(JERSEY CITY, NJ) -- In April 2021, Art House Productions embarked on the Jersey City Community Song, seeking submissions from New Jersey-based poets and writers of lines about the theme, "Life in the Pandemic and Beyond: Reflections of Yesterday, Dreaming of Tomorrow."

After receiving submissions from 18 talented writers, local songwriter and music teacher Carol Lester, curated the original, crowdsourced song titled “Stronger” using lines from each submission.

Contributing writers include Stephen Cole, Danielle Dadamo, Stephanie Daniels, Chris Garrahan, Deirdre Garrahan, Jack Halpin, ShrujanaIyer, Steve Kulberg, Carol Lester, Linda Nassaney, Leonora Obed, Genesis Pierre Louis, Hara Rola, Thais Sherell, Megha Sood, Sara Welch, David Williams, and Alicia Wright.

Singers include Meredith Burns, Max Di Biaggio, Lola Castellano, Carol Lester, Bertram Okpokwasil, and Alishia Taiping. Musicians include Carol Lester, Peter Moffitt, and Vivian Warfield. Video by Courtney Little. Special thanks to David Castellano, Doménica Dillon, Alex Pergament, Gretchen Von Koenig, and Emmanuel Vozos.

This project was sponsored by the City of Jersey City and Office of Cultural Affairs.

Art House Productions was founded in late September 2001 by Christine Goodman, a community leader and professional performing artist. Art House began as an informal gathering of poets and community members in direct response to the tragedies of September 11th. At that time, there were no consistent performance venues for artists in Jersey City to meet one another and share new work. Art House's inaugural event sprung from the desire to connect a devastated community through art and dialogue. Since then, Art House has established itself as a pioneer of artistic and cultural programming in Hudson County.

The mission of Art House Productions is to engage, inspire, entertain and challenge audiences with highly intentional visual and performing arts programming; provide arts education to promote lifelong learning to diverse communities; and celebrate the essential power of the arts to illuminate humanity. Art House provides a home for innovative performing, visual, and literary artists to develop new work; presents emerging and under-recognized artists who are making significant contributions to their respective fields; and serves as a space for established artists to take creative risks.

 

COLUMNS

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"Lord have mercy; the short of it is, I originally come from Wichita, Kansas of all places," laughed Glenn Alexander. "I've been back here in the New York City/New Jersey area for a long time. I have a lot of albums out from my early life, then I took some years off and now I'm back at it; I've spent the last 17 years of my life touring with Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes and prior to that, just playing with a long list of folks who are all listed on my website and then, I have this band. They are the horn players from the Asbury Jukes, we've been together nine or ten years. Wow, I've thought about that, we've been together nine or ten years and in '26 I think it will be 10 years because our first album came out in 2016 or somewhere around there. So, yeah, I love that band, it's a great band and those horn players are world class, they've toured and worked with everybody. I'm just excited as heck because JB and I are good friends and I love what he does and his album is killin'. I love that he and I got our heads together on this, it's gonna be a fantastic night of music, I can tell you that."  

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