Top 10 NJ Arts Events of Week: NJ Hall of Fame, Simone Dinnerstein, more

This year’s New Jersey Hall of Fame induction ceremony will take place Oct. 16.

Here is a roundup of arts events taking place around the state, through Oct. 19:

• Former president George W. Bush, The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, Chelsea Handler and Gov. Phil Murphy will be among the participants in the 13th annual New Jersey Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, a one-hour event that will premiere at 7 p.m. Oct. 16 on the My9NJ television network and on the Hall of Fame’s YouTube and Facebook pages, with re-airings on Oct. 17, 23 and 24, as well as broadcasts on NJ PBS on Oct. 20 and 22-23. Bush will presumably speak about the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, a Trenton native. Richards is likely to talk about the late Sarah Dash, also of Trenton, who opened for the Stones in the ’60s as a member of Patti LaBelle & The Bluebelles and later sang on Rolling Stones albums and recorded and toured with Richards’ band X-pensive Winos. Performers will include jazz guitarist John Pizzarelli (presumably paying tribute to George Benson of Englewood); and Rory O’Malley, who appeared in “Hamilton” on Broadway and is likely to pay tribute to Alexander Hamilton himself, who will be inducted in the Public Service category.

Joining Scalia, Dash, Hamilton and Benson in the Class of 2021 will be William Paterson, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Paul Volcker, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Monte Irvin and others.

Actor Danny DeVito will host the ceremony, and other participants will include Dash’s Labelle bandmates Patti LaBelle and Nona Hendryx, Quincy Jones, Robin Roberts, Judith Light, Al Leiter and New Jersey First Lady Tammy Snyder-Murphy.

Also coming up this week:

SIMONE DINNERSTEIN

MUSIC

• The Peak Performances series at Montclair State University returns to in-person shows with “The Eye is the First Circle,” a multimedia piece conceived, directed and performed by pianist Simone Dinnerstein, Oct. 14-15 at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 16 at 8 p.m. and Oct. 17 at 3 p.m. at the Kasser Theater. Working with projection designer Laurie Olinder and lighting designer Davison Scandrett, Dinnerstein “deconstructs and collages” (in the words of the Peak Performances website) her father Simon Dinnerstein’s painting, “The Fulbright Triptych,” and Charles Ives’ Piano Sonata No. 2 (Concord).

According to the website, the painting “places a family portrait (including an infant Simone) within the tradition of medieval altar paintings, against a wall teeming with art historical references, and the Concord Sonata expresses the imaginative and natural world of the Transcendentalists through an ecstatic and fractured musical lens. Olinder pulls visuals including animated elements of the painting and real-time video to all points of the stage, and Scandrett’s lighting gives them breathtaking theatricality.”

• Kean University presents a free Jazz & Roots Music Festival, on The Lawn at Enlow Hall in Hillside, Oct. 16, with the Dizzy Gillespie Afro-Latin Experience, featuring the late Gillespie’s longtime bassist John Lee, at 7 p.m., preceded by guitarist Dave Stryker’s quartet at 6 p.m.; hip-hop artist JSWISS with saxophonist Casey Benjamin and guitarist Mark Whitfield, at 5:15 p.m.; and pianist Nat Adderley Jr., at 4:30 p.m. (UPDATE: Because of the threat of inclement weather, this has been moved to Oct. 17.)

WALTER PARKS

• The Hudson West Folk Festival takes place from noon to 10 p.m. Oct. 16 at the Nimbus Arts Center in Jersey City, with performances by Swamp Cabbage (featuring Walter Parks), Malcolm Holcombe, Amy Rigby, Quarter Horse, Zoë Lewis, Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton, Side Pony (Caitlin Cannon and Alice Wallace) and Miles to Dayton, and workshops led by some of the artists.

• Michael Nesmith and Micky Dolenz are bringing what they are calling “The Monkees Farewell Tour” to the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, Oct. 19 at 8 p.m.; and Ovation Hall at Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City, Oct. 23 at 8 p.m. Nesmith and Dolenz are now 78 and 76, respectively; their bandmates Davy Jones and Peter Tork died in 2012 and 2019, respectively. Nesmith has active in several Monkees reunion projects over the last decade after showing little interest in the group for four decades after quitting in 1971.

SUXIAO-YANG

AUGUSTIN HADELICH

• Nicholas McGegan will conduct and Augustin Hadelich will be featured on violin as the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra performs at Prudential Hall at NJPAC in Newark, Oct. 14 at 1:30 p.m. and Oct. 16 at 8 p.m.; and the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, Oct. 17 at 3 p.m. The program will include Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 and Romance for Violin and Orchestra, No. 2; and Chevalier de Saint-Georges’s Violin Concert in A Major, Op. 5, No. 2 and Overture to L’amante anonyme.

• The New Jersey Jazz Society will offer an online presentation by baritone saxophonist Frank Basile on six influential baritone saxophonists — Harry Carney, Leo Parker, Cecil Payne, Pepper Adams, Ronnie Cuber and Gary Smulyan — Oct. 17 at 3 p.m. It will be viewable on the NJJS website as well as on its Facebook and YouTube pages. There is no charge to view, but donations are suggested, and it will be archived, after Oct. 17, on the NJJS website and YouTube channel.

• Postmodern Jukebox, led by keyboardist Scott Bradlee, is a New York-based group that specializes in retro-sounding covers of modern songs, and releases YouTube videos regularly with that theme. Recent entries have included Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License,” No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” and Panic! At the Disco’s “Roaring 20s.” The group will perform at the Union County Performing Arts Center in Rahway, Oct. 16 at 8 p.m.; and at the Music Box at Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in Atlantic City, Oct. 22 at 9 p.m. (For a chance to win two tickets to the Rahway show, send an email to njartscontest@gmail.com by 11 a.m. Oct. 14 with the word “Postmodern” in the subject line.)

Tierney Sutton, left, and Ann Hampton Callaway.

• Veteran cabaret singers Tierney Sutton and Ann Hampton Callaway will sing songs strongly associated with movies — including “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “Let’s Face the Music and Dance,” “Blue Skies,” “As Time Goes By” and “Windmills of Your Mind — in a show titled “In Technicolor” at the Victoria Theater at NJPAC in Newark, Oct. 15 at 7:30 p.m.

FILM

• The new documentary, “The Mustangs: America’s Wild Horses,” will be shown at various times Oct. 15-17 at Basie Center Cinemas in Red Bank. The film’s website, themustangsfilm.com, currently lists only one other New Jersey theater where it will be screened: The Village at SOPAC in South Orange, which will feature it Nov. 11-13.

The film, which was co-executive produced by Robert Redford, Patti Scialfa Springsteen and recent Olympic show-jumping silver medal winner Jessica Springsteen, features previously released music by Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris, and a new song written by Diane Warren and performed by Blanco Brown.

According to a press release, the film “takes audiences on an odyssey throughout America to places few people have seen or even know about. There are more than 80,000 wild horses on our federal lands and more than 50,000 in government custody.”

“America’s wild horses are fighting their last stand,” said Redford in the press release. “Increasing competition for our natural resources threatens our wilderness areas and wildlife species.

Here is its trailer: