In this spirit, the Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech hosted mainstays from California’s Monterey Jazz Festival on Saturday night. As a touring group, they last stopped in Atlanta two years ago (at Symphony Hall) with a sextet featuring pianist Benny Green and saxophonist James Moody. It was a celebration of Monterey’s 50th anniversary. The artists created a festival experience by breaking out into different configurations, creating multiple concerts within the main event. But the huge size of Symphony Hall and the physical distance between the musicians and audience muted the energy of the evening’s performances.

Saturday’s concert, led by pianist Kenny Barron (above), was different. Bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa and drummer Johnathan Blake provided able assistance accompanying Barron and a front line of guitarist Russell Malone, violinist Regina Carter and singer Kurt Elling. In the smaller Georgia Tech venue, with the audience closer to the stage, the musicians better connected with the crowd.

The Monterey Jazz Festival All Stars. From left: Kenny Barron, Regina Carter, Russell Malone, Kiyoshi Kitagawa, Kurt Elling, Johnathan Blake. Photo by Cole Thompson

The group played a number of tunes en masse, including Barron’s compositions “Calypso” and “Theme #1.” But the most compelling songs were performed by pieces of the whole. Barron, a thoughtful and considerate accompanist, backed up Elling on “You Are Too Beautiful” in a quartet setting, then laced a piano trio with breakneck runs and a commanding sound. Malone’s solo version of the Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There” started with impressionistic, finger-style phrases that evolved to bebop acrobatics. Giddy applause rang out for Carter and Barron from the very first notes of their “Georgia on My Mind/Amazing Grace” duet.

For me, Elling (at left) was the standout in an evening stacked with inspiring musical talent. The singer scatted on a vocalese version of Thelonious Monk’s “Rhythm A Ning” — a spry, fun melody. His solo, initiated by a staccato chord from the piano, began with a carefully thought out series of boops and bops. As he warmed into the improvisation, creating nonsense phrases that sounded only a few degrees removed from English, Elling elongated vowels and changed rhythms. He moved from quarter notes into sixteenth-note runs, his body twisting and turning, and finished with full-bodied falsetto statements, sweat visible on his forehead.

Like Elling, the other artists loaded each tune with intense musicality. Barron and company were at the tail end of the first part of a 36-show tour and could easily have phoned in a performance. They chose, however, to forge a connection with the music and the audience, bringing the best elements of a world-class music festival to Atlanta.

"Swarm" by Sarah Emerson

Fortin intends to explore catastrophe in its various manifestations, from catalcysmic events to the subtler “shadow of the permanent threat of catastrophe.” These two artists, both trained in Atlanta, fit the bill. Emerson creates a world whose Bambi innocence belies the strange doings that take place therein. Taylor often limns a landscape laid waste by weather — Atlanta’s floods in her most recent work. Her paintings are sourced from newspaper or television images, which often neutralize the emotional impact of their subject. You might say she depicts the banality of natural disaster. 

Emerson, 36, will contribute a site-specific silhouette tableau on windows of Québec City’s Museum of Civilization, as well as a temporary mural, location yet to be determined, that reprises the locusts that swarmed in her discomfiting recent show at her Atlanta gallery, Whitespace.

Both artists consider Manif an important opportunity. “Sylvie’s been really supportive,” Emerson says. “She encouraged me to stretch.”

Although she has shown abroad, Emerson says this is her most important show thus far, because she will be exhibiting in the context of internationally recognized artists. Taylor, who is represented by Marcia Wood Gallery, is also excited by the prospect of a new platform. An artist who tends to lose herself in her work, the 44-year-old painter says, “It’s also made me think about my work differently, to think about its value outside of the studio.”

Williams received a doctor’s OK during the day Tuesday — “antibiotics and steroids are wonderful things,” a physician familiar with the case told me — and she sang the role that evening.

But her voice didn’t sound 100 percent, and too detailed a description would seem unjustly definitive. Her sound flows easily, and she sculpted phrases with intelligence and emotion. We can guess that the wide, slightly unstable wobble and sandpapery tone were lingering effects of her illness. I hope to hear her again when she’s in ideal voice. (Top photo: Mezzo Elizabeth Bishop, as Amneris, and Williams as Aida. Photos by Tim Wilkerson)

As an actress — physically and vocally — Williams was often riveting. There’s a pivotal scene with baritone Mark Delavan, playing her father Amonasro, the King of Ethiopia. To win his battle against the Egyptians, he needs for his daughter to get secret information.

So Amonasro uses emotional blackmail — “Your dead mother is cursing you!” — to break her spirit. Williams played it to the full – absorbing his taunts, then shattered at her father’s disapproval and desperately, pathetically, pleading for his forgiveness. In the course of a few believable moments, this regal young woman wilted and appeared the humbled child. Directed by Trevore Ross, it was a masterful scene, the emotional highlight of the evening.

Williams is scheduled to finish the run of “Aida” Friday night and Sunday afternoon. Perhaps if there’s a lesson learned, it’s just how difficult it is to sing these epic Verdi roles, requiring a balance of emotional maturity and vocal artistry and sheer athleticism. Listeners out there who heard her Tuesday and will attend one of the final performances are invited to share their comparisons on her singing.

"Juniper Prairie" by Peter Essick. The National Geographic photographer will conduct a workshop for the center.

The core of the lab, which is open to any photographer for a monthly fee, is equipment that originally belonged to the Photographer’s Print Studio. That Decatur photo lab was founded in 2005 by a group of photographers who pooled resources to buy equipment after all the local commercial labs had closed. Longtime Atlanta artist Kathryn Kolb, one of the studio founders, is the new center’s director.

The center is an arm of the Serenbe Insitute, a nonprofit organization devoted to arts, culture and the environment, which is funded by the community’s property transfer fees. It provided the start-up costs and is underwriting the center’s $190,000 budget in the short term. The plan is that the center will become self-sustaining, generating income through monthly studio fees and tuition for its workshops and other programs. 

Frank Hunter will teach a course on platinum and palladium printing.

The workshop roster encompasses classes on specific technical subjects and photographic field trips. As part of the center’s “Eye on the World” series, some will be conducted with the Georgia Conservancy, with the possibility that the conservancy will use photos taken during the trips in its advocacy literature.

The 5-8 p.m. reception on March 13 will include tours, an exhibition of instructors’ work and more.

Georgia Shakespeare’s 25th season will begin with a world premiere: “Prophets,” a multimedia work by longtime company member Brad Sherrill, which delves into the Old Testament texts of Isaiah and Jeremiah.

From March 24 through 28, Sherrill will perform “Prophets” in repertory with his first one-man Bible-based show, “The Gospel of John,”  which he has performed more than 500 times since 2001 at churches and theaters, from off-Broadway’s Lamb’s Theatre to Westminster Cathedral. 

I am sorry to say that I have never seen “Gospel,” but the YouTube clips (and this) are pretty wonderful. You can see how Sherrill’s grasp of Shakespearean rhythm transforms the words into liquid music.

As we reported earlier, Georgia Shakes has found the financing for Shake at the Lake, which returns to Piedmont Park on May 5-9. And its summer repertory will begin June 9 with “Shrew: The Musical.” It’s nice to see the Oglethorpe University-based theater programming new work and transforming  itself  from a summer festival to a year-round producer.

On the verge of opening its 25th season, the theater announced Wednesday that Bank of America has come through as sponsor of the evocative, al fresco happening. (After running for four years, the 2009 event was canceled because the theater couldn’t afford it.)

Chris Kayser as Bottom. Photo by Bill DeLoach

Happily, John Dillon’s free-form “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” — first seen last summer at the Oglethorpe University theater — will run May 5-9 on the pier at Lake Clara Meer. In Dillon’s inventive staging of “Midsummer,” the potion-laced farce is framed by the backstage shenanigans of a bunch of contemporary buffoons. Tickets are free.

In a press release, producing artistic director Richard Garner also cited the Coca-Cola Company, CornerCap Investment Council, the Kendeda Fund, the Charles Loridans Foundation and the Piedmont Park Conservancy as contributing angels. ”Without their philanthropic vision and earnest interest in the arts in our city, Shake at the Lake would not be possible,” Garner said.

You have to admire Georgia Shakespeare’s tenacity. On opening night of the 2004 inaugural event, a sudden downpour threatened to rain on the parade. But the troupers didn’t wilt. Founded as an outdoor ensemble, they improvised a tarp-tent, and the show went on. If you are a picnic-on-the-lawn kind of person, watching Shakespeare from Piedmont Park’s sunken-garden setting can add heady perfume to a spring evening.  

"A Midsummer's Night Dream," 2009

Here’s the ticket protocol: They are distributed on a first-come, first-served basis on the day of performance, beginning at 10 a.m. from the Piedmont Park Visitor Center and from Georgia Shakespeare’s box office at the Conant Performing Arts Center at Oglethorpe University. For more information: shakeatthelake.com or gashakespeare.org, or call 404-264-0020.

Brad Sherrill’s “The Gospel of  John” runs in repertory with the world premiere of his new piece, “Prophets,” March 24-28.

High drama continues for the Atlanta Opera’s “Aida.” Read ArtsCriticATL’s opening night review here.

The scheduled title character, soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams (top photo), is reportedly feeling better after a sinus infection forced her to cancel Saturday’s opening night, just two hours before curtain. It would have been her first time singing the role.

As of noon today, she’s still a question mark. She had a voice lesson (over the phone) with her teacher, and saw an ear-nose-throat doctor this morning — a local physician who specializes in opera singers. If Williams’ vocal cords are healthy and she’s psychologically prepared to sing her debut Aida, she’ll be onstage tonight.

But, just in case, the opera flew in Angela Brown (above) late yesterday. An accomplished Verdi soprano, Brown sang a strong Leonora (in Verdi’s “Il Trovatore”) last season in Atlanta and has sung Aida at the Metropolitan Opera several times. She’s also a favorite Aida at the Paris Opera.

Brown will have a costume fitting today, rehearse briefly with conductor Yoel Levi this afternoon, walk through the blocking at 5 o’clock and be prepared to sing tonight’s performance at 7:30.

Atlanta Opera general director Dennis Hanthorn, reached just before noon today, said he’s optimistic that Mary Elizabeth Williams will take the stage tonight, as originally planned. But, he added, “there’s a lot of pressure on her: she wants to sing her first Aida well, and she doesn’t want to damage her vocal cords. That’s a consideration we all take very seriously.”

For Saturday’s performance, Indra Thomas was brought in as the “cover” soprano — a one-time substitution, since she departed Atlanta this morning for concerts in Brazil.

After the decision was made that Thomas would sing, Hanthorn said he went to reassure Williams. “I told her, ‘We need to think long term,’” Hanthorn said. “Some singers think if they have to cancel that they’ll never be hired again. I told her that this will have no effect on our future performances together.”

It’s been 15 years since festival artistic director and curator Douglas Scott, seeing the demise of the juried Atlanta Dance on the Loose Festival, decided to start the MAD festival. To pay for the concert’s first venue, Scott worked at Agnes Scott College as an adjunct instructor, giving up a semester’s wages to cover the college theater’s rental costs.

Around that time, 1993 to ‘95, CORE Performance Company artistic director Sue Schroeder consulted the New York-based ARTS Action Research group in an effort to aid her financially strapped company. That spurred the Atlanta Dance Initiative, which helped 12 to 15 local dance companies define their niches, eliminate competition and foster support among companies. As a result, an open, inclusive network of modern dance groups and individual artists has grown.

Now, many local groups offer performance opportunities to others, like Dance Canvas, Zoetic Dance Exchange, Brooks and Company Dance’s Shorts and others. And next year, the MAD Festival will add a performance at the South Fulton Arts Center.

Project 7 Contemporary Dance Company in "Know Me in the Now." Photo by Roman Naumov

Saturday’s concert featured seven works — some of them sections from larger ones — offering a sample of the wide range of contemporary styles developing locally. Opening the show, host company Full Radius Dance cast an eerie glow of macabre beauty with Scott’s “Walking on My Grave.” It’s a piece for six women, costumed by Gladys Saint-LaRue in red to earth tones, with zombie-chic matted hairstyles, to Zoe Keating’s gently bone-rattling minimalist music.

The piece began with a line of five dancers facing away from the audience, backs exposed. A sixth walked slowly, deliberately, timelessly upstage of them. As catalyst, she stepped into the line, and all began to shudder, until she spread her arms and slowly traced her finger down each adjacent dancer’s spine. Light revealed a solid black line drawn chillingly down every spine, and the ensuing duets seemed like rolling, rotating conversations between the living and the dead. Near the piece’s end, one dancer rolled across the floor as a wheelchair nearly backed over her. It was intriguing to see the wheelchair, typically associated with disability, used to create this deliciously unsettling image.

A duo from Daryl Foster's "Lift." Photo by Jon Nalon

Next came Daryl Foster’s “Lift,” inspired by the aerodynamic concept of lift. This septet showed a group of individuals’ struggles to rise above gravity’s pull through the metaphor of airplane flight, as suspending reaches dived into pitch turns, levitated upward and spiraled into the floor like an airplane spinning out of control — executed with weightless speed to Arvo Pärt’s soaring vocal music.

SIDEWAYS Dance Company then performed an excerpt from Charlotte Foster’s “COEXIST,” combining dance, music and poetry by Ladyvee DaPoet.

Terry Slade’s Redemption Dance Theater performed one of the evening’s highlights with “The Last Day,” based on a biblical vision of the world’s end. In canons and contrapuntal phrases, three strong, vital women — Jasmine Roberts, Joanna Futral and Erin Smith — rushed forward, reaching upward. They paused, arms lowering across the face in awe at an incredible sight. Dropping forward, they sprang back, shifting into lunges, turns, reaches and pulls in different directions to the urgent flow of Steve Reich’s music, then spinning into high, tight turns as the trio built intensity. In or out of unison, these three professionals moved with a synergy and emotional charge that animated the space around them with spiritual feeling.

Cherrise Wakeham’s “Know Me in the Now” fused her contemporary style with an undercurrent of risk-taking and emotional honesty, set to music by Ani DiFranco and Counting Crows, among others. A single figure in black began, elevated on a black, four-step stile – suggesting someone in transition. Then four figures, evenly spaced in front of her, pulsed through a barrage of angular gestures that seemed to express inner torment and frustration.

Sue Schroeder’s "The Point” from CORE Performance Company. Photo by D. Patton White

In Sue Schroeder’s “The Point,” CORE Performance Company’s cohesive group of three women and two men were costumed in shades of cream and beige, as if from an early-20th-century photograph. They traveled along curved trajectories into seemingly chance encounters — embraces and lifts onto the shoulders. At one point, the entire group arrived together, then continued in an ongoing flux of changing relationships.

Lastly, Zoetic Dance Ensemble performed Melanie Lynch-Blanchard’s ”Click.” Backed by video projections, the quintet seemed to depict a journey through life among a community of women. White-trained costumes and a background of changing images suggested a wedding, a baptism and a small child. In the foreground, dancers grasped hands, pulled and shared weight in patterns that seemed to reflect the constancy of nurturing support.

This photo and above: Melanie Lynch-Blanchard's "Click" at the 2010 MAD Festival. Photos by Keiko Guest

This year’s MAD Festival was energized. There’s a sense of optimism, with the vitality of young dancers from colleges pouring into the city. On foundations set by people like Schroeder and Scott, growth is inevitable.

The Atlanta Opera’s “Aida,” which opened Saturday at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre and runs through March 7, is all that and more. And there’s an unusual amount of backstory to this production.

Set in ancient Egypt, this epic of a doomed love triangle, with the fate of nations hanging in the balance, is the grandest of operas. For better or usually worse, few companies today can resist a Cecil B. DeMille-style extravaganza. With opening-night cancellations, however, no one knew what might happen; everyone on stage and in the sold-out audience was on high alert.

Soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams had been scheduled to sing the first Aida of her career. At her Atlanta Opera debut, in 2005 as Serena in “Porgy and Bess,” Williams had the most powerfully gorgeous voice in the cast. At 33, she’s carefully building a substantial reputation, singing Puccini and Verdi heroines around the country to very positive reviews.

When I interviewed Williams on Thursday afternoon, a few hours before the dress rehearsal, she told me, “Yesterday, I woke up with a cold. When I was 27 that would have spun me into orbit. But now I know I’m prepared for the vocal demands and dramatic heft of Aida. I know I can sing it, so I can deal with a cold.”

Antonello Palombi and Mary Elizabeth Williams at the Thursday night "Aida" dress rehearsal, where the soprano sang just fine. By Saturday she'd lost part of her voice. Production photos by Tim Wilkerson

But that cold was soon diagnosed as a sinus infection. With no understudy on hand, the opera flew in soprano Indra Thomas from New York. An Atlanta native, she performed “Aida” with the Atlanta Opera for its inaugural show at the Civic Center in 2003 and has since sung the role widely. Thomas walked through the staging and had a quick rehearsal with conductor Yoel Levi — just in case.

Then, at 6 p.m. Saturday, the opera’s general director Dennis Hanthorn made the call: Williams was out, Thomas in.

In performance, Thomas is a deeply sympathetic heroine. She radiates charisma, nobility and vulnerability all at once, and her voice is large and, at times, beautifully piercing. Yet Saturday her instrument sounded in tatters. Top notes were more or less solid, but she’s lost a naturally flowing middle range. To compensate, she seemed to push her chesty low voice upward, which led to many scooping and barking sounds. In the opera’s most intoxicating aria, “O patria mia,” accompanied by sweet-toned oboist Dane Philipsen — where our heroine longs for her homeland — Thomas backed off notes before they cracked, which distorted her every phrase.

Indra Thomas (singing Aida at the Palm Beach Opera). Photo by Steven Caras

Still, Thomas was affecting for her quieter, lyrical monologues, such as “Ritorna vincitor” in Act 1. By opera’s end — sealed in a tomb for eternity with her lover, Radamès — her star power and basic talents were utterly convincing. Is this a gifted soprano who has sung too many heavy roles too soon? Can she retool the voice and sing to her amazing potential?

And who will sing the title role in the remaining three performances? Thomas was free Saturday but has other dates beginning Monday. Mary Elizabeth Williams’ Aida debut is thus scheduled for the next performance, Tuesday. (You can bet Hanthorn is on the phone right now, scrambling to find a third Aida — just in case.)

Italian tenor Antonello Palombi, as the Egyptian warrior Radamès, is the most famous operatic stand-in from recent memory. You can catch the story on YouTube: At Milan’s fabled La Scala, where opera is a blood sport, celebrity tenor Roberto Alagna was booed after his opening aria, “Celeste Aida.” Alagna raised an angry fist as he stormed off stage. The music never stopped, and his understudy, Palombi, in street clothes, picked up where the star left off.

Palombi received wild cheers at the end, and he joined Leonard Bernstein and Andre Watts, among many, as replacements who scored big when the pressure was on. Despite this worldwide burst of attention, however, Palombi’s career hasn’t much taken off. He remains a middle-tier tenor.

Antonello Palombi going casual at La Scala. Image from Italian TV

In Atlanta, the reasons were apparent. His voice is large and lovely, especially for Radamès’ many heroic, open-hydrant declarations of love. But his diction is sloppy — I couldn’t catch a single word of his Italian — and he seemed unable to sing any consonants. The result was a stream of undifferentiated tones, and you never had the sense that he was in control of his instrument.

With the romantic leads stumbling, mezzo Elizabeth Bishop, as Amneris, easily became the opera’s dominant voice. The clarity of her diction, the focus of her tone and her elegant sense of line made her Verdi interpretation a little closer to Rossini’s lean bel canto than Puccini’s succulent verissimo. I like my Verdi that way. Bishop’s anguish during Radamès’ judgment scene, in the final act, was a highlight of the evening, vocally and dramatically.

Baritone Mark Delavan sang an authoritative Flying Dutchman in Atlanta last season. He returned as Amonasro, Aida’s father and the King of Ethiopia, though he, too, seemed troubled in the throat Saturday night, as if he had a cold.

Bass Morris Robinson, as Ramfis, gulped his syllables — and yet, in sound and presence, made an extremely imposing high priest. Robinson lives in Atlanta; for his curtain call he jumped out with a charming little hip-hop move, pointing at his hometown crowd, blowing kisses, returning the audience’s affection.

Atlanta rented this production, with stock stone-pillar sets, from the New Orleans Opera. A.T. Jones’ costumes evoked ancient-empire epics, from “The Ten Commandments” to “Caligula,” and would probably look better on a slimmer bunch of people. Rotund opera singers in faux Egyptian frocks exaggerate the kitsch factor.

I’ve been harsh on Yoel Levi for his Atlanta Opera conducting — leading the orchestra in emotionally coarse and anti-lyrical accompaniments for “Hansel and Gretel” (in 2007) and “The Elixir of Love” (earlier this season). I think of Levi for dazzling symphonic precision, not for the supple quality of breathing with singers — a fundamental that any capable opera conductor would do by instinct.

Well, his “Aida” is a fresh change. Levi responded with sympathy to the singers and brought intensity to the drama. The orchestra played well for him. True, he paced the Triumphal Scene — all those blazing trumpets and stentorian cries from the chorus — like a metronome, or a provincial bandmaster. But overall, Levi and company delivered a grand “Aida.”

“I hate you, too,” replies Mia (Katie Jarvis), with a fondness we haven’t heard from her before. A jaded 15-year-old, Mia is a foul-mouthed but open-hearted survivor of the rough coming-of-age trial that constitutes Andrea Arnold’s alternately bracing and contrived movie.

Winner earlier this month of a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award — the Brits’ answer to the Oscars — for outstanding British film, “Fish Tank” sticks to the sort of bleak, low-income housing projects Arnold focused on in her terrific “Red Road” (2006). Mia lives with kid sister Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths) and their mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing), who looks barely older than her children. In their loud, high-rise apartment, the TV blares constantly, Joanne is always smoking and drinking (so are her daughters), and the three of them curse one another with paint-peeling vehemence.

Kierston Wareing as bruised mother Joanne. Photos by Holly Horner

The bitterness and squalor get troweled on so thickly at the start that a viewer might fear the movie is going to be a kitchen-sink sociological tract – a Caucasian, UK cousin of, say, “Precious.” That feeling is compounded by what look like bursts of faux uplift: Mia hopes to escape her dead-end life by becoming a dancer and repeatedly tries to liberate a white horse tied up in a nearby trailer park.

But give the movie a chance. After all, the dancing that Mia aspires to is of the skanky, music-video sort, and that white horse is starving to death. It won’t be carrying Mia into any sort of fairy-tale kingdom at the end.

Michael Fassbender as Connor

There is a sort of Prince Charming in the person of Connor, mom’s new boyfriend. Played with a fantastic mix of paternal charm and boyish sexiness by Michael Fassbender (of “Hunger” and “Inglourious Basterds”), Connor is the first person in a while who seems to actually see Mia, and care what she thinks. Which could be either a very good or a very bad thing.

The plot of “Fish Tank” is slim and, after a certain point, predictable. What makes it worth watching is writer-director Arnold’s filmmaking process, which owes a debt to fellow UK filmmakers Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. Shooting in chronological sequence, she reportedly fed her actors only portions of the script at a time. They didn’t know exactly where the drama was headed, or what would happen to their characters. The result, for the viewer, is a shared sense of discovery. And, occasionally, of danger.

“Fish Tank.” With Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, Kierston Wareing. Unrated. 123 minutes. At Atlanta’s Landmark Midtown Art Cinema.