Melissa Etheridge has shows coming up in Englewood, Red Bank and Morristown.
Here is a roundup of major arts events taking place around New Jersey, through April 17.
MUSIC
• This is a busy time for Melissa Etheridge, with a new album, Rise, just released (check out, below, “The Other Side of Blue,” a duet with Chris Stapleton that is on it); her first nomination for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (inductees will be announced next week); and a tour that began in late March and will continue through late September.
She will perform at BergenPAC in Englewood, April 10 at 8 p.m.; and The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, April 17 at 8 p.m. She will also return to New Jersey for a show at The Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, Sept. 9 at 7:30 p.m.
• 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.
• Harpin’ Help is an annual event organized by harmonica player Sandy Mack to benefit The Jersey Shore Jazz & Blues Foundation and local food banks. This year’s show will take place at Bar Anticipation in Lake Como, April 12, with 13 sets of harp-heavy music, beginning at 12:30 p.m. and featuring James Maddock, Cosmic Jerry Band, Kevin Hill & Secret Sound, Salty Dawgz, Sharon Lasher, Stringbean and others.
ANGELIQUE KIDJO
• Angélique Kidjo, the Benin-born and now New York-based, five-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, will release a new album, Hope!!, on April 24, that will feature collaborations with Ayra Starr, Pharrell, Charlie Wilson, Nile Rodgers, The Soweto Gospel and others. She will also perform at The McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, April 11 at 7:30 p.m.
• New Jersey Symphony music director Xian Zhang will conduct, and Francesca Dego will be featured on Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2, when the orchestra performs at Prudential Hall at NJPAC in Newark, April 10 at 7:30 p.m. and April 12 at 2 p.m.; and The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, April 11 at 7:30 p.m. The program also will include Anton Webern’s Im Sommerwind; and Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben.
• 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.”
BARRY MANILOW
• Barry Manilow, 82, is on his farewell tour, and billing his 7 p.m. April 14 concert The Prudential Center in Newark as “The Last Newark Concert.” Manilow announced in December that he had to have surgery to have a cancerous spot on his lung removed, and that he was cancelling shows because of that. But he is scheduled to return to the road this month, and has concerts scheduled into early 2027.
He is also planning to release a new album, What a Time, in June.
DANCE
• New Jersey Ballet will perform Twyla Tharp’s “Nine Sinatra Songs,” Justin Peck’s “In Creases” and other works at The Union County Performing Arts Center in Rahway, April 11 at 2 p.m. This is a free show, made possible by The New Jersey Economic Development Authority’s A.R.T. — Phase II Grant Program, though advance registration is required through the UCPAC website.
NJEDA is also supporting a sensory-friendly NJ Ballet performance of “Sleeping Beauty,” featuring Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 1889 music, at UCPAC, April 12 at 2 p.m. The ballet will be adapted for children and adults with autism and other sensory sensitivities, and last just one hour. Tickets are being sold for this performance, though they are just $8.
DANNY CLINCH
JOHN PRINE
MUSIC/FILM
• The Outpost in the Burbs and Montclair Film are teaming up to present a pair of linked events paying tribute to the late John Prine, in Montclair, on April 11.
At 4 p.m. that day, “You Got Gold: A Celebration of John Prine” will be screened at The Clairidge, with a question-and-answer session following. The film documents a 2022 John Prine tribute concert featuring Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile, Bob Weir, Lyle Lovett, Dwight Yoakam, Kacey Musgraves, Steve Earle and many others.
Then, at 8 p.m., The Outpost in the Burbs will present a concert titled “In Spite of Ourselves: A Tribute to John Prine” — featuring Ted Leo, Laura Cantrell, Leslie Mendelson, Carolann Solebello and Sam Robbins — at The First Congregational Church.
Tickets to the two events will be sold separately, but there will also be VIP tickets that will include a concert ticket (with seating in the first four rows), a film ticket, and a commemorative posted signed by the concert performers.
Prine — the singer-songwriter whose best-known songs include “Angel From Montgomery,” “Hello in There,” “Paradise,” “Sam Stone,” “That’s the Way the World Goes ‘Round” and “Please Don’t Bury Me” — died in 2020, at the age of 73.
The cover of Marc Shaiman’s book, “Never Mind the Happy: Showbiz Stories From a Sore Winner.”
WORDS
• Marc Shaiman — the composer of music for musicals such as “Hairspray,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Some Like It Hot,” and countless film scores — has written a memoir titled “Never Mind the Happy: Showbiz Stories From a Sore Winner,” and will discuss it with actor Norbert Leo Butz at the Words bookstore in Maplewood, April 14 at 7 p.m. The event will also feature a performance by Christine Ebersole.
• Alton Brown — who has been the creator, judge and/or host of numerous television food shows, including “Good Eats,” “Iron Chef America,” “Cutthroat Kitchen” and “Food Network Star” — promises “new (food) demonstrations, music, and slightly scaled-down mayhem” at his “An Evening of Alton Brown” show, which he will present at The Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, April 10 at 7:30 p.m.
• The Rutgers University Center for Social Justice Education & LGBT Communities will present Durand Bernarr, who won the Progressive R&B Album Grammy this year for his Bloom, in a talk titled “In Full Bloom” at The New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, April 14 at 7 p.m. This will be a moderated question-and-answer session that, according to the NBPAC website, will explore “the human behind the artist; his journey, creative evolution, triumphs, and the challenges that have shaped his sound and spirit.”
• Singer-songwriter Jesse Malin will sign copies of his new book “Almost Grown: A New York Memoir,” April 11 at 4 p.m. at Jack’s Music Shoppe in Red Bank.
• The Garden State New Play Festival will present “Tell Your Story! A Community Writing Workshop,” a free event led by writer and teacher Dania Ramos, April 14 at 8:30 p.m. at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City.
Mile Square Theatre in Hoboken will present the play “The Mountaintop,” which is about The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
THEATER
• Mile Square Theatre in Hoboken will present “The Mountaintop” — Katori Hall’s wildly imaginative 2009 play about The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — from April 16 to May 3. The play is a fictionalized account of the night before King dies, and features just two characters: King and a maid at the hotel at which he is staying.
• 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.”
• New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch will present the prolific Israel Horovitz’s “Sins of the Mother” from April 10 to May 3. The play — which is set in Gloucester, Massachusetts — has been described as “a seething stew of parent-child tensions” as well as a “wily, cynical tale … Horovitz has calibrated each exchange, each lightly comic laugh line, as he inches towards resolutions both startling and satisfying.”
CINDY STAGOFF
LENNY KAYE
FILM
• Monty Hall in Jersey City will present “Nuggets: Celluloid Artyfacts of Sixties Rock,” a collection of rare short films and television clips showcasing ’60s pop and garage-rock bands, April 11 at 8 p.m. Lenny Kaye will speak live at the event; he is a singer-songwriter, a member of Patti Smith’s band, and the creator of the landmark 1972 garage-rock anthology the program is named after, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era.
• The Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie will screen “Listen Up! Trenton Makes Music,” a documentary about the Trenton music scene (see trailer below), April 11. Frank Pinto and Joe Zook, two musicians featured in the film, will perform live at 6:30 p.m., with the screening following.
MULTI-MEDIA ART
• “Sea Change,” a collaborative project by artist Debrah Pearson Feinn and filmmaker Jerry Fried that has been described as an “immersive art experience where video, sound and sculpture surround you, pulling you straight into the waves,” can be seen at Fletcher Hall at Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Montclair, April 10 from 6 to 8:30 p.m.; April 11 from 3 to 5 p.m.; and April 12 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.; there will be no admission charge.
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REVIEWS
“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)
“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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