PATTI LaBELLE
Here is a roundup of arts events taking place around New Jersey, through Feb. 13.
MUSIC
• “I just want to give a public thank you for all the years that people have been on my page with me,” Patti LaBelle has said about her 80/65 Tour, which comes to Prudential Hall at NJPAC in Newark, Feb. 8 at 8 p.m.
The tour, which began last year, celebrates her 80th birthday (which took place in May 2024) and her 65 years in show business — going back to her teenage years in Philadelphia, when she sang as part of the vocal group The Ordettes, which evolved into Patti LaBelle & the Blue Belles and, then, the trio Labelle, who reached their peak of popularity with their No. 1 1974 hit, “Lady Marmalade.”
• Ari Shapiro, the NPR “All Things Considered” co-host and former NPR White House correspondent who also has sung with the group Pink Martini, will present a cabaret show titled “Thank You for Listening: An Evening of Songs & Stories,” Feb. 8 at 7:30 p.m. at The Vogel at The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank.
According to the Basie website, the show “adapts tales from Shapiro’s best-selling memoir, ‘The Best Strangers in the World,’ into an evening of stories and songs about the power of listening to forge connections.”
The Vitamin String Quartet will perform at The Mayo Performing Arts Center, Feb. 13.
• The Vitamin String Quartet, which specializes in reinventing the music of pop and rock acts (and has a received valuable exposure by having its recordings featured on the soundtracks of “Bridgerton” and other TV series and films), will present a show titled “The Music of Taylor Swift, Bridgerton, and Beyond,” Feb. 13 at 7:30 p.m. at The Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown.
According to the venue’s website, the “Beyond” refers to “familiar hits from the likes of Billie Eilish, BTS … The Weeknd and Daft Punk.”
• The Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music at Monmouth University in West Long Branch and The Monmouth University Music and Theatre Arts Department will co-present “A History of Hip Hop Sampling,” a multimedia presentation by journalists John Morrison and Josh Leidy, Feb. 7 at 7 p.m. at the university’s Woods Theatre. The talk will be followed by performances by Monmouth University students and others associated with the student-run Blue Hawk Records label.
There will be no admission charge, but pre-registration is requested; click HERE.
• Dave & the Divas — featuring guitarist-keyboardist David Amlen and singers Julie Dobrow, Meg Beattie Patrick, Iris Schaffer Hall, Stacia Thiel and Cecilē Williams — will perform songs from their new album Freedom at The Outpost in the Burbs at The First Congregational Church in Montclair, Feb. 8 at 8 p.m. The album includes new versions of songs written by Amlen’s late sister, singer-songwriter Jenny Amlen, as well as covers of songs from Elton John’s 1969 album Empty Sky.
Click HERE to read a feature on the album.
The McCarter Theatre Center will present “Noli Timere,” Feb. 7-8.
DANCE
• “Noli Timere,” Latin for “be not afraid,” will be presented, in its world premiere, at The Berlind Theater at The McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, Feb. 7-8 at 7:30 p.m., as well as Feb. 8 at 2 p.m.
This is a collaboration between director-choreographer (and Princeton University professor) Rebecca Lazier and sculptor Janet Echelman and is, according to the theater’s website, a “groundbreaking aerial performance (that) features eight multidisciplinary performers dancing up to 25 feet in the air within a voluminous, custom-designed Echelman net sculpture. Choreographed to an original score by JORANE, this fusion of contemporary dance, avant-garde circus, and sculpture explores the delicate interconnectedness and fragility of our world, offering a profound commentary on navigating our unstable ecosystem through art and advanced engineering.”
WORDS
• Singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash will participate in a discussion on the subject of “Art-making in a Vexed Era,” Feb. 11 at 4:30 p.m. at The Richardson Auditorium on the Princeton University campus. The discussion is free and open to the general public, and also will feature Cash’s husband and musical partner John Leventhal (who has also worked with Shawn Colvin, Elvis Costello, Jackson Browne and many other artists), filmmaker, visual artist and writer RaMell Ross and poet Peter Gizzi, and be moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Princeton professor Paul Muldoon.
The event is being presented by The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Princeton Atelier program, with the Labyrinth Books store co-sponsoring.
Buster Keaton in “Sherlock Jr.”
FILM
• The Silents Synched company, which specializes in showing classic silent films with a soundtrack of contemporary music, will screen Buster Keaton’s 1924 detective comedy “Sherlock Jr.” at The Village at SOPAC in South Orange, Feb. 7-8 and 10-12 at 7 p.m., and Feb. 9 at 5 p.m., with music from R.E.M.’s albums Monster (1994) and New Adventures in Hi-Fi (1996) being played. (watch trailer below)
• The Mahoning Drive-in Theater in Lehighton, Pennsylvania — which has been active since 1948, and still offers “an exclusively retro 35mm film program, which is presented reel-to-reel via original 1940’s Simplex projectors” — has organized a tour, and will present its “Mahoning Drive-In Road Show” at The Union County Performing Arts Center in Rahway, Feb. 8, with a horror-film double feature of “The Fog” (1980) at 7 p.m. and “Phantasm” (1979) at 9 p.m., plus live pre-show organ music, “classic drive-in interstitials and previews,” memorabilia vendors and more.
• As part of its Black History Month series, The Newark Public Library will screen the 2023 documentary “Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes” — about the jazz drummer, composer and activist, who died in 2007 at the age of 83 — Feb. 8 at 1:30 p.m., with a discussion by screenwriter Josslyn Luckett and producer-writer Jamara Wakefield following. (watch trailer below)
REVIEWS
“Here There Are Blueberries” at McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton. (Through Feb. 9)
“Mystic Pizza” at Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn. (Through Feb. 23)
“Morven Revealed: Untold Stories From New Jersey’s Most Historic Home” at Morven Museum & Garden, Princeton. (Through March 2)
“Bony Ramirez: Cattleya” at Newark Museum of Art. (Through March 9)
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