Although plenty of young trumpet players idolized the intricate, lightning-quick bebop of Dizzy Gillespie, few got as close to the man as Arturo Sandoval, the Cuban jazz legend who revered Gillespie for his introduction of Afro-Cuban and Latin elements into the jazz repertoire back in the '40s. Sandoval met Dizz in '77 and became one of the elder's protégés, playing concerts with him worldwide. He defected to the States in 1990, Gillespie died in 1993 and Sandoval's star has only continued to shine brighter, with a boatload of major awards cluttering up his trophy case and a tenured position at Florida International University. Sandoval drives over from the east coast for a three-concert series with The Florida Orchestra this week. At a time when jazz is often either slick and soulless or defiant and difficult, Sandoval handily manages to please most comers.
Arturo Sandoval w/The Florida Orchestra, 8 p.m. Fri., Jan. 5 @ Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, Tampa, 8 p.m. Sat., Jan. 6 @ Mahaffey Theater, St. Petersburg and 8 p.m. Mon., Jan. 8 @ Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater, $17-$52. —Cooper Levey-Baker
PRE-LILITH
For some artists, it seems like the stars align at all the wrong times: The big break comes too soon or too late, the record company sits on your album for a decade, your group withers away from internal conflict. Even with all the success she has had, Karla Bonoff is a case in point. She formed the L.A. folk-pop band Bryndle in the late 1960s, playing the famous singer/songwriter-career-making venue the Troubadour. Signed to a major label, the band managed to release only one single. After its dissolution, Bonoff went on to a solid — if unspectacular — career playing pleasant and pretty folk-pop all by her lonesome, and Linda Ronstadt eventually picked up a handful of her songs to record. More recently, Bonoff reunited with Bryndle, which dropped its long-long-long-awaited debut in 1995. Although she now calls herself "semi-retired," Bonoff dips out every now and then for brief tours and proves that the success of the relaxed pop of the Lilith Fair crowd was decades in the making.
Karla Bonoff w/Kenny Edwards/Nina Gerber, 8 p.m. Sat., Jan. 6 @ Largo Cultural Center, Largo, $20-$23. —CLB
BALLIN', SHOT-CALLIN'
In her jumpy hothouse rhythms and swampy piano vamps, you can hear an awful lot of where Marcia Ball is from: the borderland where east Texas and west Louisiana meet. It's not difficult to imagine her boogie-woogie sound cranking in any number of joints in that area. She established herself in Austin in 1970 after an accidental auto-related visit to the town and has recorded an album of fiery blues and country every few years for a couple decades. If it's technical innovation you're after, you're barking up the wrong tree, but a Ball show promises foot-stompin', hootin' and maybe even a little bit o' hollerin'. R&B vet Bettye LaVette opens; see Eric Snider's profile.
Marcia Ball/Bettye LaVette, 8 p.m. Sat., Jan. 6 @ Tampa Theatre, Tampa, $25. —CLB
This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2007.