Robert Plant will bring his Saving Grace band, featuring Suzi Dian, to The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, April 6.
Here is a roundup of major arts events taking place around New Jersey, through April 9.
MUSIC
• Former Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant and his Saving Grace band will perform at The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, April 6 at 7:30 p.m., with Rosie Flores opening.
Saving Grace features Plant along with singer Suzi Dian and drummer Oli Jefferson (who are married) plus guitarist Tony Kelsey, guitar and banjo player Matt Worley, and cellist Barney Morse-Brown. Their debut album, released in September, is titled Saving Grace and is credited to Robert Plant with Suzi Dian. It includes 10 covers from the worlds of rock, blues and gospel.
Saving Grace first performed together in 2019. According to promotional material, “The group members were drawn together by a shared love of roots music both vintage and modern — of blues, folk, gospel, country and those tantalizing sounds that lay in between. Like Plant, they’re keen to explore how these genres are evolving as well as to discover where these repertoires originated — and how collectively they could reinvigorate the music they loved.”
Natalie Stewart, left, and Marsha Ambrosius of Floetry.
• Marsha Ambrosius and Natalie Stewart — who combine R&B, hip-hop and poetry in their five-time Grammy-nominated duo Floetry — have not released any new music under that name for more than 20 years. But they are touring together for the first time since 2016, and their inspirationally named Floetry Presents Say Yes: The Tour will come to Prudential Hall at NJPAC in Newark, April 8-9 at 8 p.m., with Raheem DeVaughn and Teedra Moses opening.
• Zakk Wylde will play his own songs with his band Black Label Society and Black Sabbath songs with his band Zakk Sabbath at The Wellmont Theater in Montclair, April 3 at 7:30 p.m. Dark Chapel will open the show.
Black Label Society’s most recent single, the ballad “Ozzy’s Song” (listen below), is a tribute to the late Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne, who died last year.
Wylde, a New Jersey native, performed frequently in Osbourne’s solo-career bands from 1987 on, and is also a current touring member of Pantera.
• Eilen Jewell recently released a cover of Woody Guthrie’s more-timely-than-ever protest song “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” and has also announced that starting in 2027, she will take an extended break from touring.
“After 2026, touring and I will part ways for a year, maybe two, maybe fifty … it’s hard to say at this point,” she wrote, in a statement. “I do hope to keep performing in some capacity. Maybe come see me on a weeknight in some Boise dive, playing for potatoes? Or strumming the guitar for a handful of fellow meditators as we contemplate the Dharma and the temporary nature of all things. I need some time for a new exploration, to try to be the kind of mother I want to be, and to stop moving long enough ‘to let my soul catch up with me,’ as my grandma Jeanne used to say. Who knows what will come of that? Maybe on some jingle-jangle morning I’ll come following the next great dream, rested and ready to go anywhere. But until then, suffice it to say … thank you. Thank you, thank you to everyone who carried me forward all this way and in all your different ways.”
Her only currently scheduled New Jersey show will take place at The Avenel Performing Arts Center, April 2 at 7:30 p.m.
AQUAPIO FILMS LTD.
JOE LOVANO
• This year marks the 100th anniversary of jazz genius John Coltrane’s birth, and in honor of him, the Coltrane 100: Both Directions at Once Tour has been organized, with stops including The McCarter Theater in Princeton, April 8 at 7:30; and The Victoria Theater at NJPAC in Newark, April 18 at 7:30 p.m. Musicians will include saxophonists Joe Lovano and Melissa Aldana, pianist Nduduzo Makhathini, bassist Linda May Han Oh (in Princeton), bassist John Patitucci (in Newark), and drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts.
The tour is designed as “a collective tribute reflecting Coltrane’s enduring influence across generations, geographies, and musical traditions,” and Lovano has said: “This quintet will honor Coltrane’s compositions as a springboard to explore and express ourselves. We do not seek to recreate, but rather to create in the spirit of Coltrane.”
FILM/MUSIC
• The Randy Now’s Man Cave record store and concert space in Hightstown will screen “Listen Up! Trenton Makes Music,” a documentary about the Trenton music scene (see trailer below), April 4 at 6:30 p.m., and Ernie White, a longtime mainstay of that scene, will also perform some live music.
Randy Now was a concert promoter at the legendary Trenton nightclub City Gardens in the ’80s and ’90s.
THEATER
• Centenary Stage Company will present Eleanor Burgess’s brilliant 2018 play “The Niceties” at The Kutz Theatre at The Lackland Performing Arts Center in Hackettstown, April 9-12 and 15-19. In it, an argument about scholarly process between a well-meaning white Ivy League professor and a confrontational Black student escalates into an intense verbal clash over race, privilege and more.
“Both sides are so deeply entrenched in their version of the truth that they can’t see anything else,” I wrote in my 2019 review of the play at The McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton. “It’s just a perfect capsule picture of where we are, as a society, now.”
• SModcastle Cinemas in Atlantic Highlands will present a four-actor stage version of “Die Hard” — yes, the 1988 Bruce Willis action movie — April 4 at 8 p.m., with Smodcastle owner Kevin Smith (the director, writer and actor known for films such as “Clerks,” “Mallrats” and “Dogma”) playing the film’s villain, Hans Gruber.
MARIAN ANDERSON
FILM
• Cape May Stage will screen the 2018 documentary “Once in a Hundred Years: The Life and Legacy of Marian Anderson,” April 4 at 3 p.m. Anderson was the first African-American singer to perform at The Metropolitan Opera in New York, and her 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. — organized after Constitution Hall would not allow her to sing for an integrated audience — helped set the stage for the civil rights movement that took place later in the 20th century.
A Philadelphia native, Anderson often vacationed in Cape May.
The film’s title comes from something the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini once told her: “A voice like yours is heard once in a hundred years.”
There will be no admission charge, though donations will be collected for Cape May MAC (Museums+Arts+Culture).
• The life and career of French film icon and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot was explored in the 2025 documentary “Bardot” (see trailer below), and following her death in December, at the age of 91, Princeton Garden Theatre, in partnership with The Princeton French Film Festival, will screen it, in its East Coast premiere, April 2 at 7 p.m.
Princeton French Film Festival organizer Yassine Ait Ali will introduce it, and Ericka Knudson, author of the 2025 book “Nouvelles Femmes: Modern Women of the French New Wave and Their Enduring Contribution to Cinema,” will host a question-and-answer session after it.
• Pianist and musicologist Kwami Coleman will host a screening of the Oscar-nominated 2024 documentary “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” April 4 at 2 p.m. at The Montclair Public Library. The film is about the role that some jazz musicians, including Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach, played in international politics in the 1960s. One critic called it “The best film you’ll ever see about the Congo, the CIA and jazz.”
The cover of Valerie Bertinelli’s book, “Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Imperfectly Perfect.”
BOOKS
• Actress and Food Network personality Valerie Bertinelli will discuss her new book “Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Imperfectly Perfect” at The URSB Carteret Performing Arts & Events Center, April 9 at 7:30 p.m. The venue’s website says the book “offers wisdom hard-won through divorce, menopause, and generational pain, and a powerful message of self-acceptance and embracing the past with compassion.”
REVIEWS
“Art (Official) Intelligence” at Gallery 14C at Project 14C, Jersey City. (Through April 2)
“What Became of Us,” presented by George Street Playhouse at New Brunswick Performing Arts Center. (Through April 5)
“The Cake,” presented by Bergen County Players at Little Firehouse Theatre, Oradell. (Through April 11)
“Ann Vollum: Sharp Teeth, Long Tongues!” at BrassWorks Gallery, Montclair. (Through May 22)
“Alexandra Schoenberg: Shifting Perspectives” at Hillside Square Gallery, Montclair. (Through June 26)
“Allan Rohan Crite: Neighborhood” at Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick. (Through July 31)
“Salvador Jiménez-Flores: Raíces & Resistencias” at Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton. (Through Aug. 1, 2027)
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