Manatee County's Sweet Adelines win again

Bradenton has some of the sweetest Adelines in all of Florida.

Magic of Manatee, the local Sweet Adelines chorus won the Audience Choice Award in the Open Division Show Performance category at the Sweet Adeline Regional Chorus Competition.

It was the MoM's third Audience Choice win in a row at the regional competition, which was held April 16 in Daytona Beach. The competition included 16 choruses from Florida and a few from South Carolina.

The local group's winning performance consisted of three songs: "Renaissance Woman," "Broadway Grandmas" and "Rhythm of Life" from the musical "Sweet Charity."

Magic of Manatee has 31 members and it's looking for more. So if you're a woman and you like singing four-part a capella harmonies, you can go to magicofmanatee.com for more information. If you're more interested in listening to music rather than performing it, you may have a bit of a wait. Magic of Manatee performs at nursing homes and small functions, but its next big public performance isn't until February.

Music honors

The Bradenton-Sarasota has reputation for being rich in the arts, music and culture, so it's kind of surprising to learn that we're one of only three parts of the state that hasn't had an honors band for young music students.

Now we have two. The Sarasota Concert Band has started the Suncoast Honors Band. It will actually be two bands, one for high school students and one for middle school students.

Band students from Sarasota, Manatee, Charlotte, Hardee and DeSoto counties had the opportunity to audition for the two ensembles. The student musicians for this year have already been chosen, and Sarasota Concert Band

officials said they had a lots of interested musicians and ended up with an elite group of student players.

There will be more auditions next year. Each band features more than 50 musicians, so there are lots of opportunities, and since there's an age limit some of the band's current musicians will become ineligible next year. (The Sarasota Concert Band secured a grant that will fund the honors bands for three years, which ensures the project will continue at least that long.)

The high school and middle school versions of the Suncoast Honors Band will perform at a free concert at the Sarasota Opera House from 4-6 p.m. May 8. (That's Mother's Day, in case you're looking for something to do with mom and you don't have any extra money.) The Sarasota Concert Band will open the show.

The featured soloist will be classical saxophonist Jeffrey Thompson, a 12th-grader at Pine View High School, who will perform the "Concerto for Alto Sax" by Alexander Glazanov.

For this concert, the Suncoast Honors Band will perform an all-classical program. Future concerts may include pops and jazz numbers.

You won't need tickets for the Mother's Day concert. You can just show up at the Opera House, at 61 N. Pineapple Ave., Sarasota.

If you want more details about the performance or the honors band, go to sarasotaconcertband.org. Information about next year's auditions will be posted on that site when it's available.

More 'Drowning'

Sarasota's Urbanite Theatre continues to pack houses with its intimate and challenging brand of theater. Its current offering, "The Drowning Girls," has been nearly sold out since before it opened, and now a couple of additional performances have been added, at 8 p.m. May 10 and May 17.

"The Drowning Girls" is an acclaimed 2008 play, rooted in fact, about an English man who married three women -- consecutively, not at the same time -- and drowned each of them in a bathtub for their insurance money. The play's characters are the three victims.

If those two added shows -- both on Tuesdays -- don't fit your schedule, you might still be able to get tickets to one of the shows later in the run. As of this writing, there were still a few tickets left for May 19, 21 and 22, which is when the show closes.

The theater is small, with fewer than 100 seats for most shows, so it's a safe bet that those shows and even the two Tuesday shows will sell out soon. If you want to see "The Drowning Girls," don't wait too long.

Urbanite is at 1487 Second St., Sarasota. Tickets are $20 or $5 for students. Call 941-321-1397 or go to urbanitetheatre.com.

Marty Clear, features writer/columnist, can be reached at 941-708-7919.

Follow twitter.com/martinclear.

This story was originally published April 29, 2016 at 4:52 PM with the headline "Manatee County's Sweet Adelines win again ."