• Yacht Rock!

    Class Schedule: Thursdays, January  23 & 30| 7:30 – 9:00 PM
    This two-session virtual course, taught by Kit O’Toole, explores the origins and rise of Yacht Rock, the smooth R&B and jazz-inspired genre.
    The term “Yacht Rock” exploded in popularity since the eponymous satirical web series debuted 20 years ago. But what exactly is the genre? How did it start, and which songs qualify as Yacht Rock? The first of two courses examines the roots of the genre—where did it originate, who were its founders, and how did it in popularity? Part one explores Yacht Rock from its earliest years through 1980. The class will sail the R&B and jazzy seas of smooth sounds through multimedia presentations and class discussion.
    Zoom Link will be provided upon registration.

  • Best of Hans Zimmer

    Candlelight concerts bring the magic of a live, multi-sensory musical experience to awe-inspiring locations like never seen before in Long Branch. Get your tickets now to discover the music of Hans Zimmer at Pollak Theatre under the gentle glow of candlelight.  

    The Listeso String Quartet will be performing various compositions by Hans Zimmer, including ‘Discombobulate’ from Sherlock Holmes, ‘This Land’ from The Lion King, the Pirates of the Caribbean Suite, and many more!

  • Rings & Dragons

    Candlelight Concerts were created with the intention of democratizing access to classical music, and the space and performers are illuminated by thousands of candles to create a truly magical experience. Featuring works from Vivaldi, Mozart, and Chopin, and including tributes to Queen, ABBA, Coldplay, and more, Candlelight Concerts allow audiences to connect with the most iconic pieces of the greatest composers and listen to the top hits of well-known artists in a different way.

    The Listeso String Quartet will be performing themes from The Lord of the Rings by Howard Shore and themes from Game of Thrones by Ramin Djawadi.

  • Tribute to Coldplay

    Candlelight Concerts were created with the intention of democratizing access to classical music, and the space and performers are illuminated by thousands of candles to create a truly magical experience. Featuring works from Vivaldi, Mozart, and Chopin, and including tributes to Queen, ABBA, Coldplay, and more, Candlelight Concerts allow audiences to connect with the most iconic pieces of the greatest composers and listen to the top hits of well-known artists in a different way.  

    The Listeso String Quartet has a tentative program that includes songs such as Clocks, Shiver, Speed of Sound, Trouble, Fix You, Paradise, Yellow, and many more!

  • Singin’ in the Rain

    The “Greatest Movie Musical of All Time” is faithfully and lovingly adapted by Broadway legends, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, from their original award-winning screenplay in Singin’ in the Rain. Each unforgettable scene, song and dance is accounted for, including the show-stopping title number! Hilarious situations, snappy dialogue and a hit-parade score of Hollywood standards make Singin’ in the Rain the perfect entertainment for any fan of the golden age of movie musicals. (source: MTI)

  • Dr. Strangelove

    co-adapted by Armando Iannucci
    co-adapted and directed by Sean Foley

    Seven-time BAFTA Award-winner Steve Coogan (Alan Partridge, The Trip) plays four roles in the world premiere stage adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s comedy masterpiece Dr. Strangelove.

When a rogue U.S General triggers a nuclear attack, a surreal race takes place, seeing the Government and one eccentric scientist scramble to avert global destruction.
 
This explosively funny satire is led by a world-renowned creative team including Emmy Award-winner Armando Iannucci (The Thick of It, Veep) and Olivier Award-winner Sean Foley (The Upstart Crow, The Play What I Wrote).

  • Blue Hawk Records – Album Release Event

    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!

  • Ocean Bodies, A Solo Exhibit by Kimberly Callas

    Monmouth University’s Ice House Gallery presents Ocean Bodies, a powerful solo exhibition by multimedia artist Kimberly Callas. The exhibition will open on February 6, 2025, with an evening reception from 5:30 to 7:30 PM, and will run through April 4, 2025. Ocean Bodies offers an immersive exploration of humanity’s interconnectedness with the ocean, drawing on symbols, archetypes, and ecological narratives to invite contemplation and action.

    Through sculptures, large-scale drawings, and mixed-media works, Callas examines the “crisis of meaning” at the heart of the climate crisis and advocates for a shift in consciousness toward an “ecological self.” This concept, central to her work, reflects humanity’s integral role within nature rather than apart from it. In Ocean Bodies, she uses water-based materials, such as dyed fabrics, India ink, and water-soluble graphite, to invoke the sea’s physical presence while exploring the symbolic depth of whales, the horizon, and the ocean itself as metaphors for the psyche and cosmos.

    Among the featured works is a series of 10-foot mixed-media drawings inspired by historical nautical charts, which pair psychological journeys with the migration of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. Complementing these works are colorful life-size figurative sculptures and reliefs, 3D-printed using bio-filament, that further explore themes of renewal and interconnection. Through these works, Callas poses urgent questions about the loss of meaning, wisdom, and biodiversity in the Anthropocene.

    “The ocean has a unique way to connect with people in an immediate and emotional way. Science and data can only tell us so much; art can speak to each of us in a way that is both uniquely personal and universal. Having Kimberly as the Urban Coast Institute artist-in-residence provided inspiration for some of the artwork in the Ocean Bodies exhibit, which will in turn inspire others. She was also able to share her creative process with her students, conducting lectures and using her art and sculpture as a pathway to ‘discovering the ecological self.’ This work reminds us that the worlds of art and science are two sides of the same coin,” said Tony MacDonald, J.D., Director, Urban Coast Institute.

    Callas created much of the work in Ocean Bodies during an artist residency with Monmouth University’s Urban Coast Institute, with additional research conducted at the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS) and an artist residency at the Arts Quarter Budapest. This body of work seeks to merge art, science, and archetypal symbols to foster a deeper understanding of humanity’s place within the natural world and inspire meaningful environmental action.

    About the Artist

    Kimberly Callas is a multimedia artist, sculptor, and the lead artist of the Social Practice project Discovering the Ecological Self. Her work delves into the human/nature relationship, focusing on the concept of the ecological self. Recently, she has incorporated cutting-edge technologies, such as 3D printing with bio-filaments and CNC, into her life-size sculptures. Art New England described her series Portrait of the Ecological Self as “unforgettable.”

    Callas’s work often involves community engagement. With her Discovering the Ecological Self social practice project, featured in The Huffington Post, she has led workshops across the U.S. and internationally. Her art has been showcased in prestigious galleries and museums worldwide, earning her numerous awards and grants, including the Pollination Project Grant, the Urban Coast Artist-in-Residence award, and the Puffin Foundation Grant. Her accolades include First Place in Sculpture at the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club’s Annual Exhibit in New York City.

    Callas’s recent exhibitions include the International New Media Exhibit at the CICA Museum in South Korea, Crossing Boundaries: Art and the Future of Energy at the Pensacola Museum of Art, and Ocean Swimmers (Entanglement), a solo exhibition in Budapest. In May 2025, she will unveil a public art commission for the Lambert Castle Renovation in Paterson, New Jersey.

    Callas holds an MFA from the New York Academy of Art and a BFA from the University of Michigan. She is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Monmouth University and maintains studios in Maine and New Jersey.

    Event Details:

    Exhibition: Ocean Bodies
    Location: Ice House Gallery, Monmouth University, 400 Cedar Ave # 600, West Long Branch, NJ 07764
    Opening Reception: February 6, 2025, 5:30–7:30 PM
    Exhibition Dates: February 6, 2025 – March 23, 2025
    Gallery Hours: Mon-Fri, 10am-5pm,

    For additional information, please contact Scott Knauer, 732.923.4786  or visit https://kimberlycallas.com/.

     

  • Akhil Sharma – Visiting Writer

    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 . . . [that] 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.

    Sharma’s second novel, the spectacular Family Life (Norton, 2014), received both the International Dublin Literary Award and the Folio Prize. Scholar and writer Edmund White called it “a terse, devastating account of growing up as a brilliant outsider in American culture” and described it as “a near perfect novel.”

    Sharma’s third and most recent book, the story collection A Life of Adventure and Delight (Norton, 2017), prompted writer Yiyun Li to describe Sharma as “truly the Chekhov of our time.” His stories have been widely published and anthologized, appearing in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry Award Stories. 

    Indeed, Sharma is such an exacting and rigorous writer that, quite unusually, he recently published a revised and rewritten edition of An Obedient Father (McNally Editions, 2022) more than twenty years after it first appeared in print. The critic Wyatt Mason, reviewing the revised version in The New York Times Magazine, described this as “Something white-rhino rare in the history of literature”, adding, approvingly, “there is scarcely a paragraph that hasn’t been improved . . . ”

    Born in Delhi, India, Sharma grew up in Edison, NJ. Before becoming a professor at Duke, where he now teaches, he was on the faculty at Rutgers. He is an engaging and surprising speaker and an excellent reader of his work

    This event is sponsored by The Visiting Writers Series, with the Center for the Arts and the Intercultural Center.

  • Georgia O’Keeffe: the Brightness of Light

    Georgia O’Keeffe: the Brightness of Light is a 2-hour documentary exploring the life and art of the most important woman artist of the 20th century – the ”Mother of Modernism.” In the 1920s, O’Keeffe became famous for her paintings of flowers, bones, and the beauty of nature. She posed nude for shocking photographs by Alfred Stieglitz, but denied that her paintings depicted sexual imagery. In the 1970s, she emerged as an iconic role model for women.