Your weekend arts forecast: Orilla en Español, comings and goings

Ona Kirei and Alejandro Arenas, collectively known as Orilla, play melodic jazz imbued with pop, folk, funk and, you better believe it, sounds cultivated from their own music backstories (she’s from Spain, he’s a Colombian). She sings and he plays amazing bass (how sweet the sound). They are both musician’s musicians.

(When will we get to have Orilla sharing a bill with that other dynamic, local, Latin-flavored dynamic duo Nate Najar and Daniela Soledade? Riddle me this.)

Seeing as it’s National Hispanic Heritage Month, Orilla have prepared a concert performance entirely in Spanish for tonight (Thursday, Sept 16) at thetudio@620.

Tickets for the 8 p.m. show, Orilla en Español, are here.

Short takes

The Tampa Bay Fingerstyle Guitar Guild brings Florida guitar legend Sam Pacetti to the Hideaway Café Saturday. If you like that sort of fleet-fingered acoustic guitar playing, Pacetti is a wizard, a true star. Tickets are here.

Featuring 30 individualistic quilts drawn from private collections, the new Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg exhibit, Pieced & Patterned, showcases the way in which American women in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries chronicled life events – as well as moments of historical significance – through skillfully crafted textiles. it opens Saturday, with regular museum admission (it’s not included in the Arts Alive! Free Museum Day special at the MFA.

Speaking of Free Museum Day this Saturday, here’s who’s doing what, and when, in the bay area.

Tampa Pride’s Pride on the River event debuts this weekend. Saturday afternoon’s boat parade on the Hillsborough River culminates in a family-friendly festival at Armature Works Pier, 1910 N. Ola Ave. The free 4 to 8 p.m. event includes live music, games, vendors and a fireworks display. Find all details here.

A few tickets remain for the Saturday 8 p.m. performance by comedian Hasan Minhaj at the David A. Straz Center.

Entrances and exits

The weekend brings new productions from two theaters – one in St. Petersburg, the other across the bay in Tampa. Over here, American Stage unveils bay area playwright Natalie Symons’ dark comedy The People Downstairs (it’s the company’s first live, in-theater show in 18 months, and you can read all about it here).

And the Tampa Repertory Theatre, working out the Ybor City campus of Hillsborough Community College, has the one-woman drama Open (read here), paired with another one-act, Every Brilliant Thing (read about an earlier production here). All pertinent details on the double bill can be found here.

It’s the final weekend for the cutting drama Rasheeda Speaking at Studio Grand Central in St. Pete, and for Shout! The Mod Musical, the all-woman jukebox musical celebrating female pop singers, at the Jaeb Theatre inside Tampa’s Straz Center for the Performing Arts. Also in its final days is the drama Wednesday’s Child, from LAB Theater Project in Ybor.

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