PATTI SMITH
Here is a roundup of major arts events taking place around New Jersey, through Oct. 15.
FESTIVALS
• This year’s edition of the biennial Dodge Poetry Festival — North America’s largest poetry festival — will take place at NJPAC and other Newark venues, Oct. 15-17.
The legendary poet and rock musician Patti Smith will appear in an event titled “Patti Smith: Songs and Stories,” Oct. 16 at 8 p.m. at NJPAC’s Prudential Hall. And a “Def Poetry Reunion,” featuring poets who appeared on the 2002-2007 HBO series “Russell Simmons presents Def Poetry” (better known as “Def Poetry Jam”), will honor Abiodun Oyewole of The Last Poet with performances and tributes by Antoinette Ellis-Williams, D. Cross (Derick Cross), Kraal “Kayo” Charles, Bonafide Rojas, Chris “Flowmentalz” Cook and Liza Jessie Peterson.
Other festival participants will include U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, Pulitzer Prize winner Tyehimba Jess, Elizabeth Acevedo, Kimberly M. Blaeser, Stephanie Burt, Anthony Cody, Meg Day, Terrance Hayes and Adrian Matejka. And NJPAC will host a free Family Fun Day, Oct. 17 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with dance classes and performances and a Latino Heritage Celebration in addition to poetry readings.
EDDIE JOBSON
• Keyboardist and violinist Eddie Jobson — whose career includes stints in Roxy Music, Curved Air, Frank Zappa’s band and other groups — will bring his U.K. Revisited band to the progressive-rock festival ProgStock, which will take place at The Williams Center in Rutherford, Oct. 8-10. Jobson co-founded the supergroup U.K. in 1977; joining him in U.K. Revisited will be singer-bassist Marc Bonilla, guitarist Alex Machacek and drummer Marco Minnemann.
Among the many other ProgStock participants will be Spock’s Beard, Nektar, Larry Fast, Crack the Sky, IZZ, Resistor, Sonus Umbra and The Jane Getter Premonition.
• The Morristown Festival of Books will feature a sold-out “Evening With Malcolm Gladwell,” Oct. 9 at 7:30 p.m. at The Mayo Performing Arts Center, and events at various locations, all day Oct. 10, with authors including Riley Sager, Anna Quindlen, Angela Brown, Matthew Futterman, Elizabeth Lim, Emma Straub, John Searles, Ada Ferrer and many others.
There will also be a KidFest (featuring authors of books for young readers), Oct. 10, and a teen writing contest.
Everything except the Gladwell event will be free.
Wycliffe Gordon
• The South Jersey Jazz Society‘s Jazz@ThePoint Festival will begin, Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. at Gregory’s Restaurant in Somers Point, with a “Red, White & Louis” tribute to Louis Armstrong featuring a presentation by Ricky Riccardi — an Armstrong expert who is director of research collections at The Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens, New York — with live music by The Bob Ferguson All-Stars (trumpeter Ferguson along with pianist Dean Schneider, bassist Jack Hegyi and drummer Lew Leabman).
Other shows at Gregory’s will include singer Paula Johns, presenting a tribute to Armstrong’s frequent collaborator Ella Fitzgerald, Oct. 16 at 9:30 p.m.; and trumpeter Terell Stafford, Oct. 17 at 9:30 p.m.
There will also be shows at Somers Point’s Gateway Playhouse, by trombonist Wycliffe Gordon, Oct. 16 at 7 p.m.; and trumpeter Jon Faddis, Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. (In 2011, Gordon released an album, Hello Pops! (A Tribute to Louis Armstrong), with his versions of songs associated with Armstrong, as well as some original tribute songs.)
The Springsteen Center for American Music will host a Chuck Berry symposium and tribute concert, Oct. 10.
MUSIC
• The life and music of Chuck Berry, who was born in October 1926, will be explored in “Chuck Berry at 100,” a symposium and concert that will take place on Oct. 10 at The Pollak Theatre at Monmouth University in West Long Branch.
The symposium, which is being organized by the university’s Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music, will open with a keynote address by RJ Smith, author of the 2022 book “Chuck Berry: An American Life.”
After the speech, according to a press release, “panel discussions and film will examine topics including the birth of rock ‘n’ roll; Berry’s role as a uniquely American storyteller; the intersection of race, identity, and popular culture in his work; the evolution of rock guitar; the global spread of rock ‘n’ roll; and the challenges of interpreting Berry’s complicated legacy in the twenty-first century.”
The Springsteen Center’s executive director, Bob Santelli, said in the press release that “This symposium will explore not only (Berry’s) accomplishments, but also the broader historical and cultural forces that shaped his life and work.”
The symposium will end with a concert of Berry’s music.
• The Buena Vista Orchestra, led by violinist Rolando Morejón Reyes, will play classic Cuban music, Oct. 11 at 7 p.m. at The Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, with other shows, later in the tour, scheduled for The McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, Feb. 12; ‘and The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, Feb. 19.
Some of the musicians were also in The Buena Vista Social Club, which gained fame with a self-titled 1997 album and a self-titled 1999 documentary; gave major boosts to the careers of performers such as Omara Portuondo and Ibrahim Ferrer; and also inspired the hit “Buena Vista Social Club” Broadway musical.
SOPHIA WERNER
• The Adelphi Orchestra will kick off its 2026-27 season with “American Voices” concerts at The Fair Lawn Community Center Theater, Oct. 10 at 2 p.m., and The Broadway Pedestrian Church in New York, Oct. 11 at 3 p.m. Kyunghun Kim will conduct, and Sophia Werner will be featured in Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto.
The concerts will also include Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8.
• Violinist Christina Bouey and pianist Yoon Lee will perform at a gala event celebrating the start of the classical season at The State Theatre in New Brunswick, Oct. 15 at 6 p.m. The event will begin with a cocktail reception and also feature a post-concert dessert reception. The program will include music by Debussy, Couperin, Fritz Kreisler, Amy Beach and Franz Waxman.
Proceeds will benefit the theater’s classical series as well as its music education programs, including Symphony Scholars, which connects public school music students with professional artists.
• Grammy-winnng jazz artists Bill Charlap (piano), Christian McBride (bass) and Kenny Washington (drums) will perform in a trio format at the Jazz Room series at The Shea Center for Performing Arts at William Paterson University in Wayne, Oct. 11 at 3 p.m. Charlap is the university’s director of jazz studies.
A Sittin’ In Meet-the-Artist session can be attended by all ticket-holders, at no extra charge, at 2 p.m.
THE BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA
• The veteran gospel vocal group The Blind Boys of Alabama – whose first lineup came together all the way back in 1939, at The Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind in Talladega — will perform at The South Orange Performing Arts Center, Oct. 15 at 7:30 p.m., and the show will include a 50th anniversary tribute to Stevie Wonder’s legendary Songs in the Key of Life double album.
• New Jersey Symphony, conducted by Keitaro Harada, will play orchestral music from the films “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” “West Side Story,” “Spirited Away” and “An American in Paris” at concerts titled “Hollywood Hits” at The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, Oct. 10 at 7:30 p.m.; and Prudential Hall at NJPAC in Newark, Oct. 11 at 2 p.m.
• Devendra Banhart, Gyan Riley and Noah Georgeson have formed a new “ambient folk” group called HUG (listen to one of their songs below) and will perform songs from it, accompanied by abstract films from the archives of the experimental filmmaker and musicologist Harry Smith, Oct. 10 at 5 and 8 p.m. at ArtYard in Frenchtown.
• Singer-songwriter-guitarist James Maddock, backed by bassist Drew Mortali and drummer Shawn Pelton, will kick off the 2026-27 season of The Outpost in the Burbs, Oct. 11 at 7:30 p.m. at The First Congregational Church in Montclair. Julia Greenberg will open.
Maddock, formerly of the band Wood, grew up in England but was based in New York for most of his career. He moved to Bradley Beach in 2024.
Isaac Hickox-Young and Billie Wyatt.
THEATER
• Actors Isaac Hickox-Young and Billie Wyatt, who are a couple in real life, co-starred last year as the title characters in a production of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” at The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey at Drew University in Madison, and will return to that stage from Oct. 10 to Nov. 15, playing Hamlet and Ophelia in another one of The Bard’s best known plays, “Hamlet.”
• Jason Odell Williams wrote “Destroying David” and will star in it when it is presented by The American Theater Group at The DMK Theater at The Union Arts Center, Oct. 8-11 and 15-18; and The Sieminski Theater in Basking Ridge, Oct. 23-25. Williams will play a tour guide at the Galleria dell’ Accademia in Florence — where Michaelangelo’s “David” sculpture can be seen — and other characters. The play is described as “a funny, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting solo show about the beauty, resilience, and power of art to help us through our darkest hours.”
• The East Lynne Theater Company will present “The War of the Worlds: The Panic Broadcast” from Oct. 7 to Nov. 1 at The Clemans Theater for the Arts at the Allen AME in Cape May. The play, by Joe Landry, was inspired by and includes the famous 1938 radio-play version of H.G. Wells’ novel, whose breaking-news format — with the novel’s location changed from London to Grovers Mill, New Jersey — convinced some listeners that a real alien invasion was happening.
MARK GARVIN
Kathryn Grody in “The Unexpected 3rd.”
• Actress Kathryn Grody wrote the autobiographical one-woman play “The Unexpected 3rd” and will star in it when The New Brunswick Performing Arts Center presents a George Street Playhouse production of it from Oct. 13 to Nov. 1.
In a press release, the play is described as “A Radical, Rollicking Rumination on the Optimism of Staying Alive” as Grody “finds herself at 79 becoming … not quite old, but elder. … Marching onward through crumbling democracy, a boiling planet and an increasingly dead roster of friends and colleagues, she is buoyed by discovering parts of herself she didn’t know were hiding, perhaps waiting for this period to bloom.”
• Effa Manley, the only woman inducted into The Baseball Hall of Fame, is the main character of Pia Wilson’s “Effa Loves Baseball,” which Premiere Stages will present at Enlow Recital Hall at Kean University in Hillside from Oct. 15 to Oct. 25.
Manley co-owned The Newark Eagles in the Negro leagues in the ’30s and ’40s, strove to improve working conditions for the players, and was active in the Civil Rights Movement.
Ben Jones’ “High Priestess of Soul” can be seen in “Dreamtime in Newark: Aljira and the Making of Global Contemporary Art.”
VISUAL ARTS
• From its opening in 1983 to its closing in 2018, Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art in Newark was one of New Jersey’s leading galleries, and The Newark Museum of Art will display works by more than 40 artists associated with it in it “Dreamtime in Newark: Aljira and the Making of Global Contemporary Art” exhibition,which will open on Oct. 15 and run through June 20.
An opening reception will be held, Oct. 15 at 5 p.m.
DANCE
• The French-Algerian ensemble Compagnie Hervé Koubi will present “Sol Invictus” in the Peak Performances series at The Kasser Theater at Montclair State University, Oct. 15 at 7:30 p.m. The piece has been described as “A vivid celebration of solidarity and the bonds that unite us,” and the score is by Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson, with excerpts of music by Steve Reich and digital composer Maxime Bodson.
OTHER
• Jackson Galaxy (host of the 2011-2020 Animal Planet series “My Cat From Hell”), comedian Drennon Davis (who has gone viral with his “Business Cats” videos), Bob Lynch (“The Cowboy Cat Wrangler”) and holistic cat practitioner and intuitive animal communicator Lora Lee Medley will be among the guests at The Catsbury Park Cat Convention, taking place Oct. 10-11 at Bell Works in Holmdel. There will also be dozens of vendors, panel discussions, art classes, cat trivia, cat tattoos, kid-friendly activities and more.
Proceeds will benefit the Catsbury Park animal rescue shelter in Asbury Park.
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REVIEWS
“Rent” at Art House Productions, Jersey City. (Through Oct. 18)
“Hold These Truths” at Luna Stage, West Orange. (Through Oct. 18)
“Scott Harbison: Recent Sightings” at Galerie Lucida, Red Bank. (Through Oct. 18)
“Hank Willis Thomas: LOVERULES — From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation” at Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick. (Through Dec. 20)
“Hank Willis Thomas Selects: NJ Arts Annual” at Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick. (Through Dec. 20)
“Salvador Jiménez-Flores: Raíces & Resistencias” at Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton. (Through Aug. 1)
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