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Hot Tickets: Cuban chemistry

By JOHN FLEMING and SEAN DALY
Published October 6, 2005

Ernesto Lecuona is famous for writing lightweight popular songs such as Malaguena, but he was one of Cuba's most prolific composers in many genres, from lyrical waltzes to Afro-Cuban jazz.

Lecuona, who died in 1963, has a champion in Thomas Tirino, a North American who has recorded all the piano works. The Lecuona-Tirino chemistry will be on display in a concert by the pianist and the Symphony of the Americas at 4 p.m. Sunday in Ferguson Hall of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Tirino will be the soloist in two Lecuona works for piano and orchestra, the Rapsodia Argentina and Rapsodia Negra. James Brooks-Bruzzese leads the Fort Lauderdale-based orchestra in other Latin-themed repertoire, including Gershwin's Cuban Overture and Bizet's L'Arlesienne Suite No. 2. $22.50-$45.50. 813 229-7827 or toll-free 1-800-955-1045; www.tbpac.org

- JOHN FLEMING, Times performing arts critic

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11 is the centerpiece of the Florida Orchestra's season-opening masterworks program this weekend. Music director Stefan Sanderling will be on the podium, and the political character of the work plays to his strengths as an interpreter. Though dedicated to the memory of 1905 in pre-Revolutionary Russia, when troops of the czar fired on an unarmed crowd in front of the Winter Palace of St. Petersburg, it was composed in 1957, shortly after the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Listeners have been debating the meaning of Shostakovich's symphony ever since: Is it a celebration of the Communist party line or a cry of protest?

More Russian music fills out the bill. Stravinsky's Fireworks raises the curtain, and then Jon Kimura Parker is the soloist in Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3. Sanderling is expected to conduct while seated on a stool, because of fractures in both feet that resulted from a fall.

Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Pasadena Community Church, the orchestra's temporary venue in St. Petersburg until the renovated Mahaffey Theater opens; 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater; and 7:30 p.m. Monday at Morsani Hall of Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Tampa. $15.50-$50.50. Call 813 286-2403 or toll-free 1-800-662-7286; www.floridaorchestra.org

- JOHN FLEMING, Times performing arts critic

Mayor Kanye West. No, no, no: Senator Kanye West. Wait, hold on, what about President Kanye West?

Chicago's favorite hip-hop son likes to brag that there's not a job he can't do. It's a heck of a boast, but who's to call his bluff?

West has produced smash hits for acts as varied as MC Jay-Z and soulster John Legend. He has strutted in front of the microphone and released two spectacular albums: 2004's Grammy-winning College Dropout (part of which was rapped post-car crash with his jaw wired shut) and this year's Late Registration, which has gone platinum in a fortnight. He's the rap world's most arrogant practitioner (no small feat there); he's also its most self-effacing (again, impressive). Heck, he even put a song about religion on mainstream radio and made the gospel thunder of Jesus Walks a No. 1 hit.

But when West uttered, "George Bush doesn't care about black people" on NBC's Hurricane Katrina telethon, he set himself up for his biggest job yet: voice of a generation. West acknowledged that the fallout from his political slap has been intense, but something tells me his is a mouth that just won't stay shut. He loves the spotlight too much. Plus, as well as headlining his own tour, which comes to Tampa Wednesday, West will also open a few fall dates for U2. Do you really think that invitation was only about mutual musical admiration? No way. You just know fellow rabble-rouser Bono, no stranger to activist grandstanding, will encourage West's political uprising. 'Ye in '08? Hey, a religious man from the Midwest sounds like a solid candidate to me.

West raises a ruckus with Common and Fantasia at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the USF Sun Dome, 4202 E Fowler Ave., Tampa. $39.50. (813) 287-8844 or (727) 898-2100 or (813) 974-3002.

- SEAN DALY, Times pop music critic

[Last modified October 5, 2005, 10:24:08]