So here we go: another spring, another opportunity for Jersey City to distinguish itself as a place to make and hear music. There’ll be strumming under the stars; there’ll be long nights in clubs and bars; there’ll be bands in basements, solo singers stuffed in restaurant back rooms, jazz combos in statuaries, rappers on mansion […]
Performing Arts
Posted inPerforming Arts
Matthew Sweet At White Eagle Hall
Some masters of melody don’t care about public opinion, and some alternative rockers are way too cool to admit that they’d like to have a hit. This has never been true of Matthew Sweet. Of all the heroes in the guitar-pop canon, he is undoubtedly the least arrogant. Before his commercial and critical breakthrough, he […]
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Days of Grace & Silence: Jersey City Poet Laureate Writes of Long Covid
“I’m pretty good at being sick,” Poet Laureate of Jersey City Ann Wallace says over Zoom. “I know how to navigate the healthcare system. I know how to advocate for myself.” Wallace has dealt with illness throughout her life, a survivor of ovarian cancer in her early twenties, an MS diagnosis in her thirties, and […]
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Mayor to Cut Ribbon on Tonal Art Music Center at Cast Iron Lofts
The area between the Holland Tunnel and the southern border of Hoboken doesn’t have a handle, but it’s full of creative potential. The Art House occupied the ground floor of a building there for awhile. Last year, there was music in Coles Park during the summer. Its freshly-minted high rise towers are filled with new […]
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SMUSH Opens Their Spring Dance Series With “Mold”
With her legs bowed, a blank look on her face, and a pinky raised, a woman oozed toward the middle of a crowded room. She bent her knees and moved her hand in a tight circle, stirring the air, feet splayed, knees bent and tongue slightly out. She crouched as though she’d sit on an […]
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Rogue Waves April: Live Music in Jersey City
One of the many commendable things about Fox & Crow (594 Palisade Ave.) is its residency policy. Should an artist fit the club’s aesthetic — roots music, acoustic instruments, intelligent (and intelligible) lyrics — he might find himself asked back monthly. Residencies, typically, are more relaxed than one-off gigs: they give the musicians an opportunity to try out new […]
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Drummer Extraordinaire Winard Harper Teams up With Nimbus Dance
A real drummer is like a dancer. Every movement is consequential and has a discernible visual — and audible — outcome. A percussionist at play is all swinging arms and thrashing elbows, batter-stirring wrists, piston legs and stomping feet. He may be fixed in his chair; he may be up and bent over his cymbals, […]
Posted inVisual Arts
An Artist Walks Through ‘A Night of Ideas’ and Reflects on Pompidou x
First announced on January 30th, the much-anticipated late-night event on March 1st was billed as a ‘Night of Ideas’, one of more than twenty nationwide signature events by Villa Albertine, a New York City-based international cultural institution fostering “exchanges in arts and ideas between the United States, France and beyond.” Co-hosted by Centre Pompidou, the prestigious Paris-based global […]
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‘Don’t Close Loew’s Alley,’ Jersey City Residents Urge City Leaders
Close to 100 Jersey City community members turned out in person, joined by an additional 50 virtually, Thursday night to learn more about a planned 2-year shutdown of an alleyway next to the Loew’s Theater in Journal Square. Closing the 10-foot-wide pathway would allow some of the theater restoration work to proceed uninterrupted by foot […]
Posted inPerforming Arts
Rogue Waves March: Live Music in Jersey City
Even if he’d never played a note onstage, Bryan Beninghove would be remembered as a deeply consequential Jersey City musician. As founder of Riverview Jazz and a motivating force behind the Jersey City Jazz Festival, he helped inaugurate an annual party that remains a centerpiece of the arts calendar — an event that has, in […]