Alice Stuart leads diverse weekend lineup at The Seasons

If it almost seems like The Seasons Performance Hall's weekend music lineups are intentionally disparate, that's because they are.

One weekend it's New Age, Gypsy jazz and classical; another its klezmer, opera and modern jazz. It's all part of the plan over at The Seasons, where Managing Director Tor Blaisdell emphasizes diversity of genres.

This weekend brings crooning and straight-ahead jazz with vocalist Rebecca Kilgore and Portland band PDXV on Friday, groove-oriented bluesy roots rock with Alice Stuart and the Formerlys on Saturday, and Irish flavored classical singing with The Celtic Tenors on Sunday.

Of the three, perhaps the most interesting is Stuart.

She's 67, she wears Converse sneakers, and she looks like the sort of unassuming person you'd love to have as your neighbor. But get her on stage and, boy, she'll cut your heart out with her guitar. She's got chops, in other words. And if you underestimate her, you'll just be that much more surprised when a song like "I've Got Something For You" knocks you flat.

"I ain't pretty, but I got some style," she sings. "I ain't young no more, but I can still be wild."

Indeed.

Stuart can get away with a line like that -- can, in fact, imbue it with a weary kind of poignance -- because she has the life experience to back it up. She started as a folk singer in the early '60s, and by decade's end had followed the zeitgeist and gone electric.

She played with Frank Zappa and toured with Van Morrison. In 1975, she was featured in Rolling Stone magazine and started drawing favorable comparisons to similar artists like Bonnie Raitt.

Then, by the time the '80s began, she was gone, a refugee from the rock 'n' roll lifestyle.

"I was burning out on it," she says in a phone interview. "I was working at least five nights a week there, and I had a child who was 4, 5 years old that I was raising by myself."

Stuart didn't return to the stage for more than a decade. She credits the break with helping her maintain her sanity and renewing her energy for music. She re-emerged, fresh, in the 1990s and has spent the intervening years touring around the Northwest and rebuilding her almost-forgotten legend.

She's not as well-known as she was in the '70s. Rolling Stone isn't calling. But those who know the Northwest music scene know Stuart and will tell you that her 2007 album, "Freedom," is as good as anything of similar vintage in the roots-country-blues Americana genre.

Like those from her previous albums, the songs on "Freedom" are straightforward but artfully crafted, something she takes pride in.

"Some people will say to me, 'I write four songs a day,'" Stuart says, chuckling. "And I'm like, 'Yeah, it sounds like it.'"

PDXV, a jazz quintet from Portland, is what you think of when you think of jazz: trumpet, saxophone, bass, piano and drums. It's the classic jazz sound, the post-bop '50s style of players like Lee Morgan and Hank Mobley.

"To me, that's what straight-ahead jazz means," trumpet player Dick Titterington says.

Vocalist Rebecca Kilgore will join PDXV for its Seasons performance. Though stylistically dissimilar -- Kilgore specializes in songs from the '30s and '40s -- the acts should make for a compelling evening together, Titterington says.

"She's probable one of the best singers of the American songbook," he says.

The Celtic Tenors will fit right in at The Seasons. Though they're trained in classical singing, the three Irish lads have incorporated American pop into a repertoire that now ranges from Stephen Foster and Bob Dylan to traditional Irish songs and opera.

It's a working formula, apparently; they've sold more than a million albums worldwide.

* Pat Muir can be reached at 509-577-7693 or pmuir@yakimaherald.com.

If you go

WHAT: Three weekend shows: Rebecca Kilgore and PDXV on Friday; Alice Stuart and the Formerlys on Saturday; and The Celtic Tenors on Sunday.

WHERE: The Seasons Performance Hall, 101 N. Naches Ave.

WHEN: All shows are at 7:30 p.m.

TICKETS: $15 for Alice Stuart and the Formerlys, and Rebecca Kilgore and PDXV; $20 for The Celtic Tenors.