Top 15 NJ Arts Events of the Week: North to Shore, Princeton, Barefoot Country Music Festivals, more

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Here is a roundup of major arts events taking place around New Jersey, through June 18.

FESTIVALS

• The fourth annual North to Shore Festival — produced by NJPAC, and co-sponsored by The New Jersey Economic Development Authority — will last from from June 13 to June 28, with most of the shows in Newark and Asbury Park, though there are also three at the new ParkStage venue in Freehold. As usual, the bookings are very eclectic, and the size of the shows will range from huge to tiny.

Here are some of the show’s scheduled for the festival’s first six days:

June 13: “Claypool Gold” featuring Primus, Les Claypool’s Frog Brigade & The Claypool Lennon Delirium at Stone Pony Summer Stage, Asbury Park.
June 13: Horse the Band at Asbury Lanes.
June 13: Brick City Comedy Revue with Kyle Grooms, Rae Sanni, John Moses at Newark Culture Club.
June 14: Brian Fallon & the Painkillers at Stone Pony, Asbury Park.
June 14: Leanna Firestone at The Baronet at Asbury Hotel.
June 15: Malibu, The Extensions, Blush at Wonder Bar, Asbury Park.
June 16: Hot Mulligan, Joyce Manor, Saturdays at Your Place, Koyo at Stone Pony Summer Stage, Asbury Park.
June 16: Sed’s House of Blues at Allettante Restaurant, Newark.
June 17: Janelle Monae at Prudential Hall at NJPAC, Newark.
June 17: Lila Iké at House of Independents, Asbury Park.
June 17: Luke Combs UK (tribute show) at Stone Pony, Asbury Park.
June 17: The Antoinette Montague Experience, “Here’s to the Ladies Who Swing and Bling” at Newark Culture Club.
June 17: Bad Cop Bad Cop, Pretty Bitter at Wonder Bar, Asbury Park.
June 18: Secondhand Serenade, Every Avenue at House of Independents, Asbury Park.
June 18: René Vaca at Prudential Hall NJPAC, Newark.
June 18: Eric D’Alessandro at Victoria Theater at NJPAC, Newark.
June 18: Surfing for Daisy at Stone Pony, Asbury Park.
June 18: Eddie 9V at Wonder Bar, Asbury Park.
June 18: Yawn Mower, Black Flamingos at Baronet Rooftop at Asbury Hotel.

Michael and Kevin Bacon.

• The Princeton Festival, which started on June 5 and continues through June 21, is offering a variety of pop, classical, dance and family events in a tented pavilion at Morven Museum & Garden, and other venues.

Here are the remaining events. Everything is at Morven Museum & Garden, unless otherwise noted.

June 11 at Trinity Church: Twelfth Night Ensemble, performing Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and other works by Vivaldi, Pietro Locatelli, Ancangelo Corelli and Francesco Durante.
June 11 at Princeton Garden Theatre: “Footloose” screening, in anticipation of The Bacon Brothers’ June 20 concert. (Kevin Bacon co-stars in the film.)
June 12 and 14: Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” featuring Toni Marie Palmertree as Cio-Cio-San and Victor Starsky as Pinkerton, with Rossen Milanov conducting The Princeton Symphony Orchestra.
June 13: Queen Nation, Queen tribute
June 14: Yoga in the Garden with live music
June 18: Time for Three (singer-violinists Nick Kendall and Charles Yang, singer-bassist Ranaan Meyer)
June 19: Juneteenth Community Celebration
June 19: Rochelle Ellis, talk on “Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement”
June 19: “Great Ladies of Jazz” featuring Capathia Jenkins and Aisha de Haas singing the songs of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and others, with Lucas Waldin conducting The Princeton Symphony Orchestra
June
June 20: The Bacon Brothers (Michael and Kevin Bacon)
June 21: “America at 250!” family event, with storytelling, educational talks and more
June 21: “American Fanfare” with singer with Julie Benko and Rossen Milanov conducting the Princeton Symphony Orchestra

ERIC CHURCH

• The sixth annual Barefoot Country Music Fest — New Jersey’s biggest annual country event — will take place June 18-21, on three stages on the beach in Wildwood, with headliners including including Miranda Lambert (June 18), Kelsea Ballerini (June 19), Post Malone (June 20) and Eric Church (June 21).

Other performers will include Shaboozey, Tucker Wetmore, Cole Swindell, Ty Myers, Chase Rice, The Fray, Tracy Lawrence, Chase Matthew, Hank Azaria & the EZ Street Band (performing a Bruce Springsteen tribute) and Williams Honor.

MUSIC

• Josh Groban will perform, with Jennifer Hudson featured as a “special guest,” at the Centennial Gala fundraiser for The Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, June 13 at 8 p.m. The two are on tour together this summer, and this is their only currently scheduled New Jersey appearance.

The Basie is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year; the building began life in 1926 as Reade’s Carlton Theater.

• E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg will present one of his Max Weinberg’s Jukebox shows in the Twilight Concert Series at Jack Curtis Stadium at Cooper River Park in Pennsauken, June 11 at 8 p.m. In these shows, Weinberg and other musicians play classic rock songs — by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who and others, including, possibly, Bruce Springsteen — that are requested by audience members.

• Max Weinberg’s Jukebox will also perform at The South Orange Performing Arts Center‘s “Gala 20,” June 12. The event will begin with a cocktail hour at 5 p.m., followed by a dinner emceed by comedian Liz Glazer at 6 p.m., the band’s performance at 8 p.m., and an afterparty featuring singer Rebecca Covington Webber at 9:30 p.m.

• The San Francisco-based Telegraph Quartet (violinists Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violist Pei-Ling Lin and cellist Jeremiah Shaw) is known for performing both standard chamber music material and more contemporary works, and will do just that in their concert in the Back Deck series at The Morris Museum in Morris Township, June 11 at 7:30 p.m.

The concert will feature Claude Debussy’s 1893 String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10, as well as Eleanor Alberga’s 2001 String Quartet No. 3, and a string quartet arrangement of Jerome Kern’s Great American Songbook standard, “The Way You Look Tonight,” famously crooned by Fred Astaire and others.

BEN FOLDS

• Ben Folds — the rock singer-songwriter and Ben Folds Five frontman who has also branched out, at times, to orchestral and chamber-pop music — will perform with New Jersey Symphony (conducted by Edwin Outwater) at Prudential Hall at NJPAC in Nesark, June 13 at 7:30 p.m.; and The State Theatre in New Brunswick, June 14 at 2 p.m.

• Les Claypool’s Claypool Gold Tour, featuring three of his bands — Primus, The Claypool Lennon Delirium, and Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade — will come to The Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park, June 13 at 6 p.m., as part of the North to Shore Festival (see above).

Primus, formed more than 40 years ago, will feature bassist-vocalist Claypool along with guitarist Larry LaLonde and drummer John Hoffman.

Claypool and Sean Ono Lennon will perform with different sets of other musicians in Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade — which has had various different lineups since its initial incarnation in 2000 — and the more recent side project The Claypool Lennon Delirium, which has released two full-length albums as well as an EP and a new song, “WAP (What a Predicament),” that you can listen to, below.

• The Brazilian musician Sergio Mendes died in 2024, at the age of 83, but his Sérgio Mendes Band — featuring longtime members such as singer Gracinha Leporace (his widow), drummer Léo Costa, bassist Andre de Santanna and guitarist Kleber Jorge — is continuing to play his music, and will be at The Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, June 11 at 7:30 p.m.; and BergenPAC in Englewood, June 14 at 7 p.m.

HERNDON LACKEY

THEATER

• The Bell Theater at Bell Works in Holmdel will present “We’ll Meet Again,” described as “A New American Musical,” June 18-21 and 24-28. The play is about Henry Stern, a Jewish boy whose family escapes from Germany shortly before the start of World War II, and settles in Alabama. For decades, he then searches for other family members who survived the Holocaust.

The musical’s score includes traditional Jewish songs as well as popular American songs from the ’30s and ’40s, including “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “The House I Live In” and “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

Herndon Lackey — whose many Broadway credits include “Les Misérables,” “Parade,” “LoveMusik” and “Inherit the Wind” — will play the adult Henry.

• The annual Plays-in-the-Park series at The Stephen J. Capestro Theater at Roosevelt Park in Edison will present “All Shook Up,” June 17-20 and 22-27 at 8 p.m. This jukebox musical features songs associated with Elvis Presley, and its plot was inspired by Shakespearean comedies including “Twelfth Night,” “As You Like It” and “Much Ado About Nothing.”

FILM

• Lloyd Kaufman, co-founder of Troma Entertainment and the director of Troma films such as “The Toxic Avenger,” will participate in a “Troma Entertainment Retrospective” hosted by Kevin Smith at Smith’s SModcastle Cinemas in Atlantic Highlands, June 14 at 4 p.m. Smith and Kaufman will discuss and Troma’s history and show clips.

Also, SModcastle Cinemas will screen “The Toxic Avenger” itself, June 14 at 1:30 p.m.

JOE CIROTTI

FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT

• The Sustainably Green Music & Arts Fest— being presented by The Washington Business Improvement District and the Washington Borough Green Team, June 13 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Downtown Washington (Warren County) — will offer exhibits, vendors, activities for children, and music by Riot Season, at 10:30 a.m.; Joe Cirotti’s Gyspy Jazz Band, at 12:30 p.m.; and BBD Rhythm & Blues (featuring singer-bassist James “JB” Barnes), at 2:30.

Click HERE to read a recent NJArts.net feature on Cirotti.

• The New Jersey-based Discovery Orchestra — which, in its own words, “teaches the listening skills that help people deeply connect with classical music” — will perform George Gershwin’s monumental, jazz-influenced Rhapsody in Blue at The Kasser Theater at Montclair State University, June 14 at 3 p.m., and the show will be taped for its seventh public television special. George Marriner Maull will conduct, and discuss the work, and Clayton Stephenson will be featured on piano.

There is no admission charge, but tickets must be reserved in advance at discoveryorchestra.org.

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REVIEWS

“Things I Remember,” works by Leandro Comrie at Guttenberg Arts. (Through June 20)

“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)

“Henri Matisse: Beyond Color” at Morris Museum, Morris Township. (Through Aug. 9)

“Salvador Jiménez-Flores: Raíces & Resistencias” at Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton. (Through Aug. 1, 2027)

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