3 concerts with variety of musical appeal

Music lovers have a lot to sing about these next few weeks. Whatever your favorite musical style, you’ll find a terrific performer at a venue nearby.

To start with the youngest: Jazz pianist/composer/boy wonder

Chase Morrin

will be playing Jan. 22 at the Pannikin in Del Mar as part of its Friday night music series, co-sponsored by BookWorks.

At 16, Morrin is a seasoned pro with a fistful of impressive credits, including ASCAP’s Young Jazz Composer Award, Downbeat Magazine’s Student Music Award for Best Performance and the Herb Alpert Emerging Young Artist Scholarship, which he’ll use for college in 2011.

Besides keeping up with his high school requirements, he plays gigs all over the county, performing original compositions and his own arrangements of jazz and Latin standards, often with noted jazzmen several times his age. In his spare time, he teaches piano and drums, manages to record a few CDs with the two bands he’s started, and acts as keyboardist and occasional music director for local theater productions. And last month, he was the pianist for the world premiere of Anthony Davis’ opera “Lilith” at UCSD.

If you think this kid sounds pretty cool, you’re right. Catch the Chase Morrin Trio, including Doug Walker on bass and Fernando Gomez on drums, at the Pannikin, where the music is free and the coffee’s good, too.

For classical music fans, there’s an exceptional evening coming up on Jan. 27 at UCSD’s Conrad Prebys Concert Hall, when harpsichordist

Takae Ohnishi

will appear in concert, in a program featuring famous and less-famous works by French, English, Spanish and German baroque composers, including Bach’s Toccata in D Minor.

Formerly a prize-winning soloist and chamber musician in Japan and principal harpsichordist for the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra and the Boston University Baroque Orchestra, Ohnishi has been teaching at UCSD since 2007, and the Prebys Hall’s fine acoustics show off her flawless technique.

The biggest, juiciest blues singer around is certainly

Candye Kane

, who’ll be making happy hour happier at the Belly Up Tavern with a Valentine’s Day Sweetheart Swing. Then she’ll be off on tour again.

The New Yorker called her last appearance in the Big Apple “a powerful, life-affirming performance,” which is what all her performances are.

Brought up in a defiantly dysfunctional blue-collar family, Candye was a teen mom, a stripper and a supersize cover girl who used her down-and-dirty life experiences to craft her tough-but-tender singer/songwriter persona.

To add to her blues credentials, she recently managed to survive pancreatic cancer, dropping 100 pounds in the process. “The love and collective good feeling from my fans around the world is why I’m still alive,” she said.

On her latest CD, “Superhero,” the title tune lets you know where she’s at: “I’ve always been a fighter/When bad times come around/I’m not gonna take it layin’ down.”

Featured in Candye’s band is her “Superhero” co-producer, 27-year-old guitarrista suprema Laura Chavez. They’ll make you feel like dancing, and falling in love with life and yourself.

Where and When

• Chase Morrin

8 p.m. Jan. 22
Pannikin Cafe, Flower Hill, Del Mar

(858) 481-8007

• Takae Ohnishi

7 p.m. Jan. 27
Prebys Concert Hall, UCSD

(858) 534-3229, https://music.ucsd.edu

• Candye Kane

4 to 7 p.m. Feb. 14
Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros, Solana Beach

(858) 481-8140