Weekend stage forecast: Jazz singer Halie Loren
The Palladium Theatre's intimate Side Door Cabaret is back in business, after the twin you-know-whats let some water in. Everything's good now, and the Side Door re-opens Friday with an 8 p.m. performance from British blues guitarist Matt Schofield.
Saturday brings the Palladium debut of Alaska-born vocalist Halie Loren, who's notched several top-selling albums in Japan and other parts of the world. She's a jazz singer, sure ... she can be sultry, she can swing, she can interpret the Great American Songbook, but there's a distinct pop element to her original songs.
"I consider myself a singer/songwriter foremost," Loren related to AllAboutJazz. "Everything else is secondary to that. Whatever people classify it as is beside the point. I just love making the music that I make ... That's their business, in a way.
"I do like a lot of different things that are genre classified as jazz. If there has to be a label on a lot of music that I make, I feel like that may be the most accurate for a lot of it."
For Saturday's show (8 p.m.), Loren's band includes John O'Leary (piano); Rick Costa (drums); and Brandon Robertson (bass).
Tickets for all Palladium Theater events are here .
The Florida Orchestra
Chelsea Gallo is the conductor for two free Florida Orchestra concerts this weekend. First, there's the annual Pops in the Park, Saturday at 6:30 p.m. in Vinoy Park, St. Pete. It's a rousing "greatest hits" sort of program, movie music and classical favorites, with Williams, Bernstein, Rossini's "William Tell Overture" and more. Bring a blanket and a picnic.
Sunday's Symphony By the Sea, 6:30 p.m. at Clearwater's Baycare Sound, features a slightly different program of film scores, classics like Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, an Armed Forces Salute in honor of Veteran's Day and a patriotic finale. The amphitheater has chairs – no need for that blanket – and food trucks.
More details on both concerts can be found here .
And more classics
Virtuosic Adventures, the Tampa Bay Symphony concert presented last week at the Straz Center, is up again Friday (8 p.m.) at the New Tampa Performing Arts Center. With Mark Sforzini conducing, the program includes La Gazza Ladra Overture by Rossini; Rhapsody for Flute and Orchestra by Pasquale Tassone; the 2023-2024 International Composition Competition Winner – Christina Condon, flute soloist; and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 9. Find tickets here .
On theater stages
No fewer than five new plays are opening this week, in St. Pete and in Tampa. To recap: The national Broadway tour of Moulin Rouge! The Musical at Morsini Hall in the Straz Center; ThinkTank's Number the Stars at the JCC Cohn Campus; The Mountaintop at American Stage; The Sound Inside at the Off-Central; and Ken Ludwig's Moriarty: A New Sherlock Holmes Adventure at freeFall Theatre.
This story has all the info, and all the ticket links.
It's also the final weekend for the potentially Broadway-bound The Boy Who Loved Batman , at the Jaeb Theatre in the Straz Center (Sunday shows at 1 and 7 p.m. will bring the curtain down); next door at the Shimberg Playhouse, Jobsite's Gorey Stories continues through Nov. 17.
Art events
Postponed due to wind and weather, the 10th annual SHINE Mural Festival kicks off Friday; the big celebration takes place Saturday (8 p.m.) at FloridaRAMA; admission is free.
Here's the map depicting which artists will be out where, mural-painting, between today and the festival close Nov. 17.
SHINE director Jenee Priebe is Friday's guest on our Arts Alive! podcast.
Saturday brings the November edition of the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance's monthly Second Saturday ArtWalk. Want to know which galleries and studios will be open and waiting for you from 5 to 9 p.m.? Click here .
Tonight: 1990s swing revival band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy at the Capitol Theatre; Country music's at the Seminole Hard Rock Event Center;
Friday: Cuba's Buena Vista Orchestra at the Mahaffey Theater; Blackberry Smoke at Ruth Eckerd Hall;
Saturday: Here Come the Mummies at the Capitol Theatre; "Neil Berg's 50 Years of Rock 'n' Roll" at Ruth Eckerd Hall; comedian Gabriel "Fluffy" Iglesias at Amalie Arena;
Sunday: Randy Houser (country) at the Seminole Hard Rock Event Center.
Monday: Daryl Hall and the Daryl's House Band, with Howard Jones at the Baycare Sound.
Your weekend stage forecast appears every Thursday in the Catalyst's CREATE section.
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