MAX WEINBERG
Here is a roundup of arts events taking place around New Jersey, through Jan. 25.
MUSIC
• Max Weinberg’s Jukebox — featuring the E Street Band drummer with members of The Weeklings plus keyboardist Dave Biglin — will headline the main concert of the Light of Day WinterFest 2024, Jan. 20 at 6:30 p.m. at The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank.
The group, which was founded in 2017, plays classic rock covers — songs originally recorded by The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, The Who and many others — that are requested by audience members.
Other performers will include Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers, Willie Nile, Low Cut Connie, Dramarama, Remember Jones, Fantastic Cat, Williams Honor, Joe D’Urso & Stone Caravan, James Maddock, Lisa Bouchelle, Joe P, Adam Ezra, Amanda Cross with Derek Cruz, Miss Emily, and Jake Thistle. Click HERE to see the set times.
Many other WinterFest shows are scheduled through Jan. 28 in various cities, through most of the activity is focused from Jan. 18 to Jan. 21 in Asbury Park. For the complete schedule, visit lightofday.org.
• The Salt Collective — an indie-rock supergroup featuring Stéphane Schück and Fred Quentin (Salt), Matthew Caws (Nada Surf), Mitch Easter (Let’s Active), Chris Stamey & Gene Holder (The dB’s), Lynn Blakey (Tres Chicas) and Rob Ladd (The Connells) — will perform at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City, Jan. 20 at 8 p.m., with Sneakers opening.
They will play songs from the 2023 Salt Collective album, Life, which was produced by Stamey and featured Schück, Quentin, Caws, Easter, Holder, Juliana Hatfield, Matthew Sweet, Richard Lloyd (Television), Anton Barbeau, Peter Holsapple and Will Rigby (The dB’s), Susan Cowsill (The Cowsills), Pat Sansone (Wilco) and Faith Jones.
You can watch a video for The Salt Collective’s “Another Bus Coming,” featuring Caws, below.
PETER SCHAAF
ROB KAPILOW
• Rob Kapilow has composed an ambitious new choral-orchestral work about immigration, “We Came to America,” and will conduct the New Jersey Symphony in it in concerts at NJPAC in Newark, Jan. 20 at 8 p.m., and the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, Jan. 21 at 3 p.m. Joining the orchestra will be an intergenerational choir of singers from JCC Young People’s Chorus @ Thurnauer, Young People’s Chorus of New York City, and Ember Choral Arts.
For an NJArts.net interview with Kapilow about this piece, click HERE.
New Jersey Symphony music director Xian Zhang will conduct the remainder of the program, which includes music written by Leonard Bernstein for “West Side Story” and “On the Town,” and William Grant Still’s “Darker America.” She also will lead the symphony in a shorter concert at NJPAC, Jan. 18 at 1:30 p.m., that will feature the Bernstein and Still pieces along with Daniel Bernard Roumain’s “i am a white person who __ Black people.”
Reverie Road (from left, John Williams, Katie Grennan, Winifred Horan and Utsav Lal).
• Reverie Road, featuring two co-founders of the traditional Irish band Solas (fiddler Winifred Horan and accordionist John Williams) along with fiddler Katie Grennan of Gaelic Storm, and pianist Ustav Lal, will perform at the Sitnik Theatre at the Lackland Performing Arts Center in Hackettstown, Jan. 20 at 8 p.m., as part of the Centenary Stage Company‘s Winter Thaw Music Festival. The group’s self-titled debut album, which will be released on March 1, will feature traditional Irish, French, Breton, and Shetland tunes, as well as original compositions by Horan and Grennan.
THEATER
• Songs written by the late Jimmy Buffett — including “Margaritaville,” “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” “Why Don’t We Get Drunk” and “Come Monday” — can be heard in the jukebox musical “Escape to Margaritaville,” which will be presented by The Road Company at The Grand Theatre in Williamstown (Gloucester County), Jan. 25-28 and Feb. 1-4 and 8-10 The musical, which has been presented on Broadway and elsewhere since 2017, is about a fun-loving musician who falls in love; Buffett wrote a new song for it, “Three Chords,” in addition to allowing his older songs to be used.
FILM
• This year’s West Orange Classic Film Festival begins Jan. 21 at 2 p.m. at the AMC Dine-In Essex Green 9m with the 1974 neo-noir masterpiece “Chinatown,” directed by Roman Polanski and co-starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. NJArts.net film critic Stephen Whitty will introduce the film and talk about it in a Q&A session, afterwards.
Whitty will do the same at the festival’s screening of “The Conversation,” Feb. 18. Other films in the series, which will feature discussions by different film experts, will include “In the Heat of the Night,” Jan. 28; “Laurel & Hardy at Work,” Feb. 4; “The Quiet Man,” Feb. 25; and “The In-Laws,” March 3.
Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company will present its “Red Firecrackers” program at The Grunin Center in Toms River, Jan. 21.
DANCE/FAMILY
• Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company will present a family show, titled “Red Firecrackers” and telling the story of the origin of the Chinese Lunar New Year, Jan. 21 at 1 p.m. at The Grunin Center for the Arts at Ocean County College in Toms River. The show is appropriate for ages 6 to 15.
VISUAL ARTS
• This year marks to 100th anniversary of the birth of sculptor and painter George Segal, and The Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick will honor the occasion with an exhibit, “George Segal: Themes and Variations,” that will open on Jan. 24 and run through July 31. More than 60 works, including some that have rarely been exhibited, will be included.
Segal lived in South Brunswick for most of his life.
“This exhibition explores George Segal’s significance in art history, guiding his generation from abstraction back to realism,” said Zimmerli director Maura Reilly in a press release. “It also reinforces the significant role that Rutgers — where he received his M.F.A. — and New Jersey played in the art world during the second half of the 20th century.”
Common’s new book, “And Then We Rise: A Guide to Loving and Taking Care of Self.”
WORDS
• Rapper, actor, activist and author Common will discuss his new book “And Then We Rise: A Guide to Loving and Taking Care of Self,” and sign copies of it, Jan. 25 at 7 p.m. at Symphony Hall in Newark. The book will be released on Jan. 23.
• Ali Stroker — the singer and actress who won a Tony in 2019 in the Featured Actress category, for playing Ado Annie in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” — will sign copies of her children’s book, “Cut Loose!,” Jan. 21 at 3 p.m. at the Bookends bookstore in Ridgewood. Her co-author Stacy Davidowitz will also appear.
The book is described on the Bookends website as “an uplifting story about embracing your strengths, standing out, and standing up for what you believe in.”
REVIEWS
“From Flame to Flower: The Art of Paul J. Stankard” at Morris Museum, Morris Township. (Through Feb. 4)
“Elana Herzog: Ripped, Tangled, and Frayed” at The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit. (Through Feb. 4)
“Night Forms” at Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton. (Through April 7)
“George Inness: Visionary Landscapes” at Montclair Art Museum. (Through June 30)
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