On February 24, 2022, the Russian army invaded the country of Ukraine. Less than a week later, Sarasota-based photojournalist Allan Mestel was in Medyka, at the largest border crossing between Ukraine and Poland, witnessing the sudden and massive influx of refugees fleeing the invasion, arriving by car, truck, train and by foot. Mestel would travel to Ukraine twice more in the coming years, crisscrossing the wartorn country and photographing bombed-out cities and their remaining defenders, documenting atrocities and even embedding with Ukrainian soldiers as they approached the front line. “I had no idea what to expect,” he says today. “I just felt compelled to see it for myself.” And with his latest exhibition, Portrait Ukraine, Mestel highlights the harrowing reality and the human cost of the war in Ukraine.

Currently on display in the Lexow Gallery of the Unitarian Universalist Church off Fruitville Road, Portrait Ukraine fills the walls with 46 photographs selected from Mestel’s three trips to Ukraine. And in those 46 photographs, Mestel takes viewers from funeral processions in Mykolaiv to shelled houses and cars flattened by tanks in Bucha; from the Battle of Kharkiv, where defiant residents live without power or running water yet refuse to leave their homes, to a sanatorium in Serhiivka, suddenly full of students disfigured in a missile attack while celebrating graduation. On one wall, a three-man team of Ukrainian soldiers launches armed drones against the enemy, while still others pose with fearsome machine guns. On another, refugees sleep on the ground and a Ukrainian cemetery overflows with fresh flowers.

As a photojournalist focusing on human rights issues, Mestel is no stranger to witnessing such scenes of conflict or hardship. He’s seen migrant shelters in Mexico and razor wire strung across riverbeds at the Rio Grande. He’s documented civil rights protests and counterprotests throughout the US. He was in Uvalde, TX, the day after the massacre. And through it all, he has maintained a certain professional detachment that allows him to function. “I have the capacity to put my own emotions on hold while I’m working,” he says. “I don’t process it emotionally until I get back.” But in the Ukrainian city of Izium, this emotional detachment would ultimately fail.

Mestel met the firefighter at a roadside coffee stand and arranged to photograph the firehouse. Only after, did the man say he had something else to show him. Mestel agreed to follow in his car. They drove to a dirt road off the main highway, down into the forest with nothing around. “And all of a sudden,” Mestel says, “this clearing opened up and there were hundreds of open graves.” In the early hours of the war, they would tell him, 439 Ukrainians had been marched into the forest and executed by Russian soldiers before being dumped in mass and unmarked graves. “You don’t have a wide enough lens to capture being amidst that many open graves,” Mestel says. “I still have trouble articulating what I felt. I can’t understand it.” Half were still unidentified, marked only by a small wooden cross. And a number.

Undeterred, Mestel is today prepping his fourth trip to Ukraine, scheduled for early May, where he’ll be partnering with a pair of aid organizations who hope to use his photographs as part of a larger effort. “My hope is to stir people into action,” he says. “That’s all I can hope for.”

Currently on display in the Lexow Gallery of the Unitarian Universalist Church, Portrait Ukraine runs through April 18. 

Photo by Allan Mestel.

Issues of class, social prejudices and good breeding run amok in the world premiere of Westminster at Urbanite Theatre. The play by Brenda Withers was the winner of Urbanite’s 2023 Modern Works Festival and is one of three world premieres at the black-box theater this season.

“Westminster did win the festival, audiences really responded to it and this is our second play coming out of the festival that has won that has moved from a script reading into a full fledged production,” says Summer Wallace, founding producing artistic director at Urbanite and director of the show. “I wish we could produce all of the other winners as well but sometimes we just can’t because of what the set calls for and it just doesn’t fit in our little gem of a space. This season I was also particularly looking for a comedy that has bite, no pun intended and this one really fits the bill.”

Wallace says “no pun intended” because Westminster is in part a story about a dog. The story begins when one of the main characters, Pia, is given a surprise rescue dog by her old friend Krys. The pair and their respective partners then square off in an ideological battle: why should Pia look after a boisterous rescue that she didn’t ask for? Why would Krys assume that this is an appropriate gesture? And what happens when two childhood friends, who attended college together, reconnect under such fraught circumstances?

“We find out over the course of the play what Pia and Krys really think of each other and through this challenge of this dog that Pia may or may not want, the truth of who they are as people and as friends gets revealed. The playwright really is playing with acceptable social prejudices,” says Wallace. “What happens when we leave our biases unchecked and cling to our point of view on the world and always make things someone else’s problem as opposed to accepting any personal responsibility for anything?”

March 22 to April 28, 1487 2nd Street, Sarasota, 941-321-1397. 

Pictured: left to right- Jonathan Fielding, Deyki Ronge,Alex Pelletier and Greg Weiner in Westminster. Photo by Sorcha Augustine.

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For the last Masterworks concert of our 2024-2025 season, we're offering a special sale with reduced-price seating options for a program that promises to delight every classical music lover. Tickets in sections A through C now range from $29 to $85. We've also increased the number of seats in our most affordable seating sections. On this program, Yang Plays Mozart, we're delighted to showcase Joyce Yang's dazzling virtuosity in Mozart’s show-stopping Piano Concerto No. 24. Conductor Katharina Wincor, a rising star, will lead Dvořák’s sunny and delightful Symphony No. 8, which is brimming with sonic references to birdsongs, rustling leaves, and folk dances. As a special treat, Sarasota Orchestra will perform a new work by accomplished composer Roger Zare, a native of Sarasota and alum of the Sarasota Youth Orchestras. The 2020 discovery of the comet NEOWISE inspired Zare's soaring, cinematic new work of the same name. We hope you'll join us as we conclude our Masterworks season on a high note! 

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Join Key Chorale Chamber Singers and Modern Marimba for Light & Gold: Luminous and Lavish settings by Eric Whitacre & Morten Lauridsen on Sunday, April 7th, 5 PM at St. Boniface Church. They will present some of Whitacre and Lauridsen’s most hauntingly beautiful works full of lush harmonies. Hear the Florida premiere of Whitacre’s Child of Wonder and Lauridsen’s masterpiece inspired by light, Lux Aeterna. Featured Guest Artist will be Key Chorale’s Principal Keyboardist Glenn Priest on organ and piano. He will also be showcased in a fiery and festive Toccata by American composer and organist John Weaver and as organ soloist for Lux Aeterna. 

The Venice Symphony is encouraging patrons to ‘Find Your Seat. Find Yourself’ with their latest creative campaign to promote the 2024-25 concert season. Coming off the heels of a successful 50th Anniversary season, The Symphony is issuing a new era of music excellence by adding more non-traditional concerts, special guest performances, and an ongoing commitment to the community. TheVeniceSymphony.org now offers patrons: An effortless user experience to learn about upcoming shows, purchase tickets, and attend free pre-concert talks; A media hub to access concert videos of past performances by Music Director Troy Quinn and symphony musicians; Opportunities to get involved with TVS Friends, Chair Society, and the Host program; Ways to support + donate to the future of music education. About The 2024-25 Season: For the first time, The Venice Symphony will begin its season in October, with Music Director Troy Quinn and the orchestra performing A Symphonic Spooktacular, growing the season to eight concert weekends. Joining the packed concert line up, The Symphony will be adding a fourth Home for the Holidays concert, giving audiences more opportunity to experience the typically sold-out December performances. TVS is also adding more non-traditional concerts. The Rat Pack is Back will feature The Venice Symphony Jazz Orchestra with Michael Andrew, former headliner and bandleader of the legendary Rainbow Room in New York City. The concert will transport you to a time and place when crooners like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin dominated the world of music and pop culture. Season subscriptions are currently on-sale through the box office, and individual tickets go on sale August 2024. 

Creative Liberties Artist Studios and Gallery continues its season’s offerings with an all-packed April, starting with a program, April 1-30, to meet artists Tom Rio, Charlotte Jordan and Michelle Depaolis-Wampner, the featured artists-in-residence at Creative Liberties in Gaze Gallery at the ARCOS Apartments, 340 Central Avenue in Sarasota. Meet the artists, learn about their process, and view and purchase their art. Open Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.; and Saturdays 10 a.m.-5 p.m.  

Pictured: Creative Liberties Studio Artist Jay Li.

As part of The Ringling’s “Art of Performance Series,” ensembleNEWSRQ (enSRQ) presents “Paris Refraction,” a four-part “micro festival” that explores new music compositions that embody or have been inspired by the City of Light. Violinist Samantha Bennett and percussionist George Nickson, enSRQ’s founders and co-artistic directors, explain that the festival is a collaboration with principal members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, ensembleNEWSRQ Core and guest artists, and “some of new music’s brightest stars.”  They add that the four-concert festival will be presented in both Dallas and Sarasota, with faculty and students of Southern Methodist University’s (SMU) Meadows School of the Arts involved in the Dallas presentation. The festival will be presented at SMU in Dallas, April 23, 24, 25, and 28. In Sarasota, the festival is May 9, 7:30 p.m.; May 10, 7:30 p.m.; and May 11, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., at the Historic Asolo Theatre, 5401 Bay Shore Road, Sarasota. Single tickets are $30-40. For more information on ticket packages and single tickets, including student ticket pricing, visit https://www.ringling.org/event/ensemblenewsrq/ or call 941-360-7399. 

Pictured: Violinist, Samantha Bennett. Photo courtesy of ensembleNEWSRQ.

2024 BEST OF SRQ LOCAL PARTY | Join us on Friday, April 12, 2024, from 5-8 pm at the Aloft Hotel in Downtown Sarasota to taste and experience some of this year's "Best of SRQ Local" restaurants and cocktails. Share a hip evening with our area’s passionate localvores and foodies. 

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