Weekend forecast: Palladium jazz; the high price of fame • St Pete Catalyst

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Friday’s night’s event at the Palladium Theater is an outreach concert from the Clearwater Jazz Holiday, which will celebrate its 45th anniversary in October.

The Palladium show (in Hough Hall, the big room) features Miami-based, timbale-playing Latin jazz bandleader Tito Puente Jr. (son of you-know-who), Brazilian guitarist Diego Figueiredo and Grammy-winning flautist Jose Valentino.

This exceptional bill also includes bay area jazz singer Fred Johnson, singer, composer and musician Ona K, and the fearless, peerless trio La Lucha.

The Sokolowski Trombone Project has a “pre-show” performance at the Side Door downstairs.

Find info and tickets for “Jazz & the World” here.

The high price of fame

The idea of celebrities as commodities is in full bloom at this weekend’s Tampa Bay Comic Convention.

Taking place Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Tampa Convention Center, it’s a celebration of pop culture and includes panel discussions, a merch marketplace, artists and authors, cosplay, contests and all the sort of fan-mania stuff that goes along with comic books, anime, superhero and fantasy movies.

For $300, you can have you photo taken with Billy Dee Williams, from the Star Wars movies. Elijah Wood from The Lord of the Rings will set you back $100. Having your photo taken alongside Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel in the original Little Mermaid, costs $90, while former child star Miko Hughes (Full House) is bargain-priced at $50.

This, mind you, is in addition to festival tickets.

You’re admonished not to speak to the celebrities (“Photo ops are quick,” the website says, “and should not be considered a meet-and-greet”), and you can’t use your own camera. You go in, an employee takes the photo, you go out. They give you a print and send a link to your photo.

Autographs come with a price tag, too. To get a signature from Star Wars veteran Hayden Christiansen, you’ll need to plunk down between $175 and $275.

From the website: “Celebrity Autographs are sold only on-site in Celebrity Row and are Cash Only.”

The list also includes Denise Crosby and John DeLancie (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Mary McDonnell and Edward James Olmos (Battlestar Galactica), actress Priscilla Presley, singer/songwriter Paul Williams, Andy Serkis (he’s motion-capture Gollum in The Lord of the Rings), Robert Patrick (Terminator 2: Judgement Day), John Schneider (The Dukes of Hazzard) and Vincent D’Onofrio (Law & Order: Criminal Intent).

Answers to all questions, along with ticket purchases, are on the Convention website.

In freeFall Theatre’s “Fable”: Heather Baird, left, Liz Power and Melissa Minyard. Image: Thee Photo Ninja.

On theater stages

It’s a big weekend for Tampa’s ThinkTank Theatre: The 2024 TYA (Theatre for Young Audiences) Play Festival spotlights a production of Dan Caffey’s The Amphibians, a coming-of-age story recommended for ages 13 and up. Performances are tonight (preview), Saturday and Sunday at JCC on the Cohn Campus, 13009 Community Campus Drive, Tampa.

Saturday’s staged readings are The House of Flightless Birds (by Baylee Shlichtman), In Bloom (by Gwyneth Strope) and A Kreutzer Sonata (by Larry Rinkel).

All performance details are here.

The spellbinding Thrice To Mine, an historically-based one-woman show written by and starring Roxanne Fay, is entering its final weekend as a Jobsite Theater production, in the Straz Center’s Shimberg Playhouse. Find tickets here; check out our Arts Alive! podcast with Fay here.

Fable is onstage through Sept. 8 at freeFall Theatre. It’s a sort of “backstage Broadway” story, as Gypsy Rose Lee, Ethel Merman, Jerome Robbins and Lee’s sister June Havoc thrust and parry over how to construct the 1959 musical Gypsy, with a little help from ghosts real and imagined. Find tickets here.

We don’t include tribute bands or tribute shows in this column, but it’s different when the “tribute” is conceptual (no costumes and no pretending to “be” the artist). Such is Saturday’s Watkins Glen Summer Jam at the Tampa Theatre, in which three area bands give a loose salute to the legendary 1973 rock festival in New York. Have Gun Will Travel plays the music of The Band, Steeln’ Peaches does a set of Allman Brothers Band tunes, and Unlimited Devotion takes on the Grateful Dead’s music. Find tickets here.

Comic magician Michael Carbonaro is back in town tonight, this time at the Seminole Hard Rock Event Center. Tickets.

Country music’s Dan + Shay play the Mid-Florida Credit Union Amphitheatre Friday, with opening sets by Jake Owens (of Vero Beach, Florida) and Dylan Marlowe. Tickets.

Writer, actor and standup comic Michael Ian Black (Wet Hot American Summer; Stella) performs a comedy set at Coastal Creative in St. Petersburg Friday and Saturday. Find info and tickets here.

Saturday night’s Mahaffey Theater performance by 17-year-old rapper That Girl Lay Lay has been canceled.

Bay area-born rapper Rod Wave throws his second consecutive “And Friends” birthday bash at Amalie Arena Saturday. Tickets.

Up-and-coming blues guitar star Selwyn Birchwood, another bay area native, is back onstage at his home base – the Palladium Theater’s Hough Hall – Saturday. Tickets.

Saturday brings the band Thirty Seconds to Mars to the Mid-Florida Credit Union Amphitheatre. The California outfit includes brothers Jared Leto (the actor) and Shannon Leto. Openers are AFI, Poppy and Kenny Hoopla. Tickets.

Singer/songwriter John Legend performs a solo concert Sunday at the Seminole Hard Rock Event Center. It’s called “A Night of Songs and Stories.” Tickets.

Troubled Jamaica-born reggae star Buju Banton is onstage, with Frydayy, Sunday at Amalie Arena. Tickets.

Your weekend arts forecast appears every Thursday in the Catalyst.

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