NJN - Jersey Arts the Podcast

Opera New Jersey’s 2011 Summer Season | 6/21/11

Producer Eric Schultz chats with Richard Russell, General Director of ...

Producer Eric Schultz chats with Richard Russell, General Director of Opera New Jersey, about the company’s 2011 summer season at McCarter Theatre in Princeton. Menotti’s The Consul, Rossini’s Barber of Seville and Pasatieri’s new opera The Family Room are all on the bill.

Singer-songwriter Josh Ritter | 05/27/11

Josh Ritter’s career began to take shape in college when ...

Josh Ritter’s career began to take shape in college when he decided that playing music was more important to him than neuroscience – and, after years of bouncing around the music scene, he’s emerged as one the most respected singer/songwriters of his generation. He’s playing the Appel Farm Arts & Music Festival with Ani Difranco on June 4th. Christopher Benincasa speaks with Josh Ritter about not being a neuroscientist, writing songs, greatness and weirdness, and his debut novel Bright’s Passage.

John Dias, Artistic Director, Two River Theater Company | 05/11/11

The Two River Theater Company in Red Bank is hot. ...

The Two River Theater Company in Red Bank is hot. New artistic director John Dias has moved quickly to bring new artists and new plays to the stage. His 2011-2012 season was just announced, including everything from “Much Ado About Nothing” to the new academic sex comedy “Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England” (developed at Two River). Dias talks to Susan Wallner about his almost mystical passion for the theater, and why he thinks New Jersey is on the cutting edge.

Joan Snyder: Intimate Works | 04/27/11

Artist Joan Snyder has been widely celebrated for her vibrant ...

Artist Joan Snyder has been widely celebrated for her vibrant expressionist prints and paintings and her leading role in feminist art. Producer Eric Schultz spoke with the 2007 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius award,” as the Zimmerli Art Museum mounts the first major retrospective of her prints: “Dancing with the Dark: Joan Snyder Prints 1963-2010.”

Lloyd Kaufman & The 12th Annual TromaDance Film Festival | 04/06/11

The TromaDance Film Festival is returning to Asbury Park – ...

The TromaDance Film Festival is returning to Asbury Park – April 22nd and 23rd at the Showroom Theater. In this podcast, Christopher Benincasa talks with the man behind the festival, Lloyd Kaufman. Kaufman is perhaps best known for introducing us to The Toxic Avenger – a mutant super-hero character he created that has come to symbolize independent, do-it-yourself filmmaking – just the right mascot for a festival like TromaDance.

Posing Beauty | 03/14/11

“Black is Beautiful” - Deborah Willis, artist, historian, and curator, ...

“Black is Beautiful” - Deborah Willis, artist, historian, and curator, explores the history of this idea, from early slave images to an iconic 1970s photo of model Suzanne Taylor. “Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present,” will be at the Newark Museum through April 28th. Willis, a MacArthur “Genius,” has a new book out as well: “Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs.”

Choreographer Carolyn Dorfman | 02/24/11

Producer Eric Schultz talks with renowned New Jersey-based choreographer Carolyn ...

Producer Eric Schultz talks with renowned New Jersey-based choreographer Carolyn Dorfman. She founded her modern dance group, the Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, 28 years ago. Dorfman discusses her latest work and collaborative approaches to creating dance. She also talks about growing up with parents who were Holocaust survivors. Her parents, she says, told her everything, and that has profoundly shaped her entire being and artistic life. She talks about how motherhood later transformed her understanding of the horrors she had so often heard about as a child. Carolyn Dorfman has choreographed dozens of high-energy and technically demanding works that use movement as metaphor, often with the ingenious use of props. One reviewer described dances as “intellectual and emotional journeys.”

O Write My Name | 02/02/11

Christopher Benincasa interviews curator Angela Sergonis about a new show ...

Christopher Benincasa interviews curator Angela Sergonis about a new show at the Morris Museum -- O Write My Name: American Portraits - Harlem Heroes -- 50 photos of acclaimed African American artists -- from Lena Horne to Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston to Dizzy Gillespie. In the 1920s, Carl Van Vechten, critic, novelist, and chronicler of the Harlem Renaissance, began photographing black writers, musicians, and artists -- the result is the vivid portrait archive now on display at the museum.

Poet Rafey Habib | 01/11/11

Christopher Benincasa talks with Dr. Rafey Habib, Professor of English ...

Christopher Benincasa talks with Dr. Rafey Habib, Professor of English at Rutgers University, author of many books on literary criticism – and a poet. His book Shades of Islam: Poems for a New Century has just been published. One of his passions is cultivating mutual understanding between the Islamic world and Western cultures – which includes working with colleagues at Rutgers University to establish a cultural diversity of courses, including Islamic literature in English translation. In this podcast, Habib reads some of his poetry, as well as his own translation from a passage in the Qur’an.

Black Nativity | 12/21/10

Black Nativity | 12/21/10