Gulf Coast Life Arts Edition

A conversation with director Ron Lagomarsino about Florida Repertory Theatre’s season-closing production of Kenneth Lonergan’s dark comedy “Lobby Hero.”

Theatre Conspiracy at the Alliance for the Arts is mounting a production of August Wilson’s play “The Piano Lesson.” Ahead of opening night, we explore the play in a conversation with director Sonya McCarter and actor Renee Freeman.

Southwest Florida-based abstract painter Maria Collier has a solo exhibition called “Sound & Color” coming to the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center. Collier’s distinctive, intuitive style is often driven by the music she listens, and dances, to while creating in her studio.

Theatre Conspiracy at the Alliance for the Arts in Fort Myers will deliver the final performances of its production of “The Hatmaker’s Wife,” March 30 – 31. Playwright Lauren Yee whimsical and poignant comedy includes talking walls, conjuring the spirit world and includes themes of love, marriage, memory, aging, family and fairy tales. We explore the play with two actors in the production: Joanne Hailey and Jim Yarnes.

Southwest Florida musicians Claire Liparulo and Caleb Neff talk about their efforts to elevate the craft of songwriting and feature local great musicians’ original work through Claire’s “High Lonesome Sound” performance series and Caleb’s “In the Pool” recording sessions.

We listen back to one of the very first episodes of the WGCU podcast “Three Song Stories,” featuring Florida Gulf Coast University professor and founder of the school’s Journalism program, Lyn Miller.

A conversation with Southwest Florida Symphony Maestro Radu Paponiu and Community Outreach Ambassador Robert Van Winkle about the orchestra’s upcoming concert featuring Cuban-American cellist Thomas Mesa performing Antonín Dvořák’s Cello “Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104. The Masterworks series concert, Saturday, March 11, also includes a piece by contemporary American composer Jessie Montgomery and Edward Elgar’s “Enigma Variations.” We’ll take a deeper dive into these compositions.

Filmmaker, director, producer, photographer, and “Godfather of the music video” Chuck Statler joins the show ahead of a film screen and Q&A at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery to talk about his pre-MTV era music video work, particularly with the seminal new wave band Devo.

Theatre Conspiracy at the Alliance for the Arts is mounting the world-premiere production of “The Last Show,” written and performed by actor, playwright and screenwriter Derek Lively. Ahead of opening night we get a preview from Lively and the production’s director and Conspiracy Theatre Founding Artistic Director Bill Taylor.

The tragic loss, last summer, of the incomparable trumpet player Dan Miller has left a huge void in the jazz world. We preview this coming weekend’s “Celebration of Love and Life” tribute concert and learn about how his legacy will continue through the Dan Miller Jazz Foundation in a conversation with his long-time significant other Judi Woods. We also hear selections from a previous episode of this program featuring Dan Miller performing live in studio.