The Fifth String Quartet of American composer Kenneth Fuchs, which had its world premiere Sunday afternoon at the Colony Hotel in Delray Beach, is an effective piece of dramatic music first and foremost, with a big-boned grandeur that shares sonic space with an intense and hearfelt elegy.

Fuchs, a professor of composition at the University of Connecticut, grew up in Fort Lauderdale and wrote the work at the behest of the Delray String Quartet, which gave the premiere and will play it again Friday night and Sunday afternoon. The composer said in remarks to an appreciative house last Sunday that the quartet, subtitled American, is a reflection on his country in the post 9-11 era.

Formally, the quartet is laid out in four movements, the outer two essentially in A major and the middle two in the neighborhood of D minor, all with traditional attributes such as sonata-allegro form, a scherzo and a double fugue. Its language is tonal, occasionally minimalist, and highly accessible, with a blue-skies feeling to much of it that derives from Fuchs’ extensive use of counterpoint and individual lines.

All of the material in the quartet is derived from the opening theme, a long-breathed, slow, Coplandesque canon that starts with the first violin and continues down to the cello. It’s one of those themes that promises a lot, and its derivations later in the quartet were clear to discern, again because the solo-line texture Fuchs sets up at the beginning accustoms the ear to single them out. The Delrays played this opening, which is marked for a very slow tempo, much too quickly to make the proper transitional effect from its stateliness to the exuberance of the rest of the movement. Nonetheless, it was pretty and evocative, and was played with an admirable level of commitment.

The first movement sets a difficult challenge for the foursome, dominated as it is by a bustling variation of the theme that requires an athletic bow and precise intonation at a high rate of speed. The effect is one of great optimism and energy, and exciting to hear. Each member attacked the assignment with gusto, building up a big cathedral of sound before the music darkened and set the stage for the scherzo.

The second movement, an agitated Shostakovich-style march, turns into a movement of almost constant motion, with long passages of pizzicati and fast-stepping motifs played in unison by all four members. Early on, the viola plays a dark-hued melody derived from the theme over a nervous pizzicato in the cello that ends up extending for pages; violist Richard Fleischman and cellist Claudio Jaffé played this beautifully, giving it a strong sense of dark energy. This is a powerful, propulsive movement, and it got a fine performance from the quartet.

The third, marked Elegia, again hints at Shostakovich by starting (after a minor-key version of the opening) with a sad-carousel waltz theme in the second violin’s upper registers that gets taken up by the whole ensemble and ultimately turns into an aggressive, sardonic version of itself before what may be the elegy itself appears toward the end of the movement. This section also received a fine performance, though the very first bars could have been a good bit slower, more mysterious, to make a clearer contrast with the second movement.

And the music of the movement is cut from much of the same cloth as the second, which also made the two middle movements sound almost like one continuous piece. Perhaps if the second movement were played more drily, the differences would stand out better. Also, the elegy at the end, which received an intensely emotional performance, could perhaps be a little longer, especially as the movement itself is designed to be the heart of the work.

The finale returns to the open-prairie feeling of the first, with a fugue subject as close to a fiddle breakdown as it could get, and when all four instruments took their turn at it, the effect was joyful and confident. The last movement doesn’t introduce much distinctive new material, but it serves as a welcome return to the cheerfulness of the first pages. This also provided the quartet’s members with a major workout, and they pulled it off admirably.

The Colony audience applauded the piece vociferously, and there is no doubt about its ability to engage listeners. Kenneth Fuchs has written a fine piece of music in this quartet, one that could conceivably fill the new-music inclinations of American string quartet concerts in an absorbing way. It also seems to me that the last two movements could be rescored for string orchestra (call it Elegy and Fugue) and make a most attractive contemporary piece for chamber orchestras.

The Delrays will record this quartet later this month for an all-Fuchs disc on Naxos, and one looks forward to hearing the piece again, as well as to celebrating the composer’s achievement and the progress made by this homegrown string foursome.

That said, the rest of the concert demonstrated where the Delray quartet has its most persistent weak spot, and that is in the core Germanic repertory of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. This is a group much more successful with late Romanticism than the Classical period, and the first half of Sunday’s concert provided another example.

The first piece on the program was the Quartet No. 52 (in E-flat, Op. 64, No. 6) of Haydn, one of the composer’s late masterworks. Although the relatively rich opening was full and warm, the rest of the movement had a lot of rough playing. First violinist Mei Mei Luo’s triplets sounded labored rather than charming, and the quartet did nothing with the four-note back-and-forth extended passage except let the notes just sort of lie there. Further, the return of the opening material in a different, remote key needed much more color to make its impact.

The second movement was stronger, especially in the Sturm und Drang second section, but the third-movement Minuet sounded unsure on its feet, with a trio, again, that needed more contrast to stand out appropriately. The finale sounded much better-rehearsed than the first three movements, and it ended the piece with a good helping of Haydn’s celebrated wit.

Schubert’s Quartettsatz (in C minor, D. 703), which followed, also shortchanged the music somewhat, with the musicians playing cleanly and attractively, but not taking advantage of the subtler aspects of Schubert’s writing, such as the little key-shifting triplet motif that recurs throughout, and which cries out for some emphasis and shade.

The concert ended with a lush William Zinn arrangement of Bess, You Is My Woman Now, the duet from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess. It was lush and lovely, but also could have used some more shape, perhaps most notably at the harmonic change that accompanies the bridge section beginning But I ain’t going.

The Delray String Quartet will repeat this program at 8 p.m. Friday night at All Saints Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale, and again at 4 p.m. Sunday at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Coconut Grove. Tickets are $20. Call 213-4138 or visit www.delraystringquartet.org.

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The Boca Raton Symphonia entered the Saturday lists as part of its first-ever two-concert weekend, and opened it with the first hearing of a new work by the retired orchestra executive who helped found the group seven seasons ago.

Marshall Turkin, who turns 86 this year, began his professional career as an arranger for the U.S. Navy while stationed at the Panama Canal during World War II, and then pursued life as a composer and jazz musician in New York thereafter. Life intervened, as it often will, and Turkin, who went on to lead the Pittsburgh and Detroit symphony front offices, took a hiatus of more than 50 years from his composing before returning to the multi-staved paper in 2010.

Turkin’s Five Brief Essays on One Theme turned out to be a well-crafted, skillfully orchestrated work in a style congruent with the Americanists of the last mid-century, and for me evoked writers such as Norman Dello Joio, Paul Creston, and David Diamond. The theme, taken from a piano piece Turkin wrote in 1954, had an attractive, searching quality, and the composer did some interesting things with it. The third essay, A Dream, contained a warm, engaging trumpet solo, and the fourth, A Joke, is a swift, sparkling movement that showed off Turkin’s knowledge of orchestral resource as lines went rippling through the instrumental fabric.

Several things to note: One might have expected a man in his mid-80s to write a nostalgic, syrupy piece that would have gone straight to the psyches of the older members of his audience, but he pointedly avoided that, much to his credit. Second, the piece is a little too brief, especially A Joke, which is far too short, and has plenty of material that could easily be expanded.

The third is that Turkin’s position as the founding president of the group surely helped win him the spot on the program, but he has written a real piece of music here, one that might have seemed quite retro only 30 years ago but whose language is now in step with its time. He has written another piece for the Festival of the Arts Boca (the Boca Fest Overture, set for debut March 14), and a perusal of the score shows its speech to be along the same lines, and also well worth a listen.

The bottom line here is that while the Five Brief Essays could be said to come out of a late-life hobbyist impulse, this is not the music of an amateur. Turkin was trained in composition at Northwestern, and by the evidence here, he must have been a diligent student.

But the concert Saturday night at the Roberts Theater at St. Andrew’s School also stood out for another reason: the pianism of Alex Kobrin. After the Turkin piece, Kobrin took the stage for the Beethoven Fourth Concerto (in G, Op. 58). A Van Cliburn Competition gold medalist in 2005, the Russian-born pianist now teaches at Columbus State University in Georgia and concertizes around the world.

Kobrin played this great work with an exceptional level of polish, every phrase carefully considered and buffed to a high sheen, and at the same time, he was fully alive to the nobility of the concerto. This is not a concerto with obvious fireworks; it’s more of an exercise in delicacy, tone color and melodic beauty than showboating. That requires a pianist with a strong sense of this work’s special, fragile balance, and in Kobrin, the Boca Symphonia had it.

The famous piano-only opening of the concerto, so daring and different from the usual contemporary model, was a statement of surpassing gentleness and intimacy in Kobrin’s hands, and it marked much of the future dialogue with the orchestra. Guest director Arthur Fagen had a better version of the Symphonia to work with here than music director Philippe Entremont did in the first concert of the season, primarily in that Fagen had a far stronger complement of violins.

Kobrin unleashed impressive athletics in the explosive cadenza of the first movement, one of the few moments of straight-ahead virtuosity in the piece. In the question-answer dialogue of the second movement, Kobrin played with exceptional poise against the peremptory drama of the strings, and in the finale, he again demonstrated a level of control in which rhythms were crisp and exact and runs glittered and gleamed. A lovely performance by a very fine pianist, and which might have been improved only by a slightly more aggressive, vigorous approach in the finale.

To close the concert, Fagen led the Symphonia in the Symphony No. 3 (in A minor, Scottish) of Felix Mendelssohn. A repertory work, but one that gets far less frequent outings than its Italian-themed sibling, and it was good to hear it. The orchestra gave it a decent reading, too, with a bubbly second movement (nice clarinet work here by Michael Forte) and good ensemble work throughout.

And that was the primary accomplishment; with a better string section, this orchestra sounded much more impressive. Fagen, a fine conductor, sounds as though he did some good drill work with the sections, and the result overall was a satisfying and often exciting concert for the group’s second seasonal outing.

Any art exhibit containing “Old Master” in its title takes the gambling out of the museum visit. There is no question that the art is going to be good. And so it is with Offering of the Angels: Old Master Paintings and Tapestries from the Uffizi Gallery, in which the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale has given us an easy one, with plenty of drama and musculature.

More than 40 works, normally housed in the Uffizi Gallery, one of the oldest and most prestigious art museums of the world, are stopping by a few American cities following successful openings in Florence, Madrid and Barcelona a couple of years ago. Fort Lauderdale is the first stop.

The works, including one recent restoration of a Titian and a work by Sandro Botticelli, take us from the creation of Adam, the original sin and expulsion from Eden to the birth, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. We find annunciations, nativities and last suppers, all by skilled artists of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Not a bad way to start the year.

A seemingly deteriorated God extends his right arm toward a sitting nude man who seems shy and unable to walk. With his long white beard and wrinkles, this God appears less regal and closer in physical appearance to man. His soft, forgiving semblance seems to be saying I do not bite. This is Jacopo Da Empoli’s The Creation of Adam (1632). It marks the beginning of the show.

Following it are two representations of The Original Sin, the first of which is by an unknown Florentine painter from the 16^th century. Adam, sitting on a rock to the left, is about to receive the apple from Eve, who is standing to the right. The one single tree of knowledge appears in the center of the panel, forming the familiar triangle composition we will see many times here. Eve’s long voluptuous hair can almost be touched by the serpent-like devil curled up around the tree. The depiction of evil includes bat wings, long nails, horns and pointy ears. Also, notice the light focusing on the Roman-Greek inspired bodies of Adam and Eve while the creature watching them from the tree is in darkness.

This take is very different from the one dating to the early 17^th century by Frans Floris. This Original Sin on a square canvas features a darker mood as well as a more realistic approach to the bodies. The composition abandons the triangular format for a more relaxed, sensual stance. Eve is placed closer to Adam, who, again, is leaning on a rock playing the more passive role in accordance with the story. He has his left arm around Eve, who features porcelain skin and a hint of smile. In her face there is no sense of regret for what she is about to do. Even though the apple is intact and Adam has yet to grab it from her hand, there is no doubt the snake smiling in the dark has already won. The misty distant landscape depicts other animals and fruits. The whole spectacle is sort of chilling.

For a warmer, rosy-tone work, turn to The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (circa 1634) by Giovanni Mannozzi (aka Giovanni da San Giovanni), who depicts the moment of shame in lighter colors.

In Madonna with Child, Young Saint John the Baptist, Dominican Monk and Angels by Andrea Piccinelli (Il Brescianino), one of several Madonnas with Child here, a young Saint John, on the lower right, holds a scroll where Jesus’ mission is written down. A monk pointing to the sky with his index finger emphasizes the divine nature of that mission while looking directly at us. As soon as it makes eye contact, the work connects with the viewer and can easily make him/her feel as Tom Hanks does in Angels and Demons. Could the artist be trying to say anything else? Where else have we seen fingers pointing in some direction? For starters, in Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks (the Louvre version), The Last Supper and his last painting, John the Baptist. The straightforward obvious gestures do little to appease the sensation of mystery filling the room –and our heads.

Facing the grandeur of some of these paintings, especially the larger ones, one can feel very small and powerless. Better to take a step back and fill the space typically reserved for interpretation of abstract and contemporary works, with humility and admiration. The museum has graciously placed benches for longer contemplation. Use them.

Pieces such as Pieta with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Catherine of Alexandria (circa 1621), by Fra’ Semplice Da Verona (Il Cappuccino Veronese) no doubt deserve your time. In it, the body of Christ appears resting on a white cloth; wound marks are seen on his hands. John the Baptist and Catherine of Alexandria accompany Mary in her grief. Mary extends her arms over the body telling humanity “look at what you have done.” Notice the lamb or ram in the foreground looking toward the lifeless body. This time, the animal has not replaced the human sacrifice, as we have seen earlier in the show.

Hanging in the first gallery room is Tintoretto’s Sacrifice of Isaac, which features the moment in which an angel stops Abraham from following God’s command and killing his son. The father, about to strike with the knife, listens to the angel as he relieves him of the terrible promise. The ram later takes Isaac’s place. Our eyes travel from the angel, on the upper left, to the ram, lower right, in a sharp diagonal line.

Do not walk out without stopping by Alessandro Turchi, aka L’Orbetto’s Christ in Limbo (circa 1620). Here we get Christ against a dark unpainted background and suspended in the air. He is holding a white banner and is accompanied by Adam and Eve. Holding a broken cross on the right is St. Dismas, the thief who was promised a seat next to Christ in Heaven. On the lower left is Hell. For me, it was the most unexpected piece of the entire show.

It is not easy to admire a value which one is not convinced of and that feels rather forced, because of popularity or loyalty or obligation. Offering of the Angels has that reassuring aroma of the ancient. Admiring its value should come easily for those who visit it from now until April 8.

Many times during the show I wanted to touch these creations to see if they were indeed real, but photographs are not allowed, not even pens; let alone touching. I thought about Eve and the way she must have felt, being around such a gorgeous forbidden fruit.

I must admit I was jealous when the National Gallery in London announced its fantastic exhibit on the master of the great masters: Leonardo da Vinci. Unable to fly there, I resigned myself to reading The Guardian’s interactive guides of his sketches and paintings.

Now, having seen the drama, the colors and compositions in Offering of the Angels, it would be a sin to feel anything but fortunate.

Offering of the Angels: Old Master Paintings and Tapestries from the Uffizi Gallery, is showing until April 8 at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale. Tickets: $18 adults, $15 for seniors and military, $10 children. Open Tuesday, Wednesady, Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Call 954-525-550o or visit www.moafl.org.

Theater: Since the vacuum created by the demise of Florida Stage, the Caldwell Theatre has become the place to go for cutting edge theater in Palm Beach County. Artistic director Clive Cholerton has shaken the cobwebs off this Boca Raton playhouse while still bringing its audience locally produced versions of plays acclaimed in New York. But who else would bring area theatergoers a thought-provoking, bone-crunching work like Kristoffer Diaz’s The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, a recent Pulitzer Prize finalist which speaks to America’s place in global politics, as seem through the metaphoric prism of professional wrestling. If this bold choice succeeds, the Caldwell could gain a new young audience, without losing too many of its longtime subscribers. Opening this weekend and continuing through Feb. 12. Call (561) 241-7432 for tickets.

Film: The word of the week is ‘‘uncanny,” and it refers to the performance of Meryl Streep as England’s Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of that nation. Just when we were convinced that the actress was a dead ringer for chef Julia Child (in Julie & Julia), she completely changes her voice, her look and her mannerisms and nails the persona of the steel-hided Maggie in The Iron Lady. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd (who has zoomed up the filmmaking learning curve since working with Streep on Mamma Mia!), the movie begins with Thatcher in dementia-riddled old age, then flashes back to her entry into politics and her rise to the top, incurring the wrath of the left along the way. The film falls into the biopic trap of trying to cover too much and spreading itself too thin, but Streep is a marvel. Opening in area theaters today.

Music: Classical music fans have a wealth of premieres to consider this weekend, all three by composers with strong local ties.

Kenneth Fuchs, who teaches at the University of Connecticut and grew up in Fort Lauderdale, introduces his String Quartet No. 5 (American) with the Delray String Quartet this Sunday afternoon. The Delray, which played Fuchs’ Fourth Quartet last season, will record the new piece for a Naxos disc of Fuchs’ chamber music to be released later this year. The score shows the work to be a kind of populist-minimalist piece, with outer movements in A major and the inner ones suggesting D minor. Everything is built out of what Fuchs calls the “American theme,” which appears at the very beginning and can be heard in various forms throughout the half-hour work.

Having premiered the Third Quartet of Thomas Sleeper a few seasons back, it’s good to see the Delrays staying in the business of performing brand-new music. This promises to be a significant premiere of a strong piece of music, and it will be heard three times, beginning at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Colony Hotel in Delray Beach (the other performances are on Jan. 20 in Fort Lauderdale and Jan. 22 in Coconut Grove). Other works on the program include the Quartet No. 52 (in E-flat, Op. 64, No. 6) of Haydn, the Quartettsatz (in C minor, D. 703) of Schubert, and music from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess. Tickets are $35. Call 213-4138 or visit www.delraystringquartet.org.

The Boca Symphonia introduces its first of two Saturday night concerts this weekend, and gives the world premiere of Five Essays on One Theme, by Marshall Turkin, a former orchestra executive who helped found the Symphonia. Turkin, 85, returned to composing only in 2010, after a 50-year hiatus while he headed the Pittsburgh and Detroit orchestras and ran the Blossom (Cleveland) and Ravinia (Chicago) summer music festivals. Inspired by a visit to a retired composer, the Northwestern-trained ex-U.S. Navy arranger unearthed a theme from a 1954 piano piece for his Essays, which are written in a tonal Americanist style from the mid-20^th century. Turkin plans to keep writing, and his Boca Fest Overture, also newly composed, debuts March 14 with the Lynn Philharmonia at the Festival of the Arts Boca.

Arthur Fagen leads this weekend’s concerts, which feature the Russian-born pianist Alex Kobrin, a Tchaikovsky Competition gold medalist, in the Beethoven Fourth Concerto (in G, Op. 58). The orchestra also will play the Scottish Symphony (No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56) of Mendelssohn. Concerts are 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at the Roberts Theater on the campus of St. Andrew’s School in Boca Raton. Tickets: $30-$50. Call 376-3848 or visit www.bocasymphonia.org.

Finally, there is Duncan Celebration, a brief fanfare for brass quintet by David Gibble, longtime professor of music and jazz band director at Palm Beach State College. Gibble wrote it at the request of the Boston Brass, which is celebrating its 25^th anniversary by commissioning 25 fanfares in some of the cities where it is concertizing. Gibble, 52, a trumpeter and graduate of the renowned jazz studies program at what is now the University of North Texas, said he drew on the fanfare in Paul Dukas’ La Peri for a model, and named the work in honor of the Duncan Theatre, which also is celebrating its 25^th anniversary this year.

Boston Brass also has programmed pieces by Ginastera, Kabalevsky, Piazzolla and de Falla for this Saturday night’s concert, as well as a collection of jazz and theater songs including Gershwin’s Strike Up the Band and Benny Golson’s I Remember Clifford. The concert is set for 8 p.m. Saturday at the Duncan Theatre. Tickets are $25. Call 868-3309 or visit www.duncantheatre.org.

Also this weekend, the very fine Canadian pianist Jon Kimura Parker is in residence at Lynn University. Parker has had a long and distinguished career, and this weekend he’s conducting master classes at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Saturday at the Amarnick-Goldstein Concert Hall and giving a recital of Russian music Sunday afternoon. The master classes, which are free and open to the public, will feature students in music including the Second Sonatas of Shostakovich and Scriabin, and the odd but lovely Sonata No. 24 (in F-sharp, Op. 78) of Beethoven.

For his recital program, Parker will play the Pictures at an Exhibition of Mussorgsky, and his own arrangement of the Petrouchka ballet suite by Stravinsky. Also on the program are the celebrated Prelude in G minor (Op. 23, No. 5) of Rachmaninov and the Sonata No. 3 (in A minor, Op. 29, From Old Notebooks) by Prokofiev. He’ll play all these on a special Yamaha concert grand being brought in for the performance by Kretzer Pianos of Jupiter. Tickets for the 4 p.m. recital at Lynn’s Wold Performing Arts Center range from $20-$35. Call 237-9000 or visit www.lynn.edu/tickets.

And in addition, Japanese-born violinist Junko Ohtsu presents a program devoted to music of women composers Sunday afternoon at the Norton Gallery of Art. Ohtsu’s program features music by the French composer Lili Boulanger, English composer Rebecca Clarke (Three Irish Songs for soprano and violin), and the Boston Classicist Amy Beach (Romance, for violin and piano). Music by three living women composers also is on the program, including the Piano Trio of 2010 Pulitzer winner Jennifer Higdon, three of the Songs of No Return by the Russian-born pianist and composer Lera Auerbach, and the Romance for violin and piano of Miami’s own Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, also a Pulitzer winner and a part-time resident of Pompano Beach.

Ohtsu said the program was compiled at the Norton’s request as a companion to its current exhibition of paintings by the young British artist Jenny Saville. “This is the first time I’ve planned a concert with all-women composers,” Ohtsu said. “In general, I don’t like the idea of gender as a subject. But I looked into it, and I found so many wonderful, talented composers.” Ohtsu will be joined by pianist Colette Valentine, cellist Evelyn Elsing and soprano Sarah Moulton Faux for the concert, which is set for 3 p.m. Tickets are $5, and available at the visitor’s desk. Call 832-5196 for more information.

Veteran jazz saxophonist Bob Mintzer didn't have to look far to find inspiration for the title of his latest CD, Canyon Cove. The disc is named for the street his house sits on in Hollywood, Calif., and which also happens to be the former residence of classical composer Arnold Schoenberg.

“He's probably rolling over in his grave because a jazz musician is living in his house," Mintzer says with a laugh.

That sense of humor permeates Canyon Cove, an unorthodox trio disc with Hammond organist Larry Goldings, drummer Peter Erskine, and Mintzer playing tenor saxophone, bass clarinet and flute. The Canyon Cove Trio will play the South Florida Jazz series Saturday night, and while most jazz trios at least feature a pianist, guitarist or bassist, this CD's only additional contributions are from Judd Miller, who plays EWI (electronic wind instrument) on three improvised pieces.

The remaining 10 tracks include Victor Young's jazz standard When I Fall in Love and Mintzer compositions that range from Thaddeus (an ode to late trumpeter Thad Jones, his former employer in the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band) to self-explanatory traditional (Bebop Special) and R&B feels (Bugaloo to You). The title track, although inspired by Mintzer's home, is also a surprising dedication to 1970s rock organ trio Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

“I'd written the melody with a '70s rock feel to it," Mintzer says, "although I'm not exactly sure why. It's not really a genre I often write things in."

In truth, any listener would be hard-pressed to hear much of ELP's notorious bombast in Mintzer's subtle title composition, although Goldings' tone and soloing offer fleeting glimpses of Keith Emerson. Goldings, who'd emerged in recent years through his work in Trio Beyond with John Scofield and Jack DeJohnette, proves the perfect organist throughout Canyon Cove -- even if he wasn't Mintzer's first choice.

"I'd played on a Little Jimmy Scott project with Joey DeFrancesco," Mintzer says, "and I hadn't had much previous experience with the instrument. But I loved the rich sound and feel of the Hammond. I thought it would be fun to do an organ trio project with Joey, but he got stranded in Europe right before the sessions. I'd just been to a party where I'd told Larry about the record, and he half-jokingly said, 'If Joey can't make it, I'll be around.'"

Erskine has been around Mintzer often, having played with him in the Jaco Pastorius Big Band 30 years ago. In fact, the two go all the way back to the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan in 1969 (where their classmates included drummer Dan Brubeck, son of pianist Dave Brubeck; Elaine Duvas, principal oboist for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and actor Tom Hulce, who portrayed Mozart in the film Amadeus).

"There's a lot of chemistry there," an understated Mintzer says of his relationship with the all-purpose Erskine, who's also a fellow faculty member at the University of Southern California.

The versatile Mintzer, who turns 59 on Jan. 27, is a New Rochelle, N.Y., native who attended the Hartt College of Music in Hartford, Conn., on a classical clarinet scholarship in 1970. He's since performed with the New York Philharmonic and the American Ballet Theatre; has an educational resume that includes 25 years on the faculty at the Manhattan School of Music, and has published more than 200 charts for school and professional big bands worldwide through Kendor Music's Bob Mintzer series.

Between early experience with Brazilian big band leader Eumir Deodato in 1974 and his tenure with Pastorius, Mintzer gained valuable knowledge by writing some of his first performed arrangements as a member of the Buddy Rich Big Band.

"I learned how to write for a big band while with Buddy," he says. "You hear all these stories about what a terrible guy he was, but he certainly wasn't terrible to me at all. He was very supportive, and provided me with an incredible opportunity. And the way he played the music, and drove a big band, was so intuitive, creative and artistic."

As a recording artist, Mintzer's website breaks his catalog down into four categories -- "Small Band," "Big Band," "Sideman/Guest" and "Yellowjackets," for the 31-year-old fusion quartet that he's been a part of for the past 21. The group's keyboardist, Russell Ferrante, is also on the USC music faculty.

Despite Mintzer's sideman credits dating back to 1975, and recordings with his own small groups and big bands from 1982, there's a tendency to think of him as an original member of the Yellowjackets. The venerable group first assembled in 1978 to back guitarist Robben Ford on his album The Inside Story.

Ford was then with the Yellowjackets for their self-titled 1981 debut, and the 1983 disc Mirage a Trois, before he departed to concentrate on his solo career. His replacement was Tower of Power alto saxophonist Marc Russo, who stayed through the 1989 album The Spin and was replaced by Mintzer.

"Bob brought the knowledge of traditional jazz," Ferrante says, "and he played tenor sax, which was a really different sound for us. He's since become a really big part of the writing, too."

"The Yellowjackets are planning to do some touring in 2012," Mintzer says, "and working on a new recording. Russell and I recently did some touring as a duo in Italy and Brazil, playing originals, standards and Yellowjackets material."

"It feels like it's just whipped by," Ferrante says of the band's tenure. "We still have a blast playing, but if at some point it's no longer fun or we feel like we're phoning it in, then it'll be time to move on. But that probably won't happen. We feel very lucky."

Mintzer's most recent work with the Yellowjackets is on Timeline, the 2010 release commemorating the group's 30th anniversary. He also appears on vocalist Kurt Elling's latest stellar offering, The Gate, and has a 2012 CD by his L.A.-based big band set for summer release on the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild label. It should provide a horn-heavy contrast to the comparatively-minimalist organ trio sound of Canyon Cove.

"It's probably the smallest ensemble I've recorded with," Mintzer says, "other than the 1997 duo album ‘Longing With Gil Goldstein.’ But I really enjoy working in a trio format. There's an intimacy there, and a transparency, that makes it really great for a saxophonist.”

Bob Mintzer and the Canyon Cove Trio appear at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Miniaci Performing Arts Center on the campus of Nova Southeastern University in Davie. Tickets are $40, $30 for South Florida Jazz members, $15 for students. Call 954-462-0222 or visit www.southfloridajazz.org.

Film adaptations of plays, books and even video games are as common as rain in Seattle, but a movie adaptation of a painting? That’s an undertaking so ambitious – and probably presumptuous – that it’s hard to fathom it. Polish director Lech Majewski is up to the task in The Mill and the Cross, attempting to delve beyond the canvas of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s famous The Way to Cavalry.

The movie’s single-shot prologue beautifully organizes its concept: Bruegel (Rutger Hauer) walks through a multi-dimensional landscape of human figures frozen in time, Last Year at Marienbad-style. These are his painted subjects in The Way to Cavalry, and in a performance of pure pensiveness, Hauer will exhibit an almost invisible control over them, like a conductor organizing a symphony or a film director supervising a production.

Majewski’s camera tracks slowly across the tableau, like the eyes of a museum spectator might do along a wall-length fresco. It’s a sequence that would play spectacularly in 3D but, like the preamble of Melancholia, it’s also the movie’s artistic zenith, having nowhere to go but down.

Most of The Mill and the Cross is presented without dialogue. Only Hauer, Michael York (as Nicolaes Jonghelinck, a wealthy patron of Bruegel’s) and Charlotte Rampling (as the Virgin Mary, convincingly expressing grief and suffering even in the thinnest of roles) have speaking parts, even though most of the action takes place in the landscape of Bruegel’s mind – specifically Flanders in 1564 (when Bruegel actually lived), where red-tunicked Spanish occupiers raid, pillage and crucify to their heart’s content.

Much of the “plot” is an experiential and ethnographic study of a village; children frolic, animals meander, musicians play folksongs, a horny man pursues a woman who fights off his advances until she doesn’t. When the Spaniards invade, they bring savagery to the bucolic land. Flagellation, living burials and the inevitable crucifixion of Christ are presented with matter-of-fact realism, and it couldn’t be a farther cry from Mel Gibson’s Passion movie, or even Scorsese’s or Pasolini’s. I would go so far as to say The Mill and the Cross is 2011’s least manipulative film.

In this case, such detachment brings with it a paucity of emotional connection. There’s no denying the power of Majewski’s images, most of which are imbued with a painter’s scope and precision. The film was shot in four countries and even includes a 2D rendering of The Way to Cavalry painted by the director. Ordinary objects are filmed with reverence and resplendence.

But these are surface pleasures. Absent anything like character-building, the film generates no compassion toward its victims and inspires no hatred for its marauders. As choreographed by Bruegel’s hand, it’s a bloodlessly subjective history lesson. What’s worse, Majewski’s screenplay (co-written with Michael Francis Gibson) is ponderously dense. The mill in the painting isn’t just a mill, we’re told; it’s “the axis around which people circle between life and death,” an admission that comes off like a bit of Cliff’s Notes embedded into a text.

But that’s just the beginning of this spiritual decoder ring of a movie, whose procession of symbols suggest that its target demographic is semioticians, not movie audiences. The film’s portent knows no end, and it has an awfully inflated sense of its own self-worth.

Throughout the running time, my mind drifted to a 2007 episode of Showtime’s This American Life, in which an artist attempted to create a live-action tableau of Christ and his companions, which he would then paint as part of a mural series. This half-hour study of the creation of a painting was far less ambitious than The Mill in the Cross, but it was ultimately richer and, it goes without saying, infinitely more entertaining.

THE MILL AND THE CROSS. Director: Lech Majewski; Cast: Rutger Hauer, Michael York, Charlotte Rampling; Distributor: Kino Lorber; Opens: Friday at Lake Worth Playhouse, Mos’ Art Theatre, Miami Beach Cinematheque and Bill Cosford Cinema in Coral Gables.