Your weekend arts forecast: Sting with ‘My Songs’ and your songs
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Sting’s May 10 concert at the Met Philadelphia was the fact that the set list did not include “Fields of Gold,” arguably one of the English singer/songwriter’s best-known tender ballads.
Here’s the thing, however. When you have a catalog as rich and deep as the former Gordon Sumner’s, with hits and beloved deep tracks going back more than 40 years, you simply can’t play them all. According to the glowing review in the Daily Local News, the two-hour, 20-song set was packed to the gills with Sting hits, both as a solo artis and from his days as the singer and bassist with the Police, along with material from his latest, The Bridge.
This tour, which Sting calls “My Songs,” stops at the Hard Rock Event Center in Tampa Saturday (tickets are here).
Set lists are often adjusted from night to night. Sting, if you’re reading this, here’s a request for “Fields of Gold.”
At the Hard Rock Event Center tonight: The 1990s grunge-rocking Candlebox. Tickets here.
More shows and concerts
The marvelously expressive jazz singer/songwriter Halie Loren and her band perform tonight at the Palladium, St. Petersburg (tickets).
Tonight at thestudio@620, St. Pete: Brazilian pianist Adolfo Mendonça, with Alejandro Arenas (bass) and Mark Feinman (drums) from La Lucha. The concert will consist of songs written by the bossa nova icon only Antonio Carlos Jobim. Tickets for the 8 p.m. performance are here.
Halsey singms at mid-Florida Credit Union Amphitheatre tonight (tickets), and comedian Bill Burr is there Friday (tickets too). That’s on the eastern side of Tampa.
Actor, comedian (and Elle King’s dad) Rob Schneider is onstage doing standup Friday at the Capitol Theatre, Clearwater (tickets).
Literary folksinger Tom Russell performs Friday at Craftsman House Gallery in St. Pete (read more here).
St. Petersburg Opera Company’s Broadway Cabaret, in which professional opera singers have fun and perform their musical theater favorites, takes place Saturday at Opera Central, on 1st Avenue S. Read all about it here.
Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor joins The Florida Orchestra for Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 Saturday at the Mahaffey Theater (St. Pete) and Sunday at Ruth Eckerd Hall (Clearwater). Also on the program, the penultimate in the TFO season: Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 and Ahmed Al Abaca’s Ode to Liberty. Additional information and tickets here.
Many of the bay area’s top jazz and funk musicians come together Sunday in Ybor City in a benefit show for drummer Pat Close. Check it out here.
Hooray for Bollywood
At the Yuengling Center (Tampa) Friday: A full orchestra of musicians playing music from Bollywood movie legends Laxmikant-Pyarelal, going all the way back to the 1960s, with vocalists including Zeenat Aman, Padmani Kolhapure, Rati Agnihotri and more. For additional information on the production, click here. Concert tickets are here.
On theater stages
Actor and playwright Ronnie Marmo is onstage Saturday at the Straz Center (Tampa)’s Jaeb Theatre with the one-man tour de force I’m Not a Comedian … I’m Lenny Bruce. Read (or watch) our interview here.
Also in the Straz Center, Jobsite Theater continues its production of Bertolt Brecht’s satire The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (read more here).
The Straz’s Broadway-tour series is in full swing with Pretty Woman the Musical on stage in Morsani Hall through Sunday (tickets here).
Anna in the Tropics, the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by Nilo Cruz, is presented this weekend (in English and Spanish productions) by Tampa’s Stageworks Theatre. Get all the details here.
Opening Friday at freeFall Theater (St. Pete) is the paranormal drama A Skeptic and a Bruja, a collaboration with Sarasota’s Urbanite Theatre. We’ll go close-up on this show Friday in the Catalyst.
And one more thing
Yours truly will be among the 18 vendors with unique Florida-centric memorabilia and ephemera for sale at Saturday’s Floridania Fest, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Gulfport Casino. To be specific, I’ll have both of St. Petersburg’s Press’ Vintage St. Pete books (Volume 1 has become a collector’s item) plus some other titles of mine. Read more here.
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