Count Basie Center for the Arts

Opened in 1926 as Reade's Carlton theater and renamed in 1984 for Red Bank's most famous son, the Count Basie Center for the Arts is one of New Jersey's busiest performing-arts campuses. Its 1,568-seat historic Hackensack Meridian Health Theatre is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, puts no seat further than 125 feet from the center of the stage, and has hosted everyone from Bruce Springsteen and Ringo Starr to William "Count" Basie himself — Tony Bennett called it "my favorite place." Next door, The Vogel, a nearly 20,000-square-foot second room that opened in 2020, reconfigures nightly between roughly 200 and 800 people for cabaret-style jazz, singer-songwriters and comedy, while the Basie Center Cinema House rounds out the block with film. Stand-up is a standing part of the programming on both stages: upcoming and recent bills include Maria Bamford, Jim Breuer, Atsuko Okatsuka, Henry Cho, Jimmy Failla, Amber Autry, Gabriel Rutledge and Anthony Rodia. Full-service bars serve beer, wine and spirits before and during performances, and every patron needs a ticket regardless of age.