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    The North to Shore Festival Comes to New Jersey

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    A new arts festival featuring local and marquee-name talent is coming to the Garden State.Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey, along with the first lady, Tammy Murphy, had a vision: A new performance festival in their home state that could rival South by Southwest in Texas or Bonnaroo in Tennessee. And they had a plan to distinguish it.“Austin and Nashville are great towns,” the governor said, referring to two famous arts hubs that are connected to notable festivals. “But if you stop to consider the cultural priorities of the states that govern them, you say, ‘Wait a minute.’ You’re hoodwinked if you get taken by the coolness.”A festival in New Jersey, they argued, would be produced in a state whose values align with issues like gun safety and reproductive rights, a bragging right difficult to come by in the south. But what organizers are really touting with the event, which is being produced for the first time this summer, is the mix of homegrown talent and national acts (Halsey, Santana, Jazmine Sullivan) performing across three different cities, from the state’s largest city to the coast.The North to Shore Festival will roam from Atlantic City to Asbury Park to Newark throughout the month. Its inaugural run will feature more than 220 acts — including music, comedy, dance and film — in 115 venues. “When you combine all the talent we have in New Jersey with the fact that our values are on the right side of history, we thought, there’s no reason we couldn’t give this a shot,” Mr. Murphy said.In May, the festival doubled in size, in part because of a commitment to local talent. Grants of up to $5,000 were handed out to 58 New Jersey-based artists.“What I love about it is that it’s a combination of the biggest names in entertainment and comedy and film,” said John Schreiber, president and chief executive of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, which is producing the festival, “but it’s also a chance to turn up the volume on the local folks I call the local heroes — the artists, the creators, the presenters, the producers — who work in these cities 365 days a year.”One example of this kind of artistic convergence is “You Got VERRRSED: NJ Poets vs. New York Poets,” which will take place in Newark on June 24, the day after Marisa Monte, a Grammy Award winner, performs there.In each host city, venues stretch beyond the familiar. Newark, for example, will host “Jersey Club 101,” a combination dance lesson and party, at Ariya Plaza Hall, a local dance club known for hosting private events and the occasional concert, on June 24.On June 9 in Atlantic City, a brewery, The Seed: A Living Beer Project, will host a multidisciplinary event, “From Earth to Cup,” with live music, pottery making and samples of its craft beers. The following afternoon at Sovereign Avenue Field, a popular skatepark, local hardcore and punk bands will play free shows in the “Back Sov Bullies Concert.”While Asbury Park’s famous rock club, the Stone Pony, will see its share of action — with Eric B. & Rakim, Brian Fallon, Demi Lovato and the B-52’s all scheduled to perform — stages at the lesser-known Watermark, down the street, will also be in heavy rotation and can expect to see more traffic than usual.Alexander Simone and his seven-piece band, the Whodat? Live Crew, will play there on June 14. Mr. Simone, 34, who is from the area and the grandson of Nina Simone, won a grant to take part in North to Shore with the band, which leans toward funk and R&B, after being nominated by local fans. The recognition confirmed something he already knew: “I am definitely one of the most known bands in this community,” he said.Now he hopes that other parts of the country will pay more attention to his music. “Artists are coming this way, to Jersey, and bringing people with them the way South by Southwest brings people to Texas,” he said. “They’re coming to see what we have to offer on this end.”Billboards along the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike are promoting the festival. Mr. Schreiber said he expects more than 350,000 people to attend. The overall windfall for New Jersey’s economy, he added, could be $100 million. “We’re betting the economic impact in all three of these communities will far outweigh any of the investment we have to make,” Mr. Murphy said.Amanda Towers, a founder of the Seed, a Living Beer Project, which will host a multidisciplinary event with music, pottery and beer in Atlantic City.Jennifer Pottheiser for The New York TimesNatalie Merchant, accompanied by New York City’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s, will perform in Newark on June 25. “I think it’s really ambitious and impressive,” she said of the idea behind the festival.But her decision to participate did not have much to do with performing in a liberal-leaning state, Ms. Merchant said. “I tend to not penalize my fans in states with political conditions like abortion restrictions.” Instead, “I talk about them onstage.”The North to Shore Festival will take place June 4-11 in Atlantic City, June 14-18 in Asbury Park and June 21-25 in Newark. More

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      Coachella Lineup: Kanye West, Billie Eilish, Harry Styles

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      The California festival and Bonnaroo, in Tennessee, both announced lineups this week as the live-music industry looks ahead after two years of events scuttled by the pandemic.Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and Kanye West will headline the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April, as the music industry takes hopeful steps toward the return of festivals and touring in 2022.Coachella, set for its usual two-weekend format, April 15-17 and April 22-24, at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, Calif., will be returning after two years mothballed by the pandemic. On Wednesday, after weeks of speculation and leaks in the music press, the festival announced its complete 2022 lineup, which will also feature performances by Megan Thee Stallion, Lil Baby, Doja Cat, Phoebe Bridgers, the reunited electronic dance group Swedish House Mafia and dozens of others. (West is billed on the official festival poster as simply Ye.)The event is expected to run at its full capacity of up to 125,000 concertgoers a day.Coachella has long been the country’s most influential festival, hosting viral moments like Tupac Shakur’s hologram in 2012 and Beyoncé’s 2018 tribute to the marching bands of historically Black colleges and universities.It has usually been the first big festival to announce its lineup each year, ushering in the touring season. But this week Coachella was scooped by the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn., which on Tuesday said that it would return in June with Tool, J. Cole, Stevie Nicks, the Chicks, Machine Gun Kelly, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and others.Coachella was one of entertainment’s first major casualties of the coronavirus. Its 2020 edition — which was to have featured Rage Against the Machine, Travis Scott and Frank Ocean — was shut down by health officials on March 10 of that year, two days before Broadway and the concert business at large went dark.Goldenvoice, the promoter that puts on Coachella in partnership with the corporate concert giant AEG Presents, had hoped to bring the festival back that fall, then in spring 2021. But each time the pandemic forced the plans to be kicked further down the road. Bonnaroo, which is presented by Live Nation, AEG’s corporate rival, had scheduled a full-scale return last September, but it was canceled after heavy rains flooded the festival grounds.About half of the ticket holders to Coachella’s 2020 edition requested refunds, Paul Tollett, one of the festival’s founders, said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times in August. Tickets cost $449 and up, not counting fees.Despite a slew of recent cancellations related to the coronavirus, like Dead & Company’s Playing in the Sand festival in Cancún, Mexico, the music world is viewing Coachella with hope as a bellwether for the full-throttle return of the multibillion-dollar touring industry. Major tours by Dua Lipa, the Weeknd, Elton John, Bon Jovi and Justin Bieber are expected this year.As recently as last summer, Goldenvoice had hoped to bring back most of the headliners planned for 2020. But while Rage Against the Machine has an extensive tour planned this year — with five dates booked at Madison Square Garden in August — it is not playing Coachella. Ocean will return to Coachella in 2023.And since the disaster at Scott’s Astroworld festival in Houston in November that left 10 people dead, the rapper has largely withdrawn from public appearances, canceling his performance as a headliner at the Day N Vegas festival, which is also presented by Goldenvoice. More