, called Whitespace -- The Mordes Collection, is a shrine to cutting-edge art, said Kara Walker-Tomé, an independent curator known for her annual Showtel and 10x10 exhibitions.

“Elayne and Marvin Mordes have an impressive collection of contemporary art,” Walker-Tomé said. “Whitespace is essentially a treasure trove of high-caliber artwork by international artists. It has been the best-kept secret in town.”

Lining the long, wide hall that leads to the master bedroom and guest suites are floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with a collection of art books. These, along with a plethora of art magazines, are used for research.

From the living area, an immense swinging door easily turns on its axis to reveal hundreds of works of art in the museum. Elayne throws up her arms and exclaims: “You don’t own the collection, the collection owns you!”

A wide variety of styles and ideas is on display in the collection. Bath Stone Circle (1992) by the British artist – and Turner Prize winner – Richard Long (b. 1945) creates a feeling of walking in nature, an almost meditative atmosphere that comes from the circular geometric shape as it contrasts with ochre-toned spike rocks. An environmental artist, Long’s works are in collections in Japan, Iceland, Italy and India, as well as San Francisco, and he creates them in museums and outdoor locations.

One common thread throughout the collection is the intriguing and mysterious role that art presents in our lives, and the different interpretations that can be made depending on each viewer’s life experiences.

The Artist Who Swallowed the World (2006), by Austrian artist Erwin Wurm (b. 1954), is a large, rotund sculpture of a man dressed in a bright green shirt, perhaps a commentary on the amount of information people digest daily.

The celebrated Canadian-American artist Frank Gehry’s work is here in the Mordes museum, too, in the form of a corrugated-cardboard chaise longue called Bubbles (1988). In this work, Gehry shows the same sense of design and use of space that can be seen in his major buildings, such as Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum, Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the Experience Music Project in Seattle.

The loft-like living area, which overlooks Lake Mangonia, is also filled with art, and here the Mordeses have left the furniture sleek and simple to keep the focus on the art. One chair stands out, with its large sculptural shape and burled wood: Chair Chair (1987-90) in red oak, Formica, cowhide and painted steel by American artist Richard Artschwager (b. 1923). A bare lightbulb hangs from a soldered metal chain over the chair; it’s titled Hanging Lamp (1988) by Austrian artist Franz West (b. 1947).

Positioned symmetrically in between the windows is an immense chromogenic print, a photograph of a cold winter scene and architecture by German photographer Sabina Honig (b. 1944). The print is framed in an architectural manner, and the perspective is so radical that it gives the feeling that one is looking through a window at the scene and could step right into it.

On the large square glass coffee table, an orange Dale Chihuly wavy glass sculpture sits in front of a television monitor with an image that looks like The Raft of the Medusa by French Romantic painter Théodore Géricualt. But on closer inspection, the image is not the painting and not a photograph, because small movements can be detected in the people.

The scene was created in 2008 by American-born artist Adad Hannah (b. 1971) who used people in 100 Mile House in British Columbia to pose as models. Each held his or her pose for up to 10 minutes to create the video production, which was featured at the Toronto International Art Fair. The Mordeses bought a Blu-Ray video of the project.

Over the grand piano, a photograph by German photographer Thomas Struth (b. 1954) adds international flair. Gracing the end of the kitchen galley is a photograph by Brazilian native and New York City resident Vik Muniz (b. 1961) in which he created a still-life painting-like photograph from an assemblage of dots cut from magazines. In the collection are several of Muniz’s works, including one of his most recent pieces, Medusa (After Caravaggio), which was recreated from large pieces of junk.

“Vik Muniz is exciting and stimulating,” Elayne said. “It is sculpture, painting; he even created a piece using dust balls that he collected from a museum. His work is not static, it’s always changing.”

Once a year, the Marvin and Elayne rearrange the collection. Elayne said the couple recently bought three major pieces that need to be installed: Giant Bent, a large plaster, iron rebar, hemp and graphite sculpture by Thomas Houseago, the Muniz photograph of Medusa, and Donations, by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset.

"And, last night, I purchased a piece of graffiti art," she said. "It’s a domino effect; it forces you into all sorts of scenarios.”

In the collection is a wide range of art, including paintings, sculptures, video, ceramics and installations.

“After years of collecting, first starting with prints, paintings, sculpture and books, you start appreciating other things, glass, ceramics, the capability for understanding many types of media. It has expanded my love for all artwork," Marvin said. "The beauty of something that someone has made by hand gives me the feeling of wanting to own it and look at it. I believe the line between art and craft is nonexistent.”

After being very active for years on the Baltimore art scene, the Mordeses, who have a daughter and two young grandchildren, moved to Palm Beach County in 2001 when Marvin joined the Cleveland Clinic staff in West Palm Beach. They first moved to Jupiter while Elayne searched for a space they could live in and devote to their collection.

Elayne also appraises and acts as an adviser on contemporary art, organizes lecture series and curates exhibitions. It's something she was well-trained for, having studied art at the University of Maryland, done graduate work in architectural design at Drexel University, and take courses in art appraisal at New York University. She's now a member of the American Society of Interior Designers and Appraisers Association of America.

Last fall, the Mordeses dedicated a large room in the museum for exhibits to be staged by outside curators, calling it Whitebox. Walker-Tomé, who curated the first exhibition in the space, will handle the next one, called Approaching Nature. It opens Friday and runs through May 9.

“When Elayne approached me with her plan of opening the space to the public through the creation of the Whitebox exhibitions, I was quite excited,” she said. “There are so few galleries or art spaces in Palm Beach County regularly showing the work of regional contemporary artists. This was an opportunity that would benefit the community in a big way."

Walker-Tomé added that the daring work in the Mordes collection gives her license to showcase similarly edgy pieces for Whitebox.

"I knew I could select artists who are making cutting-edge work, again, showcasing the fact that we have artists in our area who are making contemporary work on the highest level," she said. "When the space is open for the public during openings and viewing days, they get to see not only Whitebox, but also the whole collection.”

Like true collectors, Elayne and Marvin are always on the lookout for great art.

“Sometimes, by the time we are ready to buy a second or third piece by an artist, the prices are already too expensive," Elayne said. "So, as we look for new artists, we go to galleries, talk to other collectors and dealers and ask questions. The art magazines are usually the first to notice new artists.”

Collecting art, living with and talking about art, keeps this couple on the move and passionate about their lives.

“This furthers my education in everything," Marvin said. "The bottom line is, I’m looking at things that people have done that I don’t do. It doesn’t necessarily make me richer by owning them, but they have enriched my life. It challenges my mind.

“We want to share what we have done. It’s a reflection of our personality and passion — not an ego trip — but to interest people in the art. Once smitten, it is a tremendous passion,” he said.

And at that, he got up and left to head to the ArtPalmBeach art fair, as Elayne energetically prepared to host a dinner at their home for all the art speakers at the fair.

"It is our mission to share our contemporary art, to share with people what is on the scene today," she said. "We don’t really own all this. We take care of it while it is in our care.”

Private and public tours of Whitespace – The Mordes Collection are available, and can be booked online at www.whitespacecollection.com. Reservations must be made as space is limited, and drop-ins are not permitted. The WhiteSpace/Elayne and Marvin Mordes Collection is located at 2805 N. Australian Ave. in West Palm Beach. Admission is $12 on public days. Proceeds benefit the Community Foundation of Palm Beach and Martin counties. Visit the Website or call (561) 842-4131.

Written by John Thomason | 10 March 2010

Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service (Disney’s Studio Ghibli)
Release date: March 2
Standard list price: $19.99 each

Girls always rule in the films of Hayao Miyazaki, Japan’s top animator and one of international cinema’s most empowering feminist voices. In his four most prominent Western exports – Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and the recent Ponyo – Miyazaki’s protagonists are girls, from princesses to hat shop workers, whose fantastical journeys change themselves and the worlds around them. In Miyazaki’s tender dreamworlds, there is no such thing as a patriarchal hierarchy. Women aren’t just equal; they’re usually smarter than the men and are more equipped to save the world.

Of course, they’re still adolescent girls, prone to teenage insecurities and harboring fragile tear ducts. This is especially true of three of Miyazaki’s older titles reissued by Disney in two-disc editions this month: 1986’s Castle in the Sky, 1988’s My Neighbor Totoro and 1989’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, each boasting informative new making-of featurettes.

Before delving into the best of these early works, a polite disregard for the one movie that doesn’t stand the test of time or adulthood: Castle in the Sky, Miyazaki’s adventure tale of a princess and a young miner who attempt to find a supposedly mythical sky castle while being pursued by a rickety gang of sky pirates and a corrupt military machine.

Cartoonish in the most infantile sense of the word, Castle in the Sky is silly and predictable, sacrificing storytelling and depth for two hours of almost nonstop action. It lacks the idyllic whimsy of Miyazaki’s later films, and its comic relief is head-scratchingly obtuse. It’s notable solely for its fabulous set designs of the titular castle and other complex edifices, but even these can be seen as phantasmagoric M.C. Escher knock-offs.

My Neighbor Totoro couldn’t be more different in tone and substance, and it’s a welcome change. Centering on two young sisters who endure their mother’s hospital-bound illness with the help of a few friendly forest spirits, Totoro dares to be slow-paced and contemplative from time to time – box-office poison for many children’s works.

Though comparisons to Alice in Wonderland are apt (Miyazaki is an avowed Lewis Carroll devotee), Totoro is less a fantasy than a real-world study of coping. It’s a truly successful family film in that, unlike most of them, it doesn’t talk down to adults or pander to children, striking a deft medium between lightness and darkness, comedy and tragedy.

And finally, in my favorite Miyazaki film, Kiki’s Delivery Service, an adolescent witch’s coming of age makes for an enlightening parable about acceptance, tolerance and self-confidence. Leaving home on her broomstick to live away from her parents for the first time, Kiki settles on a small town that’s seemingly unwilling to accept a witch into its populace. Unaware of any special abilities she may possess, Kiki transforms her known distinguishing talent – her ability to fly – into a delivery service for the town’s residents.

On her routes, she witnesses bountiful kindness and snobbish ingratitude, learning much about the way the world works and battling her insecurities in the process.
Kiki is exactly the kind of character girls will find inspirational, and more than any other protagonist in these films, she anticipates Miyazaki’s later heroines. Peppering his film with dark undercurrents – including an exciting action set-piece surrounding an upturned dirigible – Miyazaki again strikes a concordant balance between whimsy and reality.

Much like the brave-yet-vulnerable, confident-yet-insecure girls at the heart of these pictures, it’s clear Miyazaki himself had yet to blossom into the maturity and sophistication of his later work. The animation is crude, particularly when held up to Pixar’s incomparable standards, and not all of his storytelling conceits walk his now well-worn tightrope of kidvid accessibility and arthouse inventiveness. But two of these underrated titles represent peeks into the visionary looking glass of a future master.

The Beaches of Agnès (Cinema Guild)
Release date: March 2
SLP: $23.99

At 81, Agnès Varda, the director of the 1962 French New Wave classic Cleo From 5 to 7 reinvents cinema once again, this time in the genre of the autobiographical documentary. One of the most overlooked movies of last year, The Beaches of Agnès is a cineaste’s dream from the first frame to the closing credit.

In this literally self-reflexive film, Varda sets up a collection of mirrors, gazes at herself and proceeds to walk backwards through the memories of her life, from childhood to her beginnings as a photographer to her emergence in the New Wave and her romantic relationship with fellow auteur Jacques Demy.

Employing archival film clips, split screens, picture-in-picture, superimpositions and newly filmed documentary diversions, Varda reanimates old film stills and reenacts old memories, all the time with the formalistic boldness and playfulness of someone a quarter her age. The Beaches of Agnès feels every bit like a swan song, and what a lovely, ceaselessly creative way to conclude a life in cinema.

The generous Cinema Guild disc includes an essay by critic Amy Taubin, two shorts about the making of the film and Varda’s magical 2003 short Le Lion Volatil.

The Wedding Song (Strand)
Release date: March 9
SLP: $24.99

This uninhibited drama set in Nazi-occupied Tunisia centers on a multicultural ghetto and two 16-year-old best friends fixated on marriage: Jewess Myriam (Lizzie Brochere), set to be betrothed to a much older man, and Muslim Nour, whose heart is set on an unemployed man, closer to her age, that her father permits her from marrying.

As outside influences shape the apolitical teenagers’ nascent ideologies, the two girls’ friendship becomes a microcosm for the way Third Reich propaganda divided otherwise stable communities, pitting friend against friend, and certainly Arab against Jew. But Karin Albou’s film doesn’t limit its rage to the stoking of hatred and the Nazi atrocities that followed.

More than any ethnic or religious discrimination, it details the subjugation of women in general with excruciating detail, something that ultimately reconnects the two friends. Its most shocking scene involves a genital waxing, shot in the kind of extreme, gooey close-ups that would never make its way past a Hollywood censor. It’s painful to watch, but it’s the unforgettable backbone of the filmmaker’s aggressive feminist argument.

The Stoning of Soraya M. (Lionsgate)
Release date: March 9
SLP: $19.99

This latest, nasty example of torture porn from Passion of the Christ producer Stephen McEveety should have been the moving, enraging women’s picture to end them all. Instead, it’s an exploitative propaganda film whose clunky script and artless direction border on the embarrassing.

A proudly unsubtle attack on the Dark Ages inequalities of Sharia law, The Stoning of Soraya M. is based a 1994 book of the same name about an Iranian woman unjustly accused of adultery (she was found cooking for a friend’s widowed husband) whose protestations to the legislative status quo lead to her eventual stoning at the hands of her ravenous, bloodthirsty community (a climactic sequence offensively shot by director Cyrus Nowrasteh as if it were a multi-angle, action-sports extravaganza).

Designed to provoke gut reactions from guilt-consumed limousine liberals as much as anti-Islamist right-wing xenophobes, this is self-important dreck designed solely for Western export, and it makes me wonder what adventurous filmgoer is cloistered enough to find any of this remotely eye-opening.

John Thomason is a freelance writer based in South Florida.