OUTshine LGBTQ+ Miami Film Festival

The 25th Annual Anniversary Edition of the OUTshine LGBTQ+ Film Festival Miami opens at the Scottish Rite Temple and continues at the Silverspot Cinema in Downtown Miami beginning April 20, 2023, for a full 11 Days.

Internationally acclaimed as one of the largest LGBTQ+ cultural festivals in the world, OUTShine Miami celebrates 25-years of amazing LGBTQ+ programming as well as uniting the community with OUTstanding social events. Through the diversity of showcasing the best in LGBTQ+ films, most of which you can only see at the Festival, OUTshine always aims to inspire, entertain and educate their audience. This year OUTshine will present some 50 plus features, shorts, and documentaries from all around the world.

The OUTshine LGBTQ+ Film Festival will open at the Scottish Rite Temple Thursday, April 20th and continue for 10 more days at the beautiful Silverspot Cinema Downtown Miami. They will also maintain their highly successful OUTshine At-Home programming, their well-known amazing, incredible parties and new to this year, a free Cocktails & Cinema Happy Hour after the films on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, making this year’s festival the must-see, must-attend event of the year!

Board Chair/Executive Director Mark Gilbert said that having a new central location downtown, Silverspot Cinema, makes the Festival more accessible to more of the community and gives us a fantastic venue to watch films and hold some amazing after parties. The theater is packed with premium experience amenities such as lounge chairs with armrests to hold your alcoholic beverages and food and Dolby Atmos audio for an immersive experience in a modern building with an epic view! Silverspot Cinema is located in the heart of downtown right next to some of the best nightlife.

OUTrageous, OUTspoken, and OUTstanding, this year’s OUTshine Film Festival Miami is presented by Gilead and Miami-Dade County.

For more information, contact Mark Gilbert at markyg@outshinefilm.com.

NSU Dance Presents Student Choreography Showcase

April

NSU Dance in the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts presents its annual Student Choreography Showcase. Come and witness powerful, original work performed by NSU students and choreographed by the university’s dance majors and minors.

NSU’s Student Choreography Showcase takes the Performance Theatre stage in the Don Taft University Center on NSU’s Davie Campus at 7:30PM on Friday and Saturday, April 21 - 22, 2023. The showcase is free and open to the public.

contact Professor Elana Lanczi at

Celebrating South Florida Symphony Orchestra’s 25th Season!

April 26 | 7:30 pm |

South Florida Symphony Orchestra’s 25th anniversary season grand finale features Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 – considered to be one of the most demanding of all piano concertos – performed by audience favorite Svetlana Smolina; along with Bruckner’s choral masterpiece, Te Deum, featuring the South Florida Symphony Chorus and spectacular vocalists.

South Florida Symphony Orchestra’s Masterworks

Featuring Pianist Svetlana Smolina

A highly sought-after world-renowned classical pianist who has performed and collaborated with musicians and orchestras around the world, the flawless and stunningly talented Svetlana Smolina will return to the South Florida Symphony Orchestra (SFSO) on April 26, 2023. This time, she will play Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 for Masterworks V, the orchestra’s grand finale of its 25th anniversary season.

OutClique caught up with Smolina to talk more about the engagement and what keeps her coming back to the SFSO.

Denny Patterson: Hi, Svetlana! How excited are you to come back and play with the SFSO again?

Svetlana Smolina: I am very happy and excited! This is going to be a special concert because, first of all, it’s the South Florida Symphony’s 25th anniversary season, so I am honored to come back. The orchestra always invites the best musicians, and Sebrina is an incredible maestra, so the level of playing is extraordinary. Plus, I’m playing my favorite piano concerto, and we’ll be performing at The Parker, which I’ve never played at before. This is going to be a very exciting event, and I cannot wait.

Denny Patterson: Can you tell us a bit more about the piece you’re playing?

Svetlana Smolina: Yes, this is a concerto by Sergei Rachmaninoff, and this is considered to be his most centered masterpiece. He composed it for his United States tour in 1909, and the second performance was conducted by Gustav Mahler. So, for me, this piece represents my culture, and it shows Rachmaninoff as more than a composer, conductor, and pianist. I think this piece truly represents him as a person, which is everything in one. It’s more like a symphony concerto rather than just a piano concerto, and I think Sebrina is going to showcase an incredible interpretation of it because she is always very passionate and bold. You never know what’s going to happen when she conducts, and that’s very close to my style. When Rachmaninoff performed the piece, he said that each piece must have a golden point to where each moment can be a great deal. This concerto has monumental episodes and combinations, and it has a lot of elements in it, so it’s a very special piece. I hope we interpret it as fresh as we can for our audience because this concerto is now played quite often. Vladimir Horowitz started playing it in 1930, and it most likely gained even more popularity after 1996 when the movie Shine came out and received an Oscar. As I mentioned, I think this piece is such a masterpiece, and it represents Rachmaninoff as a musician.

Denny Patterson: Since you have performed with the SFSO numerous times, what do you enjoy the most about collaborating with Maestra Sebrina and this esteemed group?

Svetlana Smolina: She brings us such magnificent interpretations. She really follows the source, and she likes to meet with you before rehearsals and find out what our own interpretation is. She’s never like, oh, it has to be like this or that. It truly is a collaboration of two musicians on the same level of artistry, and two musicians trusting each other and doing their best improvisations. That is what I really treasure because playing in an orchestra, it’s all about communication, and that communication happens on such a trust level. I am very in tune to what Sebrina feels about music. She’s very close to my musical ideas. We’re almost matching, so we never have to argue (laughs). We could probably play without rehearsals. Sebrina is very passionate, and her feelings and imagination are wild. It is very, very special to perform with her because we can create on stage.

Denny Patterson: Before we wrap up, are there any other upcoming projects or anything else you would like to mention or plug?

Svetlana Smolina: Before coming to Florida, I will be in Asia at the beginning of April playing a chamber concert with Kazuhiro Takagi in Osaka, Japan, and I may do a couple concerts and masterclasses in China. In May, I’ll be working as a guest professor for the London Performing Academy, and I’ll be playing at the Philadelphia International Music Festival in June. Then in September, I’ll be going on tour in Brazil, playing in São Paulo and a few other cities, and I’ll be doing another orchestral tour through China with the Dublin Philharmonic in October. So, that is what’s currently planned, and we’ll see what else this year brings!

April

The Parker

SouthFloridaSymphony.org

Denny

Chugunov