Beth Baker, like many performers, does the occasional benefit performance. But the singer says doing a benefit for the Rogue Gallery & Art Center holds a special place in her heart.
Her father, Charlie, was an artist and served on the Medford gallery's board of directors before his death in 1999. Baker herself is a painter as well as a singer
Baker will perform her third benefit concert for the gallery called "Broadway, Blues and Beyond" at 8 p.m. Friday, April 13, at the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater in Medford, then duck down the alley after the show for a party at the Rogue Gallery with food and drink and a chance for party-goers to win a signed CD.
"I feel like I'm honoring my father by being of service to the Rogue Gallery and Art Center," she says.
Baker's show will range from Broadway show tunes to jazz, blues and ballads. It's becoming an annual tradition for the Medford-based, non-profit art center.
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Baker's career stretched from San Francisco in the 1980s to New York City, where she did a cabaret act for several years, in the 1990s. She moved to the Rogue Valley in 1999 to be with her father during his final illness.
Since then she's recorded two CDs, "I've Got To Sing My Song," in 2002, and "The Other side of Me" in 2005. She opened for the Smothers Brothers and for Burt Bacharach at the Britt Festivals, and sang with the Dixie Fat Cats at the Medford Jazz Jubilee, along with performing benefit concerts.
As a girl growing up in San Jose, Calif., Baker took lessons in painting as well as music, and she still creates murals for clients.
She says people tend to assume that performing artists from New York or California are tops, but it ain't necessarily so. Local performers have to overcome the notion that they're not every bit as exciting as somebody who drops in from New York or LA.
"It has been suggested that I pretend to still spend some time in New York to make myself more 'interesting,' " Baker says.
There won't be any pretending when she takes the stage at the Craterian.
Tickets are $15-$25 for the concert and $25 for the party.


