Songwriting legend Bacharach opens Gallo Center season; two more big shows also set

Call it a soft opening.

While great performers already have taken to the stages at the Gallo Center for the Arts since late summer as part of its new 2018-19 seasons, things aren’t really official until Saturday.

That’s when Burt Bacharach, one of America’s greatest living songwriters, takes to the Mary Stuart Rogers stage as the official season opener.

Bacharach is one of three major artists coming this week to the Gallo Center, followed by return appearances by Boz Scaggs and Kenny G. More on those two artists later.

First, it’s Bacharach who will take the spotlight at the downtown arts center. The lauded songwriter and pianist turned 90 in May and shows no signs of retiring. At work on several new musicals, he spent July touring Europe and performs a series of West Coast dates this month.

The Gallo Center show will feature his numerous signature songs along with a group of singers who are veterans on tour with Bacharach: Donna Taylor, John Pagano and Josie James, with the songwriter adding his own voice, as well. But perhaps most enticing, he’ll offer his own personal stories of his illustrious career while working with top-tier singers, and how he created his 48 Top 10 hits and nine No. 1 songs.

Bacharach’s many well-known songs include “Alfie,” “Arthur’s Theme,” “Close To You,” “Do You Know The Way To San Jose?,” “I Say A Little Prayer,” “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again,” “This Guy’s In Love With You,” “Walk On By,” “What The World Needs Now Is Love,” and “Wishin’ And Hopin’.”

His songs have been recorded by singers including Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Linda Ronstadt, Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin.

Bacharach opens the Gallo Center season at 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 22. Tickets are $79-$139.

Boz Scaggs

A return appearance to the Gallo Center on Sunday for Scaggs already has sold out. Scaggs has roamed between genres over the course of his career, from rock to blue-eyed soul to blues and a little jazz. In the 1970s and ‘80s, he charted Billboard Top 20 hits with “Lowdown,” “Lido Shuffle,” “Breakdown Dead Ahead,” “Look What You’ve Done to Me” and more.

The singer-songwriter cut his teeth in the 1960s playing with the Steve Miller Band, but has been a solo artist for the past five decades. And while he released his self-titled “Boz” in 1965, Scaggs told The Bee in a May 2015 interview — in advance of another Gallo Center appearance — that it had been only recently that he felt he’d truly grown into his own.

“It took me some time to find my footing and to find who I was with my instruments. And that is still developing with me,” he said in that interview. “Within the last 10 years I’ve started using my voice in sort of a jazz realm. I’m singing more traditional kinds of songs. That’s going to be a very important part of the way I continue to develop as an artist. I have found some footing as a writer. I found some footing as an instrumentalist. Particularly with my voice, I developed a style that is my own. That’s the big difference for me in the past 50 years.”

Kenny G

Born Kenneth Bruce Gorelick, Kenny G will bring his signature sound to Gallo Center for the Arts in concert Thursday.

The saxophonist released his self-titled debut album in 1982 and, over the course of his more than 30-year career, has become the biggest-selling contemporary instrumental musician, with global sales topping 75 million.

Seven of his Grammy-nominated singles have charted on the Billboard Top 40.

To keep his skills sharp, Kenny G still practices about three hours a day, he told The Bee in an April 2016 interview, before another Gallo Center show. He said he is driven by the desire to be “great at something.”

“It’s really fun when you’re really good at something. If you practice, it maintains you at that level, and that’s what I’m after,” he said in the interview.

The Seattle native has been playing the same saxophone since high school, where he started his musical career. He has had a long career collaborating with other great performers, from Whitney Houston to Michael Bolton and Katy Perry. Yet he has continued to resist the urge to break from his instrumentalist roots. While he has recorded songs with lyrics and collaborated with singers, he has never felt pressure to put more vocals in his music.

“There was no motivation for me to do vocals because I’m not a singer,” he said in the 2016 interview. “I was doing really successfully as a saxophone player. There were a few vocal songs here and there on recordings, but that just makes an album sound good to me — variety. I never minded a couple of vocal songs if they were the right ones with the right vocalist.”

He’s also embraced a self-deprecating sense of humor, whether on his Twitter account or appearing with fellow easy listening star Michael Bolton in his “Big, Sexy Valentine’s Day Special” on Netflix with Andy Samberg.

Kenny G’s Gallo Center show is at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 27. Tickets — $49-$99 — were going fast, but were still available at press time.

For more on all the shows, see www.galloarts.org.