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Music

Hot Ticket: Marcia's musical gumbo

By PHILIP BOOTH and JOHN FLEMING
Published February 2, 2006

Skipper's Smokehouse has long been a great place to check out the New Orleans sound. Post-Katrina, the action has picked up, with a recent appearance by old-school girl group the Dixie Cups, a good-time party with Buckwheat Zydeco last month and a Feb. 11 date with Cajun champs Beausoleil.

But topping the must-see list for many fans is Saturday's show by Marcia Ball. The charismatic singer and keyboardist, raised in Louisiana near her native Texas and based in Austin since 1970, has long been a favorite at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and a huge attraction at nightclubs around town.

Old fans and new converts jam the joints to dance to such rollicking concert staples as Mama's Cooking, That's Enough of That Stuff and Big Shot and hush for her moving version of Randy Newman's Louisiana 1927, particularly relevant these days.

Ball's blues-based roadhouse piano is directly influenced by the rumba-boogie of the Crescent City's Professor Longhair and Dr. John (who played Jannus Landing last week). Her tangy belting owes a lot to veteran Big Easy R&B singer Irma Thomas. For a preview of Saturday's show, check out last year's bracing Live! Down the Road, recorded in 2004 for PBS's Sierra Center Stage series and nominated for a Grammy in the Traditional Blues Album category.

The Skipper's show is a double bill, with Texas singer, songwriter and guitarist Clay McClinton, son of Delbert. The younger McClinton favors a sound not unlike that of his father: twang-edged blues rock.

Ball and McClinton play at 8 Saturday night at Skipper's Smokehouse, 910 Skipper Road, Tampa. Tickets are $20. 813 971-0666 or www.skipperssmokehouse.com

- PHILIP BOOTH, Times correspondent

The first St. Petersburg Chamber Music Festival continues with concerts and other events through the weekend. Today, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Norman Dello Joio is in the spotlight, with a master class on him by Vernon Taranto Jr. at 3:30 p.m.; then, at 7:30 p.m., Taranto is conducting an all-Dello Joio program of choral works and chamber music, both at St. Petersburg College, 6605 Fifth Ave. N, St. Petersburg. The master class is at HS 117, the concert at the Music Center.

Friday's program, the centerpiece of the festival, has the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center giving an all-Mozart program: Trio for violin, cello and piano; Sonata for piano, four hands; and Quartet for violin, viola, cello and piano. Among the players will be pianist Wu Han, pictured here, co-artistic director, with her husband, cellist David Finckel of the Emerson String Quartet, of the Chamber Music Society. The concert is at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Palladium Theater, 253 Fifth Ave. N, St. Petersburg. $18-$24. Han and violinist Ani Kavafian will hold a master class Saturday morning at 10 at the Palladium. $8.

Sunday, the festival winds up with flutist Gary Schocker and guitarist Jason Vieaux playing works of Vivaldi, Albeniz, Ibert and Schocker, among others, at 2 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts, 255 Beach Drive, St. Petersburg. $8, $15. For information and tickets: 727 822-3590; www.mypalladium.org

- JOHN FLEMING, Times performing arts critic

Inna Dukach and Israel Lozano are Mimi and Rodolfo in Puccini's La Boheme, which opens the Sarasota Opera season Saturday night and then has a dozen more performances through March 25. Artistic director Victor DeRenzi is conducting La Boheme. The company will celebrate Mozart's 250th birthday with The Marriage of Figaro opening Feb. 11. Also on the agenda: the Verdi rarity I masnadieri (Feb. 25) and Johann Strauss Jr.'s operetta Die Fledermaus (March 4). $19-$99. (941) 366-8450; www.sarasotaopera.org

- JOHN FLEMING, Times performing arts critic

[Last modified February 1, 2006, 09:05:07]