Until recently, you weren’t likely to hear mention of the local Bak Middle School of the Arts and the Juilliard School in New York City within the same sentence.

Starting Monday, that will officially change when Juilliard’s world-class faculty and graduate students come to Bak to educate 81 students, ages 12-18, in one of its series of weeklong Summer Jazz Workshops 2011. The series commemorates the 10th anniversary of Juilliard’s Institute for Jazz Studies, and Bak was one of only six schools selected worldwide for participation.

Bak’s profile as a free magnet arts school has risen gradually at the site of the former North Shore High School, located on Echo Lake Drive just south of the old jai alai fronton in West Palm Beach. That rise has been more pronounced since Palm Beacher Dora Bak donated $1.5 million in the name of her late husband, Dr. Richard Bak, and gave the Palm Beach Middle School of the Arts a new name in 2002.

The school offers conservatory-level arts programs in band, keyboard, strings, vocal music, dance, visual arts, theater and communications to more than 1,350 Palm Beach County children in grades 6-8. Many graduates go on to attend high school at the affiliated Dreyfoos School of the Arts, formerly Palm Beach and Twin Lakes high schools and located near the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach.

But Juilliard? It was founded in 1905 as the Institute of Musical Art, and became the Juilliard School of Music in 1926 when the institute merged with the Juilliard Graduate School. That musical institution had been founded two years earlier, through a bequest in the will of wealthy textile merchant Augustus Juilliard. When dance and drama were introduced into the curriculum in the 1950s and 1960s, its name was shortened to the Juilliard School.

Juilliard has since produced award-winning dancers, choreographers, authors and actors (those include Kevin Spacey, Laura Linney, Kevin Kline, Robin Williams, Ving Rhames and William Hurt). Alumni have collectively won more than 62 Tony Awards, 47 Emmys, 24 Oscars and 16 Pulitzer Prizes.

Yet music is still what the school is best-known for, a fact underscored by more than 105 collective Grammy Awards. Juilliard’s classical products include cellist Yo-Yo Ma, soprano Renee Fleming, and violin virtuoso and current faculty member Itzhak Perlman.

Jazz musicians benefited from Juilliard lessons long before the school established its Institute for Jazz Studies, as evidenced by a list of students that includes Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Wynton Marsalis, Nina Simone, Tito Puente, Christian McBride and Michel Camilo. Current jazz faculty members include former Davis bassist Ron Carter, piano icon Kenny Barron, heralded trombonist Steve Turre, and bandleader and noted session drummer Carl Allen, the artistic director for Juilliard’s jazz program.

Among Juilliard’s Summer Jazz Workshops, Bak joins only the Georgia Academy for the Blind in Macon (where the workshops are held simultaneously with Bak’s), North Atlanta High School (June 20-24), the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine (June 27-July 1), Trinity College at the University of Melbourne in Australia (July 3-9) and Snow College in Ephraim, Utah (July 10-16).

Cleve Maloon, Bak’s director of bands, facilitated the partnership with Juilliard through his connections -- and his diligence.

“I first contacted Juilliard about a year ago, because I knew they were coming as far south as Atlanta,” says the 45-year-old Maloon. “So I talked to Laurie Carter, executive director of Juilliard’s jazz program, and told her that we had the facilities, and the reputation for excellence, to do summer jazz workshops here, too. A lot of other things had to happen to make it all possible, including major corporate sponsorship by Jon Smith Subs and others. And a couple of area music stores, Chafin Musicenter and Music Man, offered scholarships.”

Born on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, Maloon is a trombonist who once opened for Bob Marley. He’s also played with other reggae icons like Steel Pulse and Third World, as well as in classical orchestras and jazz big bands. And it didn’t hurt his case that he had a friend and fellow Virgin Islands native who was teaching jazz saxophone at Juilliard.

“My first call was to Ron Blake,” Maloon says, “who's a saxophonist and boyhood friend. He comes down here every year to perform with our jazz band, and he'll be here to teach during the week.”

Allen, the Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies’ artistic director since 2008, said Blake brought the idea to him and Carter.

“And here we are,” he said. “One of the things we look for is geographic areas that express an interest. There are hot spots around the country for music and jazz education, and the area between Jacksonville and Miami is one of them. So it’s not about why we’re going to a middle school, because Cleve Maloon and Bak have a great program there. It’s about developing relationships, and subsequently the next generation of jazz musicians.”

The 50-year-old Allen has been part of the Juilliard faculty since 2001. A Milwaukee native, the drummer studied classical music at the University of Wisconsin and jazz at William Paterson University in New Jersey, has several recordings as a bandleader, and has worked with Freddie Hubbard, Branford Marsalis, James Moody, Dewey Redman, Pharaoh Sanders, Lena Horne and Sammy Davis Jr.

“This will be our fourth year at North Atlanta High School,” Allen says, “our seventh at Snow College in Utah, and our first at Bak. It’ll also be our third year at the Georgia Academy for the Blind, but also our first at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind. There’s so much talent at schools like those, and we always seem to come away feeling like we got more out of it than the students.

“We’re doing our second year in Australia, too, and I just got back from Japan and Korea, where we’re looking to add workshops next year,” he said.

Bak’s jazz workshops will feature instrumental-only concentrations in trumpet, saxophone, trombone, guitar, piano, double bass, electric bass and drums, but no vocal program. The intensive five-day camp will run from 9 a.m-5 p.m. each day, and will begin with Monday’s placement exams, during which intermediate students will be required to play Duke Ellington’s C Jam Blues.

“It’s only two notes,” Maloon says, “so I don’t think any of them will have trouble reading through it. And having a vocal program would have, I think, taken the whole camp in a different direction."

Advanced instrumental students can choose between the jazz standards Blue Bossa, Autumn Leaves, Stella by Starlight and Now’s the Time. All may also be asked to play one major and/or one minor scale using two octaves.

Following their placement, students will participate in small combo and large ensemble studies, individual practices, listening and jam sessions, and preparation for a closing 6 p.m. concert at the Bak Middle School of the Arts’ Mainstage that’s open to the public Friday. The lessons will be designed to give young jazz musicians a taste of the Juilliard student’s life, including emphasis on refining technique and performance, and broadening their understanding of improvisation and jazz styles -- all for $350. Jeff Chafin of Chafin Musicenter, and John and Dixie Jarvis of Music Man, provided scholarships to students who couldn’t afford the tuition.

“Our prices are lower than the other schools offering Summer Jazz Workshops,” Maloon says. “It's very affordable, but it was also first-come, first-served through applications, not auditions. So even though we were initially expecting around 45 students, we finally had to cut off the total at 81. There's a kid coming from Wisconsin, one from Virginia, a few from Orlando and the Florida west coast, and some from Broward and Dade counties. And I made sure that area band directors knew about it, so many are coming from throughout Palm Beach County.”

Like Allen, Maloon studied at multiple colleges and universities (Augustana College and Northwestern University, both in Illinois, and the University of Iowa) after moving to the United States in 1984. Now in his 10th year as Bak band director, he’d worked previously at multiple area high schools since moving to South Florida from Illinois in 1996. He’ll be present for all five days of the Summer Jazz Workshops, even if he doesn’t know what his exact role will be.

“I'll mainly function as a facilitator,” Maloon says. “I plan to be in the background, although I’ll do whatever’s needed to make things run smoothly. There are 12 to 15 Bak students who’ll be here, and they get my instruction all the time. I want them to experience the Juilliard teaching methods.”

Juilliard was founded in the early 20th century to provide an American educational alternative to U.S. classical prodigies, who often had to attend European conservatories to achieve higher learning. Yet Maloon is impressed at how far the school’s jazz studies program has come in only 10 years.

“I think Juilliard’s jazz program is already equal to its classical side in stature,” he says. “Their entire staff is the best of the best, a who’s-who of jazz that’s based in New York City, where you can play and listen to jazz as well as study and teach it.”

In the fall of 2010, Juilliard received 2,466 undergraduate applications, of which the school admitted only 7.4 percent. Bak admits nearly three times that percentage through its auditions, although far more still get turned away than get accepted.

“There are a lot of students who are preparing earlier now than in the past,” Maloon says, “so it can get tough statistically. I’m there for every audition, and I think I had 215 kids who auditioned this year for only 40 spots.”

So does Maloon think he might have a future Juilliard student?

“Sure,” he says. “I have former students who are studying music now at the Manhattan School of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, and Yale. And another who’s going into her graduate program, and plans to audition at Juilliard.”

After a year in preparation -- which reached a breakneck pace once Bak started its summer break June 6 -- Maloon sounds one-third exhausted and two-thirds exhilarated a few days before the start of the Summer Jazz Workshops.

“It's been hectic,” he says with a sigh. “But Juilliard is trying to address nearly every level of music student here, which I think is great. I’m really looking forward to meeting the kids, and working alongside these great undergraduate students and instructors. Carl Allen has done it all, Brandon Lee is one of the youngest Juilliard faculty members ever, and even though Ron Blake and I grew up together, I still love to watch him at work.

“The University of Illinois asked me to teach at a trombone camp this summer, but I turned them down. I had to stay here for this.”

Perhaps it was Johannes Brahms who said it best:

“Using the technique adapted to a small instrument the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings,” he wrote to Clara Schumann, describing the celebrated Chaconne of J.S. Bach. “If I could picture myself writing, or even conceiving, such a piece, I am certain that the extreme excitement and emotional tension would have driven me mad.”

The great Chaconne that ends the Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor (BWV 1004) of Bach is one of several solo-instrument milestones established by the composer, including the six suites for solo cello, that have enriched the repertoire immeasurably for nearly 300 years. The Chaconne and its Partita, along with the sixth Cello Suite (in D, BWV 1012), were the major works Tuesday night on the first program in the faculty concert series at Palm Beach Atlantic University’s Stringendo School for Strings summer music camp.

The husband-and-wife team of violinist James Buswell and cellist Carol Ou, both faculty members at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music, each gave strong renditions of their respective solo works. The two also performed a relatively new piece, the Double Chaconne for violin and cello of the American composer Richard Toensing, recently retired from the composition faculty at the University of Colorado.

Toensing’s piece, which came in the middle of the program, proved to be a highly dramatic, tremendously difficult series of variations on an aggressive, explosive theme that ended, like the piece did, with a reminiscence of the famous D-flat appoggiatura before the C that closes the two-cello String Quintet (in C, D. 956) of Schubert. Toensing takes surprisingly little advantage of opportunities to have the two instruments playing together, preferring instead to write mostly a series of dialogue-style passages, several of them featuring fierce tremolandos.

He does, however, employ a wide variety of string colors, from high-floating harmonics to pizzicati plucked over the fingerboard, and chromatic scales that slither between the two instruments, like runners in a snake relay. The overall tone is intense and powerful, and while Toensing’s two themes aren’t particularly compelling, he has created a piece that’s impressive and commanding when it’s well-played, as it surely was here.

Buswell opened the concert with the Bach Partita, after extensive remarks about the importance of communicating with audiences, and a shout-out to his 10-year-old daughter Anna, who was seated in the hall. This is a violinist with a large, commanding sound, and he seems to be able to conjure up that sound with minimal effort, approaching his instrument in a way that seemed almost casual.

He gave a satisfying, accomplished reading of the Partita, one in which technique and interpretation went hand-in-hand comfortably. Buswell chose good tempos and didn’t linger, and the concluding Chaconne, like the four movements before it, was not especially epic or expansive.

Yet the Chaconne is something of an adventure for the audience and the performer, and here it could have used some more drama, some more portentous pacing. The mid-point change to D major, for instance, was modest and quiet, but didn’t have the kind of setup that makes it magical, that makes the move from stress to repose so fulfilling. Still, it was thrilling to hear the piece, and Buswell clearly knows its ins and outs.

Ou (pronounced Oh) closed the concert with the Cello Suite No. 6, which unlike the other five was written for a five-string instrument, and playing it on a standard cello presents physical challenges in addition to interpretive ones. But it was in good hands: Ou is a fine cellist, a player with masterful technique and a beautiful sound.

The emotional high point of the suite, the Sarabande, was quite lovely, aided by a full-throated treatment of the piece’s intense melodic line. Ou’s two Gavottes were crisply played, and in the Gigue, Ou demonstrated admirably clean control of the dance’s rapid passagework.

The Stringendo series’ programs this month are of a similarly high quality from the standpoint of repertoire, and to have begun it with these two supreme works of Bach sets a good tone of serious music-making for this effort, and for a time of year when vacation is usually uppermost in the mind.

The next concert in the Stringendo series features Atlanta Symphony violinist Jay Christy and Cleveland Orchestra cellist Alan Harrell, along with baritone Lloyd Mims, Bergonzi String Quartet violinist Glenn Basham, and pianist Tao Lin, who teaches at Lynn University. On the program are Samuel Barber’s Dover Beach (Op. 3), the Mendelssohn Piano Trio No. 1 (in D minor, Op. 49), and the Schubert Trout Quintet (in A, D. 667). The concert begins at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Persson Recital Hall on the PBAU campus. Tickets: $15. Call 803-2970 or send an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

If you've parked your car in the Old School Square parking garage recently to go to one of Delray Beach's multiple clubs, theaters, galleries or restaurants, you were in close proximity of a major new downtown arts venue whether you knew it or not.

The Arts Garage (www.delraybeacharts.org) was opened in the spring by the Delray Beach Community Redevelopment Agency and the Creative City Collaborative (CCC), an organization formed by the Delray Beach City Commission five years ago to foster the arts.

Located at the intersection of Northeast 1st Street and Northeast 2nd Avenue, on the first floor of the parking garage in the Pineapple Grove arts district, the Arts Garage is a 130-seat facility for concerts, films, theater, art openings, meetings, educational, recovery and non-profit functions, and even press conferences.

Tennis great John McEnroe used the room for a press junket before a February exhibition match presented by the Delray Beach Tennis Center. The Arts Garage’s subsequent Jazz Jubilee featured trumpeter Melton Mustafa, and its ongoing Jazz Project series has offered other international-to-local talents like violinist Federico Britos, saxophonist Jesse Jones Jr. and vocalist Chloe Dolandis. Paintings, photos, drawings and sculptures by area visual artists are also on display (and for sale) throughout the rectangular main room and its three smaller tributaries.

Not bad for a site that still hasn't had its official grand opening.

“We've had events to introduce our concepts so far, including both jazz and our Summer Arts Collaborative,” says Calisha Anderson, marketing and development manager for the CCC. “That's a workshop series for adults and children that includes funky classes from urban drumming to stage combat. We’ll get to our grand opening later in the year.”

The multi-disciplinary facility is certainly finding jazz to be a popular draw thus far, as the Jazz Project series is now booked through the second and fourth Saturdays in August. Featured artists range from traditional to Brazilian, and includes performers who’ve recorded and shared the stage with Charlie Parker, Buddy Rich, Jaco Pastorius, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Chick Corea and Frank Sinatra.

June 11 features 80-year-old Miami resident Ira Sullivan, who moved to South Florida from Chicago 50 years ago after working with Parker, Blakey, and trumpeter Red Rodney. A masterful player on trumpet, flugelhorn, flute, peckhorn, and tenor, alto and soprano saxophones, Sullivan is not only South Florida's resident multi-instrumental jazz giant, but an equally impressive educator. He's nurtured talents from Pastorius and guitarist Pat Metheny up through the current crop of jazz students, and will instruct at the forthcoming Young Musicians Summer Music Camp 2011 presented by the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music.

Sullivan decided to set his stakes here in the early 1960s to raise his children with wife Charlene. Clearly, Chicago’s loss has been South Florida's gain.

“I never intended to come here,” Sullivan says. “I only came down to visit my parents. All I knew about Florida was the ad I’d seen in ‘Popular Mechanics’ with a gray-haired couple in a canoe saying ‘Retire in Florida on $15 a month.’”

On June 25, Davie-based Davis & Dow invoke the legendary voice-and-guitar duo artistry of Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass. Vocalist Julie Davis is adept at scatting, torching, belting and crooning material from traditional to pop, and seven-stringed guitarist Kelly Dow blends the dexterity of Pass with the gypsy swing nuances of Django Reinhardt. Davis & Dow have won over audiences from throughout the United States to England and Japan, and their latest CD, the 2009 release Loverly, is a mix of standards and originals that's among the best efforts ever by a South Florida-based artist.

In July, the Arts Garage brings in versatile Davie-based vocalist Dana Paul (a veteran South Florida singer and stage actor who’s performed with Corea, Sullivan, Tom Scott and Toots Thielemans) and Miami saxophonist Ed Calle (a studio titan who’s appeared on Grammy-winning albums by Sinatra and trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, numerous TV and film soundtracks, and toured the world with Gloria Estefan, Bob James and Julio Iglesias).

The following month, it’s personable saxophonist Turk Mauro (a South Florida-based New York City native whose personality has come through in work with Gillespie and Rich, plus several solo recordings) and vocalist Rose Max (a Rio de Janeiro-born, Miami-based Brazilian jazz specialist who’s become a South Florida festival favorite).

All will perform within an interior stage frame that’s made up of the Arts Garage’s three movable, acoustically-enhanced walls.

“We can set it up any way we want,” says Anderson, “so that every time you’re there, it's likely to look a bit different. And one of our board members is Jon Robertson, dean of the Lynn University Conservatory of Music in Boca Raton. He had one of his professionals assess the sound, and they said it was spectacular.”

The smaller room on the west end will eventually be turned into a dance studio, continuing the facility’s all-encompassing philosophy. The CCC is also putting together an even larger arts facility in a warehouse on Northeast 3rd Street in the future.

“That's our long-term project,” Anderson says, “and it's about two years from being fully developed. It’s a 15,000-square-foot space, so we're using the Arts Garage as an incubator for that much bigger stage. But this one is going very well. Jesse Jones Jr. loved the room, and said it was one of his best performances. The crowd was just so into it.”

Jazz clubs have come and gone over the past few decades in South Florida and beyond. The genre stopped being America’s dance music when bebop thwarted big bands, and the more cerebral bop era sagged with the advent of rock ‘n’ roll. A final, popular nail in the coffin may have been disco, the audio acid for the masses that’s still influencing everything from techno to TV.

So perhaps the Arts Garage is going about it the right way by making jazz a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, as opposed to all-encompassing former jazz clubs like The Hideaway in Lake Worth. It lasted all of six weeks between late February and early April.

Maybe a part-time jazz venue like the Arts Garage can help to re-define the term “garage band” -- or perhaps inspire a rare network TV show with substance called So You Think You Can Play?

Upcoming guests in the Arts Garage jazz series are Ira Sullivan on June 11, Davis & Dow on June 25, Dana Paul on July 9, Ed Calle on July 23, Turk Mauro on August 13, and Rose Max on August 27, all from 8-10 p.m. at the Arts Garage, 180 N.E. 1st St., Delray Beach (561-243-7129). All concerts are a BYOW (bring your own whatever) format, and all VIP premium table seating is $25 in advance, with regularly priced tickets $20 in advance; $25 at the door. Tickets are available online at www.artsgarage.eventbrite.com.

FORT LAUDERDALE – More so than most operas, Don Giovanni presents its audience with a puzzle: Is it a tragedy or a comedy?

The Romantics of the 19^th century saw it as an exercise in decadence and darkness, and until recently it was common to leave out the final scene, and end the opera with the licentious Don dragged screaming into Hell.

But surely seeing it as a comedy, if not quite a buffa one, is what its creators had in mind. A lighthearted story with a moral, but a moral its original audiences were always conscious of, and one that was the last gasp of the memento mori that was ever-present in the daily life of the West until the Romantic era.

It’s much easier to see that if Mozart’s opera is presented with laughs in mind, and director John Pascoe’s earthy, funny take on the score made for a successful, highly satisfying end to the Florida Grand Opera’s 70^th season Saturday night at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.

This Giovanni, set in some sort of mixed time frame of 18^th-century Spain and 1950s Italian cinema, was full of busy, inventive movement, near-slapstick comedy and frank sexuality, most notably in the final banquet scene. There, the Don, whose onstage orchestra consisted of beautiful young women in nightwear, asks Donna Elvira to eat with him, then pointedly sticks his head between the legs of a leggy blonde in a camisole stretched out on the table.

A little much, perhaps, but it was the logical culmination of the very physical way the Don was portrayed all night, and it also was backed up by some fine singing and a first-class orchestra that beautifully rendered this marvelous score.

As Giovanni, the baritone David Pittsinger demonstrated good acting chops and a voice of an almost-conversational clarity and considerable strength. He was at his most affecting in moments such as his Deh vieni alla finestra, when he could let the warmer, lyric side of his voice show, and to excellent effect. He was a believable Giovanni, a handsome, slim man with plenty of money and confidence, and credible as an object of female desire, even if older than the libretto suggests.

Another fine lyrical male voice was that of tenor Andrew Bidlack as Don Ottavio, who in his two uxorious arias – Dalla sua pace and Il mio tesoro – sang with unforced loveliness and an exciting bigness that suggested a Pinkerton or Rodolfo in Bidlack’s future. He was not able to sustain that level throughout the opera, but he came close, and that this was his eighth performance in the role might have had something to do with it.

The two chief female leads in the all-American cast – sopranos Jacquelyn Wagner as Donna Anna and Georgia Jarman as Donna Elvira – also sang quite well throughout the night. Wagner has a high-floating, silvery quality to her strong voice that was most evident in her pretty, sensitive reading of Non mi dir in the closing moments of Act II.

Jarman’s brassier voice and more involved acting were very enjoyable to see and hear, and she showed real range in the way she led into her Mi tradí quell’alma ingrata: this was a woman in emotional pain, and she showed that dramatically by singing most of the recitative leading into it very softly – a risky move, but one that worked well.

Soprano Brittany Ann Renee Robinson, who like Wagner and Jarman was making her debut with FGO in this opera, made quite a good Zerlina. She has a lightly colored voice with a top that expands easily when more power is called for, and her Batti, batti and Vedrai, carino were tastefully and winningly sung.

Baritone Jonathan G. Michie, an excellent Ping earlier this season in FGO’s Turandot, was a mostly strong Masetto, though his voice lost heft toward the end of the evening. As Leporello, bass Tom Corbeil was great fun to watch, though less engaging musically; his voice was clear but underpowered throughout, which took away some of the vocal interest at crucial moments such as his side comments during his boss’ confrontation with the stone guest.

Bass Morris Robinson’s huge, creamy voice was excellently suited for his role as the Commendatore, and the stentorian way he sustained his notes made his singing sound like part of the trombone choir that accompanies his words in the graveyard scene.

Conductor Andrew Bisantz had a wonderful group of musicians at his disposal in the pit, and they played exceptionally well, with the kind of thorough polish that highlights all the things we admire about Mozart: his daring harmonies, splendid melodies and canny scoring, and above all his ability to bring the characters on stage alive in the orchestra.

Above all, it was Pascoe’s staging of this Washington National Opera production that made this Giovanni so much fun to see. Some of it didn’t quite work – the mobs looking for Giovanni at the beginning of Act II were shouting something stagy, and the women demons that circled the nobleman before he went through the door to perdition came off as hokey – but in most of it, Pascoe kept things busy and used all of his playing space in smart, entertaining ways.

One important pitfall that Pascoe avoided was the first half of the second act, which can come to a complete halt when all the arias from the Viennese version of the score are added in. Pascoe set them up in mini-tableaux; Elvira confesses her continuing love for Giovanni while occasionally clinging to a column for support, and Anna tells Ottavio that she must mourn her father while the two are staring at a giant, Hamlet’s father-style portrait of the dead Commendatore.

Pascoe’s moments of broader comedy – a mob does vaudeville’s slowly-I-turn shtick, and Leporello gets one over on Giovanni only to walk straight into a door jamb – were not out of place, and indeed, this was a Giovanni in which the house laughed loudly, and laughed often.

Marry that with superlative orchestral playing and a high level of singing that was usually good in solos and very fine in ensembles, and you had a Don Giovanni that knew what it was about, and in which the contrast between comedy and tragedy were not in conflict, but part and parcel of the same story – something, in fact, like life itself.

***

The 71^st season of Florida Grand Opera will feature four productions, beginning Nov. 12-Dec. 3 with Federico Moreno Torroba’s zarzuela Luisa Fernanda, a first for this company. Puccini’s La Rondine, another first for FGO, is next (Jan. 21-Feb. 4), followed by Verdi’s Rigoletto (last staged in 2006, from Jan. 28-Feb. 18), and Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette (last seen in 2004, from April 21-May 12). For more information or for tickets, call 800-741-1010 or visit www.fgo.org.

Set to turn 67 next month, Jeff Beck is one of three famed British lead guitarists who played with 1960s pop/rock group the Yardbirds, the others being Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.

And each followed that stint by diving into heavy blues-rock: Clapton with Cream; Page with Led Zeppelin, and Beck with his self-titled group.

But while Clapton left Cream to pursue simpler pop material as a solo artist, and Page ventured further into rhythmic complexity with Zeppelin, it was still Beck who went the furthest outside the box. His 1975 instrumental jazz/fusion gem Blow By Blow, produced by former Beatles engineering guru George Martin, started a trend of unexpected career moves that continues 36 years later.

Yet Beck played a surprisingly cover-heavy and nostalgic set on Sunday at the Tire Kingdom Stage of SunFest, avoiding material from his latest release, the progressive 2010 Grammy winner Emotion & Commotion. The muddy sound at the Meyer Ampitheatre seemed to rankle the guitarist, who concluded the proceedings after only 75 minutes.

Beck’s quartet included longtime keyboardist Jason Rebello, bassist/vocalist Rhonda Smith (an alum of Prince's band) and drummer/vocalist Narada Michael Walden. It was Walden who played on Beck's 1976 release Wired, the Blow By Blow follow-up that equaled its predecessor while adding muscle tone. The drummer’s shimmering intro to Led Boots, the opening track on Wired, led to an early highlight as its stops and starts got the capacity crowd involved.

While Beck’s artistic apex occurred in the 1970s, he mined his sparse 1980s catalog for some mid-set highlights. Smith sat out Where Were You, a ballad from the 1989 release Guitar Shop, which was recorded in a bass-free trio format by Beck, keyboardist Tony Hymas and drumming wiz Terry Bozzio. Walden stood to one side of his massive drum kit to play cymbals with mallets, accenting the lines of Beck and Rebello.

Smith took the spotlight during a solo on an electric upright bass, and donned her primary instrument as Beck introduced her to the crowd to continue in a slap-and-tap showcase. The quartet then downshifted into an instrumental version of Curtis Mayfield’s People Get Ready, which featured banner solos by both Rebello and Beck. The hit remake from the guitarist’s 1985 album Flash actually featured guest vocalist Rod Stewart, singer for the original Jeff Beck Group in the late 1960s.

Beck is known for featuring outstanding female musicians in his bands. His late-1990s touring quartet included Jennifer Batten, a former Michael Jackson guitarist who pushed both bandleaders to greater heights. And youthful Australian bass prodigy Tal Wilkendeld preceded Smith -- whose thumping intro to the funky You Never Know (from Beck’s 1980 recording There & Back) led to heated guitar-and-keyboard trades, plus flurries from Walden that were unfortunately washed out within the blanketed sound. The drummer’s thunderous tones from Wired, and the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s 1975 album Visions of the Emerald Beyond, were stunted here.

On Muddy Waters’ blues standard Rollin’ and Tumblin’, Smith sang lead, delivering a growling, overwrought vocal that the audience nevertheless ate up. Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing then featured Walden on lead vocal, but Beck stole the thunder. Clearly warming up, his unorthodox, finger-picked soloing echoed not only Hendrix, but other mentors from Les Paul to Roy Buchanan.

Yet that was the point where something else happened to annoy Beck. At 7:45 p.m., he could clearly hear Earth, Wind & Fire start up at the Bank of America Stage to the north, which was as overly loud as the Tire Kingdom Stage was muffled.

“I hope we don’t get drowned out here,” Beck said before launching into Blue Wind, another track from Wired. Rebello played inspired solos that echoed the original album playing of Jan Hammer, holding his own in a point-counterpoint session with the iconic guitarist.

All of which led to the set-closing Beatles cover A Day in the Life, which was one of the high points in Beck’s career-resurgent 2008 DVD Performing This Week....Live at Ronnie Scott’s (with Rebello, Wilkenfeld and yet another great drummer, Vinnie Colaiuta). As the dynamics of Rebello, Smith and Walden ebbed and flowed, Beck mimicked the original vocal melody with otherworldly touch, feel and precision.

The encore was an anticlimactic cover of Sly & the Family Stone’s I Want To Take You Higher, sung by Walden and Smith. Rebello again provided fiery soloing, but Beck looked like he couldn’t wait to get off the stage from the moment he appeared to play the unaccompanied opening riff.

SunFest’s southernmost FPL Stage faces north, and backs up against Okeechobee Boulevard, far away from the other two stages. The Tire Kingdom Stage at the Meyer Ampitheatre also faces north, and is an immobile concrete structure between Datura and Evernia streets. Yet the Bank of America Stage actually faces south on Clematis Street, less than three blocks away from the Meyer.

Beck is known for the emotion in his playing, but commotion like this can also bring it out through his temper. Perhaps it’s time to aim the mobile northernmost stage in a different direction, or at least pump down the volume, so that he might come back when he can stay longer. The multi-Grammy winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee deserved better, and so did his audience.