Orlando’s Arts & Entertainment 2024 – 2025 Season Preview Is Here
Meet The Dynamos In This Season's Guide.
Jeff Rupert during a sound check at Blue Bamboo, “The Boo” has become known as THE place for jazz in Orlando. Photo by Roberto Gonzalez
Blue Bamboo Center for the Arts
It looks like there’s a happy ending in store for this popular music venue. The year surely didn’t start off that way—not when Blue Bamboo’s husband-and-wife owners, Chris and Melody Cortez, found out that their shrewdly converted, hundred-seat performance space on an industrial stretch of Kentucky Avenue had been sold to new owners—owners who had plans to renovate it and bump the rent up threefold.
That was clearly a scary situation for “The ‘Boo,” as fans have come to call the colorful, jazz-oriented performance center, whose owners had no choice but to search for less expensive digs. Timing is everything in jazz. It’s also good to have it on your side, as it was for Chris and Melody when the old and abandoned Winter Park Library became available to renters this year—and the Winter Park City Commission voted for the building to become a performing arts venue.
Plans call for the new and improved Blue Bamboo to be in on the ground floor, literally and figuratively.
A tentative schedule calls for a 40-year lease for Blue Bamboo, which will rent the first floor to be used for rehearsals, recording space and concerts. Other floors of the building will eventually serve as offices, art galleries and spaces for rehearsals and meetings.
The Boo will also continue staging concerts in select venues elsewhere, including a September 8 “Music at the Casa” concert at Casa Feliz in Winter Park, featuring flamenco guitarist and recording artist Don Soledad. bluebambooartcenter.com
Sally Michel, Bathers, 1982. Oil on board. Harn Museum of Art Collection, University of Florida, The Florida Art Collection, Gift of Samuel H. and Roberta T. Vickers. ©2024 The
Milton Avery Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Mennello Museum of American Art
Curiosity is a core value of the Mennello Museum of American Art. The museum is dedicated to celebrating the diversity of American art and does that through exploring new ideas and providing meaningful experiences.
Established in 1998 to display the art of Earl Cunningham, whose pieces are in its permanent collection, the Mennello has expanded to exhibiting traditional and contemporary American artists. On September 20, it stages the first museum retrospective of Sally Michel’s Modernist landscapes in more than 20 years in “Sally Michel: Abstracting Tonalism.” It runs through January 12, 2025—be sure to put it on your calendar.
“Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America” documents John James Audubon’s second grand expedition and features 150 folio drawings; it runs through September 8, as do Mark Messersmith’s large-scale paintings of Florida landscapes.
Located in Loch Haven Cultural Park, the Mennello is part of the Orlando Urban Trail and draws from the City of Orlando’s public art program, the largest in the state. It features works by Florida artists and offers walking paths, green spaces and views of Lake Formosa. mennellomuseum.org
“Following Harry,” a documentary that follows the life and work of Civil Rights icon Harry Belafonte, opens Global Peace 360° on September 17. ©Global Peace 360°
Global Peace 360°
Just the idea of it—the concept itself, and the fact that such a lofty, ambitious, and lord only knows supremely important enterprise wound up with Orlando as its home—is enough to make you proud.
This annual festival highlights films that revolve around the pursuit of peace, be it personal, communal or international. Its creator found a home for it in Orlando, where most films are screened either at Enzian Theatre or Rollins College, means that Florida feature-based films and documentaries often pop up during the series.
This year’s festival kicks off on Sept. 17 and runs through the weekend, which holds the International Day of Peace (Sept. 21). A new addition planned for the festival is a separate, virtual lineup of films. This year also marks a new partnership with Afro-TV in Orlando along with year-round programming. peacefilmfest.org
The interior of Timucua, a performing arts space in the middle of a private home. It stages roughly 100 concerts a year. ©Timucua
Timucua
Timucua, a reference to the Native American sun and moon worshipping tribe who once lived in what would become Central Florida, is a performing arts space in the middle of a private home on Summerlin Avenue, converted 24 years ago into a donation-based concert venue by Benoit Glazer, formerly the music director of Cirque du Soleil, and his wife, Elaine, who is also a musician. The neighborhood enterprise just south of downtown Orlando stages roughly 100 concerts a year, ranging from classical to experimental.
September’s schedule will include “Echoes of the In-Between” led by Benoit Glazer September 4 at 7:30 p.m., featuring orchestra recordings that have been edited, mixed and mastered in DXD audio, a “Meditation for Peace” that takes place on the second Monday of every month, a performance by the PSA Organ Trio with Ryan Devlin at 7:30 on September 27, and the James Hall Quartet featuring Jeff Rupert September 28 at 2:30 p.m.
Additional concerts include an ongoing “Deep Listening” experience on every third Wednesday at 7 p.m. led by Keith Lay. The diverse offerings include an upcoming French swing and Manouche jazz ensemble to a Sam Rivers tribute. timucua.com
