Two Outdoor Concerts, One Indoor Supper Club Tonite

I mentioned Monday that there were to be two concerts this week in two Essex County parks in the city. I attended the Carrie Jackson concert on Tuesday in Weequahic Park. I don't know that I'll get to the Fuerza Positiva concert in Riverbank Park tonite (7pm), but I might do so just for a sense of the size and feeling of the crowd, plus a view across the river of the current state of construction of the Red Bull Stadium well underway in Harrison.
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The "Sounds of the City" free concert series outside NJPAC wraps up for the summer tonite as well (from 5-10pm). The NJPAC website says:

Tonight's salsa dance party finale features dancer and choreographer Smiling David, a Sounds of the City favorite, who returns with his sizzling, Newark-based Pzazz Dance Company as well as the expert salsa dancers of Barrio Latino, a group from Italy, founded by Gabriele Giannattasio and Teresa Pellegrino, and Magia Dance Company, a troupe that hails from the Bronx, founded by Vittico. Music comes courtesy of Papo Vazquez Pirates Troubadours, a unit that fuses Afro-Caribbean rhythms from Puerto Rico and Cuba with the freer melodic and harmonic elements of progressive jazz; and the sounds of DJ Danny Ramirez, who spins the best in Latin music—from salsa to merengue to bachata. Sounds of the City begins at 5:00pm and ends at 10:00pm.

If you wear purple, you might win tickets to the December 16-27 engagement at NJPAC of The Color Purple, which I imagine is a musical. The website also urges:

Come enjoy a Purpletini while you soak in the sun, fun and music at Sounds of the City Purple Thursdays!

I have no idea what a Purpletini is, but I imagine it is purple in color. As to whether it is alcoholic or nonalcoholic, non- seems more likely, since the notice says nothing about one's having to be over 21. And when, by the way, are we going to grow up and drop the drinking age to the voting age, 18, and teach people how to use alcohol safely? When I was in high school, we were taught that alcohol in extreme excess can kill by slowing respiration to zero breaths an hour, but in recent years we have heard one horror story after another of stupid kids in college hazings or on high-school trips drinking a whole bottle of vodka or such and DYING!
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It seems to me that TWO salsa concerts on the same nite is at least one too many. Is it a simple lack of communication between Essex County and NJPAC that produces such lack of variety? If so, maybe there ought to be more coordination thru, for instance, the Newark Arts Council (which should consider performing arts within its purview).
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At the same time as the free outdoor concerts Downtown and in the Ironbound, the Barat Foundation (like "Barrett", not "Borat") resumes its Experimental Supper Club Thursdays, Downtown:

Live Jazz and Home Cookin' at the Supper Club hosted by the Barat Foundation

You are cordially invited to celebrate our return from France, meet our scholarship recipients and see the beautiful work we accomplished abroad!

765 Broad Street 7-9pm
donations are welcome

Some of the kids the Barat Foundation took to France this summer, in a field of sunflowers in Provence. (Foto © Barat Foundation 2009)

Come share in our celebration as we watch student work and enjoy live music and delicious food.

Tonight, Thursday
August 27th
7-9pm

cool and casual

Come dine, listen to live music, and hear our scholarship students tell you about our cultural immersion summer in the South of France.

Visit our blog by clicking here.

The Barat Foundation has a very large space on the ground floor of a building on Broad Street at Bank (entrance on Bank) in which its Thursday jazz soirées musicales (my term, not theirs) are held, and artworks are displayed in an adjoining capacious gallery. The description in the email quoted above makes it sound as tho the students may have some performance works as well as fotografy and paintings to show off.

Tonight's Supper Club Menu includes:

Summer Stock Pasta Salad with roasted zuchini, sun dried tomatoes, car[ame]lized onions, roasted artichoke hearts, fresh spinach and basil and balsamic vinaigrette
New Jersey Deviled Eggs [I like that play on words.]
Simple Salad
Red Wine * * *
Live Music provided by The Rhythm of the Wind Jazz Band

If you haven't yet made it to the Barat Foundation's gallery, you may be delited to see how much there is on view, much of it by gifted, young, Newark artists.