Webley
Webster presents the Terry’s Serendipity Café Web Site!
The
In association with the Office of Arts and Cultural Development,
MRCA, Township of Montclair
Updated 2/1/2012 (etc)
Serendipity in the Newark Star-Ledger
Serendipity on "Arts Up Close"
Find the “Arts Up Close” category, then “Takeo Sugihara & Serendipity Café” and slide ahead to about 0:08:00
Parents Who Rock Backyard Party Photos 9/10/11
|
Staff
Meetings Weds 6:00 – 7:00 Dec
28 meeting is at 5:00 PM! An hour early. |
|
Serendipity
always needs new staff members and adult advisors Come to our
meetings and get involved it’s easy. |
|
Winter 2011-12 Events: February 25, 2012 B’nai Keshet
99 S. Fullerton 7 to 10 April 28 2012, First Lutheran Church 153 Park St. 7 to
10 |
|
Admission is
usually $2.00 Admission is free
if we don’t have to pay for the space. |
|
Poets, Film makers and Musicians: email serendipitycafe@hotmail.com
if you are ready to perform. Include a name and
phone number (so we can contact you). |
12/31/11 The audience was impressive, by being over 160 people, of whom 94 paid $3.00 to come in. The performers were grand, the sets a bit short, mostly, but the open mic was definitely best of the year.
Thanks to the staff, the audience, the performers and the advisors for a great year!
12/7/11 The Tree lighting on Friday, followed by the Café at Bnai Keshet went exactly as planned, including more than double the previous attendance. The music was good, The Skin Cells were well organized, so were the Toasted Plastic and all the locals. Nice work, everyone!
11/11/11 After doing sound for the Veteran’s Day ceremonies in Edgemont Memorial Park, we trucked over to St. James’ church and had a full Serendipity Café with a not full audience. Seems to me we need to work on getting the audience numbers up. Good music, though, and thanks to St. James for letting us use their Parish Hall on short notice after our Scarendipity Cancellation.
9/24/11 Another Warm Serendipity, this time in the Park House in Edgemont Park. The consensus seems to be that it was good, there was a good sized audience, the coffee was great, and the bands mostly got to play their whole sets. Josh Heaps was the entertainment head, and we were slightly overbooked. The Alumi theme was carried on by the Porchisas with founding members Alan and Adam. And then Pinegrove with Alumni Evan Hall, Zach Levine, Nick Levine. Aden Feliciano was there, as well as Catherine Weller-Demming, a founder and current Deputy Mayor. Alma Schneider of the Parents Who Rock presented us with a check for $1363.00 which the PWR raised at their annual backyard party, which we did the sound for, with Emily, Max, and a couple of other Staff members helped out at. There’s pix on Facebookm see link above.
7/22/11 The Warm Serendipity: at least a hundred in the shade. But we had Los Huevos, Sumi, Stolen Jars, a standup comic, Anna and Carmen, I even got to sit in with Vinnie & Los Huevos. We had S’mores, with a camp stove, lotsa water, and visits by alumi Ethan Cantor, Oliver Rew, Ross Hamilton. And Even Peter Guiffra was there. Many thanks to Ken and Mike for all the help.
6/18/11 Festival Underground 2011 was an awards fest, with Anna Berlin and Katherine Wolfgang receiving the annual Staff Scholarship Award, presented by Carlos Lejnieks, who, by coincidence, spoke at the MHS graduation ceremony this year. Carlos is a founding staff member, and gave us some history, as well. Ken Pasture received a special award for trucking, and dedication and Farrah Stephenson from the American Cancer Society, presented Serendipity with a plaque thanking us for our participation in Relay For Life for the last 2 years. The music was tops, although I wish we had Stolen Jars. The chalk art was immense, and widespread.
5/21 /11 The Relay for Life on was punctuated by a rainstorm, but the drying out worked and we got the system back on line & no damage but mud. There was all night DJ work by Max and Emily, under a point system of great complexity. A grand appearance by Alma and the New No Rehearsals, plenty of darkness, a 2 AM ukulele jam with guitar, good performances by Passing Notes, Stolen Jars, and others, but my notes are all blurry, I’ll probably not be able to read the list until Josh makes a copy for the entertainment notebook. In spite of all that, it appears that the ASC collected over $90,000.00! And it was much better after I went home and put on dry socks.
4/29/11 show was loud and echo-ey. Good performances all around especially the famous Pokey-Men, plenty of audience members. Staff was non-existent except for Emily and Anna at load-up time, though, and we are currently searching for our missing snare drum stand.
4/14/11 We taped an episode of “Arts Close Up” with Meg Beatty Patrick on Channel 34 for broadcast in early May. Anna, Julia, Josh, Harris, Emily, Thatcher, Charlie and Ed were there. We did some interview-like stuff, some Josh/Harris guitar, some Anna B tunes, and Thatcher & Charlie improvised a Serendipity “commercial”. It will be on the schedule, and in the On Demand menu, I hear. Thanks to Sharon Collucci, and Michael Reitman, the blues photographer. Use the following link, and select category “Arts Up Close” Montclair TV34
3/28/11 We collected some money for
aid to
2/27/2011 Friday’s “Carendipity” went very well. Extra help at the start meant a quick Load-In, So we got right to the music, which was quite tuneful, in spite of the complete lack of live drums. The “eat your heart out” jell-o contest was quick, and not too messy. It’s good on the videos uploaded to tumblr. So, to sum up, no one threw up over this one. Notes: Serendipity Café in the Star Ledger at (2/10/11).
http://www.nj.com/news/index.
And then Pokey Men were in the
1/28/2011 Nearly everything went as
planned on this first event of the year, and first time at St. James. There was
plenty of music,
12/31/2010 The old year was ended at Fletcher Hall of the UUC with a good variety of music, recruited by Josh and Harris. Anna Berlin’s Mocha Coffee, Shirley Temples, Julia as MC, Emily on the sound board. We wish great 2011 to everyone. I hope for more new ideas and enthusiasm for the Montclair Student Café Project in 2011.
11/22/2010 Serendipity Café at the First United Methodist Church. This one was solid. Hip-Hop with harmony! Anna Berlin, Lotsa acoustic guitar players of many different styles. No Actual contests, and slightly OK for a November event. Had a talk with Vidal of the Parish Council and we are welcome there.
10/29/2010 Scarendipity 2010 featured 10 Sleep, Things Keep Happening, Werebears, Mannyfesto, a bit of that gameboy stuff at open mic, Josh on guitar, etc. 67 paid customers, and more than a dozen staff members. Pumpkin pie eating contest. Nick Levine, the winner. Should have had prizes for not being sick afterwards.
9/18/2010 The Alumni Reunion worked out pretty well. We had some good music, some olde buddies, and some swirley cake. Not to mention ukuleles. Next year I want someone to be alumni invitor.
8/30/2010 The 8/6 event at the
Library was smooth and cool, despite the many changes in performers, & the
competition with the Acres reunion performance. We got out on time, which helps
our chances for doing Serendipity at the Library in the future. On 8/28 we had
some difficulties at the
7/5/2010 The independence day was a great success. Elvis lead our group, which included Patrick from Sponge Bob (Jeremy), Winnie the Pooh (Julia Z and Josh), Cookie Monster (Nick Levine) and Cat in the Hat (Aidan Feliciano). The angels, Emily and Lidia (and sometimes Julia) and the Banner makers and bearers, Anna, Johnny Q, Ethan, Thatcher, and everyone I left out really made it a hot one. By which I mean like 101 F. In the shade. You could of fried an egg on this parade! Consider revising.
6/19/2010. There is nothing like Festival Underground, when it doesn’t rain! There was a decent crowd of our usual audience, including some open mic performers, regulars, and so on. The weather was perfect. Ken was as tough as a circus roustabout, and the staff were very helpful, happy, relaxed. We put on 7 or eight bands, Had a jam at the end with Adam, Jeff, and Vin doing some tunes. Cell phone pix below. The bands were: The Porchistas, Hazmats, Tasm, A vs B, March to the Sea, Ten Sleep, Los Huevos, Slim Deer, Tense Deer. An the Alumi Trio.
Alumni: Iris perrot, Adam, Jeff, Vin Demming, Kathryn Weller-Demming Charlee Swanson, Harry Wohl, Ethan Kantor, Max Kravitz, Max Mellman, Julia Berlin, Larry Pope did the recording, Ross Hamilton performed.
6/5/2010 The Relay for Life was definitely an all-nighter.
We set a record for playing outdoor live music in
4/30/2010 The best ever Hip-Hop Serendipity, the “Rap-Fest”. Good sized audience, interesting variety, a whole new bunch of people.
2/27/2010 The Valentine’s day “Carendipity”. Decent size crowd, good bands, excellent open mic. Almost made some money. Love that dry ice seltzer!
1/31/2010 We don’t know why the Pyramids disappeared, but the rest of us had fun. A tad too many acoustic guitar/singer types for my liking. Good thing Thatcher and his gang brought their electrics.
1/2/2010 I have to say First Night was one of the great ones. Large attendance, great job by the staff keeping things going, participation of newbies and alumni, having the Mayor in the audience, great help by parents. What a kick! Happy New Year!
11/28/09 We’re back to small. Perhaps the number of days out of school effect? But good to see Evan & Daryl do their acoustic sets. Moravec was fine. How about those classical guitarists at open mic?
10/31/09 Scarendipity had it’s points. Attendance over 70, for one. Face painting contest, good open mic, great bands. Los Huevos!
9/28/09 We’re up to 50, audience wise. Roger Rockmore, The blue kids, Avaiary, Moravec, etc all well done. Thanks to those who stuck out the rain and made the ending a happy one.
8/29/09 Small staff, small audience, last night. The rain was real. The jams & open mic were good fun. Larry & Nick were awesome, Aiden, Anna, the staff: Nick, Anna, Kat.
Thanks.
7/22/2009 As of today’s meeting the entertainment committee only had one band. So we decided not to put on an event that doesn’t meet our standards. We’re going to ask for the amphitheater.
7/18/2009 The parade was great, Elvis was in good form, as were big bird, Elmo, The cookie monster and Abbie Kadabra. We will not be in the Amphi, due to other concerts and work, but hopefully the Union Congregational space will be available.
6/20/2009 We had the Park House as a rain location, and lucky we did. It rained. I think a lot of people missed this great event, because they thought it was too rainy. Congratulations to Larry Pope, this year’s Staff Scholarship Award winner and many thanks to the runners up, Ethan Cantor and Ross Hamilton for their years of dedicated service.
5/30/09 Same size, same dedication. Animal Scandal turned out to be quite good. Too bad about the Awesome!! And the rain, we’ll try again in September. No Library this summer, I’m told, due to staffing problems. So we’ll try for the Amphitheater.
3/21/09 Another small but dedicated audience. We must advertise. Excitement for the Awesome!! Is building. The whole town is gonna be there.
2/21/09
Use of the Union Congregational Church,
01/31/09 Great stuff! A live painting thing. Daryl! Good music. Good turnout for cleanup. Even made some money this time!
12/31/08 I missed Larry. A lot of things happened, the music was great, though.
11/22/08 Small but excellent, and I think there are other things to add. Evan!
10/18/08 The Lutheran Church seems to bring us good luck. The Passing Notes were great, I hope they come back. So were Crucial Party. Cranes Are Flying are getting better and better. Pumpkin pie, though, even as a watcher I was near to being “sick”.
9/26/08 It was cool to put all the tables on the stage. The lighting came out right and so did the sound. The bands were good. Not bad for a rainy day.
8/23/08 Well, we just love the library. And Byron came through with some interesting entertainment. Sakura Madams, you know.
8/7/2008 Although Manuel put in a lot of work setting up the Hip-Hop show, it just didn’t come together. Too many people out of town, not enough time. We’ll try this again in the fall.
07/04/2008 Marched in the Independence Day Parade. Early on we were joined by Sara Bynum-Copeland, who is Terry’s mother. She stayed with us for the whole parade, and helped carry the banner. She told us stories from the founding of Terry’s Serendipity Café. And it didn’t rain much.!
6/23/2008 Festival Underground without rain! Great weather, great bands, Award ceremonies, Iko-Iko, grape soda. Thanks & Congrats to the class of ‘08
5/31/2008 The watermelon eating was astounding. We must get the names of those contestants. Lima Research Society just goes to show what Science can do. And Evan! Thanks for the music.
4/29/2008 The 4/26 Café was interesting, to say the least. Confusing, I might say. More after the critique
4/7/2008 The 3/29 event was an “Unexpected Gem”. A slow start, but it built to a great finish.
3/11/2008 The masks and bellies were heavily decorated on Leap Day. Well attended, The Library is the best! Thanks, everyone!
2/21/2008 Incredible technological breakthrough! Paper masks are being built for the 2/29 Leap Day extravaganza. What an eclipse last night!
1/25/2008- What?? Still no guesses about Webley? We have a new drum hardware bag. Knive design has produced our new, nearly sold out batch of T-Shirts.
12/10/07- You can email us at SerendipityCafe@hotmail.com. If anyone knows who Webley Webster is, they might win a brass figligee with bronze oak leaf palm. No relation to Louise.
11/9/07 – Go to the Myspace (Serendipitycafe1) and look at the videos of the Jell-o contest from Scarendipity 2007! Well, really.
9/28/07 – Reputed to be “the greatest Serendipity ever!”, with Franciso, Point 5, Kodiak Bear Regiment and Welcome home. We broke a table leg, but you know what they say.
8/31/07 – Generator Powered! At least we had sound. Lights didn’t work. But we liked Lima Research Society, Crucial Pary, Funkus, and said goodbye to Byron Lupin III, and hello to Byron the Traveller. I hope that confetti really goes away.
7/20/07 – Good turnout, interesting music. The library is a great place for Serendipity. The movie was a beauty, and the Library’s DVD/Projector/Screen was very slick indeed.
6/16/07 – The Festival Underground was great! We presented the Serendipity Staff Scholarship to Evan AND Zack, listened to new bands, enjoyed the sunshine, and then!!!! Got rained and thundered on just before the Staff Band was to play. Talk about luck! Missed Lof, though. Next time. Come to the Parade, come to the library.
2/5/07 – We now have a stage snake, thanks to the Parents Who Rock, which we used in January, at the 1/27 café. It worked fine. Reviews were quite positive for the January event, we had interesting and solid music, thanks to Julia Berlin. Feb is shaping up well, with Gray Delmar in charge of entertaiment.
1/10/2007 – We had a great time on First Night. The
recordings are in the mixing/burning stage. All the performers were
professional and great. Some of them are completely famous. The reviews looked
good in the
12/10/2006 – Great lineup for first night: Jenny Owen Youngs, Rocket Surgery, The Early, Princeton Review, PointFive, Evan Hall.
8/22/2006 – We got rained out in July but the August amphitheater café was lovely. The weather was fine and we even had electric power. There’s a bit in the Montlcair times about volunteering, for adults. September is recruitment month!
5/24/2006 – There will be no library café’s this summer due to shortness of staff. However, we will try for July 21 and Aug 18 at the Amphitheater.
3/25/2006 – This café was the first one recorded with our new Yamaha AW1600 digital recording workstation. We’ll know in a few days how good it sounds.
Paid attendance was 70, Heroes and Villians didn’t show up, but we had Dogwater and Rocket Surgery to take up the slack.No Problem!
2/25/2006 - A great party. Attendance was 117, everyone approved highly. Tromboner was a big attraction. Got a tuner and a couple small cables in the lost and
Found.
12/4/2005 – The December 3 Serendipity was small but fun. We had a lot of competion from Showcase, Hockey and Football. The large group of helpers at the end, putting the equipment back at 277 Grove, was a really wonderful indication that Serendipity is doing fine. Annnnnd… Check the “myspace” page at
http://www.myspace.com/serendipitycafe1 this is the myspace
email address: serendipitycafe_myspace@hotmail.com Thanks to Max and Julian!!!
11/2/2005 – The Scarendipty went well. Attendance was up, the entertainment recovered well from a last minute change of bands, and the critique meeting tonight was energetic and pointed.
9/28/2005 – The 9/23/05 Serendipity at the Amphitheater was rained into the Auditorium. The move was quick, and over $100 was raised for Katrina Hurrincane victims.
8/21/2005 – The Aug 12th café was very lucky. We got the entertainment booked at the last minute, we had a good turnout, lotta fun, and didn’t have to pay rent for the building, thanks to Phil Jones and Tom Flowers. It will be good to get everyone back to town & started up on the Scarenedipity and such.
7/7/2005 - The July 19th event has been cancelled due to lack of staff.
6/27/2005 – The Festvial was (in my humble opinion) excellent this year. The Acid Reign were the hit of the day, and we were lucky to have both the founders of Festival Underground at the event. Thanks to Ken Pasture for all the work, heavy lifting, and all day in the heat. Thanks to all the bands, all the parents, my mom and dad, and that kid over there.
5/30/2005 – the 5/28 Café had a really surprising number of
Alumni in Attendance. And seeing Sara Bynum-Copeland, Terry’s mother, and
5/1/2005 – the 4/30 café was small but intimate. The guitar piñata was pink, the cake was free and the music was in great variety. You should have been there.
3/21/2005 – The 3/19 café was fine! Special thanks to Pet Boy Sherman for filling in for the missing members of Cripple Fight. Solid performances by the Gray Escape (Dave), The Early, Princeton Review and Dogwater. Alex Gorlick was awesome. I liked them all.
2/28/2005 – Collected $142 for Tsunami Relief. How many want Saturday’s silly story on the web site? Raise your hands, one at a time, please.
1/26/2005 There just aren’t enough Saturdays. 2/29 not available 3/5 DT’s show, 3/12 Midsummer, 3/19 5 day weekend.
1/5/2005: The First Night at the Library café went smoothly, and was well received. We have a project under way to record the café performances to put on CD’s and here. New staff members come to the meeting today. Here comes the thnickaman!
11/27/04: The Library café was fine once we got in. There were some rough moments, waiting for the keymaster to let us in. After that, Kelsey was great on the café part, and Evan did OK at MC and ent. Head. The crowd seemed to be weighted toward the younger side and somewhat smaller than usual. But we decided to go with the Library for First Night.
8/22/04: Saturday’s café was mellow. Was that Manny Smith I saw? Sam Paterson? Too bad we didn’t get any pictures. Anyone who has pix of the 8/21 café, please email them to serendipitycafe@hotmail.com , but keep the size small. Use medium quality jpegs.
6/19/04: The festival Underground was a beautiful day, and a small group of the inner circle of Serendipity friends showed up for a really great day of music and sun and breezes and hackie-Frisbee.
6/9/04: The Mettenhiemer was awesome. Thanks to Dylan, Jackie, Marty, Gail, Ken, Bruno, all the Staff members, especially the waiters, The Montclair Women’s Club, our advertisers, the bands, performers, lotta work, lotta good results. Evelyn! Not out of character for a millisecond. Cinema! Cinema!
4/19/04 The Hip Hop Serendipity didn’t quite work. Some of the music was good, some of it was medium, but mainly, hardly anyone showed up.
2/23/04 The “Candle Light” Café included many bands never before seen at Serendipity. We were lucky to get Lucas’s camera working long enough to get the pictures off it. Holy Moley!
11/22/03: We all really like the Lutheran Church spot. We had an excellent café, with interesting music. The layout is comfy and we worked all the usual stuff in. The arrow committee truly excelled in navigational aids. David, you were marvelous More after the meeting.
I don’t know what caused it but we had the biggest, warmest crowd ever at the 10/25/03 Scarendipity. Over 175 people paid to come in and a bunch more were staff, performers, freeloaders of other kinds and adult supervisors. Many thanks to Gail Rainken, Cat Kanner, Pat Shrout, Jane Hanson, Ted Stilles, Ken Pasture, Peter Guiffra (Elvis), Bruno Suria and all the staff members who worked hard and long. There or other people who helped and we will have a lot to talk about when we meet on Wednesday.
The re-moved café worked out! We had more than a hundred in the audience and a great open mic hour. Can’t beat that Fire Dean. By the way, I fixed that buzzy stage monitor.
Nothing in recorded history can match the sophistication of the Sophisticate Serendipity! The ambience, music, poetry, food, drink and apparel were all in character from beginning to end. Historic performances by all, from Sousaphones to Jazz Quintet. And the first ever wedding at Serendipity. Many thanks to the Mettenheimer foundation for making it all possible.
The April 12 Café was very interesting. Waking James, Miasmiscs, Tim and Tonic and Gruve were all first time bands (I think) and all great. Open mic went fine. The staff was top notch, including the new sound crew. Thanks to all who helped clean up & move out.
Congratulations to Pet Boy Sherman on winning the SVPA battle of the bands. And great work by Redwood School District as last year’s Champions. The 1/18/03 café was a success by initial reports. The staff seem to think that the 1/18 café was the best of the year (so far). We need volunteers for the Feb and March committees.
The 2002 Fall season was unusually well received. In September we overcame a power failure and enjoyed a fine outdoor café in front of the Innes building. In October, the Spooky Serendipity was quite the event, with 2 Elvises and lots of costumes. (see photo gallery). In November, the Café at the church last Saturday was excellent, with great music. December included First Night Montclair, which wasn’t perfect, but once again we overcame adversity.
Terry’s Serendipity Café is a project begun by
Montclair High School students in the spring of 1995. It provides a place for
our town’s young people to listen to performances by a wide variety of artists,
poets and musicians here in town. Terry’s Serendipity Café is run by the
students themselves, with adult volunteer advice and supervision. The café
presents all types of performances and music from classical to rock, from jazz
to hip hop. We have “open mic” time set aside at each
café for people to come up on stage and perform. It is a great place for new
artists to present their material to a live audience.
The café is held at a variety of places depending on
availability, season and ideas. Wherever it is held, the café is drug, smoke
and alcohol free, and the emphasis is on respect for the performers and
audience alike. The café project is educational for the staff and entertaining
for the customers.
After three months of preparation, the first café was
held at the Edgemont Park Shelter House in Montclair in early June of 1995. For
about two years, the café was held about twice a month in the Park House. Other
locations include the Glenfield Park house, the MHS
amphitheater, the Hillside School cafeteria, 12 Miles West Theater, and the
First United Methodist Church. Entertainment has included famous jazz
performers, student and adult age bands, poets and comedians, actors and
rappers. In 2001 we screened some avant-garde videos.
In early 1998 a crisis occurred as the founding
members wanted to retire, but found the organization difficult to part with.
After a period of about eight months of no activity, the project found itself
in the hands of a new staff who wanted to re-start the project. In 1999 cafes
were held about every 6 weeks. In 2000 we began to step up the pace and in 2001
and 2002 we held an event every month.
Terry's Serendipity Café always NEEDS NEW
STAFF! We are always looking for new staff members. It's
fun and you can get a keen T-shirt. If you want to get involved in the
Serendipity Café, then come to meetings. . We need students and adults
interested in theater, art, finance, management, music, advertising, world wide web technology, and food. They are every Wednesday from
Email us at:
serendipitycafe@hotmail.com
.