Embrace the joy and warmth of the season at the annual holiday concert with Father Alphonse Stevenson and the Orchestra of St. Peter by the Sea! This cherished tradition brings a 42-piece orchestra and exceptional soloists to Pollak Theatre with beloved carols and festive melodies. Be part of this heartwarming celebration and let the spirit of the season come alive through the power of music.
The Record Label Strategies class along with the rest of the Blue Hawk team invites you to celebrate the release of their 25th compilation album “Signature Edition”! Blue Hawk Records is partnering with WMCX on this milestone release. Join us for some live music, food, and a giveaway!
Join us for Tuesday Night Book Club! Hosted by Monmouth University’s Ken Womack. This month’s novel is Percival Everett’s James. AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR FOR 2024 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
Parliament/Funkadelic’s George Clinton declared “we want the funk,” and by the mid-70s the genre was in full swing. On the R&B and pop charts as well as on the dance floor, funk had officially taken over. This two-session virtual course taught by Kit O’Toole covers the peak of the genre, its eventual decline in popularity, and its continuing influence. Artists examined include the Ohio Players, Stevie Wonder, Average White Band, Kool and the Gang, Earth, Wind, and Fire, the Commodores, Cameo, Slave, Zapp and Roger, and many more. In addition, subgenres including go go, punk funk (coined by Rick James), funk rock, and Bay Area funk will be covered. The course includes multimedia presentations and class discussions.
From 1963 to 1969, the Beatles sent Christmas messages on flexidiscs to their US and UK fan clubs. In 1970, a compilation of these messages was sent out, and they were re-released as a collector’s set in 2017. Join SCOTT FREIMAN and KEN WOMACK for a one-session virtual course to explore this unique aspect of the Beatles’ history.
It’s just like book club but with albums! With new advances in technology, the way we consume music through our devices, apps and on demand streaming services like Pandora, Spotify and iTunes is making the idea of the “album” as an art form extinct. Get together with other music enthusiasts on Tuesday nights to discuss some of the greatest records of all-time! Listen to the album beforehand and then come prepared to discuss. This event will feature The Doors.
Join us for Tuesday Night Book Club! Hosted by Monmouth University’s Ken Womack. This month’s novel is Harold Pinter, Betrayal. One of the most essential artists produced by the twentieth century. Pinter’s work gets under our skin more than that of any living playwright.” New York Times. Upon its premiere at the National Theatre, Betrayal was immediately recognized as a masterpiece. It won the Olivier Award for best new play, and has since been performed all around the world and made into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley, and Patricia Hodge. Betrayal begins with a meeting between adulterous lovers, Emma and Jerry, two years after their affair has ended. During the nine scenes of the play, we move back in time through the stages of their affair, ending in the house of Emma and her husband Robert, Jerry’s best friend.
Through the alchemy of welding and traditional blacksmithing, Michael Malpass commanded steel, bronze, copper, and brass with a sculptor’s precision. He elevated these industrial remnants, liberating them from their utilitarian past, and reimagined them as vibrant works of art— imbuing them with new life and meaning.
Soprano Angel Blue makes her long-awaited Met role debut as the Ethiopian princess torn between love and country, one of opera’s defining roles. Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium for Michael Mayer’s spectacular new staging, which brings audiences inside the towering pyramids and gilded tombs of ancient Egypt with intricate projections and dazzling animations. Mezzo-soprano Judit Kutasi, following her 2024 debut in Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, is Aida’s Egyptian rival Amneris, and tenor Piotr Beczała is the soldier Radamès—completing opera’s greatest love triangle. The all-star cast also features baritone Quinn Kelsey as Amonasro and bass Dmitry Belosselskiy as Ramfis. This live cinema transmission is part of the Met’s award-winning Live in HD series, bringing opera to movie theaters across the globe.
Sharma is a highly decorated short-story writer and novelist; he’s been awarded many of the most prestigious prizes and recognitions that a fiction writer can receive. His first novel, An Obedient Father (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000), hailed in New York Magazine by Jonathan Franzen as “A great novel” and described by Hilary Mantel in the New York Review of Books as “uncompromising,” with a “first chapter . . . blasts off the locks and splinters the wood,” received the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
