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The Baroque Orchestra of New Jersey (BONJ) brings A Viennese November Fest to the Bickford Theatre at the Morris Museum in Morristown on Saturday, November 14, 2026, at 1 PM and Sunday, November 15, 2026, at 3 PM. The concert celebrates Johann Strauss II, pairing a live orchestra and three vocal soloists with antique music boxes from the museum’s own Guinness Collection of Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata.
It is the latest installment of BONJ’s Music Box Series, where Maestro Robert Butts picks instruments from the collection and builds a program around them. This time the theme is Vienna: waltzes, polkas and operetta, with a 19th century disc music box taking a turn alongside the orchestra.
Event Details
- What: Baroque Orchestra of New Jersey, A Viennese November Fest (Music Box Series)
- When: Saturday, November 14, 2026, 1 PM, and Sunday, November 15, 2026, 3 PM
- Where: Bickford Theatre at the Morris Museum, 6 Normandy Heights Road, Morristown
- Tickets: $53 general, $48 for museum members (includes a $3 service fee)
- Box office: 973-971-3706, or buy on the Morris Museum event page
What’s on the Program
Nearly everything on the bill is Johann Strauss II. The afternoon opens with the overture to Die Fledermaus and moves through Ein Herz, ein Sinn, the Pizzicato Polka, the Voices of Spring Waltz, the Thunder and Lightning Polka and the Radetzky March. The Blue Danube gets played on a B. A. Bremond “Orchestre Complet” music box, and a disc music box nicknamed “Mira” handles two numbers of its own.
Soloists Timothy Maureen Cole, Teresa Giardina and Jason Adamo sing selections from Die Fledermaus, including the Watch Duet and the Czardas, plus pieces from Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow, among them the Merry Widow Waltz. The program closes with the Champagne Aria from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, sung by all three. The museum notes that programs are subject to change.
Why the Music Boxes Matter
The Morris Museum’s Guinness Collection is one of the most notable collections of mechanical musical instruments and automata in the country, and this series is one of the few chances to hear pieces from it in a live concert setting. Hearing a music box play The Blue Danube, then hearing the full orchestra take the same tune, is the whole fun of the afternoon. If you caught our interview with Maestro Robert Butts earlier this year, this is the series he has been building for three decades with the orchestra.
Make a Day of It in Morristown
Both performances are matinees, which leaves time to walk the museum galleries before the show or head into town for dinner after. Our local’s guide to Morristown covers the Green and downtown dining, and our roundup of things to do in Morris County this month has more ideas for the same weekend.
Photo: Morris Museum, from the Baroque Orchestra of New Jersey event page.
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