Ken Waldman & The Down Hill Strugglers
WHEN: Thursday, January 21, at noon and 7 p.m.
WHERE: The Theatre at Raritan Valley Community College, 118 Lamington Road in Branchburg, NJ.. The performances are part of the Theatre’s popular Club28 series.
ADMISSION: $10 for the noon performance at RVCC and $25 for the 7 p.m. show. All seating is general admission. The noon performance is set in on-stage theatre-style seating and is approximately one hour in length. Audience members are invited to pre-order a box lunch for $5 and dine at the Theatre before the noon show. The evening show, set in a relaxed, on-stage cabaret setting, includes refreshments and is approximately two hours long.
Ken Waldman (right) plays “old-time” music, which predates bluegrass. He partners with The Down Hill Strugglers (below, left), an old-time string band based in Brooklyn, NY, to carry the music of old rural America forward with verve and creativity. While some of the music is more widely recognized as square-dance music, it's also the sounds of a community, performed among friends. Waldman, who’s often referred to as Alaska’s Fiddler Poet, shares original poems and tells stories—about the music, about Alaska or about life on the road.
The New Yorker has written of Waldman & The Down Hill Strugglers: “He brings his instruments, a few fellow musicians, and his poems about surviving a plane crash (locals once called him ‘a walking dead man’), watching grizzlies feed in a garbage dump, and other adventures in the forty-ninth state.”
In keeping with the Theatre’s ongoing commitment to provide educational and artistic enrichment opportunities to the local community, Waldman will spend the day before his RVCC performances at two area schools—Clinton Public School and sister schools Raritan Valley Montessori School/Cherry Blossom Montessori School in Bridgewater. A visiting artist at over 200 schools in 32 states, Waldman will present educational interactive programs encompassing writing/literacy, music, geography, math and critical thinking. He also will conduct writing workshops with individual classes. The visits were facilitated by Carol Young of Cherry Blossom Montessori School and Jacqueline Turner, curriculum coordinator of Clinton Public School.
Serving Somerset and Hunterdon County residents for close to 50 years, RVCC is an educational and cultural center that is nationally recognized for its innovative programming, service to the community and environmental leadership. The College offers more than 90 associate degrees and certificates, as well as career training, professional development and personal enrichment courses. The College also has a performing arts center and planetarium.
RVCC is committed to offering a quality and affordable education through effective teaching, liaisons with the community’s businesses and state-of-the-art technology. For further information, visit www.raritanval.edu.
