The American Lung Association will be hosting ‘Chefs with Flair’, a food and wine tasting dinner on February 20,2012 at the Bridgewater Manor in Bridgewater, NJ. This event will be held from 6:30-9:30 PM and will showcase New Jersey’s greatest Chefs. In adddition, Top chateaux & vineyards will be serving wines to compliment each dish. We hope you will participate in th is special event. This year, a special trophy and prize will be awarded to the chef preparing the best dish as voted by our guests. For more information, contact Jackie at 908-685-8040 x 309 or jcascio@lunginfo.org

TAMING THE MONKEY MIND MEDITATION CLASS NOW OFFERED AT WATCHUNG ARTS CENTER

Detailed descriptions online for all programs 

 January 25, 2012 (Watchung, NJ)  –  The Watchung Arts Center opens enrollment for a new meditation class beginning on Thursday, February 16th from 7:30 – 6:30 PM.  The class will run for 6 consecutive weeks at a cost of $96 per 6-week subscription ($91 WAC members) and $18 for walk-ins.
In an article in Psychology today by Colin Allen (April 1, 2003), Researcher Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, recorded the brain waves of stressed-out employees of a high-tech firm in Madison, Wisconsin.   The subjects were split randomly into two groups, a control and a group that would learn meditation over eight weeks.  The researchers found that the meditators showed a pronounced shift in activity to the left frontal lobe.  In other words, they were calmer and happier than before. Taming the Monkey Mind – An Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation will be taught in the Upper Gallery of the Watchung Arts Center.  Instructor and Life Coach, Kerry Allan Rasp, completed his training in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) with Jon Kabat-Zinn at the UMass Medical Center in 2000 and at Coach U in 2001. Kerry has been practicing meditation, primarily in the Theravada tradition for over 12 years and his teachers include Joseph Goldstein, Christopher Titmuss, Jack Kornfield, Stephen Batchelor, Bikkhu Bodhi and Shinzen Young. He is also on staff at Summit Psychological Services, a psychotherapy practice in New Jersey, and teaches meditation at Montclair State University. Mindfulness Meditation is a 2,500 year old Buddhist practice that is increasingly relevant for the crazy and stressful time in which we live. Visiting instructor and life coach, Kerry Alan Rasp, will offer basic instructions in mindfulness meditation, lead a guided meditation, share simple techniques to calm the monkey mind, and allow time for discussion. The Class will take place in the Upper Gallery of the Center.   For details and a downloadable flyer/registration form visit the website WatchungArts.org.   The Watchung Arts Center, a multi-disciplinary arts facility serves Watchung, Warren, Long Hill Township, the surrounding communities and the Tri-State Area.  For more information visit our to download a registration form visit website at www.watchungarts.org or email at wacenter@optonline.net.  The Watchung Arts Center is located at 18 Stirling Road, Watchung, NJ  07069.

FOLLOWING HIS SOLO PERFORMANCE AT THE WHITE HOUSE RIO CLEMENTE RETURNS TO THEWATCHUNG ARTS CENTER Photo Attached – provided by Mr. Rio Clemente

(January 23, 2012) Watchung, NJ – Rio Clemente has played jazz piano on concert stages, in clubs and restaurants, in churches, even in supermarkets. But on December 22, he sat down at the historic 1938 Steinway piano in the East Room of the White House to an audience of visitors on a holiday tour for over two hours. Rio received a standing ovation when he was finished.

The Center is fortunate to have this master pianist and former member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary perform in its intimate Upper Gallery. At this special solo performance, Rio will charm and delight all with his musical prowess and talent. The audience will be treated to the energy and charisma of this jazz virtuoso and enjoy a night filled with musical inspiration and pure joy.

Rio played at the JVC Jazz Festival, Newport Jazz Festival, Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center as well as jazz clubs from Manhattan to Cape Cod and from Florida to California. He has entertained audiences in Europe, Bermuda, the Virgin Islands and Antigua. He has performed at the United Nations and has appeared with the Symphony in Golden, CO, with the Livingston (NJ) Symphony and with ensemble groups like the Morris Choral Society and Orchestra. In addition he has travelled from coast to coast to entertain senators, governors, mayors and other dignitaries.

The Bishop of Jazz recorded with bassist Milt Hinton, performed Dave Brubeck’s mass (To Hope! A Celebration) and prepared a feature CD on Richard Rodgers that led Linda Rodgers to say, “Rio plays my father’s music better than anyone I ever heard — with unremitting style and sensitivity, and always with a technique that is elegant.” Dave Brubeck has written, “Rio Clemente is EXCELLENT!,” and comedian Freddy Roman has said, “I want to open for you!”

A native of Morristown, NJ, Rio Clemente is a member of its Hall of Fame. He’s been named Professional Artist of the Year by the Arts Council of the Morris Area, New Jersey Monthly Magazine selected him among its “Top 40 New Jerseyans” and the New Jersey Jazz Society named Rio Musician of the Year.Tickets are $18 in advance, $22 ($20 for WAC members, $10 for students) at the door. Advanced price tickets can be purchased though the website at WatchungArts.org using a credit card or by check made payable to the Watchung Arts Center, 18 Stirling Road, Watchung, NJ 07069. Advanced sale price will be given prior to the event only.

Friday February 10th at 8:00 PM

INVITES ALL TO ATTEND OPEN HOUSE TO INTRODUCE NEW BALLROOM DANCE CLASSES

Friday, January 27, 2012 from 8 – 10 PM

Detailed descriptions online for all programs  January 23, 2012 (Watchung, NJ)  –  The Watchung Arts Center would like to invite you to a special event introducing the newest program Artistry of Dance – An Open House has been scheduled on Friday, January 27 from 8 – 10 PM.  

The Open House will introduce patrons to championship dancers/instructors Sergei and Olga Bezrodnov.   The Artistry of Dance will include a number of classes in various styles of Ballroom and Latin Dances for children and Adults. Classes and Social Clubs will begin the week of February 1, 2012.  See the website for all classes and clubs offered at WatchungArts.org. The open house is free to the public and will feature free sample lessons, demonstrations, and showcase performances surrounded by the colorful artwork of WAC’s Upper Gallery.  It will also allow participants to sign up for one of the many classes.

The schedule is as follows:
8:00 pm – 8:15 pm – Open Doors
8:15 pm – 8:30 pm – About “Artistry of Dance” & demonstrations of the Ballroom Dances
8:30 pm – 8:45 pm – Free Waltz Class
8:45 pm – 9:00 pm – Free Salsa Class
9:00 pm – 9:15 pm – Free Cha-cha Class
9:15 pm – 9:30 pm – Ballroom Dance Show Program
9:30 pm – 10:00 pm – Dancing & Fun & Reception Time 

 Register to attend the Open House by calling 908-753-0190 or sending an email to WACenter@optonline.net.  Please include your name, number attending, and phone/email contact. The Watchung Arts Center, a multi-disciplinary arts facility serves Watchung, Warren, Long Hill Township, the surrounding communities and the Tri-State Area.  For more information visit our to download a registration form visit website at www.watchungarts.org or email at wacenter@optonline.net.  The Watchung Arts Center is located at 18 Stirling Road, Watchung, NJ  07069.  

FAR HILLS, NJ - A new Performing Arts Center (PAC) has opened at Far Hills Country Day School that offers students the opportunity to perform and work behind the scenes in a professional performance space. The PAC accommodates 570 seats and can hold the entire student body, teachers, parents, and friends.

A highlight of the PAC is the projection, lighting and sound system that was designed and installed by experts including acoustical engineers. The control booth features cutting-edge programs like the MIDI/Music Tech lab, which allows students to gain proficiency in the use of the technological equipment ranging from synthesizers, samplers, digital controllers and software applications to create their own music.

Far Hills Country Day School’s arts program is broad and comprehensive, ranging from music performance, theory and fine arts classes to drama and an annual musical. The school is renowned in academic circles for its unique Integrated Performing Arts Curriculum, which incorporates performance and presentation skills into the academic classroom.

The school currently offers 24 annual performances and assemblies. This diversity of offerings allows students on all levels to participate and experience the feeling of being on stage, which develops their poise, confidence and public presentation skills. By the time a Far Hills Country Day School eighth grader graduates, the student will have appeared in front of an audience at least 26 times.

The opening of the PAC is the completion of a ten-year campus transformation at the school which has included a new primary wing, outdoor athletic fields, music conservatory and our auditorium.

For more information, please contact:

Susan Carpenter

Far Hills Country Day School

908-766-0622 x427

RVCC THEATRE TO PRESENT AGA-BOOM The Theatre at Raritan Valley Community College (RVCC) in Branchburg will present Aga-Boom, Saturday, February 11, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. The performance is part of the Theatre’s Family Series and is recommended for the whole family. Tickets costs $25 each. Three former stars of Cirque du Soleil’s Alegria will juggle, stilt-walk and pratfall their way through paper pandemonium. Aga-Boom is rooted in a unique style of theatrical clowning that combines the unbridled silliness of slapstick and the humor of physical comedy with theatrical expressionism, poetry and the European avant-garde. The cataclysmic finale is a blizzard of unrestrained laughter that never ends. For the eighth year in a row, Courier News readers voted The Theatre at RVCC as the “Best of the Best” in 2011 in the “Theater” category. To purchase tickets or for more information, call the Box Office, 908-725-3420, or order online at www.rvccArts.org. The Theatre offers birthday parties for both the Family and Sampler Series. Senior citizen, student and group discounts are also available for a variety of performances. RVCC’s main campus is located at 118 Lamington Road in Branchburg, NJ. Serving Somerset and Hunterdon County residents for over 40 years, the College offers more than 90 associate degrees and certificates. RVCC @ Bridgewater, located at 14 Vogt Drive, offers technical, trade, credit and non-credit courses. The College is committed to offering a quality and affordable education through effective teaching, liaisons with the community’s businesses and state-of-the-art technology. For further information, visit www.raritanval.edu.

Quick, healthy, easy 350 calorie meals

Naked Nutrition’s Mona Laru will create delicious, low calorie meals at the Somerville Public Library, a branch of the Somerset County Library System, on Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 7:00 PM.  Ms. Laru will show us how to purge toxic foods from our pantries and replace them with healthy, energizing foods.  A cooking demonstration of easy yet delicious meals is included in this first step to achieving a healthy new lifestyle!

 Please register for this free program by calling the library at (908) 725-1336, ext.11.  In the case of inclement weather, announcements will be made on the Somerset County Library System website. 

For more information about the library’s programming or services, visit the Somerset County Library System’s website at http://www.somerset.lib.nj.us or contact Melissa Banks, Director, at (908) 725-1336, ext. 13. The library is located at 35 West End Avenue, adjacent to the Borough Hall building in Somerville, NJ. 

Patrons with further questions can call SCLS at (908)725-1336 ext 11 or enter the website at http://www.sclsnj.org.  The Somerset County Library System has branches in Bridgewater, Bound Brook, Hillsborough, at the Mary Jacobs Library in Rocky Hill, North Plainfield, Peapack & Gladstone, Somerville, Warren Township and Watchung.

Gentle Chair Yoga for Seniors

A series of four Chair Yoga Classes for Seniors will be hosted by the Somerville Public Library, a branch of the Somerset County Library System, in collaboration with Somerville Senior Citizens Housing, Inc. on Thursday afternoons, February 9,16, 23 and March 1, at 1PM.  Classes will be held at Somerville Senior Citizens Housing, Inc., located at One Mountain Ave. in Somerville, directly across from the Somerville Public Library. Anyone, age 55 and up, is welcome to attend. 

Chair Yoga is a gentle form of yoga in which instructor Anna Paun will lead participants through classic yoga asanas or poses, breathing techniques and meditation. All moves will be modified to those participants who prefer to stay seated in a chair or use a chair for support.

Please register for this free program by calling the library at (908) 725-1336, ext.11 or sign up online at http://libraryinsight.net/events.asp. In the case of inclement weather, announcements will be made on the Somerset County Library System website. 

For more information about the library’s programming or services, visit the Somerset County Library System’s website at http://www.somerset.lib.nj.us or contact Melissa Banks, Director, at (908) 725-1336, ext. 13. The library is located at 35 West End Avenue, adjacent to the Borough Hall building in Somerville, NJ. 

Patrons with further questions can call SCLS at (908)725-1336 ext 11 or enter the website at http://www.sclsnj.org.  The Somerset County Library System has branches in Bridgewater, Bound Brook, Hillsborough, at the Mary Jacobs Library in Rocky Hill, North Plainfield, Peapack & Gladstone, Somerville, Warren Township and Watchung.

Tickets still available for Kenny Werner, Jazz Pianist ExtraordinaireSpecial Solo Performance at the Watchung Arts CenterSaturday, January 21 at 8 PM January 16, 2012 (Watchung, NJ) – Kenny Werner, a former resident of Watchung, who performed at the Watchung Arts Center during his early career, is returning as a highly acclaimed international jazz pianist on Saturday, January 21 at 8 PM.  Werner has shared the stage with jazz greats Charles Mingus, Archie Shepp, Rufus Reid, Bobby McFerrin, Marian McPartland, Toots Thielemans and Joe Lovano among many others. He has also served as pianist, arranger, and musical director for the noted film, television and Broadway star, Betty Buckley. Werner’s other credentials include composer, author of Effortless Mastery – Liberating the Musician Within, and NYU jazz piano and composition faculty member. He was honored as the recipient of a prestigious 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship Award for Music Composition for his work “No Beginning, No End,” written for saxophone, voice, piano, and a 35 piece wind ensemble.   Mr. Werner tours the world to rave revues.  Having him play at the Watchung Arts Center is a coup for both the WAC organization and New Jersey. Please join us for a very inspired performance followed by a Welcome-Home Reception with Kenny Werner. “Perfection, 360 degrees of soul and science in one human being.  My kind of musician.”     Quincy Jones “Whether soloing or interpreting, Werner takes you outside, but not by any route you’ve followed before.  You never know where he’s going, but every place he takes you is a delight.”   KeyBoard Magazine “When one hears pianist Kenny Werner, that feeling of elation is clearly front and center.”  Zan Stewart, The Newark Star Ledger “a pianist who tempers fearsome technique with a questing spiritualism”   Nate Chinen, The New York Times Tickets can be purchased online for $18 Advance Sale or at the door for $22 General Admission, WAC Members $20, and Students $10.  Seating is limited so purchase at WatchungArts.org, or visit the Center on Thursdays and Fridays from 12-3 PM.  The Watchung Arts Center, a multi-disciplinary arts facility serving Watchung and the surrounding communities and the Tri-State Area.   For more information visit our website at www.watchungarts.org or to place a reservation call 908-753-0190 or email at wacenter@optonline.net.  The Watchung Arts Center is located at 18 Stirling Road, Watchung, NJ  07069.

EXCITING JANUARY EXHIBITION TO FOLLOW SUCCESSFUL MEMBERS AND CHILDREN’S JURIED ART

Watchung, NJ (January 16, 2012)  -   The Public is invited to attend the Opening Reception of two exciting exhibitions at the Center in January.   The Opening Artist Reception will take place on Sunday, January 8, 2012 from 1 – 4 PM with the exhibitions running January 8 through January 28, 2012. The Upper Gallery will feature “Pictorial Constructions” featuring four artists, Pasquale Cuppari, Joe Freeman, Jr., Patti Jordan & Wayne Charles Roth .  “Pictorial Constructions” presents work by three New Jersey artists and a Rhode Island artist who are engaged in the careful or improvisational assembly of elements to create dynamic and probing compositions in a variety of media. Like architects and excavators, these four artists are fabricating fascinating worlds and structures in their art.  Pasquale Cuppari (Roselle Park, NJ) has added a new dimension to his brilliantly hued paint and glitter encrusted canvases. Through heavy daubs of oil and enamel as well as other mixed media elements, he has been interpreting the beauty of the world and the expansiveness of the universe in his organic abstractions, part of his Mondo Bello series. Recently, he has allowed massive paint drips to form projecting rock- like formations on his works, extending his tactile surfaces, nature metaphors and literal and illusionistic space.  Joe Freeman, Jr. (Providence, RI), a recent graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, has been producing a superb series of hand developed silver gelatin photographs that explore and document actual constructions that he sets up both in nature and in the studio and then photographs. Using string, wood, glass pieces, duct tape, rolled and inked paper and/or other found and chosen objects and materials, Freeman intrudes on rocks and trees or completely reformulates a two-dimensional surface to play with light, shadow and illusion in the spaces he constructs. The result is altered landscapes, anthropomorphic objects, and geometric designs that confound, flabbergast and entrance the viewer.  Working with ink, water, graphite and solvent, Patti Jordan (Montclair, NJ) squeegees and brushes ink across the surface of large sheets of Fabriano paper. Jordan pushes and pulls her medium, coaxing, building and diluting the black liquid to formulate bold, textured and abstractly pooled and rippled layers. Creatures, bones, eyes, limbs and orifices appear, collide and condense on her horizontal and vertical scroll-like pieces, constructions of the imagination, psyche and random gesture. Wayne Charles Roth (Mountain Lakes, NJ) shapes and builds thousands of computer images to create his cascading, rushing digital concoctions of color and form. Painting on the computer in a unique and astonishing manner, Roth’s build-up of swooping and soaring abstract forms almost defies our ability to follow the rapid movements in his art. Metaphors for 21st century life, his digital paintings capture the complicated frenzy and experience we all create and design for ourselves even as we hunt for the corners of respite both visually and mentally in life as well as art. Guest curator of the exhibition, Virginia Fabbri Butera, Ph.D. (Summit, NJ), is the Director of the Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery at the College of Saint Elizabeth in Morristown, NJ, where she is also Professor of Art History and chairs the Art and Music Programs.
The Lower Gallery will showcase the works of artist Kelly Vetter.  Born in Jersey City, named after Dad’s favorite pub, studied at Pratt Institute earning an MFA in Painting, Kelly Vetter is a lifelong Jersey artist and resident. Creating miniature works on wood, paper and other ephemera, the artist creates vignettes into a fractured fairytale full of folklore, American icons and ideals, and personal narrative amid allegorical imagery.  The exhibit entitled “Sugar and Spice” is a body of work that explores love, loss and memory, with a bittersweet dose of nostalgia. Reworked vintage photographs and everyday objects, once loved and treasured but discarded,  allow the ghosts of the past a new life, while also serving as a modern day memento mori. Images familiar in the everyday visual vernacular transform into new messages from a personal painterly perspective, a saccharine free yet sentimental view.    

The Watchung Arts Center, a multi-disciplinary arts facility serving Long Hill Township, Warren, Watchung, the surrounding communities and the Tri-State Area.      

For more information visit our website at www.watchungarts.org or to place a reservation call 908-753-0190 or email at wacenter@optonline.net.  The Watchung Arts Center is located at 18 Stirling Road, Watchung, NJ  07069.