SHERVIN LAINEZ
JOSHUA BELL
Here is a roundup of major arts events taking place around New Jersey, through May 14.
MUSIC
• Violinist Joshua Bell, who started a four-year stint as New Jersey Symphony‘s principal guest conductor in the organization’s current season, will both conduct and play violin at the orchestra’s concerts at Prudential Hall at NJPAC in Newark, May 14 at 1:30 p.m. and May 16 at 7:30 p.m.; The Richardson Auditorium at Princeton University, May 15 at 7:30 p.m.; and The Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, May 17 at 2 p.m. The program includes Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90, “Italian” — which Mendelssohn once described as “the jolliest piece I’ve ever done” — as well as Ludwig van Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, Op. 84, and Camille Saint-Saëns’ Violin Concerto No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 61.
Beethoven’s Overture was composed for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play “Egmont,” for which Beethoven wrote incidental music.
Bell’s appearances with the Symphony, next season, have already been announced. He will perform and conduct at March 11-14 concerts featuring Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Violin Concerto, and Symphony No 7.
• Philadelphia radio station WMMR will present its annual MMR*B*Q concert, May 9 at 1 p.m. at The Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in Camden, with an unusually eclectic batch of main attractions — Godsmack, Alice Cooper, The Hooters and Everclear — as well as Des Rocs, Kami Kehoe, LYLVC and The Circus Hearts, plus live-band karaoke and DJ music on a side stage. There will be assigned seating only for the last four acts; for the earlier ones, it will be general admission.
CHRIS DRUKKER
DAVE STRYKER
• Ross Farm in Basking Ridge will present its annual Ross Farm Jazz Fest, May 9 at 1 p.m. Student ensembles will be emphasized, with a lineup headed by guitarist Dave Stryker’s Quartet (featuring saxophonist Eric Alexander) but also including Ryan Huston with The Montclair State University Jazz Sextet, Sally Shupe with The William Paterson University Jazz Septet, Christian Orlowski with The Rutgers University Jazz Sextet, and The Jazz House Ambassadors Combo (directed by Mike Lee).
Stryker and Ross Farm’s David Becker co-curated the event, at which attendees are encouraged to bring a chair or blanket, and picnic with their own food and drinks, if they wish.
• Singer-songwriter and guitarist Madeleine Peyroux — who began her career as a street musician in Paris and is now based in Athens, Georgia — will bring her We Are America: American Songs That Give Us Hope Tour at The McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, May 14 at 7:30 p.m. She will perform in a trio format with bassist Barak Mori and guitarist Jon Herington and sing both originals and songs written by or associated with artists such as Judy Collins, Bessie Smith, Bob Dylan and Allen Toussaint.
• Guitarist Stéphane Wrembel — born in France, but a longtime Maplewood resident and an expert in the music of legendary gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt — will present his annual Django a Gogo Music Festival & Guitar Camp from May 12 to May 17, with concerts, workshops and jam sessions at The Woodland in Maplewood, Symphony Space in Manhattan, and Barbès in Brooklyn. Joining him as musical collaborators and/or instructors at these events will be master musicians from throughout the world, including Angelo Debarre, Jean-Michel Pilc, Gismo Graf, Sébastien Felix, David Gastine, Ari Folman-Cohen and Nick Driscoll.
MAJA BOGDANOVIĆ
• The Princeton Symphony Orchestra will play Aaron Copland’s Letter From Home — which was written in 1944, and whose music is intended to suggest what a soldier feels when reading a letter from home — at The Richardson Auditorium at Princeton University, May 9 at 7:30 p.m. and May 10 at 4 p.m. The program will also include Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, Op. 100 — also written in 1944 — and Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 33, featuring Serbia-born Maja Bogdanović.
This is the orchestra’s annual Edward T. Cone Concert, honoring the composer, pianist, author, teacher and philanthropist who taught at Princeton University and served on the orchestra’s board. Cone died in 2004 at the age of 87.
• Chris Martin IV, joined by musician and guitar instructor Craig Thatcher, will talk about his 35 years as the head of the Martin Guitar company (founded in 1833) in an event titled “An Evening With Martin Guitar,” May 7 at 7 p.m. at The Bickford Theatre at The Morris Museum in Morris Township.
• The progressive bluegrass supergroup The Punch Brothers will release their first all-instrumental album, cleverly titled The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers, on July 24, and will likely perform some songs from it at their 7:30 p.m. May 14 concert at The Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown. (Check out “New Bike,” which will be on it, below.) This will also be the band’s first album to feature fiddler Brittany Haas, who also plays in Crooked Still, and who joined The Punch Brothers in 2023. Other group members include Chris Thile (of Nickel Creek), banjo player Noam Pikelny (formerly of Leftover Salmon), guitarist Chris Eldridge (formerly of The Infamous Stringdusters) and bassist Paul Kowert.
THEATER
• The Carriage House restaurant at The Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn recently reopened after extensive renovations, and will offer dining-and-entertainment experiences this month via two murder mysteries — “Murder on the Titanic,” May 7-9 at 7 p.m., and “The Golden Girls Murder Mystery,” May 14-16 at 7 p.m. — as well as “Cup of Ambition: A Dolly Parton-Inspired Cocktail Experience,” featuring music and storytelling in addition to drinks, May 21-23 at 7 p.m. Also, Joe Regan will play piano, Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.
Members of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
DANCE
• Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will make its annual Mother’s Day Weekend appearances at Prudential Hall at NJPAC in Newark, May 8-9 at 8 p.m. and May 10 at 3 p.m. The company’s signature piece, “Revelations,” will be performed at each show. Among the other offerings will be Maija García’s “Jazz Island” (May 8 and 10 only), which is based on a Caribbean folk tale and features an original score by Trinidad-born trumpeter and composer Etienne Charles.
• Carolyn Dorfman’s Dance‘s 7:30 p.m. May 14 show at The Victoria Theater at NJPAC in Newark will include the world premiere of Dorfman’s “The Hero Within: The Story of Max Heller, Mary Mills and Miracles,” plus her “Echad” and Juel D. Lane’s “Now.”
“The Hero Within” is part of Dorfman’s Legacy Project, in which the choreographer, who is the daughter of of Holocaust survivors, explores her heritage through dance. (Max Heller was a young Austrian who managed to get to The United States in the late 1930s, with the help of an American named Mary Mills.)
BOOKS
• The 10th annual Montclair Literary Festival, has started and will continue through May 11, with remaining author appearances including Adriana Trigiani (author of “The View From Lake Como”) at The Unitarian Universalist Congregation, May 6 at 7 p.m.; Xochitl Gonzalez (“Last Night in Brooklyn”) at Montclair State University’s Student Center Ballroom, May 9 at 12:30 p.m.; Francine Prose (“Five Weeks in the Country”) at Montclair State University’s University Hall, May 9 at 1:45 p.m.; Christina Baker Kline (“The Foursome”) at The Unitarian Universalist Congregation, May 11 at 7 p.m.; and many others.
Plus, May 7 at 7 p.m. at Watchung Booksellers, writer Alice Elliott Dark and actress-novelist Dagmara Domińczyk will record a podcast in which they discuss Elena Ferrante’s 2006 novel “The Lost Daughter,” which was made into a 2021 film co-starring Domińczyk.
The festival raises funds and awareness for Succeed2gether, the Montclair-based nonprofit organization that addresses unequal access to educational resources by providing free enrichment and academic programs and a post-high-school pathway to children in need from Montclair and other Essex County towns.
• Jesse Malin will be interviewed by fellow musician James Mastro about his new book “Almost Grown: A New York Memoir,” May 13 at 7 p.m. at Little City Books in Hoboken. Lucinda Williams has said that the book “stands to-to-toe with (Jim Carroll’s) ‘The Basketball Diaries’ as a story about growing up in New York.”
FILM
• The Bellevue Theatre in Montclair, which reopened in October after being closed since 2017, will celebrate its 104th birthday with screenings of three film musicals of different eras — “The Sound of Music” (1965) at 10 a.m., “Sing” (2016) at 10:30 a.m., and “Grease” (1978) at 11 a.m. — plus face painting and other activities for children.
“The Sound of Music,” which ran at The Bellevue for three years in the ’60s, was the first film screened when the theater reopened in October.
This year’s Aqualumina festival and parade is scheduled for May 9.
OTHER
• The third edition of the biennial Aqualumina, a riverside lantern festival presented by ArtYard in Frenchtown, will take place on May 9. According to a message on ArtYard’s website, “All are welcome to attend in their aquatic finest and join the festival’s lantern parade, featuring hundreds of community members donning handmade rain cloud hats, iceberg fascinators, or shibori-dyed river suits and carrying illuminated jellyfish parasols and fish lanterns.”
The parade will begin at 8 p.m. at Sunbeam Lenape Park, following check-in starting at 7 p.m.
Aqualumina will also offer performances by waterglass artist Cindertalk; steel drumming by Pan Evolution Steel Orchestra; choral music by Vermont-based FarmSong, New York-based Supruli, and NJWomensong; dance performances by Kalyan Sayre and Michael Sazonov’s Movement Lab; and a trio of illuminated sculptures by Elsa Mora.
“Aqualumina invites us into a shared act of wonder,” said ArtYard founder and executive director Jill Kearney, in a press release. “As we move together along the river at night, carrying light, making music, and witnessing beguiling performances, we celebrate water as an essential force that connects communities and reminds us of our shared responsibility to care for it.”
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REVIEWS
“& Sons” at Luna Stage, West Orange. (Through May 10)
“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)
“Willem de Kooning: The Breakthrough Years, 1945–50” at Princeton University Art Museum. (Through July 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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