Your weekend arts forecast: Barry Manilow, Judith Hill

Barry Manilow, through his nationwide Manilow Music Project, has given away over $10M worth of funds and music instrument donations since he began the program 15 years ago.

“It is wonderful to partner with our concert venues to identify schools and music teachers in their neighborhoods that deserve this small token of my gratitude,” the 79-year-old singer/songwriter said on his website. “Many school music programs have either been terminated, or their funds have been severely depleted. I always want to do my part through The Manilow Music Project to keep music in schools.”

It happens in every city Manilow’s tour visits. Since the guy behind “Copacabana,” “Mandy,” “I Write the Songs” (a song he didn’t actually write) and so many more pop hits has a show at Amalie Arena Saturday, he’ll be handing a $5,000 check to Christopher Allen, director of orchestras at Newsome High School in Lithia, a city in Hillsborough County.

Allen will be at Saturday’s concert to receive – onstage, apparently – the check, plus another five grand to purchase instruments for the school’s music program.

Tickets for the 7 p.m. concert are here.

Judith Hill. Facebook.

Say hello to singer Judith Hill, performing Saturday at the Attic at Rock Brothers Brewing (Ybor City).

Say, maybe you’re familiar with her, but you don’t know it. Hill was an uber-popular contestant on Season Four of The Voice (“She’s going to be a Grammy-winning superstar,” said judge Adam Levine).

As a backup singer, she’s been on numerous high-charting records, and was featured in the documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, which won the 2015 Grammy for Best Music Film. Hill’s song “Desperation” won the Black Reel Award.

Want more? She was part of the backup company for Michael Jackson’s This is It tour of 2009, and had been chosen to duet with him on “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.” Jackson’s untimely death, of course, put the brakes on everything – but Hill can be seen (and heard) in the posthumously-released This is It film.

Her debut album, 2015’s Back in Time, was co-produced by Prince at his Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis.

Tickets for the Saturday concert are here.

More concerts

In Tampa: Rock ‘n’ roll, R&B, zydeco, blues, jazz, boogie-woogie … there’s no music that Marcia Ball can’t sing AND play masterfully well on the piano. The legendary Texas tornado has a Friday-night date at Skipper’s Smokehouse, with Rev. Billy C. Wirtz – yet another piano-thumping gemstone – opening the show. Tickets are here. And the very next night (Saturday, Jan. 14) Skipper’s has North Carolina’s slick and slippery Southern Culture on the Skids (tickets).

In Clearwater: Singer Geoff Tate, longtime voice of the metal band Queensryche, is at the Capitol Theatre Friday (tickets); the same night, Ruth Eckerd Hall has the Florida country quartet The Mavericks, with the outstanding vocalist Raul Malo (tickets); Florida-bred trailer park comedian Larry the Cable Guy has a date Saturday at Ruth Eckerd Hall (tickets); the vocal quartet Manhattan Transfer is at the Capitol Saturday (tickets).

Manhattan Transfer performed last spring in Largo; here’s the March 22 Catalyst interview with co-founder Janis Siegel.

In St. Petersburg: Song stylist Nellie McKay takes over the Palladium (Side Door) Friday; here’s the Catalyst interview with her from earlier in the week; guitarist/singer Willy Porter returns to the Palladium (Hough Hall) Saturday (tickets). Sunday brings jazz pianists Shelly Berg and Laurence Hobgood to the Palladium (Side Door) for a duo concert – both pianos, along with bass and drums (tickets).

Vocalist Capathia Jenkins does the honors as The Florida Orchestra (with Stuart Malina conducting) plays music associated with the great Aretha Franklin, Friday in Ferguson Hall (Straz Center, Tampa) and Saturday at St. Pete’s Mahaffey Theater. Tickets.

Theater

Hamilton, of course, is still doing boffo b.o. (that’s box office) at the Straz Center, where the road company is in residence (at Morsani Hall) through Jan. 22. Tickets.

Bill Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as we told you Wednesday, is starting its first weekend at Jobsite Theatre (also in the Straz Center, Tampa). 

Beth Henley’s dark comedy Crimes of the Heart (read all about it here) is also in its inaugural weekend, at American Stage, in downtown St. Pete. 

ThinkTank, the bay area’s Theatre for Young Audiences company, is opening the Obie-winning drama The Wolves at Stageworks Theatre. Tickets are here. More about the company, and this production, Friday in the Catalyst.

Your weekend arts forecast appears every Thursday in the Catalyst. 

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