Jersey Arts Podcast

Susan Wallner talks to playwright, director, and artistic director Emily Mann. Mann is celebrating her 20th anniversary season at the Tony Award-winning McCarter Theatre with a restaging of "Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years." Times have changed since its first production -- as Mann says, "People came with different expectations in 1995 to this play about thes...

Tina Sloan is best known for her 26 years as Nurse Lillian on “Guiding Light.” CBS just canceled the show, but, as producer Susan Wallner finds out, Tina already has a new gig: starring in a play based on her life as a soap star, mother, daughter, wife, former mountain climber and, as she puts it, “lady who lunches.” “Changing Shoes” is at Cape May Stage August 17, 2009. Thanks for listening! Subs...

State of the Arts producer Christopher Benincasa meets up with actor Matthew Arkin at New Brunswick’s George Street Playhouse to talk about his role in the Obie Award-winning play Sight Unseen. He plays Jonathan Waxman, an art-world super-star wrestling with an unexpected identity crisis. The play runs through February 15th. Thanks for listening! Subscribe to The Jersey Arts Podcast in your favori...

Seven years ago, opera singer Scott Altman and his wife Lisa decided to settle in Princeton with their young kids, and start a brand new opera company. Today, Opera New Jersey is getting consistently rave reviews. In Feb 2009 they perform Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus featuring opera superstar Ruth Ann Swenson. Producer Eric Schultz chats with Opera New Jersey co-founder and artistic directo...

Philip Pearlstein’s current exhibition at the Montclair Art Museum has been designated an “American Masterpiece” by the National Endowment for the Arts. Pearlstein is known for his precise, larger-than-life nudes. Producer Susan Wallner talks to the artist about his extraordinary career and to curator Patterson Sims who says that Pearlstein, now in his 80s, is making “the best paintings of his lif...

Simone Dinnerstein’s self-produced CD of Bach’s Goldberg Variations topped the classical music charts and propelled her into a career as a top international soloist. The Brooklyn native will perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in a series of upcoming concerts with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Producer Eric Schultz meets Dinnerstein, who describes how the Goldberg Variations changed her...

“Is it possible to make a photograph of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world?” This is the premise of an exhibit featuring over 1,000 images by more than 180 artists from 18 countries at The Pierro Gallery of South Orange through May 25th. NJN producer Susan Wallner spoke to guest curator Laurel Ptak about where she got the idea for the show and why it’s proven to be so popular. Tha...

During the era of Jim Crow, black singers were played on black radio stations, and white singers on white ones. Famously, Elvis Presley adopted the bluesy style and songs of black performers, shocking white audiences. Rose Marie McCoy wanted to be a singer, but became one of the best songwriters of the time, working on both sides of the color barrier with hits by Ike and Tina Turner, Elvis Presley...

On stage through July 20, "Summerland" is a work of historical fiction based on a real case that involved William H. Mumler – a man who claimed to be able to photograph spirits, and whose clients included First Lady of the United States Mary Todd Lincoln. Thanks for listening! Subscribe to The Jersey Arts Podcast in your favorite podcast player. The Jersey Arts Podcast is one medium of F...

In the age of Instagram, food is a visual obsession. “The Shared Meal,” an exhibition at Artworks in Trenton, dives deeper, exploring the meaning of food through the work of nine visual artists. Thanks for listening! Subscribe to The Jersey Arts Podcast in your favorite podcast player. The Jersey Arts Podcast is one medium of Feature Stories on Discover Jersey Arts (jerseyarts.com) , where article...

From April 25-28, NJSO presents Xian Conducts Mozart, with classical music super-star Simone Dinnerstein performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23. Hear from Dinnerstein on her take on the timeless genius of Mozart’s music. Thanks for listening! Subscribe to The Jersey Arts Podcast in your favorite podcast player. The Jersey Arts Podcast is one medium of Feature Stories on Discover Jersey Arts (je...

Video games, music, and pizza form the cultural undercurrent of "Band on the Run," a new play by Chris Saglimbene featured in this year’s Stages Festival. A playwright, actor, vlogger, gamer, artist, and all-around talented guy, Saglimbene has cerebral palsy but, as he says, “it doesn’t have him.” Actors from Premiere Stages at Kean University join Saglimbene in a staged reading on March...

The Alan Parsons Live Project plays Bergen Performing Arts Center on Friday, February 22. Rock icon Alan Parsons took a moment during his non-stop touring schedule to chat with us about getting his start working with The Beatles and Pink Floyd at Abbey Road Studios, the analog approach he took in producing his new album “The Secret,” and finally winning a Grammy Award a few weeks ago after being n...

Composer John Morton has created interactive installations using sound in Central Park,  Governors Island and now the Morris Museum, where two of his pieces can be “played” through February 24. “Fever Songs” uses audio gathered from different religious traditions, and “The Voyage Out” is a collaboration with figurative artist Jacqueline Shatz. Producer Susan Wallner talks to both of the artists  a...

At the age of 75, singer-songwriter Garland Jeffreys continues to rock. The Brooklyn native got his start in New York City’s club scene in the mid-60s, and had a breakout hit in the 70s with the single “Wild in the Streets.” He met his best friend Lou Reed while studying art history at Syracuse University, and he recorded with The Velvet Underground’s co-founder John Cale before striking out on hi...

Drummer, leader, and composer Terri Lyne Carrington made history as the first woman to win a Grammy for Best Instrumental Jazz for her album “Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue.” Now, she brings her interpretation of Duke Ellington’s “Money Jungle” to the TD James Moody Jazz Festival at NJPAC on November 11, 2018, as part of a program called “Jazz Vinyl Revisited.” Producer Susan Wallner talks to C...

Tonight, Tuesday, October 30,  at Douglass Library at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, a mother and her daughter – one an artist, the other a scientist – will have a public conversation about where, why and how their fields intersect. Thanks for listening! Subscribe to The Jersey Arts Podcast in your favorite podcast player. The Jersey Arts Podcast is one medium of Feature Stories on Discover...

The Dodge Poetry Festival is the largest poetry event in North America. Paterson-based poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan will be reading on Thursday and Friday of the four-day festival taking place October 18-21 in Newark. Maria is the force behind the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College, and the author of more than 20 books of and about poetry. Her poems are about her life, including her...

Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s Broadway musical "Bright Star" has come to Surflight Theatre in Beach Haven. The comedian and the songwriter created the show after collaborating on a Grammy-winning bluegrass album called "Love Has Come For You." "Bright Star" is set in the American South in the 1920s and '40s, and it’s on a similar musical wavelength. We recentl...

Wendy Wasserstein’s best known play, "The Heidi Chronicles," won both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play in 1989. Many of the themes of this feminist classic were already evident in "Uncommon Women and Others," a play written by Wasserstein a decade earlier. "Uncommon Women" is on stage at the Princeton Summer Theater through July 22nd. For...

Looking for a way to celebrate the start of the summer season? Beginning Friday, June 22, all 48 blocks of Atlantic City will be buzzing with hands-on art projects, live performances, unique dining experiences and a lot more. We recently spoke with Joyce Hagen, Executive Director of the Atlantic City Arts Foundation, to learn more about A.C.’s arts scene, and to find out what the 48 Blocks Atlanti...

“Caged” is a play based on the experiences of incarcerated men in New Jersey. It’s written by the New Jersey Prison Cooperative, a group of men who met in a drama class in prison taught by Chris Hedges, an author and Princeton University professor. Hedges had heard a story about a man being jailed that had affected him, and he offered it to the class as a starting point. From that beginning, the m...

The new musical "The Sting," now entering its last weekend at Paper Mill Playhouse, was pretty much totally sold out before it even opened. A musical adaptation of the classic, Oscar-winning film of the same name starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, this new version stars Harry Connick, Jr., J. Harrison Ghee and Kate Shindle – to name a few. Theater-goers know Ghee from his inimitabl...

Even if you don't know anything about opera, you've heard “Ride of the Valkyries" – it’s been bouncing around pop culture for generations, appearing in everything from Bugs Bunny cartoons to "Apocalypse Now." This Sunday, March 18, at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Trilogy: An Opera Company will present Richard Wagner’s "The Valkyrie" – the second of four...

The next show at the Axelrod Performing Arts Center, opening March 3, is the popular musical “Ragtime.” Set in the early 20th century, it features African Americans, Jewish immigrants, upper-class suburbanites, as well as historical luminaries such as Harry Houdini, Henry Ford and Emma Goldman. Luis Salgado is the director of this new production, returning to Axelrod PAC after his popular 2017 pro...