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The view from box b: Philip Thomas’ Impact

Did you know NJPAC presents more than 280 free events every year? 

Did you know NJPAC is building a new neighborhood in downtown Newark?

Did you know that 20% of NJPAC’s operating budget comes from the support of our Members?

When this Arts Center was in its infancy — before its stages were built, even before anyone had put a shovel in the ground — there was already an Arts Education department at NJPAC.

We sent artists into public school classrooms, staged family performances and offered teachers resources for bringing the arts into their classrooms, all years before we sold a single ticket.

That we did so was one of the gifts given to this organization by one man: Philip Thomas, the Arts Center’s founding Vice President of Arts Education. After stints working with the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Philip joined NJPAC in 1992 — a full five years before our doors opened.

Like everyone who had a hand in shaping the Arts Center into what it is today, Philip had big ambitions for this place. Before our opening night, he’d created programs that put National Dance Institute classes into schools in Essex and Union counties, arranged a series of workshops at community organizations where members of the renown a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock sang with children, and launched the Arts Basic to the Curriculum Conference — an arts integration conference for teachers, held on multiple Newark college campuses.

He hit the ground running, and never let up.

“Our goal from the outset was to build partnerships with schools, with school districts, with community based organizations all across the state,” he told me when he came back to Newark recently for a visit. And that determination has shaped our arts education efforts ever since.

So many of the programs that NJPAC still proudly presents today, from our SchoolTime performances for school children to our annual Kwanzaa Family Festival, were first implemented by Philip.

But in November, when our campus is filled with the sounds of jazz all month long during the TD James Moody Jazz Festival, it’s hard not to think that the crown jewel of Philip’s years of work here was his foresight in establishing what is to this day our signature Arts Education program: TD Jazz for Teens. This year-long Saturday arts training program offers young jazz vocalists and instrumentalists, ages 12 to 18, an unequaled opportunity to hone their skills — and to play with a cohort of talented peers. (By the way, if you know a talented teen: Registration for the spring semester is now open; audition tapes are due by Dec. 9. Learn more here.)

Philip came back to our campus this past spring, when TD Jazz for Teens held its 25th annual spring concert for its graduating students — always a wonderful celebration, but this year also a reunion of sorts for those who established the program, including Philip, our inaugural program director, the great bassist Rufus Reid, and saxophonist Don Braden, who directed the program in later years.

Philip recruited Rufus to design this program during NJPAC’s first season — and persuading a performer of his caliber to create our curriculum instantly set the program apart.

“I was adamant that if we did it, we had to do it a certain way,” said Rufus, who has now retired from teaching, but still tours and records. That included making sure that everyone on the faculty was a working professional artist.

“All the teachers can play. They are in the trenches, making music by touring and gigging. To me, that’s why the program has been successful,” he said.

In addition to multiple-GRAMMY®-winning alto sax player and jazz composer Mark Gross, TD Jazz for Teens’ current Director of Jazz Instruction, the program’s faculty today includes a roster of more than a dozen working jazz musicians including GRAMMY®-nominated artists saxophonist Wayne Escoffery and guitarist Alex Wintz (himself an alum of the program) as well as celebrated percussionist Alvester Garnett and acclaimed, Russian-born trumpeter Valery Ponomarev, a member of The Jazz Messengers. Even more bold-faced names, including eight-time GRAMMY®-winning bassist Christian McBride, the Arts Center’s Jazz Advisor, vibraphonist Stefon Harris, and MacArthur “Genius” fellow and Doris Duke Artist Award winner Regina Carter offer master classes, working directly with students.

Teens studying percussion, guitar, bass, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, piano and other instruments, as well as jazz vocal performance, are invited into the program via audition. Throughout the school year, they fill the Center for Arts Education on the NJPAC campus every Saturday, turning its hallways into a festival of sound, with beats and melodies spilling out of every doorway. Although the program is not free, scholarship assistance keeps it accessible to talented students regardless of their financial circumstances. Any interested student is welcome, regardless of means.

Critically, our students also perform publicly together, both at semester-ending concerts and at events throughout the year, both on and off NJPAC’s campus. All students record their own compositions together in a studio setting, an annual highlight of the program.

Music has taken the program’s alumni far: Percussionist and composer Tyshawn Sorey, a MacArthur “Genius” grant winner, was among the program’s first students. Guitarist Alex Wintz, now a TD Jazz for Teens teaching artist, got his first GRAMMY® nomination for his work with the Terraza Big Band. Vocalist Lucy Yeghiazaryan performs around the country.

“There are a bunch of students I have taught here who’ve gotten scholarships to go on to Berklee or NYU or the Manhattan School of Music, major conservatories. I started teaching here 10 years ago now and I’m seeing quite a few of my earlier students out in the New York City jazz scene working professionally,” noted Wintz.

“But I think there are some of my students who just want music to be part of their life forever, even if not professionally. They understand that music can bring a lot of light into your life.”

Gross echoed that thought. “Whether they go to a higher-ed program or not, whether they play professionally or not, we want to give them a love of music, and through that, a sense of what life is about,” he said.

We can’t thank Philip enough for bringing that light, that love, to so many of our students for so many years.

All good wishes,

John Schreiber

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The view from box b: North to Shore Community Arts Grants

Did you know NJPAC presents more than 280 free events every year? 

Did you know NJPAC is building a new neighborhood in downtown Newark?

Did you know that 20% of NJPAC’s operating budget comes from the support of our Members?

While the Arts Center already offers hundreds of free community performances in Greater Newark every year, NJPAC’s newest community engagement initiative, the ArtsXChange, is designed to begin the process of bringing NJPAC arts programming into all the neighborhoods of Newark.

The project kicked off this spring in the South Ward’s Clinton Hill area. There, the Arts Center is partnering with Clinton Hill Community Action to offer performances, workshops and celebrations in local parks, schools and community centers, with a focus on the talents of local artists.

(And we know that Newark has plenty of talent: Sarah Vaughan, Frankie Valli, George Clinton, Queen Latifah, Wayne Shorter and Michael B. Jordan all hail from Brick City!)

Born out of the feedback NJPAC received while planning the new Cooperman Family Arts Education and Community Center on our campus, the ArtsXChange program is our answer to the many Newarkers who told us that a community center downtown would be welcome — but that they also wanted Arts Center programming right in their own neighborhoods.

Before launching ArtsXChange, NJPAC’s Community Engagement team went on a listening tour, meeting with organizations in all the neighborhoods of Newark, to hear about what kind of arts programming would be most welcome in each corner of the city. Through these conversations, the Arts Center crafted a plan that would expand NJPAC’s calendar of free events by producing arts programming in equal partnership with community members and organizations. The South Ward program is the first of what is hoped will eventually be a city-wide network of such partnerships. 

ArtsXChange is unique because it is designed and informed by community residents and local artists who work with an NJPAC production team to mount events. These community events advance the Arts Center’s vision of featuring all of Newark’s talent, diversity, and creativity, in ways that make their performances and events most accessible to local audiences.

“ArtsXChange makes space and provides a platform for artists at every level,” says Assistant Vice President of Community Engagement Eyesha Marable. “We want to make room for their gifts and support them. Not just one time but everlastingly.”

The ArtsXChange with Clinton Hill Community Action in the South Ward launched in April with a kick-off performance featuring the Shabazz Dance Troupe, spoken word poet Mia X, a choir from the Belmont Runyon Elementary School (which hosted the performance), the hip hop collective The Other Side of Newark, and Mayor Baraka. After that spectacular start, at least two events have been held in the neighborhood each month. 

Among the events: In May, ArtsXChange produced a playwright’s workshop; as a result, one of the written pieces that came out of the workshop will be performed this August.

 “We are committed to creating consistent and predictable programming in the community that uplifts local up-and-coming and professional artists,” says Marable. 

Everyone is warmly welcomed to upcoming ArtsXchange events, including a festival of one-act plays in Mildred Helms Park on August 10 and a performance of local writer Pia Wilson’s play Eternal City, presented by the Yendor Theater Company, on August 24. Get all the details on upcoming ArtsXChange events here. 

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The view from box b: North to Shore Community Arts Grants

The view from box b: Philip Thomas’ Impact

Did you know NJPAC is building a new neighborhood in downtown Newark?

Did you know that 20% of NJPAC’s operating budget comes from the support of our Members?

NJPAC’s theaters are surrounded by gravel parking lots, but by 2026, a stroll around the Arts Center will be a walk through a densely populated and green new neighborhood. Buildings of all sizes will fill the new development, where a visitor on any given day will find residents popping in and out of apartment buildings and maisonette townhouses, ducking into shops or visiting galleries and restaurants.

This new development will be the Arts Center’s second real estate development project following the opening of One Theater Square in 2018 — its largest project to date. The goal is to create a bustling, arts-infused residential neighborhood around NJPAC’s theaters.

“It was important to create a district that celebrates NJPAC and strengthens Newark — to unite this critical cultural institution and the neighboring residential areas in a harmonious way,” says Yasemin Kologlu, Principal at Skidmore Owings & Merrill, the celebrated architecture firm that has been chosen to design the new neighborhood, which will be built on what is now the Arts Center’s Parking Lot A. 

As the design team worked, Kologlu says, they were inspired by a quote from the celebrated architectural critic Herbert Muschamp, who wrote of NJPAC when it opened: “Newark’s new Center is much more than a work of architecture. It is an uproar. A commotion. A melee of civic hope.”

After years of preparatory work, a groundbreaking for this new district — a joint effort between the Arts Center and developers Center Street Owners (CSO), a group that includes L+M Development Partners and Prudential Impact & Responsible Investments — is scheduled for the first quarter of 2024.

The first phase of redevelopment will include a high-rise tower and two low-rise towers, creating 350 residential units (20% of which will be affordable housing) and plenty of space for shops, restaurants and cultural spaces on each building’s ground floor, all built around a new extension of Mulberry Street through the NJPAC campus to Rector Street. For-sale townhomes will line quieter side-streets between the two residential buildings.

”We wanted to create an active and diverse neighborhood by designing various types of residences for different lifestyles,” says Kologlu. “The project also presented an enormous opportunity to bring back some of the city’s streetscape by restoring those lost urban connections.” 

So the high rise tower will face the Passaic River, to take advantage of the water views. Closer to NJPAC, the scale of the buildings will be lower, with open space on the ground floors extending the new streetscape.

In addition to the development on Lot A, the project also includes the first major upgrade to NJPAC’s central building in its 26 year history: A new light-filled entryway will be built on the Arts Center’s eastern facade, with big windows overlooking the redesigned  Mulberry Street, giving passers-by a peak at activity inside, while a wood and metal canopy shields arriving guests from the elements.This new entryway will allow multiple parties and special events — from weddings to corporate gatherings — to be held at the Arts Center at the same time as mainstage performances.

“We’re creating a new arts and residential district that is grounded and embedded in Newark,” says Kologlu.

“We believe it’s going to be a special place — a welcoming and vibrant neighborhood that knits the surrounding communities together.”

view more articles

The view from box b: North to Shore Community Arts Grants

Did you know NJPAC presents more than 280 free events every year? 

The view from box b: Philip Thomas’ Impact

Did you know that 20% of NJPAC’s operating budget comes from the support of our Members?

From teaching Newark’s kids to play music, to filling the city’s parks with performances – all of NJPAC’s work as a nonprofit is supported by our Members and Donors.

That’s why we offer our Members so much: Early access to tickets, discounts on performances, even reserved parking (at some levels) and 20% off at Newark restaurants like our own Nico Kitchen + Bar!

We need your support to continue to bring the arts to students, elders, and all of our Greater Newark community. We can’t do it without you.

Please, join us today!

view more articles

The view from box b: North to Shore Community Arts Grants

Did you know NJPAC presents more than 280 free events every year? 

Did you know NJPAC is building a new neighborhood in downtown Newark?

The view from box b: Philip Thomas’ Impact