The Perkins Center for the Arts in Moorestown will kick off its house concert season with Hot Club of Philadelphia, featuring Haitian singer-songwriter Nathalie (Talie) Cerin, at 8 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 20.
The concert will take place on the third Friday of the month due to the Moorestown Music Collective concert on Friday, Sept. 13. That show will feature musician Josh Rouse at the Community House of Moorestown at 8 p.m. There will be a pre-concert talk at Perkins at 7 p.m. facilitated by Tina Schofield, Perkins conservatory manager.
Additional shows for the season – all on Friday – are expected to include Waterside Vibes on Oct. 18 at 8 p.m., Jackson Pines on Nov. 8 at 8 p.m., Aaron Parnell Brown & The Riverside Gang on Jan. 10 at 8 p.m., Jaffna on Feb. 14 at 8 p.m., Irish Trad on March 14 at 8 p.m. and the Greek party band OPA! – led by multi-instrumentalist Bill Koutsoros – on April 11 at 6:30 p.m.
“I just hope that it provides a moment in your day or your week where you can sort of let go for a second, and kind of think back into the universal spirit of just listening to music,” noted Joe Makoviecki of Jackson Pines, of what he hopes people will feel when they come to his show.
“The main point is to stimulate an internal switch that people maybe might forget they have when they’re just listening to the radio Top 40 and everything sounds the same, or when you’re going through your daily life and you just listen to the same stuff because, after a certain age, most of us stick with the same music that we’ve listened to and don’t really expand.”
The Perkins’ house concert season is a co-sponsored project of the Perkins Folklife Center and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and its partner agency, the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by the Perkins Conservatory.
For more information on all shows or a season subscription, visit www.perkinsarts.org.
“We’re just happy to broaden people’s perspective on what’s possible in music,” explained Makoviecki. “Even if you’re from New Jersey, you don’t have to play a certain style just because certain things are more stereotypical from different regions. Just like there’s hip-hop from Nashville, there’s folk music from North Jersey and central Jersey, and so we just represent that everywhere we go.”
