Out & About

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The New York Sun

The magic of a great performance can be found in every moment of the 17-day Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, S.C., and not just on its historic stages but on the piazzas of its homes, in its parks, and on its streets.

This performing arts festival, a spin-off of the Italian festival that is now independent from it, offers experimental theater, dance, and opera, along with more traditional jazz, as well as orchestral, choral, and chamber music. And then there are the cast parties, art exhibits, beach outings, plantation visits … and did I mention shopping?

Yes, the town itself is a vacation destination, but Spoleto thrives with the help of the town, not because of it. What counts most is the consistently high quality of the festival, thanks to the talented folks who program it. These include the star choral conductor, Joseph Flummerfelt, who oversees all choral work at the New York Philharmonic; the orchestra and opera conductor Emmanuel Villaume, who was in New York this spring conducting the Met’s “Samson and Delilah”; the pianist and chamber music impresario Charles Wadsworth, founder of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, who plays host to two chamber music performances every day; the new music maestro John Kennedy, lately of Sante Fe; one of America’s most gifted arts administrators, Nigel Redden, who is the general director of Spoleto as well as director of the Lincoln Center Festival, and producer Nunally Kersh, a transplanted New Yorker whose husband, Robert Stehling, owns the beloved restaurant Hominy Grill.

And then there is this year’s on-stage talent, including actor Karen Kandell, who conveys a miraculous number of stories in the theater production “Geisha,” which is coming to the Lincoln Center Festival in July; she proved incredibly modest at a brunch in her honor at the home of retired retail executive Thomas Nipper. To name just a few others: tenor Frederic Antoun, a powerful heartthrob of a Romeo in “Romeo and Juliette,” who was seen having dinner with his girlfriend and parents at McCrady’s (one of 100 fine-dining choices in the area); and dancers with the Paul Taylor Dance Company, Nathaniel Keuter and Parisa Khobdeh, who felt a long way from their Upper Harlem home at their cast party on a classic piazza surrounded by live oaks.

The best party of the festival was the black-tie gala planned by Susan Ravenel, which cleverly used scrims from Spoleto shows as well as a tree from last year’s production of “Die Vogel” as the decor. The event welcomed contingents from New York and Washington (with artist John Dunnan hosting members of the Kennedy Center President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts).

More than half the festival audience hails from the South, so Northerners must succumb to the slow and charming rhythms of their environs, which is fine by them. Spoleto regulars from New York include Jennie and Richard De-Scherer, Christopher and Lou Hammond, Memrie Lewis, Joan and Arthur Sarnoff, and Howard and Mary Phipps.

One attendee, West Virginian Jerry “Jake” Davis, has been making regular trips to New York to do interviews for a documentary on the CBS foreign correspondent Frank Kearns. “He took all the dangerous assignments and never complained,” Mr. Davis said. “Everyone thought he was James Bond.” Mr. Davis needs $100,000 to complete the project.

agordon@nysun.com


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