Sara Bareilles.Pop music: Fresh off her third Grammy nomination, announced Wednesday in Los Angeles, Sara Bareilles plays Boca Raton’s Mizner Park on Saturday night on a bill with Michael Franti and Spearhead, the always barefoot social-justice singer’s dub-ska outfit. The two acts are playing as part of WRMF-97.9 FM’s annual No Sno Ball at Mizner’s Count de Hoernle Amphitheatre. Bareilles is touring in support of her latest disc, Kaleidoscope, which yielded the nominated single King of Anything, and Franti has become much more visible as a peace activist and bard of catchy tunes such as Say Hey (I Love You). Tickets for the 7 p.m. show go for $52.50 through Ticketmaster.
Meanwhile at the Cruzan Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, it’s WPBZ-103.1 FM’s 15th annual Buzz Bake Sale, which by South Florida standards makes this annual all-day alt-rock fest an institution. Among the bands on the lineup Saturday are the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Pepper, Switchfoot, Finger 11, Sick Puppies and Chevelle. The music starts around 10 a.m., and the tickets cost $48.10 all told, through Ticketmaster/Live Nation.
Head of St. John the Baptist (late 15th century, English), anonymous.
Art: Opening Saturday at the Society of the Four Arts on Palm Beach is Object of Devotion, a show featuring 60 alabaster sculptures and panels from 15th- and 16th-century England. These works, from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, show the depth of religious feeling in working-class and aristocratic society; these pieces, which show things such as the martyrdom of St. Edmund and the head of John the Baptist, were created for use in churches and castles, and also for contemplative hours in ordinary homes.
As always with anonymous art of this kind, the viewer is astonished by the exceptional detail and craftsmanship exhibited by artisans whose names have been lost to history. The exhibit runs through Jan. 16 in the Four Arts’ lovely little O’Keeffe Gallery, which packs in a lot of art for just $5 a ticket. Call 655-7226 for more information or visit www.fourarts.org.
Eliot Spitzer in Client 9.Film: The deal of the weekend is unquestionably the grand opening of Living Room Theaters, on the campus of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. All movies this weekend at the four plush, 50-seat screening rooms are at an introductory discount price of only $2. Typical of the complex’s independent film fare is Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Alex Gibney’s exhaustive look at the crusading attorney general and his downfall due to his compulsive, hubristic taste in high-ticket call girls – uh, I mean escorts. Sex drives the story, but the political machinations and the efforts of his enemies to bring Spitzer down from his perch as governor proves just as interesting.
Carrie Santanna and Adam Simpson in Hate Mail.
Theater: Also debuting this weekend is a new professional theater company, the Boca Raton Theatre Guild. Well, it is not entirely new, but this 20-year-old community theater is raising the bar and going pro, giving them access to better actors and directors and, they hope, a larger audience. The troupe unveils its new status with a comedy, Bill Corbett and Kira Obolensky’s Hate Mail, about the stormy relationship between a wealthy Midwesterner and an arty, angst-ridden souvenir shop clerk, which begins when he writes her demanding a refund for the faulty snow globe she sold him. Squint and you can see a tongue-in-cheek take-off of A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters. Adam Simpson, chair of the drama department at Lynn University co-stars with his wife, Carrie Santanna, an assistant professor at Lynn. At the Willow Theatre in Boca’s Sugar Sand Park through Dec. 12. Call (561) 948-2601 for tickets.
Violinist Tomas Cotik.
Classical music: The Delray Beach String Quartet has been playing the Colony Hotel in Delray since its inception seven years ago, and last year it expanded its reach into Broward and Miami-Dade counties. Tonight, the quartet opens its new season with a concert at All Saints Episcopal in Fort Lauderdale, where it will play regularly, as it did last year. The group also plays St. Stephen’s Episcopal in Coconut Grove as well as back home at the Colony, where it will perform Sunday afternoon.
The Delray has made another switch at second violin, replacing Megan McClendon with Tomas Cotik, an Argentina-born violinist who is now teaching at the University of Miami. On the program: The Bird Quartet of Haydn (in C, Op. 33, No. 3), the Second Quartet (in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2) of Brahms, and the Fourth Quartet of American composer Kenneth Fuchs. He’ll be on hand tonight in Fort Lauderdale and on Sunday afternoon in Delray Beach to talk about his piece. Tickets are $20 for the Lauderdale and Coconut Grove (Dec. 12) performances; it’s $35 for the home crowd in Delray. Call 213-4138 or visit www.delraystringquartet.com.
Philippe Entremont.The Boca Raton Symphonia opens its new season Sunday afternoon at the Roberts Theater on the campus of St. Andrew’s School with its new music director, Philippe Entremont. The 76-year-old Frenchman is one of the finest pianists of his generation, and an expert conductor, too. He’ll solo in the Mozart Concerto No. 20 (in D minor, K. 466) and conduct the Beethoven Fourth Symphony (in B-flat, Op. 60) on a program that also includes the five-part character suite Souvenirs, written for him by Palm Beach County-reared composer Richard Danielpour. Both Danielpour and Entremont will be interviewed before the concert by the veteran broadcaster Martin Bookspan, who has a home in Aventura, and has agreed to lead pre-concert talks before each Boca Symphonia concert this year. Bookspan starts the interviews at 1:45 p.m., and the concert begins at 3 p.m. after a half-hour pause. Tickets are $28.50-$53; call 376-3848 or visit www.bocasymphonia.org.
Pianist Seba Ali.Also, the Lynn Philharmonia presents two concerts of student concerto winners this weekend at its Wold Performing Arts Center. This year, the winners are pianists Seba Ali and Valeriya Polunina, violinist Zhen-Yang Yu, and clarinetist Ciprian Stancioi. At 7:30 p.m. Saturday, conductor Jon Robertson and the Lynn will accompany Ali in the Ravel Piano Concerto and Polunina in the Rachmaninov Concerto No. 2 (in C minor, Op. 18). On Sunday at 4 p.m., Stancioi solos in the Weber Concerto No. 2 (in E-flat), and Yu performs the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 (in A minor, Op. 77). Tickets range from $35-$50. Call 237-9000 or visit www.lynn.edu/tickets.