Top 10 Arts Events of the Week: Rock, Ribs and Ridges; New Jersey Symphony; Steely Dan, more

by JAY LUSTIG
ROCK RIBS RIDGES PREVIEW '22

Don Felder will perform at the Rock, Ribs and Ridges festival.

Here is a roundup of arts events taking place around the state, through June 30.

MUSIC

Don Felder, Dave Mason and Artimus Pyle — Rock and Roll Hall of Famers as members of The Eagles, Traffic and Lynyrd Skynyrd, respectively — will perform at this year’s edition of the annual Rock, Ribs and Ridges festival, taking place June 24-26 at the Sussex County Fairgrounds in Augusta. Other performers will include Jim Messina (of Loggins & Messina, Poco and Buffalo Springfield), Molly Hatchet (the Southern rock band best known for their 1980 hit “Flirtin’ With Disaster”), Duane Betts (son of Allman Brothers Band member Dickey Betts and co-founder of the Betts Allman Band) and groups playing the music of Neil Young and Creedence Clearwater Revival. As the festival’s title implies, both music and barbecued food will be featured. The “Ridges” refers to the festival’s scenic location. There will also be overnight camping.

Steely Dan, which has continued under the leadership under singer-keyboardist Donald Fagen since the 2017 death of co-founder and co-leader Walter Becker, performs at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, June 30 at 7:30 p.m., with jazz guitarist Dave Stryker opening. Stryker will perform in a trio format with organist Jared Gold and drummer McClenty Hunter.

Steely Dan will also perform at the Event Center at Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in Atlantic City, Aug. 6.

CHRISTINE EBERSOLE

Two-time Tony winner (“42nd Street,” “Grey Gardens”) and Maplewood resident Christine Ebersole will perform, and be honored, at a gala benefiting the American Theater Group, June 26 at 6 p.m. at the Fellowship Cultural Arts Center in Basking Ridge.

• The Black Crowes, whose 2021 reunion tour came to Holmdel and Camden, will return to New Jersey for a 5:30 p.m. concert at the Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park. Only two original members, brothers Chris Robinson (vocals) and Rich Robinson (guitar), remain, but bassist Sven Pipien has participated in most of the band’s tours since 1997. The band Howlin Rain will open.

The Black Crowes will also perform at the Event Center at Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in Atlantic City, July 2 at 8 p.m.

The New Jersey Symphony will play music by Mozart, Rossini, Rodgers & Hammerstein, John Philip Sousa and others at three free concerts this summer. They will take place June 24 at 7:30 p.m. at Branch Brook Park in Newark, June 28 at 8 p.m. at Ocean County College in Toms River, and July 2 at 7:30 p.m. at Metuchen Town Plaza, with José Luis Domínguez conducting. New Jersey Symphony Youth Orchestra Henry Lewis Concerto Competition winner Timothy Shi will be featured on Mozart’s Allegro from Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major, K. 216.

The Missouri-based bluegrass group The HillBenders will put their own spin on The Who’s music — they call it “WhoGrass” — and also play original songs in a free concert, outdoors at Woodbridge High School, June 26 at 7 p.m. The show is part of the Woodbridge Country Sundays series. (see video below)

TOVAH FELDSHUH

THEATER

Tovah Feldshuh and Jonathan Brielle Holtzman will co-star in the Holtzman-written “A Monkey and Me: Stories I Never Told My Mother,” June 24 at 7 p.m., June 25 at 2 and 8 p.m. and June 26 at 3 p.m. at the Axelrod Performing Arts Center in Deal. The Axelrod website describes the play as a “semi-autobiographical musical” that includes “humorous tales of growing up in Asbury Park, wrestling with gangsters, corporate America, two ex-wives (and) a monkey from his Las Vegas extravaganza” and features Feldshuh as “his overbearing theatrical Jewish mother.”

FILM

The Union County Performing Arts Center in Rahway will kick off its Film Noir Summer series, June 24 at 8 p.m., with “The Maltese Falcon,” to be followed by “Strangers on a Train,” July 22; “North by Northwest,” July 23; “Psycho,” July 24; and “Double Indemnity,” Aug. 20. Each screening will be preceded by a half-hour organ concert and a film short; the short for June 24 will be “Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur.”

OTHER

“Stranger Things” actors including Gaten Matarazzo, Noah Schnapp and Dacre Montgomery will meet fans at Stranger Con, a “Stranger Things” convention taking place at the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center in Edison, June 25-26. Other attractions will include vendors, panel discussions and trivia contests.

ArtYard’s biennial “Hatch” takes place June 25.

Biennially, ArtYard in Frenchtown presents a celebration of communal creativity called a “Hatch,” featuring storytelling, and a parade in which people dressed as birds hatch from a 14-foot egg. The next one takes place June 25 at 11 a.m. (with those dressing as birds asked to arrive at 9:30 a.m.) and will feature music by the Ocean Avenue Stompers brass band. The hatch theme was chosen, according to the ArtYard website, as “a nod to Frenchtown’s past as a 20th-century hub of egg incubation, and to its future as an incubator of creative artistic enterprise.”

REVIEWS

“Sister Act” at Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn. (Through June 26)
“Three Sisters” at Two River Theater, Red Bank. (Through June 26)
“Enchanted April” at Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Madison. (Through June 26)
“Freedom Rider,” presented by Crossroads Theatre Company at New Brunswick Performing Arts Center. (Through June 26)
“Sugarbelly and Other Tales My Father Told Me,” presented by Crossroads Theatre Company at New Brunswick Performing Arts Center. (Through June 26)
“Tenacity & Resilience: The Art of Jerry Pinkney” at Montclair Art Museum. (Through June 26)

“Ecstatic Decrepitude,” works by Peter Schumann at ArtYard, Frenchtown. (Through July 31)

“Maxwell Mustardo: Dish-Oriented” at Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton. (Through Sept. 4)

“For the Culture, by the Culture: Thirty Years of Black Art, Activism, and Achievement” at Morris Museum, Morris Township. (Through Sept. 25.)

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