Assorted ramblings from the world of entertainment:

• One of my favorite live performances last year was seeing Annie Clark at Stage AE.

The singer and guitarist better known as St. Vincent brought a very different show to Pittsburgh this week.

St. Vincent, conductor Jules Buckley and her band were joined by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for a concert Tuesday at Heinz Hall. It was the first stop on a 16-city orchestral tour that will conclude with an Aug. 2 performance at the Hollywood Bowl.

The grandeur of playing with so many musicians (she had more cellists Tuesday than she had band members at Stage AE) seemed to amplify the theatricality that’s always been a part of her persona.

On several songs, she looked like a marionette. She would lean far back from the microphone or contort herself into different angular poses only to snap back into an upright position as if being pulled by a puppeteer’s strings.

Tuesday’s set was a slightly abbreviated version of the orchestral concert she performed last year at London’s Royal Albert Hall. That show was released digitally to streaming services in March, and “Live in London!” will be released July 10 as a 2-LP set.

The 17 songs included multiple tracks from more recent albums “All Born Screaming” and “MasSeduction,” but it included just as many from earlier releases “Marry Me” and “Actor.”

For me the standout was “Violent Times.” With its powerful brass and swelling strings, it sounded like St. Vincent was auditioning to record a Shirley Bassey-era “James Bond” theme song.

“Marrow,” “Digital Witness,” “Los Ageless” and the encore of “Slow Disco” were other highlights. Buckley also is responsible for the orchestral arrangements of St. Vincent’s songs, and those arrangements had more oomph than orchestral pop shows often do. They added drama and brought out different musical colors in songs I’d heard many times before.

St. Vincent didn’t crowd surf like she did at Stage AE, but during “New York” she left the stage and ran up the aisle, sitting on a lap or two and kissing at least one bald head. That song also might have been the first time many of the orchestra members accompanied a song with multiple utterances of a certain 12-letter profanity.

At one point, someone in the audience yelled out, “Turn up the guitar,” in between songs. It was a gauche thing to do at a symphonic concert, but he wasn’t wrong. St. Vincent is a skilled guitarist, and that instrument was less prominent in the mix Tuesday than it is on the “Live in London!” album.

Of the two concerts, I probably preferred the show last year at Stage AE. But St. Vincent is a constantly experimenting and evolving artist, and this tour might be the only opportunity to experience these songs in this way. It was a great birthday gift from my daughter.

• The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is one of many acts that will be doing free concerts during the Three Rivers Arts Festival, which opens Friday and runs this weekend and June 11 to 14 at Arts Landing, a new four-acre public arts space in downtown Pittsburgh.

The artist market features more than 300 artisans from around the country, and the event includes a variety of public art exhibitions and fine arts performances as well as free shows by nationally touring artists.

This year’s lineup includes Spin Doctors on Friday, The Pharcyde on Saturday, Trousdale on Sunday, Buffalo Rose on June 11, The War and Treaty on June 12, Delfeayo Marsalis & the Uptown Jazz Orchestra on June 13 and Joan Osborne on June 14.

More information is available at traf.trustarts.org.

Andy Gray is the entertainment editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com.