NJPAC Announces 2025 Jazz Vespers Free Concert Series
Arturo O'Farrill
The New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) has announced its 2025 Jazz Vespers Concert Series, the 25th year of free monthly concerts. The 6:00 p.m. shows will happen at the Bethany Baptist Church on Market Street in Newark on the first Saturday of the next five months.
February 1
Powerhouse Vocalist Sheila Jordan, 93, kicks it off with her signature scat style of bebop and beyond when she leads her quartet with bassist Harvie S, guitarist Roni Ben-Hur and drummer Billy Drummond.
March 1
They’re called “The Great City of Newark Jazz & Blues All-Stars.” Singer Antoinette Montague, sax man Leo Johnson, pianist Brandon McCune and drummer Earl Grice will light up the night with their blend of jazz, blues, balladry, gospel, soul and swing.
April 5
Rhoda Scott, the daughter of a South Jersey Minister in Weymouth Township, provides worship, bop and R’n’B. In France, she’s a superstar, known as “The Barefoot Lady” for her habit of removing her shoes to perform. In church, ever since she was a kid, she’d command the organ.
May 3
To actually see Arturo O’Farrill play piano for free in a church will be something to remember forever. Born in Mexico and raised in New York City, the son of Cuban superstar trumpeter Chico O’Farrill, Arturo dazzles every time he sits on the piano bench. He’s won six Grammy Awards and downbeat magazine once called him, “one of our greatest living pianists.”
June 7
What a way to end it all! The New Yorker magazine calls Cassandra Wilson, “one of the most inventive and captivating singers of her generation.” Her “smokehouse contralto” is equally at home with jazz, blues, country, folk or pop. She’s a National Endowment of the Arts Jazz Master (2022) and performed here twice already: once in 2020 as part of MLK Day and then again that same year in celebration of fellow Jazz Master Dorthaan Kirk’s 80th birthday.
For more information, visit www.NJPAC.org.
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