Amy Glazer made her directorial debut as a teenager at Miami Beach Senior High School, where she directed another student named Mickey Rourke in his first play.

Now a playwright, independent filmmaker and a professor of film, television, radio and theater at San Jose State University, she’s returned to South Florida this month to screen her new film, Seducing Charlie Barker, which opened earlier this month in Miami and screens Friday at FAU’s Living Room Theaters.

The film is based on the play The Scene, by Theresa Rebeck, and stars Daphne Zuniga, Stephen Barker Turner, Heather Gordon and David Wilson Barnes. Seducing Charlie Barker is a dark satire about a talented but out-of-work New York actor (Turner) whose disenchantment with the surreal contradictions of show business leaves him vulnerable to the charms of a narcissistic party girl, Clea (Gordon).

The film won Best American Indie at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival in 2010.

“It’s a sexy, dark satire and a bit voyeuristic. There’s something so wonderful about watching people behave badly. It’s something we can’t do, but when you see other people doing it, it’s deliciously horrific,” Glazer said.

Glazer said she’s happy that the film is finally reaching audiences.

“It’s rewarding that after three years of hard work, people will actually come out and see the film,” she said. “I always have this dread that it will be like a home movie – only my father will watch it. Having a real audience is extremely gratifying.”

Glazer, 57, lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband of 33 years, James Connolly, a publisher, and her 17-year-old son, Liam.

I spoke to Amy in New York City where she was attending the screening of her film at the Quad Cinema in Greenwich Village and taking in as many plays as she could, including Seminar and The Understudy, both by Theresa Rebeck, and Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities starring Stockard Channing and Stacy Keach.

PBAP: As a Miami Beach native, but a longtime resident of the San Francisco Bay area, what does it mean to you to come back to South Florida and screen your film?

Glazer: Even though I couldn’t wait to move away from Miami, it’s still the place I come back to often. It was a beautiful place to grow up. I feel very nostalgic for South Florida. It will always be my home.

I have a strong community of friends and extended and chosen family here. Mitchell Kaplan, founder and owner of the Coral Gables bookstore, Books & Books, is my best friend. We went to elementary school together. So, it’s always wonderful to come here. Since I work in the Bay Area, none of these people have had much of an opportunity to see my work. There’s something really gratifying about being able to share my work with friends and family.

PBAP: Can you tell us a little bit about the film?

Glazer: The film is a modern-day morality tale. The story is not the surprising part of the film – it’s the behavior by the characters that we never expect. It makes us examine our own values. In our culture, art takes a second seat to commerce and the commodification of art. What happens when we value meaninglessness over meaning? How does that impact our relationships? It’s something I struggle with as well. As a theater director and an indie filmmaker, I do these things because I love them – it’s who I am. It’s not a way of becoming famous or making money.

PBAP: Whom does the film appeal to?

Glazer: The film appeals to people 40-plus. First of all, it’s a very smart and funny film. I’ve been compared to Woody Allen and I think it’s because we both make films that are language-driven. It appeals to filmgoers that want to be challenged. But I also think it appeals to the younger generation, too, because the character of Clea is a beautiful, vacuous, social climber who is actually much smarter than she appears and is not afraid to work the system for her own advantage.

PBAP: I saw the film at the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival and I loved Heather Gordon, the actress who plays Clea. I think she will go on to be a star.

Glazer: Heather Gordon is smart, sexy and gorgeous and a great comedic actress. She is a cross between Lucille Ball and Marilyn Monroe. While we were working on the play, I said: “You are too brilliant to go to Hollywood and get eaten up. Go to graduate school.” She auditioned at Yale, Harvard and NYU and got into Harvard on a scholarship.

PBAP: Many times it’s difficult to translate a play into the film genre. How were you able to translate the play into the film, and is it a successful transition?

Glazer: Yes, I think it is. The film is more successful than the play. I deconstructed the play because there was so much language. What had been a monologue became a scene, but the story, the tone, the satire all translated well to film.

PBAP: What directors do you admire? Did you have any mentors in your professional life, someone who influenced your work?

Glazer: I love Woody Allen. I love Robert Altman and John Cassavetes. These are the filmmakers that influenced me the most because their work is character-driven. At the end of the day, I’m most interested in character and the behavior that comes from that character.

On a more personal level, I was strongly influenced by my professor at California Institute of the Arts, Alexander Mackendrick. He directed The Lady Killers and The Man in the White Suit. He was very interested in how I told stories and in my natural storytelling abilities. He was the one who encouraged me to learn the grammar of film.

I now use one of his textbooks that was printed posthumously, and it’s so wonderful to remind myself of his lesson, which is: The most important thing you can do in film is to capture the performance. If you can capture an authentic performance, if you can get a certain level of work from your actors, then you’ll tell your story.

PBAP: I know that you were exposed to a lot of art, theater and culture as a child, and that your uncle, Sidney Glazier, was a producer of The Producers. What did you learn about filmmaking from him?

Glazer: My parents filled our lives with the arts. We went to theater, both in New York and Miami. We went to concerts, we went to ballet. We were inundated with the arts. It’s subliminal. I learned my own aesthetic sensibility from these experiences.

I remember going to London in 1973 with my parents and seeing Claire Bloom in A Doll’s House. That experience was life-changing. I met Claire Bloom again in 2010 at the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival, where she received a Lifetime Achievement Award. I went up to her and told her that I saw her and Colin Blakely in The Doll’s House and that it is one of my best memories. It was wonderful to be able to see her. She is still so beautiful, elegant and articulate.

My brother (Mitch Glazer, writer/producer for the Starz TV series, Magic City) and I were on the set the entire time my uncle was filming The Producers. He also produced Take the Money and Run and The Twelve Chairs. He loved theater, and whenever we were in New York, he would always get us tickets to any show we wanted to see.

PBAP: Amy, you have a lot of energy and seem to juggle a lot of balls in the air at the same time. What are you working on now?

Glazer: I’m directing a play at San Jose Repertory Theatre and I’m the associate director at the San Francisco Playhouse. I’m working on my next film, based on a play that I directed called Blue Surge by playwright Rebecca Gilman. She’s a dear friend and a brilliant play and screenwriter. I’ve directed five to six of her plays. Blue Surge is a story that I love and I’m very excited to get started on this project.

PBAP: Well, we’d love to see that film as well. Do you think you will screen it here in South Florida?

Glazer: I’d love to. When you direct a play, you spend a few months of your life and then you move on. This film has taken three years of my life and has taken on a life of its own. Everyone said the likelihood of getting the film distributed was low, but we never took “No” for an answer.

PBAP: What advice would you give to budding playwrights, filmmakers or directors?

Glazer: Work from your passion. At the end of the day, I have never done my art for money. I never said, “Oh, this will make me famous.” Or, “this will make me rich.” I tell stories because it’s who I am. It’s what I need to do to be whole. When you’re working from a place of love and you respect the work you do, if you are passionate about the work, that is contagious.

In the words of Winston Churchill: “Never, never, never give up.” That is my mantra. Also, trust yourself. Believe in your passion and follow your bliss. When the work is an expression of your joy, then it doesn’t feel like work and you can get anything done. Doing the work is being alive.

PBAP: Will you ever slow down or take time off?

Glazer: I never see myself retiring. I fully expect to be making movies and directing theater until the day I die. I can’t even imagine not doing this. The truth is: When you have something that you love to do, it keeps you young. As a professor, filmmaker and theater director, my joie de vivre comes from my work. I can’t imagine myself not working.

Seducing Charlie Barker screens Friday at the Living Room Theaters at FAU in Boca Raton. For more information, please call 561-549-2600 or visit www.fau.livingroomtheaters.com. Prices are: $9.50 regular admission; $7.50 matinees before 5 p.m.; $6.50 military, students and educators (with ID), seniors. For information on the film, please visit: www.seducingcharliebarker.com.

Long yellow shoelaces make for a wonderful sun, there is a vice versa to shoes are made from animals and while I don’t know about the white elephant, the black bear in the room is not always ignored.

I learned all of the above during a recent trip to the Boca Raton Museum of Art to check out two ongoing exhibits that are proving to be very popular.

More than 90 highly personal works created by ordinary men and women with no formal artistic training are the core of Outsider Visions: Self-Taught Southern Artists of the 20^th Century, running through Jan. 8. The works here are humble in material and execution and, as we learn through the descriptions, often the results of a personal affliction, a divine revelation/vision or a favorite scenery.

Whether you are an art expert or only sat through a few credits of art history, you will feel that inner critic dying to point out that the proportions here and there are off, the composition seems boring and there is overall flatness. The temptation is especially irresistible with the first couple of works set against an intense red wall. They are perceived as childish; you can tell from the looks of those passing by.

John Henry Toney’s That Man Is in Love with that Cutting Up Hairdo (2000) is an example of this. The use of markers along with the basic facial features and body shapes remind you indeed of a child’s drawing, but a child would have probably stopped after composing the main figures. That elaborate background you see taking over the entire white surface, as well as the linear patterns on the clothing, would have never happened. A child would have grown bored long before completing it and moved on to a new drawing.

Forget for a moment what you thought great art looks like. This is folk art, or outsider art, as the self-taught art genre is called. It does not have to be great or bad. It just is. And it is truly unique.

Despite the infantile traits, I found myself liking two works by Florida-born Mama Johnson titled Two Girls (2002) and Guess Who (2002). In both cases, two dots appear in place of the nose while bold black circular outlines make for wide-open eyes. A classic red mouth completes the face. In Guess Who, the use of frenetic lines, some bold, some thin, in red, black and blue, remind me a bit of Amelia Pelaez.

Alabama-born Jimmy Lee Sudduth provides some of the pieces that stand out the most: Red the Weenie Dog (2000) and Sawmill in Red (2000). The use of color in them – watch for the variations of browns, greens and pinks -- along with the rich texture and raw finish, gives them a certain maturity and sophistication.

I love the irregular patches of blues and whites on the body of Weenie Dog. Here the animal appears horizontally stretched out against a bright green plain. If you read the description you will learn Sudduth, the son of a Choctaw Indian Shaman, grew up painting with mud and honey. For color he likes to use wild berries, grasses and coffee, among other materials.

Next to it is Black Bear (2006) by John “Cornbread” Anderson, a native of Georgia. The work, mostly in black, has a picture-book feeling to it. It seems to me perfectly fitted as an illustration for a children’s book. I suppose because I can imagine certain story line going on as the happy bear eats the honey and gets ambushed by the upset bees.

I found the strength of the show and its value to be precisely in the ability of these men and women to block knowledge and resist the traditional learning method that means sketching, cleaning brushes and having a group critique. It is a brave thing to resist the path that more or less promises systematic improvement. Come to think of it, improvement (as a goal) does not seem to exist for these self-taught artists. I got the impression they create because there is joy in doing so, not as a way to make a living and not expecting to become better.

But therein lays the good dilemma of Outsider Visions. One cannot be sure if an artist’s apparent disregard for the basic principles/rules of art is intentional or evidence of poor skill.

Even if the latter was the case, it does not necessarily mean we should dismiss the works. Actually, it could be interpreted as a sign of greatness. Pablo Picasso famously said: “In every child there is an artist. The difficulty is knowing how to hold on to this artist as the child grows up.” He also said: “…it has taken me my whole life to learn to draw like a child.”

In that case, these artists are masters at holding on to their inner child.

Does that mean knowledge ruins natural artistic ability? Not always. Before we get to Outsider Visions we have to walk through a jungle-like installation called The World According to Federico Uribe, by the Colombian conceptual artist.

Like the folk artists, Uribe is not a child. He is actually a very educated adult. He attended the University of Los Andes in Bogota and continued his studies in New York before moving to Miami. Yet he has managed to transform a 5,000 square-foot room into a silly uncomplicated world where alligators and leopards are made of sneakers, and leather and brown shoelaces become a monkey climbing a life-sized palm tree made of books.

This is what he is known for: giving every day objects unpredictable highly amusing new lives. The animals we encounter (a crocodile, a giraffe, a turtle, an ostrich, a zebra, a puma, etc.) all appear posing, as if suspended in the middle of an attack or reaction. This makes the show closer to real life.

For each of his inventive creations, such as the sheep made of ping-pong balls, we feel like rotating all around it to look at it from different angles. We want to decipher the recipe that gave it form. In most cases that recipe includes: Sneakers, pencils, shoelaces, books, discarded pieces of wood, corks, rubber soles and anything else you can imagine.

Also here are pieces from Uribe’s 2008 Animal Farm installation, which features a life-sized farmer family made of colored pencils.

Also running until Jan. 8, this is show that produces instant excitement. I watched adults and children enter and exit the room in complete amusement. Is it possible? Yes. Shoes are made of animals, so why not make animals of shoes?

I asked myself the same question and the answer was Yes, too. It is possible to go through formal education and have one’s imagination and innocence emerge intact.

The Boca Raton Museum of Art is at 501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton, in Mizner Park. Admission: $14 adults, $12 seniors, $6 students (through March 18). Hours: 10 am-5 pm Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; 10 am-9 pm Wednesday; 12 pm-5 pm Saturday and Sunday. Closed Mondays and holidays. Call 561-392-2500, or visit www.bocamuseum.org.

In all my years of going to hear Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, I have never heard a better interpretation than that of Canadian soprano Michele Capalbo, who sang the lead role of Cio-Cio San on Saturday at Palm Beach Opera.

Capalbo led the company’s “B” cast; the “A” cast opened Palm Beach Opera’s 50th season the night before. Taking on such demanding lead roles means opera singers must get at least one day’s rest between appearances. That is why the company alternates the lead singers.

Capalbo’s soprano has a beautiful, rich, rounded tone and her middle and lower ranges are just as strong as her top. The lead tenor, Rafael Davila, singing Pinkerton, is infatuated with his Japanese geisha girl, but little understands how much store the sweet 15-year-old beauty puts into such a union.

Note for note, Davila matched Capalbo, magnificently. She has the bigger role; after Act I, Davila appears briefly in the last act. Davila’s tenor has a ringing, pure, full sound with a honeyed head tone that is quite impressive. Their Act I wedding love duet was tender and superbly sung by both artists.

The combination of Puccini and conductor Bruno Aprea, Palm Beach Opera’s artistic director, was magical. The orchestra responded beautifully. Every section played well, and the horns, who are asked to underscore so much of the later singing in the opera, were champions. No fluffs, just smooth sounds.

As a body, the orchestra shone when they played the famous intermezzo between acts. I have always believed they should take the stage alone, without singers, to show off their prowess. Perhaps an ideal venue would be among the orchestras chosen to play in the Kravis Center’s Regional Arts series. They are a match for any visiting orchestra, foreign or domestic.

Chorus master Greg Ritchey schooled his choristers well. On stage and off, they sounded perfect. Nothing was overdone; a light touch was all that was needed in their few appearances, and that’s what came across: delicate, beautiful, sensitive choral work.

Ron Daniels’ stage direction handled the opera with a deft understanding of Japanese sensibilities; crowded nations like Japan and England tend to practice reserved restraint in first meetings, and so it was here, and very apt. Daniels’ direction was superb, and he had the audience spellbound. Only once did they dare to break the spell with applause for Capalbo’s Un bel dì, which was much deserved.

Baritone Michael Chioldi was excellent as Sharpless, the American consul general in Nagasaki, who cautions Lt. Pinkerton not to take this marriage lightly. Three years later, it falls to him to tell Butterfly that there is now a second Mrs. Pinkerton (Shirin Eskandani, a member of the Young Artists troupe). Acting and singing with great distinction, Chioldi’s voice is plum rich, and beautifully modulated.

Suzuki, sung by mezzo Irene Roberts, was perfection as the maid to Butterfly. Her singing is delicious and her acting absolutely on point. Her Flower Duet with Capalbo was particularly memorable.

Julius Ahn played and sang the role of Goro, the marriage broker. He has a good tenor voice and rather than be too pushy, as is so often seen, he acted subtly. It works. Baritone Valentin Vasilu was “dangerous” as The Bonze, Butterfly’s uncle, who interrupts the wedding to condemn her for changing religions. A terrifying presence, but not too terrifying. Kenneth Stavert, another Palm Beach Opera Young Artist, was very good as Prince Yamadori. He sang it nicely and was convincing as the jilted suitor to Butterfly.

Not at all convincing, however, were Benjamin Clements and Jesse Enderle, playing the imperial commissioner and official registrar, respectively. Their singing was weak, and it was a good thing their roles were short. I’ve always said that in casting comprimario roles, one should choose professionals, especially on such an enormous occasion as a half-century celebration.

Kathy Waszkelewicz’s makeup, much assisted by Japanese wigs, made the cast and chorus members look suitably Asian. The lighting design by Steven Strawbridge was adequate, and the scenery and costumes were on loan from San Francisco Opera. The American battleship Abraham Lincoln in Nagasaki harbor was ghoulishly realistic.

But the kudos, as always, go to Giacomo Puccini for his magnificent music and orchestrations, which gave a lush and memorable start to this 50^th anniversary season of Palm Beach Opera.

Rex Hearn, who founded Berkshire Opera in 1995, regularly reviews opera, music and theater in South Florida.

On the first day of the New Art Dealers Alliance art fair (NADA), which took place during the recent Miami Art Week, young artists and art professionals gathered alongside established dealers, collectors and curators in the expansive grand lobby of the Deauville Beach Resort.

Young men with scruffy beards wearing blue jeans sat on couches and armchairs alongside polished art world mavens in Prada to watch Hennessy Youngman’s performance work, History of Art Part 1, a Joyce-like, stream-of-consciousness rap with wry observations about art-world elitism and racism.

The vibe was casual, and the comfortable mingling of emerging and established in what, at times, felt more like an über-cool art college because of the camaraderie, is one of the many things that made NADA unique among the large pack of art fairs that take place this week each year. In fact, in a week that brought every major art-world player to the Miami area, NADA proved to be the cream that rose to the top — achieving both record attendance and sales and garnering rave reviews in the art trades.

NADA, which began Dec. 1 and ran for four days, is inherently different from competing fairs because it’s not simply a fair. It’s a New York-based, not-for-profit membership organization, founded in 2002. And, as Heather Hubbs, NADA’s director, said, “We’re the only fair that doesn’t charge admission.”

The primary mission of NADA is to create a collaborative environment for contemporary art professionals. “We believe that the adversarial approach to exhibiting and selling art has run its course,” the group, which has individual and organizational membership tiers, says on its website.

“Some people are young gallery owners, some are gallery directors, and some are curators or writers. A lot of art advisers are members,” Hubbs said. Membership is by invitation only.

And while NADA’s primary focus is sales, the environment is not intimidating. “Part of it is about meeting the collectors and knowing them because ultimately the galleries want to sell work, but it’s also about creating a network in which you can share resources and knowledge,” Hubbs said. “You can’t really ever cut out the competition because ultimately everybody’s trying to do the same thing, but you can create a friendly environment that’s comfortable and open.”

Hubbs, who is both keenly intelligent and remarkably down-to-earth, has been NADA’s director since 2005. Both the organization and the fair have flourished under her leadership. She’s highly respected within the contemporary art arena and many of the gallerists see the show’s success being due in large part to her vision.

“I think Heather Hubbs as a director is artist-minded,” said John Riepenhoff, co-owner of Wisconsin’s The Green Gallery. “I think she sees the fair in a more artistic way than some that are run by people that are more corporate-minded, which has its own place. But we’re really happy in this environment.”

Another factor that distinguishes NADA is the venue. The Deauville Beach Resort, situated oceanside, is a good 20-minute cab ride from the convention center that houses Art Basel Miami Beach. Yet the distance seems a draw, rather than deterrent. Visitors can take a breather from the craziness here because it’s the perfect environment for that. The Deauville has historic charm, too. It was designed in the 60s in the Miami Modernist “MiMo” style and was a hangout for the Rat Pack. The cool ambiance lingers.

The auditorium-like grand lobby proved a perfect spot for performance art, which went on throughout the fair. In addition to the Hennessy performance, artist John Miserendino performed Pavilion each day, a work inspired by Dan Graham’s iconic architectural sculptures. It found the young artist squatting in a readymade alongside the entrance to two of the exhibit galleries conducting staged interviews with various art world players as visitors scuffled by, or stopped to observe.

There’s a misconception that NADA offers only new, or emerging art, but that was not necessarily the case. Though many of the galleries are new and do show new art, many are also quite established and showed mid-career artists. With prices ranging from affordable works under $1,000, to those well over $100,000 — and the most dominant price being around $20,000 — a few sales can cancel out what a gallery pays to participate.

“Art fairs are important for us because they give us a visibility that we tend to lack due to our geographic location,” said Jake Palmert, Riepenhoff’s partner in The Green Gallery. “Also we were introduced to a number of curators and museum board members from cities across the country.”

The gallery was showing works by painter Scott Reeder and mixed media artists Tyson Reeder and Amy Yao. “Everything is contemporary conceptual art. We’re working with living artists. Everything in the booth is pretty fresh and made for this exhibition, or recently,” Riepenhoff said.

The galleries represented a microcosm of the global art scene and wherever they hailed from, and whether they were showing new or established artists, all agreed on NADA’s significance.

“Certainly I think NADA is the most challenging and convincing fair among the younger fairs that happen along with Art Basel. It was a very easy choice,” said Johannes Vogt (no relation to the writer), who owns the Vogt Gallery in New York City’s Chelsea district. Vogt had work by Bo Christian Larssen, a mid-career, significant Swedish artist based in Berlin.

Chaira Badinella and her partner Fabrizio Affronti, who own Milan’s Brand New Gallery, which opened last year, chose to participate in NADA, “because we thought it was really important for young galleries and a good way to present our work to the American public,” Badinella said.

They were showing paintings by Shinique Smith and sculptures by Cristina Lei Rodriguez, both established artists.

Istanbul’s NON Gallery was participating in NADA for the second time and showing work by Asli Çavuşoğlu, who was just featured in Performa 11, New York’s biennial for visual performance art, and Annika Eriksson.

“We chose to show quite a young artist, Asli, who is 29, and Annika is quite established. So one emerging and one established,” said NON’s director, Derya Demir.

NADA was the only fair where Miami-based nonprofit art space Locust Projects had a presence outside their gallery. “We were excited about presenting Locust Projects in the context of so many wonderful galleries,” said Chana Budgazad Sheldon, Locust’s executive director. They brought a limited-edition series of photographs by Valerie Hegarty.

NADA’s sales met, or exceeded, participant’s expectations, ArtInfo reported. The positive sale results may be due in part to the collaboration NADA entered into this year with Paddle 8, an online auction platform.

Galleries were invited to preview work prior to the fair’s opening and the online auction ran for a week after the fair ended. For this reason, many collectors knew before the fair began what works they were most interested in seeing and made a beeline for those dealer’s booths during the preview.

Between the sales and the networking opportunities, NADA has positioned itself as the lifeblood for many participating galleries.

“For us, NADA is essential to keeping our program alive,” said The Green Gallery’s Palmert.

Here are brief reviews from three recent concerts:

Delray String Quartet (Dec. 11, Colony Hotel, Delray Beach): This foursome is on something of a roll as it enters its eighth season of concertizing. Next month it will give the world premiere of the String Quartet No. 5 by Kenneth Fuchs, and will contribute that work to an all-Fuchs disc for Naxos.

It’s just released a second disc (a sampler of live performances from last season), and at the end of next year plans to offer a recording of the Grieg String Quartet and the Piano Quintet of Jean Sibelius, with pianist Tao Lin.

And with a new sponsorship from the Akerman Senterfitt law firm, the quartet is on the verge of a more muscular future. Last Sunday afternoon, it gave the last performance of its first program in a well-attended concert at the Colony Hotel in Delray Beach.

The guest for the afternoon was clarinetist Paul Green, who played the Clarinet Quintet (in B-flat, Op. 34) of Carl Maria von Weber. Clarinetists would be considerably worse off without Weber’s works for clarinet, and this piece is essentially a chamber concerto, with the strings mostly playing accompaniment as the clarinet leaps athletically over the soundscape.

Green played with alacrity and fluid technique, with plenty of impressive, pearly runs throughout the range of the instrument. The very top of the register was sometimes pinched and shrill, but he made up for that with a big, pretty tone in the slow movement.

The second half was devoted to the String Quartet No. 1 (in E minor) of Bedrich Smetana, titled From My Life. This is a repeat work for the Delrays, and this season it got a very well-drilled, solid performance, with good work from violist Richard Fleischman to get the piece off to an impassioned start. Cellist Claudio Jaffe played his yearning intro to the slow movement beautifully, and violinists Mei Mei Luo and Tomas Cotik played with force and vigor.

Although this was an impressive, accurate reading of this fine work of late Romanticism, overall it was perhaps played too aggressively. Each movement was hammered home, and though there were lovely spots of tenderness and contrast in moments such as the rustic Trio of the second movement, in general things were hard-edged and ferocious; it was effective and exciting, but rather too rough.

The concert closed with a very effective arrangement (by a Briton who goes by J. Nurse) of the overture to Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow. It was strong enough to implant Vilja in one’s head for hours afterward, and it was a certified crowd pleaser Sunday.

It may be that this lineup of the quartet, with Cotik in his second season, will be the one to carry it to the next level. The group seems to have gotten past some of its earlier bumpiness and is starting to think of itself as an ensemble that can do bigger things than heretofore. This will be the season to watch for fans of the Delray String Quartet.

Seraphic Fire (Dec. 7, St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church, Boca Raton): There’s almost no end to the great corpus of old and new music for the Christmas season, and last week Seraphic Fire presented its usual eclectic mix of the fresh and familiar for its O Holy Night program of holiday fare.

The Miami concert choir learned earlier this month that it had been nominated for two Grammy Awards, one for its recording of the London version of the Brahms German Requiem, and the other for its first Christmas album (a second one is being done this month). A lot therefore is riding on this current season of concerts to cement that reputation, and so far, so good.

Prominent on the Dec. 7 program at St. Gregory’s, its new Boca Raton home, were new pieces by Steven Sametz and two fresh arrangements by Seraphic Fire founder Patrick Dupré Quigley. The Sametz piece, Nino de Rosas, from Three Mystical Choruses, is getting its Florida premiere in the Seraphic Fire concerts for Christmas, and it features the kind of pungent harmony and stark dramatic setting familiar from this composer’s other choral works. Soloist Lexa Ferrill, a mezzo-soprano, has a characterful quality to her singing, but there was a bit too much vibrato here for my taste, though the piece itself was compelling and well-crafted.

As usual with Seraphic Fire, Quigley made good use of the space, working by candlelight (and LEDs for the music books choristers carried) for the first segment, and bringing in his singers from the back of the church as they sang Preces and Responses by the 17^th-century English composer William Smith. Between those two was Steven Paulus’ Hymn to the Eternal Flame, and after the Responses came Thomas Tallis’ Glory to Thee, My God, This Night, and Quigley’s adaptation of the David Willcocks arrangement of O Come, All Ye Faithful (with the famous descant intact).

All of the concert was like this, with songs done back to back in discrete sections. It had a wonderful way of making the music sound equally persuasive, especially sung this beautifully, with a smooth vocal sheen over everything and contemporary music handled as ably as that of the Renaissance, which was represented here by a lovely reading of Victoria’s O Magnum Mysterium.

Other standouts include a touching Little Child in a Manger, by the contemporary Canadian composer Stephen Chatman, and Seraphic Fire’s now-familiar treatment of Elizabeth Poston’s Jesus Christ the Apple Tree as a 13-part canon sung from throughout the nave by the choir members. Mezzo-soprano Misty Bermudez was the soloist in the closing O Holy Night, arranged by Quigley in a way that at first echoed the bare-bones sound of much of the music on the concert. Bermudez’s voice was rich and full, and Quigley ended his interesting arrangement unusually, in a blaze of fortissimo glory.

Yoonjung Han (Dec. 4, Steinway Gallery Boca Raton): Earlier this month, the South Korean-born pianist Yoonjung Han played the Dame Myra Hess memorial recital series in Chicago, a prestigious series that has introduced rising pianists to a Chicago-area audience in the hall and over WFMT radio.

Three days before, local audiences got to hear Han’s work at the Steinway Gallery in Boca Raton, a return appearance for her this year, after a recital at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Boca last season.

Han, who turns 27 next month, began with Federico Mompou’s Variations on a Theme of Chopin, in which the Catalan composer takes the little Prelude in A (Op. 28, No. 7) through a delicious set of reworkings. She played them beautifully, finding particular warmth in the fourth variation, with its langorous tonal language and sense of bittersweet melancholy.

She brought that same sensibility to more Spanish music, two of the Goyescas (Los requiebros and El amor y la muerte) of Enrique Granados, where even in the more extravagant pages Han had control of the music she was making, infusing it with a fine feeling for Spanish color. She was just as persuasive in the Godowsky reworking of Albéniz’s Tango in D, from his España (Op. 165).

Han also played the Beethoven Sonata No. 28 (in A, Op. 101), which came off a shade carefully. Her Classical textures are very clear and clean, particularly in the fugal passages of the finale. While the short slow movement was darkly pretty, the preceding March needed a bit more abandon, some more force and Beethoven-style coarse wit. That would have made a stronger contrast with the discursiveness of the opening movement and given the music more shape.

Still, this was highly attractive playing, and she returned to the same tradition with pleasing effect in one of her encores, the slow movement of the big E-flat Sonata (No. 52, Hob.XVI: 52) of Haydn. She captured the fantasia element of this music admirably, with a wide range of nuance and shade, and a little rush in the descending thirds that brought the listener’s attention to bear on the music’s drama.

For her second and final encore, Han performed La Campanella, Liszt’s fiery etude on the theme from the finale of Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 2. Han unleashed the fireworks for this piece, demonstrating not just excellent fingerwork but also that she has those virtuoso capabilities in her arsenal.

It was refreshing to get a good piece of bravura after a lot of introspection in Han’s program, and she seems partial to the dreamier, deeply Romantic part of the repertory. She makes a fine champion of Mompou and Spanish composers, but quite a good Classicist, too. When she comes back again, it’d be good to hear her do some earlier Haydn and Beethoven, perhaps even some Mozart, and to see whether she can bring the kind of depth she brought to Mompou to another side of her art.