Ralph Fiennes in “Conclave.”
Here is a roundup of arts events taking place around New Jersey, through Oct. 24.
FILM
• The Montclair Film Festival will begin Oct. 18 at 7 p.m., with a screening of “Conclave” at The Wellmont Theater. In this movie — which is based on the novel by Robert Harris and directed by Edward Berger — Ralph Fiennes plays a Cardinal running the secretive, intrigue-filled process of selecting a new Pope after a Pope dies unexpectedly. You can watch the trailer for it below.
A question-and-answer session with Berger will follow the screening, and that will then be followed by an opening night dance party in the theater, with a DJ.
The festival will continue through Oct. 27, with screenings and discussions at The Wellmont, The Clairidge and other Montclair locations, as well as, as the festival’s “signature event,” an “Evening of Conversation” featuring the somewhat odd couple of Jon Bon Jovi and Stephen Colbert, at Prudential Hall at NJPAC in Newark, Oct. 26 at 8 p.m.
• Cary Elwes — who co-starred in the 1987 movie “The Princess Bride” and wrote the 2014 book, “As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride” — will be featured in “The Princess Bride: An Inconceivable Evening with Cary Elwes,” Oct. 19 at 8 p.m. at The State Theatre in New Brunswick. After the movie is shown, Elwes will participate in a conversation about it moderated by journalist Alex Biese.
MUSIC
MALLORY TURNER
Christian McBride & Ursa Major (from left, McBride, Savannah Harris, Nicole Glover, Mike King and Ely Perlman).
• Bassist Christian McBride and his group Ursa Major, singer Dee Dee Bridgewater with pianist Bill Charlap, Keyon Harrold’s Foreverland, Lakecia Benjamin & Phoenix, Nduduzo Makhathini, The Cookers, Brian Betz and The Ocean Avenue Stompers will be among the acts at The Exit Zero Jazz Festival, taking place at Convention Hall at other Cape May locations, mostly from Oct. 25 to 27, though there will also be an opening night concert, Oct. 24 at 7 p.m. at Convention Hall, featuring the band Davina & the Vagabonds. (There will also be a live auction at the Oct. 24 event, with proceeds benefiting the educational initiatives of the Cape May Jazz Festival Foundation.)
Ursa Major, which will perform at Convention Hall Oct. 25 at 9:15 p.m., teams McBride with four younger musicians: saxophonist Nicole Glover, guitarist Ely Perlman, pianist Mike King and drummer Savannah Harris.
• More than 40 indie artists will perform 30-minute live sets on this year’s edition of the South Amboy-based Internet radio station BlowUpRadio.com‘s 17th annual Banding Together benefit for the Spondylitis Association of America.
Performers will include The Successful Failures, Anthony Walker, Sad About Girls, Amanda Brite, The Fisherman & the Sea, Diego Allessandro, Jason Didner, Sonofdov, The Dust-Ups, Colie Brice, Sean Faust, Tony Tedesco and The Mighty Alrighty.
Those donating $10 or more will receive a download of a compilation of songs by Banding Together artists and others.
“When I started doing the Banding Together benefits in 2007 after my wife was diagnosed with Spondylitis, I was amazed at the outpouring of support from musicians that wanted to help,” said BlowUpRadio.com founder Lazlo, in a press release. “Here we are now in our 17th year, and I am still overwhelmed by the positive support of musicians, and people who donate each year to help find a cure for this debilitating disease.”
ROSANNE CASH
• Rosanne Cash released a 30th anniversary edition of her 1993 album The Wheel late last year, and will bring her Reinventing the Wheel Tour — featuring song from it, and stories about it — to The McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, Oct. 18 at 7:30 p.m.; and The Newton Theatre, Oct. 20 at 7 p.m. She will perform with her husband John Leventhal, a multi-instrumentalist who has co-written songs with her and co-produced The Wheel (and has also produced or co-produced all of her albums since then).
Cash has said of the album, “It’s the first record (she and Leventhal) made together, the first songs we wrote together, and we fell in love making the record. It’s kind of dripping with longing and desire — and transformation.”
• The Boonton-based Internet radio station HomeGrownRadioNJ — which bills itself as “Real Music Broadcast Worldwide” — will celebrate its upcoming 20th anniversary with a concert, Oct. 19 at 5:30 p.m. at Boonton Elks Lodge #1405, featuring the bands The Outcrops and The Electric Farm, as well as singer-songwriter Geoff Doubleday.
• The Fletcher’s Listening Room Series at The Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Montclair launched in August with a concert by Walter Parks, and will continue with a 7:30 p.m. Oct. 24 concert by singer-songwriter Dayna Kurtz, accompanied by guitarist Robert Maché.
CAROLYN ENGER
MULTIMEDIA
• Pianist Carolyn Enger will perform her multimedia program, “The Mischlinge Exposé,” Oct. 20 at 3 p.m. at The Watchung Arts Center. She will play music by Jewish-born composers such as Mahler and Schoenberg, combined with audio and video of her father and godmother, who both lived in Europe during the Nazi era. “Mischlinge” was a term used by the Nazis to describe people of mixed Aryan and Jewish ancestry.
John Bathke of The News 12 Network will introduce the work and moderate a discussion with Enger after she performs.
• The New Jersey International Film Festival will continue its embrace of shows that combine live music and film with a show featuring music by sonic innovator Jim Haynes, Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. at Voorhees Hall at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. According to the festival’s website, Haynes will present “a composition of accreted noise and drone from electro-acoustic sources, including but not limited to varispeed motors, electronics, shortwave radio, contact microphones, and tactile noise devices,” and the show will include “accompanying projections of experimental films by Marjorie Conrad, Anita Labelle and Albert Gabriel Nigrin.”
THEATER
• American Theater Group will present “My Italy Story” at The Hamilton Stage at Union County Performing Arts Center in Rahway, Oct. 24-27, as well at The Sieminski Theater in Basking Ridge, Nov. 1-3. It is a one-person play, written by Joseph Gallo and starring Michael Notardonato, that has been described as “a gentle drama about a young, third-generation Italian-American from Hoboken who journeys to Naples to settle a long-standing family feud.”
• Excerpts from plays such as “Macbeth,” “Hamlet,” “Othello” and “King Lear” will be featured in “Madness, Murder, and Mayhem … From the Dark Recesses of Shakespeare’s Mind,” to be presented by The OCC Repertory Theater Company at The Black Box Theater at The Grunin Center for the Arts at Ocean County College in Toms River, Oct. 18-19 and 25 at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 20 and 27 at 2 p.m., and Oct. 26 at 2 and 7:30 p.m.
DANIEL HEDDEN
Members of Carolyn Dorfman Dance, performing “WAVES.”
DANCE
• Carolyn Dorfman Dance will perform at The Heidi Gallery at JSDD (Jewish Service for the Developmentally Disabled) in Livingston, Oct. 20 at 2 p.m., in conjunction with the recent opening of the juried group exhibition, The WAE Open (which will run through Dec. 8).
One of the dances that troupe members will perform is “WAVES.” Reviewing the premiere of this work in 2015, NJArts.net dance critic Robert Johnson wrote that “In the ingenious ensemble sections, the dancers press against one another to form snaky lines that roll over (like waves) and regroup. The final image of this piece shows the dancers sliding toward us, like a wave’s last gasp — the surf that rushes up the beach.”
Other dances will include excerpts from “The Legacy Project,” “Keystone,” “Living Room Music,” and “Love Suite Love.”
The performance is free, though attendees must register in advance; email heidigallery@jsdd.org.
• American Repertory Ballet‘s “Wonderment” shows, coming up at The New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, will include the world premiere of “Baroquen Dreams,” a new ballet choreographed by ARB artist-in-residence Ethan Stiefel that was inspired by the Baroque composer, conductor and ballet dancer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) and one of his protégés, Marin Marais (1656-1728), who became a renowned musician and composer. The shows will take place Oct. 18 at 7 p.m., Oct. 19 at 2 and 7 p.m., and Oct. 20 at 2 p.m., and the program will also include Marius Petipa’s Swan Lake “Black Swan Pas de Deux and Coda”; Lar Lubovitch’s “Something About Night”; and Antony Tudor’s “Little Improvisations.”
FAREED ZAKARIA
BOOKS
• The Morristown Festival of Books will take place Oct. 18 and 19, with dozens of authors at various locations. Its keynote event, scheduled for Oct. 18 at 7:30 at the Mayo Performing Arts Center, will be a discussion with CNN host and Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria — author of “Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present,” which was released earlier this year — in conversation with writer and filmmaker Jonathan Alter.
Alter will also participate in the festival on Oct. 19, talking about his own new book, “American Reckoning: Inside Trump’s Trial — and My Own.” Other authors scheduled for Oct. 19 include Caroline Manzo, Sharon Malone, Stuart E. Eizenstat, Rachelle Bergstein, Caroline Leavitt, Edward Wong, Eric Weiner and Jonathan Turley.
• Alex Van Halen will sign copies of his new book “Brothers” at Books & Greetings in Northvale, Oct. 22 at 6 p.m. In the book, according to a press release, the drummer and Van Halen band co-founder “shares his story of family, camaraderie, immigration, music, and loss, and offers a remarkable tribute to his late little brother and bandmate, Edward, a once-in-a-generation talent and transformed our understanding of what it’s possible to do with a guitar.”
Eddie Van Halen died in 2020, at the age of 65.
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REVIEWS
“American Mariachi” at Two River Theater, Red Bank. (Through Oct. 20)
“Pen Pals” at New Jersey Repertory Company, Long Branch. (Through Oct. 20)
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” at Mile Square Theatre, Hoboken. (Through Oct. 20)
“Macbeth by Candlelight,” presented by The Curtain at Nimbus Arts Center, Jersey City. (Through Nov. 3)
“Under a Southern Star: Identity and Environment in Australian Photography,” presented by Princeton University Art Museum at Art on Hulfish. (Through Jan. 5)
“New Sculpture/New Jersey” at Morris Museum, Morris Township. (Through Feb. 2)
“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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