If getting your country Christmas fix from the Band Perry concert conflicted with the Christmas parades last week, you’ve got another chance next Saturday. Fort Pierce’s Sunrise Theatre hosts the first-ever Trace Adkins Christmas Show Tour, featuring Christian music artist Jason Crabb.
Adkins, a lifelong member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans who sang at the Republican Convention in Tampa two years ago, won a campaign of his own – on NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice.” Described as a “reverent, family-friendly show,” with “fire-side story-telling,” it may tap into Adkins’ acting talents to sound upbeat. He’s had a hellish year, getting into a fight with an Adkins impersonator on a cruise ship in February, bailing out of rehab to deal with the death of his father, then having his wife file for divorce in March.
Lord have mercy. The show starts at 8 p.m. Dec. 20. Tickets are $75 and $69. Go to www.sunrisetheatre.com, or call the box office at 772-461-4775.
If you were hoping for a healthy dose of blasphemy to offset the schmaltz of the holidays, forget about it! You’re too late!! Or so comedian Lewis Black might scold with his signature wrath. His performance, as well as the entire irreverent run of “The Book of Mormon” next week are sold out at the Kravis Center.
Then again, for the gamblers among us, Kravis management says there will be a lottery drawing at each performance for a few seats. “Mormon” runs Dec. 16 through Dec. 21, if you’re shopping at City Place and want to test your luck – or the power of prayer.
Other holiday shows at Kravis include George Balanchine’s “The Nutcracker,” performed by the Miami City Ballet Dec. 27 through Dec. 30; “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” a musical based on the animated film, Tuesday Dec. 23 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., with tickets starting at $20.
In Orlando, some big names in the alt-country/indie/folk genres are coming to a venue that may get lost amidst the big name venues like Hard Rock Café and House of Blues. Plaza Live, the third largest venue in Orlando, was purchased last year by the Orlando Philharmonic for a rehearsal hall, and performances are on the schedule this season. While the orchestra undertakes an extensive renovation, the venue continues to bring top-ranked music, comedy and theatrical acts at reasonable ticket prices. The converted 1960s movie theater is in Colonial Plaza, just south of Winter Park.
Among the greats coming to play: January 16, the extraordinary alternative country and blues singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams is giving a rare performance at Plaza Live, on tour to promote her latest album, “Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone,” which many are calling her best ever (and this writer agrees). It includes a collaboration with her father, the poet Miller Williams, who read at Bill Clinton’s inauguration. For more on Lucinda, google Bill Buford’s many-thousand word profile of her in 2000 for the New Yorker magazine.
Also at Plaza Live, on Jan. 24, another female alt-country/blues legend, Iris Dement, performs. She too has a new album, ”Sing the Delta,” her first in 16 years.
Rock and roll hall of famer Leon Russell plays Jan. 29; now 72, his 2011 album, “The Union,” recorded with Elton John, placed third on Rolling Stone’s list of 30 best albums that year.
In a different vein but with a shared audience, Grammy-award winning banjo great Béla Fleck and his wife Abigail Washburn who plays clawhammer banjo and sings, perform together March 6.
Winter Park’s Morse Museum of American Art, known for an extensive collection of Tiffany glass, is worth working into the trip. For directions and a full schedule of shows, go to www.plazaliveorlando.com, or call 407-228-1220.
It’s rare that electronic music has its day in our area. One of the genre’s more approachable forms is going to fill an other-worldly venue Saturday: the Hallstrom Plantarium at Indian River State College’s main campus in Fort Pierce. The performer, Jonn Serrie, is a world-class composer of the genre of ambient electronica known as space music. He’s recorded 18 albums, and sold half a million copies. His music has been used as film scores and as calming therapy for children on the autism spectrum and patients in hospice care. He’s worked with David Carradine on a tai-chi video.
Serrie may be best known for his musical accompaniment to planetarium shows. “The musical journey I try to create would be as if we were in a starship together crossing the universe with the music as a backdrop for our exploration,” he explained in a profile for Stars Ends Radio, an online space music station.
It was in that context that the college’s planetarium director Jon Bell met Serrie at a conference in 1979. “Jonn was doing a lot of work with the Charles Hayden Planetarium in Boston, and he had given a talk on how music can take the place of narration in a show,” Bell recalls. “When you travel through nebula you should have a sound track that would make you feel you were doing that.”
Serrie, who lives in Atlanta, is making the journey south with a half-dozen keyboards, setting up to play live in matinee and evening performances.
“It will be a sensation,” says Jon Bell, the college’s planetarium director, who choreographed a light show to accompany Serrie’s music. “And the special effects are, pardon the pun, heavenly.”
Four prior concerts have been sell-outs – the planetarium seats 75. So popular is Serrie among space music fans that they travel to see him play. “I’m accustomed to seeing some of his followers walk in,” says Bell.
Performances are Dec. 13 at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tickets are $12. Also playing this weekend at the planetarium: “Star of Wonder,” an astronomer’s look at how a star may have led the Magi to Bethlehem 2000 years ago. Those shows are Friday at 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $3. IRSC is at 3209 Virginia Ave., Fort Pierce. Bring a sweater – they keep it cold out there in space.
For a look at the universe of the pioneering Vero family for which the Hallstrom Planetarium was named, stop in at the Hallstrom House Saturday on south Old Dixie Highway for a celebration of St. Lucia, the Swedish yuletide tradition. Built in 1919 by Swedish horticulturalist Axel Hallstrom, who ten years earlier planted 40 acres of pineapples at the site, the house is decked out for the holidays and will be open from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. The event is staged by the Vero Beach Historical Society and admission is a can of food for the food bank. The Hallstrom house is at 1723 Old Dixie Highway SW.