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Weekend arts forecast: Meanwhile, back at The Pier
It’s estimated that 4,000 people attended last week’s inaugural Rise Up St. Pete concert at Spa Beach, on The Pier, with New Orleans’ The Revivalists.
Promoters are upping the ante with two shows this weekend. Michigan best buddies Mike Temrowski and Alex O’Neill are better known as pop/hip hop singer and songwriter Quinn XCII (say “Quinn 92”) and Ayokay, an ECM composer and producer (he’s produced many of Quinn’s platinum-selling singles). They’re performing Friday at 6 p.m., and tickets are here.
Rise Up goes reggae for Saturday’s show, which begins at 5 p.m. Acts are Iration, Fortunate Youth, Artikal Sound System and Cydeways. Tickets.
Big country
Two of country music’s brightest stars will walk among us this weekend, with two separate concerts taking place on each side of Tampa Bay.
Multiple award-winning singer and songwriter Chris Stapleton has top billing at Saturday’s sold-out “Walmart Heroes and Headliners” show at the Mid-Florida Credit Union Amphitheatre. Improbably, the lineup also includes the rock band Imagine Dragons and the R&B vocalist H.E.R.
And Chris Young, another country megawatt star (13 chart-toppers, so far), plays The Sound, Clearwater’s new Coachman Park amphitheater, Friday. Tickets.
The annual WQYK Guitar Pull returns to the Mahaffey Theater Saturday. Here’s the tradition: Several up-and-coming country artists perform acoustically, one at a time, and swap stories. The 2023 participants are Scotty McCreery, Tigerlily Gold, George Birge, Brian Kelley and Brett Young, and tickets are here.
K-pop
K-pop, as in pop music from South Korea, is a thing. One of the most successful acts to come out of the K-pop universe is Everglow, a six-member girl group “assembled” by an entertainment conglomerate (think Spice Girls, think Menudo, and you’ve got it). Everglow’s star has dimmed somewhat since its 2019/2020 heyday, but there’s a new American tour going on, and it stops in St. Pete, at the Mahaffey Theater, Friday. Find tickets here.
And more concerts
Drummer Jason Bonham, whose father was Led Zeppelin’s drummer John Bonham, is at the Seminole Hard Rock Event Center tonight with his Led Zeppelin Evening. It’s sold out.
Tonight at the Palladium Side Door: Acclaimed acoustic jazz bassist Michael J. Ross and his band, with Tampa vocalist Fred Johnson. Tickets.
Friday at the Palladium Hough Hall: Comedian Intern John. Tickets.
Friday at the Capitol Theatre: Bay area frequent flier Christopher Cross. Tickets.
British rock guitar legend Martin Barre, who was part of Jethro Tull for decades and played on every record from Stand Up (1969) through Christmas Album (2003), brings his eponymously-titled band to the Central Park Performing Arts Center Saturday (tickets are here). The split with Tull pointman Ian Anderson was not particularly pleasant, as Barre explained to the Catalyst in a 2022 interview.
Saturday at the Capitol Theatre: The Fixx (“One Thing Leads to Another”). Tickets.
It’s the final weekend for the Jobsite Theater production of “Frankenstein” with Paul Potenza, left, Katrina Stevenson and Giles Davies. Photo: Stage Photography of Tampa.
On theater stages
It’s your last chance to see two acclaimed shows at Tampa’s biggest professional theaters. Sunday brings the curtain down on Frankenstein at Jobsite, and also on the Stageworks production of Poirot Returns.
No Exit (the iconic existential drama) is entering its first weekend at the Off-Central (info and tickets here) while Jared Eberlein’s drama The Heirs of Pretending continues at LAB Theatre Project (tickets here).
Likewise, American Stage’s “production” of the experimental one-person play White Rabbit Red Rabbit continues (one actor per performance, reading the script cold). Shows tonight through Sunday include Georgia Mallory Guy, Fanni Green, Ivy Sunflower, Tito Mercado and John Millsap at various venues. Find all details, and tickets, here.
St. Petersburg Opera Company’s annual production of the 60-minute English opera for families, Pinocchio, is onstage Friday and Saturday (and again Nov. 18 and 19) at Opera Central, on 1st Avenue S. Tickets here. Cast member Ashley Thunder is our guest Friday on the Arts Alive! podcast.
The Energizer Bunny otherwise known as the “pub musical” The Choir of Man remain at the Jaeb Theatre, in Tampa’s Straz Center, through Dec. 10. Tickets.
Where’s the Orchestra?
It’s Hooray for Hollywood weekend for The Florida Orchestra. Conducted by Bob Bernhardt, Hollywood’s Golden Age (Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., Mahaffey) brings together classic film music from the likes of Bernard Herrmann, Max Steiner, John Williams, Elmer Bernstein, Miklos Rozsa and others. Michael Chertock on piano. Tickets.
At the Palladium Theater, Mark Sforzini conducts the Tampa Bay Symphony Sunday (at 2:30 p.m.) with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, On-Again, Off-Again by Jack Frerer and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, with Hui Xu, piano soloist. Tickets.
And still more
The dance company Project Alchemy has a new experimental production, MIXED, at thestudio@620 Friday and Saturday (7:30 p.m. each day). Find info and tickets here.
Saturday’s Festival of Reading, at the Palladium, is sold out.
Saturday’s annual visit from the touring Oddities and Curiosities Expo, at the Tampa Convention Center, is essentially a room full of weird stuff – taxidermy, skulls and bones, evil clowns, horror movie ephemera – for the folks who enjoy such things. It’s from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and tickets are here.
Creative Pinellas Walsingham Road gallery and environs will be the site for Saturday’s Artsventure, a free family festival with dozens of art vendors, live performances, the gallery exhibition, craft activities, food and more. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The St. Petersburg Arts Alliance’s monthly Second Saturday ArtWalk, encompassing more than 40 downtown St. Pete art galleries and studios, is from 5 to 9 p.m. Saturday. Here’s the map-slash-list provided by the organization.
The Weekend Arts Forecast appears every Thursday in the Catalyst.
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