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  • Monmouth University Music and Arts Festival 2020

    The Monmouth University Music and Arts Festival will provide Monmouth County communities and beyond, along with the students, faculty, and staff at Monmouth University, with the opportunity to enjoy a top-flight music and arts event each summer. Every year, we welcome thousands of tourists and other visitors to the area, and we’re delighted to afford families with cultural opportunities to supplement their days at our lovely beaches. This year, of course, we are presenting the Music and Arts Festival virtually. With the help of cutting-edge contemporary technology, our performers are delighted to afford our community with a great boon during these challenging times.

    Our university is the year-round home for working musicians and artists, not to mention scores of students honing their talents as instrumental and theatrical performers, visual artists, and arts administrators. With the Music and Arts Festival, we will attract nationally and internationally acclaimed musicians and other fine artists to our campus. Not only will they supplement our students’ arts education, they will be on site each summer to provide visitors with opportunities to experience premiere concerts and exhibitions right here on the Shore.


    EVENT SPONSOR:

      
    With additional support from The Grove/West at Shrewsbury and Cammack Retirement
         
    PROGRAM:

    Blue Hawk House Band, “What’s Going On,” Marvin Gaye (1939-1984)

    Bill Timoney, American actor, “William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator”

    Lakehouse Music Academy, “Go,” Amy Ray (1964-)

    Colm Tóibín, Irish author, “Elizabeth Bishop”

    Katie Coffman, soprano, “Will There Really Be Morning,” Richard Hundley (1931-2018)

    Joseph Marano, tenor, “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960)

    The Sea Sharps, Monmouth University a cappella choir, “Just Got Paid,” Johnny Kemp (1959-2015)

    Julie Dzikiewicz (1962-), American artist, She Persisted (including “Suffrage Cat,” “Ida B. Wells,” “The Story of the Ham”)

    Garden State Philharmonic, Diane Wittry, conductor and music director

    Selections from West Side Story (“America,” “Prologue,” “Somewhere,” “Mambo”), Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

    “Starburst,” Jessie Montgomery (1981-)

    “Portraits of Langston: Harlem’s Summer Night,” Valerie Coleman (1970-)

    “Perhaps,” Reena Esmail (1983-)

    “Tango from Two Latin Dances,” Lauren Bernofsky (1967-)

    “Stars and Stripes,” John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)

    PERFORMANCE GROUPS:

    Blue Hawk House Band:

    George Wurzbach (Director, conga, production), Sara Wojciehowski (bass, production), Jason Caprioni (engineer), Bruce Davis (vocals 1), Jenae Louis-Jacques (vocals 2), Shadiyah Jai (vocals 3). Dillon Schindler (piano, arrangements), Max Adolf (guitar), Zach Sandler (saxophone), Danielle DiMeola (drums), Mark Rodriguez (synth).

    The Sea Sharps:

    Katie Coffman (arranger/president), David Wilderotter (soloist), Antonio Gonzalez (vocal percussionist/music director), Kaylee Figalora-Torres (music director), Arina Martin (music director), Mitchell Hendricks, Jamie Burch, Jason Castillo, Kyle Anderson, Anastasia Francisquini, Gabriella Estrada, Jordan Dilone, Delaney Rivera, Ruby Branyan, Nate Wilkie 

    The Garden State Philharmonic:

    Diane Wittry (Director/Conductor), Ruotao Mao (violin), Uli Speth (violin), Nick Pappone (violin), Krisztina Kiss (viola), Jameson Platte (cello), Nathan White (bass), Allison Kiger  (flute/piccolo), Emily Tsai (oboe/production), Chris Nichols (clarinet), Melissa Kritzer (bassoon), Karl Krammer-Johansen (horn), Tom Cook (trumpet), Roger Verdi (trombone), Jay Krush (tuba), Gregory Landes (timpani/percussion); guest pianists (Garah Landes, Candace Chien, Craig Ketter, Martha Locker)

    Jamie Bernstein Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4C4qI7faNw&feature=youtu.be

    STEERING COMMITTEE:

    Eileen Chapman, Chris Hellstrom, Darika S. Lara-Rodriguez, Nancy Mezey, Lynda Rabens, Joe Rapolla, Michael Thomas, David Tripold, Hettie Williams, Diane Wittry, Sara K. Wojciehowski, Kelly Barratt, Kenneth Womack (coordinator) 

  • Virtual Tuesday Night Book Club: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

    Join us for Tuesday Night Book Club! Hosted by Monmouth University’s Ken Womack and Michael Thomas, each month we’ll explore a different novel. All you have to do is Zoom in and join the discussion!

    This month’s novel is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In Margaret Atwood’s dystopian future, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War. The result is the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead’s commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive. At once a scathing satire, an ominous warning, and a tour de force of narrative suspense, The Handmaid’s Tale is a modern classic.

    When you register you will be provided the meeting link to join the conversation. Get more information on how to use zoom

  • Virtual Living Room Concert Series – Stay Safe, Stay at Home – Volume 2

    Monmouth University Center for the Arts is proud to present the second installment of our Virtual Living Room Concert Series – Stay Safe, Stay at Home featuring some of your favorite singers, songwriters and musicians from the Jersey Shore and beyond! The concert will premiere on the Center for the Arts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/ig8kCI861q4 on June 12, 2020 at 8 PM with a live chat from some of the artists and will be available to stream on the channel anytime afterward.

    This living room concert features: Roger McGuinn, Remember Jones, Zack Sandler, Richie Furay, Joel Krauss, Ross Owen, David DeRosa, Mary McCrink, Pam McCoy, Andy McDonough, Tommy LaBella and Amy Phillips.

    The concert is directed by Monmouth University Alumnus Tom Parr ’85  and sponsored in part by Riptide records.

  • Virtual Tuesday Night Book Club: James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On The Mountain

    Join us for Tuesday Night Book Club! Hosted by Monmouth University’s Ken Womack and Michael Thomas, each month we’ll explore a different novel. All you have to do is Zoom in and join the discussion!

    This month’s novel is James Baldwin’s GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN. Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is James Baldwin’s first major work, a novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy’s discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin’s rendering of his protagonist’s spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.

    Free and open to the public, but registration is required. You will be provided the Zoom link when you register. 

  • Virtual Tuesday Night Book Club: Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides

    Join us for Tuesday Night Book Club! Hosted by Monmouth University’s Ken Womack and Michael Thomas, each month we’ll explore a different novel. All you have to do is Zoom in and join the discussion! Our next book will be Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides.

    First published in 1993, The Virgin Suicides announced the arrival of a major new American novelist. In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters–beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the neighborhood boys–commit suicide one by one over the course of a single year. As the boys observe them from afar, transfixed, they piece together the mystery of the family’s fatal melancholy, in this hypnotic and unforgettable novel of adolescent love, disquiet, and death. Jeffrey Eugenides evokes the emotions of youth with haunting sensitivity and dark humor and creates a coming-of-age story unlike any of our time. Adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola, The Virgin Suicides is a modern classic, a lyrical and timeless tale of sex and suicide that transforms and mythologizes suburban middle-American life.

    When you register you will be provided the meeting link to join the conversation. CLICK HERE for more information on how to use zoom. Free and open to the public, but registration is required.

  • Virtual Living Room Concert Series – Stay Safe, Stay at Home

    Monmouth University Center for the Arts is proud to present the premiere of a Virtual Living Room Concert Series – Stay Safe, Stay at Home featuring some of your favorite singers, songwriters and musicians from the Jersey Shore and beyond! The concert will premiere on the Center for the Arts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/n2m9mKRFiqk on May 8, 2020 at 8 PM with a live chat from some of the artists and will be available to stream on the channel anytime afterward.

    This living room concert features: Steve Forbert, Pat Guadagno, Jessie Wagner, Marc Ribler, Harry Filkin, Carl Gentry, Bobby Bandiera, Lowell “Banana” Levinger, Sara Devine, Eddie “Kingfish” Manion, Franke Previte & Lisa Sherman.

    The concert is directed by Monmouth University Alumnus Tom Parr ’85  and sponsored in part by Riptide records.

  • Virtual Blue Hawk Records Release Show for “Sweet 16”

    This semester, Blue Hawk Records will be hosting their first ever virtual release show on the Blue Hawk Records Instagram page for their new album Sweet 16 on May 6 at 8pm. 

    Over the past few weeks, student life at Monmouth University, and everywhere, has changed dramatically, due to COVID – 19. Like all other schools and universities across the country, Monmouth has moved to online instruction for the remainder of the spring semester. However, despite the chaotic and tumultuous situation students found themselves, Blue Hawk Records carried on with its plans to release its 16th studio album. They innovated and found a way to remotely produce, promote and release the spring 2020 compilation EP, “Sweet 16”. A first for the student-run record label, as well as most major record labels.

    Artists on “Sweet 16” include Monmouth students, Shadiyah, featuring Gabriel Garza, Nicole Totland, Bruce Davis, featuring Janae, Mikey Sanchez, Drew Fournier, and Monmouth alumni, Anya Schildge Angeloni ‘12M, along with an ensemble of accompanying student musicians and producers.

    Sweet 16 will be available for streaming on all digital platforms on May 8.

    You can find and follow Blue Hawk Records at @bluehawkrecordsofficial

  • Virtual Tuesday Night Book Club: Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays

    Join us for Tuesday Night Book Club! Hosted by Monmouth University’s Ken Womack and Michael Thomas, each month we’ll explore a different novel. All you have to do is Zoom in and join the discussion!

    This month’s novel is Joan Didion’s PLAY IT AS IT LAYS. A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil—literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul—it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.

    When you register you will be provided the meeting link to join the conversation. CLICK HERE for more information on how to use zoom

  • Just Beachy: A Reading of Sandy Stories

    Help us mark the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Sandy. Readers will present stories that have been posted to “9 Feet High,” part of the Just Beachy/After Sandy installation now on view in Rechnitz Hall’s DiMattio Gallery.

    We invite you to participate by reading your own story, or listen as you hear your own story being read. Join us as your Sandy experience is acknowledged through the spoken word. Your story deserves to be heard!

  • Tone, Featuring David Sancious and Ernest ‘Boom’ Carter, Former Members of Springsteen’s E Street Band, and Gerald Carboy

    The Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music at Monmouth University will present An Evening with Tone, featuring David Sancious, Ernest “Boom” Carter, and Gerald Carboy, hosted by Bob Santelli, Founding Executive Director of the Grammy Museum, on Sunday, October 6, at 7 p.m. in the Pollak Theater on the university campus.

    The event is free and open to the public.

    In 1974 E Street Band keyboards player Sancious and drummer Carter left the group and teamed with Carboy, a Jersey Shore bass player, to form the jazz-fusion band Tone. Acclaimed by critics, Tone’s music expanded the parameters of fusion and featured the extraordinary keyboard work of Sancious. The group’s album, Transformation: The Speed of Love, is an acknowledged fusion classic.

    “Tone was one of the great jazz bands from the Jersey Shore,” said Santelli, author of Greetings from E Street: The Story of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. “Critics loved the band, but during the mid-1970’s hype surrounding the release of Born to Run, Tone didn’t get the attention it deserved from Springsteen fans.”

    Santelli will interview the musicians about Tone, their years in the Jersey Shore music scene, and the role Sancious and Carter played in the early days of the E Street Band. The night will conclude with a rare performance by the trio.

    Additionally, authors Barry Schneier and Chris Phillips will be on site to sign their book, Bruce Springsteen: Rock and Roll Future, published earlier this year. The book features Schneier’s photographs from the legendary performance of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at the Harvard Square Theatre in 1974. It was that show that was reviewed by future manager Jon Landau, who wrote, “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” The band line-up for that Boston show included Sancious and Carter.