Report To The Community 2022

Music Director Xian Zhang and
superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma at the
New Jersey Symphony’s sold-out
centennial season gala.
NJPAC collaborated with Audible
to produce The Book of Baraka,
an audio memoir by author and
Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka
A scene from Erin Mallon’s play,
Soft Animals, presented by Vivid
Stage as part of Stage Exchange,
a collaboration by NJPAC and NJ
Theater Alliance.
The long-running Business Partners
Roundtable series hosted an
enlightening 2022 conversation
about the impact of cryptocurrencies.
a co-commission by several
symphony orchestras including
the New Jersey Symphony,
plus the Grand Teton Music
Festival. Dancers from New
Jersey Ballet were part of the
performance and the evening
came to a thrilling end with
streamers shot from cannons
during Stand By Me & Hip-Hop
Studies & Etude in C-sharp Minor
by Resident Artistic Catalyst
Daniel Bernard Roumain.
The Symphony’s centennial
season will conclude in June
2023 with performances at
NJPAC, when conductor and
music director Xian Zhang will
lead the orchestra and violinist
Joshua Bell in Bruch’s Violin
Concerto No. 1, Stravinsky’s Rite
of Spring and a commissioned
world premiere by Roumain.
the mayor speaks
How does an artist become an
activist — and then, a political
leader? Newark Mayor Ras J.
Baraka answered that question
in Book of Baraka, an Audible
Original released in February.
The recording, replete with
snippets of spoken poetry and
archival news footage, was
narrated by the Mayor with
an assist from his old college
friend, New Yorker writer and
filmmaker Jelani Cobb, and
covers Baraka’s life from his
childhood through his election
as Mayor in 2014, when he was
inaugurated at the Arts Center.
NJPAC served as an executive
producer on the project, and
Stefon Harris, NJPAC’s Artistic
Director of Jazz Education,
composed the music that
plays as accompaniment
to the Mayor’s stories and
recollections. The recording
was made available for free
on the Audible website.
In addition to producing the
audiobook, the Arts Center
hosted an event in the Victoria
Theater to celebrate its release,
which featured Baraka and
Cobb in conversation with
Audible founder and chairman
Don Katz. They spoke about
Cobb and Baraka’s college
days at Howard (“I remember
you would never let anyone
say a wrong word about
the city of Newark,” Cobb
recalled) to poet Amiri Baraka’s
admonition to his son to never
let his other ambitions get
in the way of his writing, to
Newark’s potential as a hub
of technology and the arts.
NJPAC’s next project with
Audible is an audio memoir by
the Newark-raised Godfather
of Funk, George Clinton.
jersey voices
amplified
“Our season was all about
human connection, what we’ve
been so sorely lacking over the
past few years — and this play
is centered on those moments
when human beings realize they
need each other,” said Laura
Ekstrand, Artistic Director at
Vivid Theater in Summit, of
the play, Soft Animals by Erin
Mallon, that her company
workshopped at NJPAC in June.
That reading was part of Stage
Exchange, the Arts Center’s
long-running collaboration with
the NJ Theater Alliance. Each
year, New Jersey professional
theaters are selected to take
part in the program, at which
they offer a reading of a
new work by a New Jersey
playwright at NJPAC, and
discuss the work with the
audience. Then the revised
play gets a full production at
the participating theater.
This year was a return to
form for the program; the
playwrights and theaters
had been selected to take
part in 2020, but the staged
readings and productions were
postponed by the pandemic.
Soft Animals, a drama about
“medical misfits” with rare
conditions who seek treatment
for their unusual difficulties,
was produced by Vivid in
September following the June
reading. Pushcart Players,
which brings performances
for young people to schools,
workshopped LIFT EVERY
VOICE: A Letter to the Editor,
by TyLie Shider, which
follows a 12-year-old boy’s
reaction to the events of the
Civil Rights Movement.
Ekstrand lauded the program
as a deeply meaningful support
for both writers and theaters.
“If you’re doing plays that
have no name recognition —
where the name of the play
doesn’t mean something to
people, or the name of the
playwright — then you’re selling
your brand as a producer
of new works. And anything
that supports that is rare
and wonderful,” she said.
getting down
to business
NJPAC’s Business Partners
Roundtable series returned as
in-person events this season,
with visits from a cohort of
New Jersey’s top executives.
In June, Megan Myungwon
Lee, Chairwoman and CEO of
Panasonic Corporation of North
America (headquartered in
Newark), spoke about her rise
to the company’s top position.
In September, Ben Melnicki,
Head of Emerging Technology
Compliance at Cross River,
joined Gavin Michael, Chief
Executive Officer of Bakkt, and
Foster Wright, President of
CoinDesk, a cryptocurrency news
organization, in a wide-ranging
conversation about the impact
of cryptocurrencies, moderated
by Roy Choudhury, a Managing
Director and Partner with
Boston Consulting Group.
And in October, NJPAC welcomed
back the Arts Center’s great
friend and a master of finance,
Leon Cooperman, for one of his
Conversations with Cooperman
events, this one featuring
businessman, investor and
philanthropist Henry Kravis, the
Co-Founder and Co-Executive
Chairman of Kohlberg Kravis
Roberts and Company.
volunteers back
in action
For Larousse Pierre, 2022 was
a busy year for volunteering
at NJPAC. The Arts Center
was hopping and Pierre says
it felt like “we started back
where we left in 2020.”
In addition to his full-time job as
a contractor in electronic quality
control for the U.S. military, for
eight years he’s clocked dozens
of volunteer hours annually —
working the photo booth during
concerts, escorting Arts
Education students backstage
for their performances and
greeting guests at his favorite
event, Horizon Foundation
Sounds of the City summer
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