ERIN O'BRIEN
RAVI COLTRANE
Here is a roundup of major arts events taking place around New Jersey, through May 21.
MUSIC
• The Exit Zero Jazz Festival takes place twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. And this year’s spring edition is scheduled for May 15-17, with shows on two stages at Convention Hall, plus sets at Carney’s Main Room, Carney’s Other Room, and The Clemans Theater for the Arts.
The headliners are The Miles Electric Band (featuring trumpeter Keyon Harrold, bassist Darryl Jones, drummer Vince Wilburn Jr., guitarist Jean Paul Bourelly, DJ Logic and others, playing Davis music from the ’70s and ’80s), May 15; singer-guitarist José James’ “Facing East: The Music of John Coltrane” tribute, May 16; and Coltrane’s son, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, May 17.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the births of both Davis and John Coltrane.
Other performers throughout the weekend will include Carmen Lundy, The Walter Smith III Trio, The Orrin Evans Trio (featuring Gary Bartz) playing the music of Thelonious Monk, The Will Calhoun Mali Project (featuring Kabine Kouyaté), The Jeremy Pelt Quintet, Edgardo Cintron playing the music of Tito Puente, Ekep Nkwelle, The High and Mighty Brass Band, Davina & the Vagabonds and others.
CINDY STAGOFF
Glenn Mercer, left, and Richard Barone.
• Singer-songwriter-guitarists Richard Barone of The Bongos and Glenn Mercer of The Feelies will present their “Hazy Cosmic Jive” show at The Avenel Performing Arts Center, May 20 at 7:30 p.m. Joined by Dave Weckerman (of The Feelies) on drums and Bob Torsello (of The Slambovian Circus of Dream) on bass, they will perform songs from the mid-’70s by artists such as David Bowie, Roxy Music, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and T.Rex.
• Jackson Browne will perform at the politically outspoken Cuban singer-songwriter Carlos Varela’s 7:30 p.m. May 16 concert at The Victoria Theater at NJPAC in Newark. The show had originally been scheduled for Nov. 21, but was postponed because of visa issues.; tickets from the November show will be honored. Singer-songwriter Diana Fuentes and poet Rodrigo Toscano will also perform.
In a press release for the original show, Browne was described as “A longtime friend and fan of Carlos Varela.” He translated and covered Varela’s “Muros y Puertas” as “Walls and Doors” on his 2014 album Standing in the Breach, with Varela playing guitar and singing backing vocals.
• Singer-songwriter and poet John Dull has assembled a “John Dull & Friends” concert that will take place at The Williams Center in Rutherford, May 21 at 7:45 p.m. Dull describes it as “A rousing evening of acoustic music and poetry with fiddle, banjo, mandolin, guitar, bass and vocal harmonies.”
The show will feature Dull’s longtime friends and collaborators Ted Clancy and David Rimelis, as well as his son, singer-songwriter and visual artist Martin Dull.
TOM CHAPIN
• Veteran folk-circuit singer-songwriter Tom Chapin will perform with The Chapin Sisters (a duo featuring his daughters, Abigail and Lily Chapin) at the free Woodcliff Lake SpringFest, taking place at Woodcliff Park from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on May 16. (The three Chapins and other relatives and former members of The Harry Chapin Band sometimes present shows devoted to the songs of Tom’s brother Harry, as The Chapin Family Band.)
They will perform at 3:25 p.m., following Allie Kenny at 11:25 a.m., The Lonesome Brood at 12:25 p.m., Joe D’Urso’s Acoustic Excursion at 1:25 p.m., and the band Big Ian at 2:25 p.m. SpringFest will also offer food trucks, a beer and seltzer garden, crafts vendors and more.
• 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.
• Hoboken’s free, annual Spring Arts & Music Festival — featuring music on two stages plus arts and food vendors, lining both sides of the city’s main drag, Washington Street — will take place May 17 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with dance-pop artists George Lamond, Cynthia, Betty Dee (of Sweet Sensation) and The Cover Girls, plus Dariana Mullen and Dan Rosales (who are cast members of Broadway’s “The Great Gatsby,” and will perform songs from the musical), Dallas Connors, DJ BriPee, Finn Douglas, 3 Dollars, Day 19 and Janétza Miranda.
MIM ADKINS
LIVINGSTON TAYLOR
• Livingston Taylor, a mainstay on the singer-songwriter circuit since the 1970s, will perform at The Outpost in the Burbs at The First Congregational Church in Montclair, May 16 at 8 p.m.
Pete Muller will open. Click HERE for a new NJArts.net interview with Muller, by Cindy Stagoff.
• 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.
DOUG MUNCH
The Morris Choral Society, conducted by Michael Wittenburg.
• The Morris Choral Society, conducted by Michael Shane Wittenberg, will perform Brahms Requiem with a full orchestra at St. Mary’s Abbey at The Delbarton School in Morristown, May 16 at 7:30 p.m. Soprano Cassandra Douglas and baritone Charles Gray will be featured as soloists.
The full title of the work, which was composed in the 1860s and whose libretto is in German, is “A German Requiem, to Words of the Holy Scriptures.”
The first half of the concert will feature performances by the all-male vocal group Express Male and the all-female vocal group High Society (performing sacred music).
• 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.
• According to a press release, “In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, major newspapers routinely commissioned their own marches. That tradition faded. USA TODAY is bringing it back, with America’s 250th anniversary on the horizon.”
“The USA TODAY March” — which USA TODAY commissioned one of its New Jersey-based reporters, Jim Beckerman, to write — will be performed, in its premiere, by New Jersey Wind Symphony at The West Side Presbyterian Church in Ridgewood, May 15 at 7:30 p.m.
The concert, whose theme is “To Shout for the Joy of Life,” will also feature music by Bach, Holst, David Maslanka and others.
The cover of “The Unsung Adventures of the Punch Brothers.”
• 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. 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.
Click HERE to read a new interview with Kowert.
• Singer-songwriter Jason Didner will celebrate the release of his Asbury Heart album with a concert at Porta in Asbury Park, May 15 at 6:30 p.m. He is releasing the album, which contains nine originals plus a cover of the Asbury Jukes classic “I Don’t Want to Go Home,” with his band the GSPs. He describes it as “An album celebrating the people, places and moments that put Asbury Park, NJ on the musical map.”
It was at Porta in 1971 — it was known then as The Student Prince — where Bruce Springsteen first jammed with Clarence Clemons.
Among the songs on the album is “Deliver Me From Nowhere,” which was inspired by the biographical 2025 film, “Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” Also on it is “DIY,” an indie-rock anthem that features Jon Caspi (of the band Jon Caspi & the First Gun), has a Ramones-like feel, and mentions Asbury Park’s Stone Pony nightclub (comparing it to a bucking bronco “that threw us once or twice”).
ATANDWA KANI
THEATER
• The Crossroads Theatre Company will present the classic 1972 anti-apartheid play “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” — written by Athol Fugard in collaboration with actors (and fellow South Africans) John Kani and Winston Ntshona — from May 19 to June 14. Atandwa Kani, the son of John Kani, will co-star in this production.
Click HERE to read my review of the play when it was presented at The Berlind Theatre at The McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, in 2015.
• The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey will open its 2026 season by presenting Noël Coward’s 1930 comedy “Private Lives” — about a divorced couple who remarry other people, then find themselves honeymooning at the same hotel with their new spouses — from May 16 to June 7 at its F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre at Drew University in Madison.
• Music Mountain Theatre in Lambertville. will present “Disaster” — the 2016 musical that is a parody of ’70s disaster movies such as “The Poseidon Adventure” and “Airport 1975,” and features ’70s hits ranging from Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling” to Peaches & Herb’s “Reunited” — from May 15 to June 7.
DANCE
• 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.)
PENN & TELLER
COMEDY
• Penn & Teller, an offbeat comedy and magic duo since the ’70s, will bring their 50th Anniversary Tour to Sound Waves at The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, May 14-15 at 8 p.m.
“As T.S. Eliot said, old men should be explorers,” Penn Jillette said in a recent interview. “And we try to do crazier stuff now than we were doing back then, and it’s really true — we are doing the weirdest acts we’ve ever done right now, and we’re in our 70s.”
OTHER
• The Morris Museum in Morris Township, which has a huge collection of mechanical musical instruments and automata (automated art), will host AutomataCon 2026, May 15-17, with talks (on subjects including “An Exploration of LEGO Automata” and “The Age of Artificial Intelligence”), workshops, social events and more. (see video below)
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REVIEWS
“My Lord, What a Night,” presented by George Street Playhouse at New Brunswick Performing Arts Center. (Through May 17)
“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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