'Celebrate Gloucester' festival coming Sept. 5

Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Charles Neville, of the Neville Brothers, joins New Orleans singer and bandleader Henri Smith, now of Gloucester, and his band, New Orleans Friends and Flavours, featuring Stanton Davis on trumpet.

Roomful of Blues, an eight-piece band, presents jump, swing, blues, soul, and rhythm and blues. Local rockers KBMG — Dan King, Dave Brown, Dave Mattacks, and Wolf Ginandes — perform an electric set.

Singer-songwriter Allen Estes introduces new songs, and locals Inge Berge, Chelsea Berry, and Pete Lindberg perform. Master of ceremonies is Joey Ciaramitaro of the blog GoodMorningGloucester.com.

Vendors and restaurants will sell a variety of fresh local food, and beer and wine is available. Lawn chairs and blankets are encouraged. All children 11 and under must be accompanied by an adult.

The event runs 3 to 10 p.m. on property recently purchased by Gloucester at 65 Rogers St., next to the Gloucester House. General admission is $15, free for children ages 5 and under. A VIP package is $95, including access to a special tent, free onsite parking, a meet and greet with the performers, free food, and free beer and wine.

In the event of bad weather, the event will move to the Gloucester House.

Proceeds are being donated to the Gloucester Fund, which will award grants based on public input. Anyone can nominate a project or charity dedicated to revitalizing Gloucester at www.CelebrateGloucester.com. From Wednesday through Sept. 30, people can vote for one of the nominees. Proceeds will be divided equally among the top three vote-getters.

Call 978-525-9093 or visit www.CelebrateGloucester.com.

AUTHOR’S CORNER: JoeAnn Hart, author of the social satire “Addled,’’ reads from her soon-to-be-finished novel, “Float,’’ during Night on the Neck at the Rock Neck Art Colony in Gloucester 5-9 p.m. Thursday. Set in a seaside town in Maine, the book follows the owner of a dehydration plant coping with financial desperation, conceptual art, insanity, infertility, jellyfish, organized crime, and more. Also during Night on the Neck, Thomas Hauck reads from his recently published book, “Public Image: Stories and Poems.’’ Specific times and locations are posted in the parking lot on the Rocky Neck Avenue causeway.

IN LOCAL GALLERIES: An exhibition of paintings by Lian Wang, a visiting scholar at Salem State College, is at the school’s Winfisky Gallery Wednesday through Sept. 30. A reception with the artist is 2 p.m. Sept. 15. Wang’s paintings reflect a Chinese Taoist emphasis on natural beauty, along with painting techniques from other countries, including a French impressionist use of color and an Indian Buddhist focus on the mind. As a result, her work is Chinese in its essence, but global in its outlook. . . . “What I Do and Where I Do It,’’ a group show at the Loading Dock Gallery at Western Avenue Studios in Lowell, is Thursday through Sept. 26. A reception with the artists is 6-9 p.m. Sept. 10. The show features the work of gallery artists, accompanied by a photograph of the studios where the work was created. . . . An exhibition of the life work of abstract painter Frances Ferro Carreiro is at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Beverly Farms, Wednesday through Sept. 29. Born in Cambridge in 1921, Carreiro settled in Gloucester in 1958, where she raised six children with her husband, Nicholas Carreiro, and lived until her death in 2001. An opening reception is 5-8 p.m. Sept. 9. Proceeds from all sales of paintings benefit the Frances Ferro Carreiro Scholarship Fund at the Montserrat School of Art in Beverly, Carreiro’s alma mater.

Items can be sent to wdkilleen@gmail.com.