Eighty-eight musicians were scheduled to perform at Leir Hall in the Montclair Art Museum on Saturday, November 7, for the fourth annual tribute to The Band's legendary farewell concert, a show built entirely to raise money for Toni's Kitchen, the Montclair food pantry serving individuals and families in Montclair, Bloomfield and West Orange. Doors were scheduled to open at 6:30 p.m., with the music set to start an hour later, as organizers marked 50 years since the original Last Waltz lit up San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom.
A Fourth Year, A Bigger Band
The tribute was conceived and organized by Ro Stafa, a Montclair-based actor, musician and event producer, according to Yahoo Entertainment. Stafa has run the Montclair tribute as a benefit for Toni's Kitchen, the food outreach program of St. Luke's Episcopal Church, for four years running, and he has called the concert one of the highlights of his year. This year's scheduled roster of 88 musicians would mark a jump from the 82 who performed in 2025, per the same account — though a report from TAPinto Montclair put the 2025 lineup at 75 musicians, the same figure both sources agree applied to the 2024 show.
Whichever count is accurate, the trajectory is the same: the band has only grown since it started with 50 musicians from across northern New Jersey at the inaugural concert on November 10, 2023, according to Toni's Kitchen. The Montclair performance this year was set to cover roughly 85 percent of the material from the original 1976 concert, Yahoo Entertainment reported, and the two-hour production presents a shortened selection of the film's celebrated repertoire.
Honoring a Thanksgiving Farewell
The Band played its real Last Waltz on Thanksgiving Day in 1976, a send-off immortalized in a documentary directed by Martin Scorsese that featured Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond, Eric Clapton and Neil Young alongside the group. Nearly five decades later, Montclair's tribute leans on that same mythology to draw a crowd willing to open their wallets for a local cause — this year's tickets include a built-in donation to Toni's Kitchen.
The fundraising has climbed alongside the band size. The first concert in 2023 raised $3,000 for the pantry's holiday-season programs, and the following year's sold-out show, which drew an audience of 280 people plus an online audience, generated $6,000 and drew support from more than 20 sponsors, according to Toni's Kitchen. Organizers have said the 2024 and 2025 shows doubled the original concert's audience attendance.
What Toni's Kitchen Does With the Money
Toni's Kitchen traces its roots to a neighborhood soup kitchen and food ministry founded by St. Luke's Episcopal Church, and it was formally established in 1982. Today the organization serves individuals and families across Montclair, Bloomfield and West Orange, and it provides more than 2 million meals annually, making it one of the area's largest hunger-relief operations. Proceeds from the Last Waltz tribute go directly to support that work, Toni's Kitchen has said.
Montclair's food-relief scene has seen other musical benefactors step up in recent years. Outpost in the Burbs, a nonprofit concert venue in town, donated a total of $20,000 to local hunger-relief groups, split into two separate $10,000 gifts to the Human Needs Food Pantry and Toni's Kitchen, according to Patch. It's a reminder that Montclair's music community has repeatedly turned to The Band's old songbook, and others, as a vehicle for keeping neighbors fed.
