JOHN CRAWFORD
Nine Inch Nails will perform at The Prudential Center in Newark, Feb. 14.
Here is a roundup of major arts events taking place around New Jersey, through Feb. 19.
MUSIC
• Nine Inch Nails have not performed in New Jersey for more than a decade; their last show here was at The PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel in 2014. But the uncompromisingly dark industrial-rock band’s Peel It Back Tour will include an 8 p.m. Feb. 14 — that’s right, Valentine’s Day! — concert at The Prudential Center in Newark, with Boys Noize opening. Frontman Trent Reznor is joined on the tour by keyboardist Atticus Ross, guitarist Robin Finck, bassist Stuart Brooks and drummer Josh Freese.
According to a press release, “The show replaces traditional LED screens with translucent fabric, raw handheld cinematography, and layered projections, creating a fully immersive, three-dimensional environment unlike anything the band has presented before.”
• Songwriter Jason Robert Brown — who has written music and lyrics for musicals such as “The Last Five Years,” “The Bridges of Madison County,” “Parade” and “13” — is also a concert performer, and will appear with a band and singers Carrie St. Louis and Ashley Pérez Flanagan (both Broadway veterans) at The Kasser Theater at Montclair State University, Feb. 19 at 7:30 p.m. The show is part of Montclair State’s Peak Performances‘ series.
KAYFIELD PHOTOGRAPHY
ORRIN EVANS
• Jazz pianist Orrin Evans’s Trash Gadget trio, also featuring drummer Byron Landham and bassist Matthew Parish, will perform at The Shea Center for Performing Arts at William Paterson University in Wayne, Feb. 15 at 3 p.m., to kick off the university’s Winter-Spring Jazz Series.
Future shows in the series will include The Branford Marsalis Quartet, Feb. 26; Steve Wilson with the William Paterson University Jazz Orchestra, March 8; John Pizzarelli, March 29; and Paquito D’Rivera with the William Paterson Latin Jazz Ensemble, May 3.
A “Meet-the-Artist” session, free to all ticket-holders, will be presented an hour before each show.
• Singer-songwriter Scott E. Moore will present a concert called “Random Acts of Love Song,” Feb. 14 at 8 p.m. at the Fletcher’s Listening Room series at Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Montclair. According to the series’ website, the show will be devoted to original love songs and covers “in myriad forms: romantic, passionate, regretful, cynical, flawed, obsessive, playful, and unconditional. All served up in a musical cocktail of blues, country, jazz and R&B.”
Proceeds will benefit Essex Together, which does work in the fields of housing, education, criminal justice reform and the environment.
• A show titled “The Jane Austen Playlist” — which will take place at The Grunin Center for the Arts at Ocean County College in Toms River, Feb. 14 at 2 p.m. — will feature performances of music that the novelist Jane Austen (“Pride and Prejudice,” “Sense and Sensibility,” “Emma”) loved, played by pianist Laura Klein and others, as well as readings from her works. (see video below)
JAKE MAGRAW
JOSH RITTER
• As part of his A Book of Gold Thrown Open Tour, singer-songwriter Josh Ritter will perform solo at The Outpost in the Burbs at The First Congregational Church in Montclair, Feb. 14 at 8 p.m. Ritter has written on Facebook that the tour “will showcase lots of my longer, more narrative songs, as well as a bunch of other songs from the new album (last year’s I Believe in You, My Honeydew) and beyond. … I’m really looking forward to seeing a bunch of new places, revisiting some of my favorite haunts, and generally just giving these songs their due on stage.”
Ritter is taking Valentine’s Day dedications for this show, HERE. He will “randomly picking out a few of these to read for all to hear,” he says.
• Singer Audra Mariel, guitarist Doug Clarke and bassist Gary Mazzaroppi will present a show titled “Jazz Love Songs” in the Cabaret Café series at The Brookdale Performing Arts Center at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, Feb. 15 at 2 p.m.
• Saxophonist Scott Robinson, an expert in the music of visionary jazz artist Sun Ra, will host a free Sun Ra Listening Session at The Montclair Public Library, Feb. 12 at 6 p.m. (The Seed Artists nonprofit organization presents a listening session at the library on the second Thursday of every month.)
Sun Ra died in 1993, at the age of 79, but his Sun Ra Arkestra continues to perform his music.
“That’s Love!,” a new musical about singer and actress Dorothy Dandridge, will premiere at The Axelrod Performing Arts Center through March 8.
THEATER
• “That’s Love!,” a new musical about singer and actress Dorothy Dandridge — the first African-American to be nominated for the Best Actress Oscar (for “Carmen Jones,” in 1954) — will premiere at The Axelrod Performing Arts Center in Deal from Feb. 19 to March 8.
Broadway veterans N’Kenge (“Caroline, or Change,” “Motown the Musical”) and Christina Sajous (“A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical”) will co-direct the show, which was conceived by N’Kenge, and will star her. The book is by Trey Ellis, and the music and lyrics are by Shelton L. Becton.
Dandridge started performing as a child, in the 1920s, and died in 1965 at the age of 42. Her life was previously explored in the 1999 film “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge,” starring Halle Berry.
• George Street Playhouse, which presented Joy Behar’s “My First Ex-Husband” — a series of monologues described as “a bold and heartfelt adaptation of true stories (exploring) the messy, hilarious truths of love, sex, and relationships” — at The New Brunswick Performing Arts Center in August, will bring it back there, Feb. 13 at 7:30 p.m., Feb. 14 at 2 and 7:30 p.m., and Feb. 15 at 1 and 4 p.m.
Behar will be joined in the show by Veanne Cox (Tony-nominated for “Company” in 1995) and Adrienne C. Moore (best known for playing Cindy “Black Cindy” Hayes in “Orange Is the New Black”).
PAUL POROWSKI FOR PLAYHOUSE 22
Kristin Schrier and Tara Hines in “Althea & Angela.”
• “Althea & Angela,” a play about professional tennis doubles partners Althea Gibson and Angela Buxton — champion athletes of the 1950s who had to deal with racism and antisemitism, respectively — will make its New Jersey premiere at the “On the Edge” black box series at Playhouse 22 in East Brunswick, from Feb. 13 to Feb. 22. In this series, the audience sits on the theater’s stage.
• Luna Stage in West Orange will present Rajesh Bose’s new abridged version of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” from Feb. 12 to March 8. Five actors will play 16 roles in this 90-minute production.
FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT
• Mile Square Theatre in Hoboken will present “The Young King,” an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 fairy tale about a peasant who finds out he is a royal heir, from Feb. 19 to March 8.
The theater describes this as an immersive, interactive, family-oriented show that “invites audiences to step inside the story, encouraging reflection and dialogue among children, families, and educators alike.”
DANCE
• Peak Performances will present Camille A. Brown & Dancers, in a show titled “I Am,” Feb. 12 at 7:30 p.m. at The Kasser Theater at Montclair State University. According to Peak Performances website, “I Am” was inspired by the HBO series “Lovecraft Country” and the rhythms of the movie “Drumline,” and “launches new queries into the possibilities of imagination — and boldly investigates the future.”
Nai Ni Chen Dance Company will present a Dragon Procession in Newark, Feb. 14.
• Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company will celebrate the beginning of the Lunar Year — this is the Year of the Horse — with a program of festive dances at The Victoria Theater at NJPAC in Newark, Feb. 14-15 at 2 p.m.
Also, on Feb. 14, there will also be a Dragon Procession beginning at noon, outside NJPAC, and including a free performance at The Newark Museum at 12:15 p.m. The procession will return to NJPAC for the 2 p.m. show, with an additional free performance, back at the museum, at 4:20 p.m.
• A show featuring performers from the “Dancing With the Stars” TV competition series will come to Prudential Hall at NJPAC in Newark, Feb. 14 at 7:30 p.m. Performers will include Val Chmerkovskiy, Britt Stewart, Alan Bersten, Brandon Armstrong, Jenna Johnson, Daniella Karagach, Pasha Pashkov, Ezra Sosa and Hailey Bills. Danielle Fishel and Andy Richter will co-host, with Alix Earle appearing as a “guest star.”
VISUAL ARTS
• “Andy Warhol: On Repeat” will open at The Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick, Feb. 11, and can be seen there through July 31. According to the museum’s website, the show “critically examines repetition and duration as foundational strategies in Warhol’s work. Bringing together his early durational film portraits and later serial photography, the exhibition explores how these formal devices shaped the artist’s approach to time and identity, and how they emerged as two of the most influential artistic strategies in twentieth-century American art.”
Jacob Lawrence’s “The 1920’s… The Migrants Arrive and Cast Their Ballots” will be shown at The New Jersey State Museum in Trenton.
• The New Jersey State Museum in Trenton will celebrate the 250th anniversary of The United States, this year, by looking back at it 200th anniversary, in 1976. The exhibition “Spirit of ’76: The Bicentennial” will open on Feb. 14 and run through February 2027.
“This year the nation is celebrating its 250th anniversary,” said the museum’s curator of cultural history, Nicholas Ciotola, in a press release. “But it’s also the 50-year anniversary of the Bicentennial, a long-overlooked chapter of recent American history that is equally deserving of remembrance. In 1976, not unlike today, Americans were wrestling with issues of belonging, equity and patriotism and channeled their feelings about the country in a variety of different ways — socially, politically, and, most importantly for this exhibit, artistically.”
The exhibition will include artifacts and pieces of art connected to the Bicentennial, including Kent Bicentennial Portfolio lithographs and screen prints by artists such as Jacob Lawrence and Robert Indiana; state government-issued items such as license plates and maps; flags and commemorative medallions; and ceramic works by Trenton porcelain companies Cybis, Boehm, and Lenox. The exhibition will also include a collection of artwork and artifacts connected to George Washington’s crossing of The Delaware River, near Trenton, in late 1776.
The Kent Bicentennial Portfolio project, Lawrence, Indiana and other artists were asked to create artwork in response to the question, “What does independence mean to you?” Lawrence (1917-2000) responded with a depiction of immigrants casting ballots.
LUTHER VANDROSS
FILM
• Montclair Film will present a five-film series, “Revolutions in Soul: A Joyful Celebration of the History of Black Popular Music,” at Montclair’s Clairidge and Bellevue theaters, starting with “Soul Power” (about a three-day concert in Zaire, in 1974, featuring James Brown, B.B. King, Miriam Makeba and others), Feb. 14 at noon at The Clairidge; and “Luther: Never Too Much,” a documentary about singer Luther Vandross, Feb. 14 at 7:30 p.m. at The Bellevue.
The series will continue with “Little Richard: I Am Everything,” Feb. 21 at The Clairidge; “Amazing Grace,” documenting a 1972 Aretha Franklin gospel concert, Feb. 21 at The Bellevue; and “Wattstax,” about a 1972 music festival in Los Angeles featuring Isaac Hayes, The Staple Singers, Richard Pryor and others, Feb. 28 at The Clairidge.
• “Paul McCartney: Man on the Run,” a new documentary about Paul McCartney’s early years as a solo artist, will be shown in movie theaters, Feb. 19. For locations and times, in New Jersey and elsewhere, visit manontherun.film.
The film was directed by Morgan Neville, whose previous works include 2014’s Oscar-winning “20 Feet From Stardom,” about some of the music world’s leading backing vocalists; and 2018’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” about longtime “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” host Fred Rogers.
“Paul McCartney: Man on the Run” debuted last year at The Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. Reviewing it for Variety, Chris Willman wrote that it “is a heck of a lot of fun to watch, if you aren’t still so married to your worn copy of Plastic Ono Band that you can’t acknowledge the obvious: If there had been no 1960s (imagine no Beatles, it’s easy if you try), McCartney would still have to be acknowledged as one of the premier craftsmen of 20th-century pop, even if it’d just been ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ as his foot on the starting block.”
A bonus short film featuring a conversation between McCartney and Neville will be shown at the Feb. 19 screenings as well.
REVIEWS
“Morven Revealed: Untold Stories From New Jersey’s Most Historic Home” at Morven Museum & Garden, Princeton. (Through March 1)
“Contemporary Volumes” at Morris Museum, Morris Township. Works by Brian Dettmer, Colette Fu, Samuelle Greene, Cheryl Gross, Amanda Love, Sarah Matthews, Cheryl R. Riley, Susan Rostow, Diana Schmertz. (Through March 8)
“Kim’s Convenience” at Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton. (Through March 15)
“Salvador Jiménez-Flores: Raíces & Resistencias” at Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton. (Through Aug. 1, 2027)
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