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Weekend spotlight: All sorts of music fests and more
The Catalyst’s every-Thursday guide to Tampa Bay entertainment and the arts.
April’s big music festival weekend is upon us. Several major blues (and rock) performers will be onstage at Vinoy Park in St. Petersburg, for the Friday-through-Sunday Tampa Bay Blues Festival, while Tampa’s Meridian Fields plays host to the Gasparilla Music Festival, featuring newer artists plus a couple of familiar favorites. That one is also Friday through Sunday.
There’s a concert nightly through Saturday on the Warehouse Arts District’s ArtsXchange stage; it’s the St. Petersburg Jazz Festival, and it’s a mixture of local, regional and international players.
The Tampa Bay Blues Festival roster includes Taj Mahal, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Los Lobos, Samantha Fish, Jimmie Vaughn, Tab Benoit and lots more; get info and tickets at this link.
The Gasparilla Music Festival features as headliners Mt. Joy, Shakey Graves, Two Friends, Jai Wolf, Gov’t Mule, Drive-By Truckers, Bryce Vine and Cimafunk, with numerous artists on the bill. get info and tickets at this link.
At the St. Petersburg Jazz Festival, the most notable names are Dafnis Prieto, Hot Club SRQ, Martin Bejerano and Alexis Cole. Find all info and tickets here.
Concert calendar
Ruth Eckerd Hall welcomes Carlos Santana Friday; no introduction necessary. Tickets are here.
Twangmeister Dwight Yoakam is back at the BayCare Sound Saturday for what seems like an annual visit; Flatland Cavalry and Chayce Beckham open the 7 p.m. show. Tickets are here.
Country’s Eric Church, who performed the National Anthem at the Tampa Bay Rays’ home season opener at the newly-refurbished Tropicana Field, is in concert Saturday at Benchmark Arena. Ashley McBryde opens. Tickets are on the other end of this link.
Kickoff time: Powerhouse blues trio GA-20 is onstage tonight at the Palladium Theater (tickets here) with an opening set from singer/songwriter Jackie Venson (both artists are in town to play the weekend’s Tampa Bay Blues Festival).
Saturday at Ferguson Hall (in Tampa’s Straz Center): Comedian and cartoonist Demetri Martin. Tickets are at this link.
Lukas Nelson plays Jannus Live Sunday. In addition to his studio and road work alongside his dad, Willie Nelson, he and his band Promise of the Real are longtime collaborators with Neil Young. He’s touring in support of his first solo album, American Romance, produced by Shooter Jennings (son of Waylon). The show’s at 7, and tickets are here.
Hip hop’s Bow Wow and BTK will be onstage Sunday, with other artists, at Benchmark Arena. Tickets for the 7 p.m. show are at this link.
Where’s the orchestra?
Tonight at 7, conductor Chelsea Gallo and The Florida Orchestra take you Inside Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, an advance deep-dive into one of the pieces on tap for this weekend’s concert. Tonight’s Mahaffey Theater event, which will feature a complete performance, is pay-what-you-can. It begins at 7:30 p.m.
Beethoven’s 7th is indeed the centerpiece this weekend, but the full concerts will also include the U.S. premiere of Thierry Caens’ Tribones, a concerto for three trombones that TFO co-commissioned with the French Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse. And Grofe’s Mississippi Suite. And a “mystery piece.”
Here’s the concert schedule (all tickets are at this link): Friday, 8 p.m., Straz Center Ferguson Hall; Saturday, 8 p.m., Mahaffey Theater; Sunday, 7:30 p.m., Ruth Eckerd Hall.
The art of illusion
The Magicians Table begins a nearly two-month run tonight at the Jaeb The (Straz Center, Tampa). Imported from London’s West End, it’s an immersive, two-hour magic show that combines theater, live music and prestidigitation from a collection of larger-than-life characters performing what’s known as close-up magic. Visit the website for more info, showtimes and tickets.
The comedy “Ripcord” opens tonight at the Off-Central, St. Petersburg. Publicity photo.
On theater stages
Ripcord is in its first weekend at the Off-Central in St. Petersburg. The comedy is by David Lindsay-Abaire, a Pulitzer Prize winner (for Rabbit Hole); it concerns the rivalry between two women at a senior living facility. Find showtimes and tickets here. The show’s Roxanne Fay and Bonnie Agan are guests on our Arts Alive! podcast Friday.
Also in St. Petersburg, and also in its first weekend, is freeFall Theatre’s production of James Still’s And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank. The theater describes it as a multimedia play that combines videotaped interviews of Dutch Holocaust survivors Ed Silverberg and Eva Schloss and live actors recreating scenes from their lives during World War II. Find showtimes and tickets here.
At Demens Landing Park, on the St. Pete bayfront, American Stage’s production of the musical Into the Woods continues. Find showtimes and tickets here.
The history-based comic drama H*tler’s Tasters, from ThinkTank Theatre, is onstage for three weekend performances at the Tampa Fringe Theatre, in Ybor City’s Kress Contemporary. Just a few tickets remain; visit the website here. And read the Catalyst interview with playwright Michelle Kholos Brooks at this link.
Coming soon
April 15 Chamber Series at the Palladium Theater
April 16-26 A Streetcar Named Desire at The Studio@620
April 16-May 3 X does not equal X at LAB Theater Project
April 17-May 3 The Meeting at Stageworks Theatre
April 17 Bill Murray & His Blood Brothers at Ruth Eckerd Hall
April 17 Goose at the BayCare Sound
April 17 & 18 Breakaway Music Festival at Raymond James Stadium
April 17 Eric Johnson at the Capitol Theatre
April 18 Foreigner at the BayCare Sound
April 18 Saigon Kick at the Capitol Theatre
April 18 American Aquarium at Skipper’s Smokehouse
April 18 The Florida Orchestra: Bugs Bunny at the Symphony at the Mahaffey Theater
April 19 UB40 at Ruth Eckerd Hall
April 19 Women of Jazz at the Palladium Theater
April 21 Alyssa Edwards at the Capitol Theatre
April 21 Maren Morris at Seminole Hard Rock Event Center
April 22/23 Graham Nash at the Capitol Theatre
April 22 Boys Like Girls at Seminole Hard Rock Event Center
April 30-May 3 Sunscreen Film Festival
Your Weekend Spotlight appears every Thursday in the Catalyst’s CREATE section.
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