Gary Tischler • May 30, 2012

Let us now praise Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. It would be churlish not to.

It may even be time for us, the American cousins and former colonials, to embrace all things English, as we are wont to do when royal ceremonials break out across the pond. We swoon at royal weddings, cry at royal funerals and stand in awe as the United Kingdom celebrates Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee, marking her 60th year as her nation’s reigning monarch.

We have won the revolution which turned us into Americans, but somewhere in our hearts and movie memories, there will always be an England. Like the English themselves, we are in thrall (although, like the English, sometimes reluctantly and rebelliously) to all things regal and royal. Somehow, in the act of separation, someone forgot to take out that gene which makes do that little bow when we are in the royal receiving line. But so few of us are.

Like Queen Victoria, with whom she shares longevity on the throne, the longer she reigns, the sturdier she seems. No doubt Prince Charles sometimes wonders just how short the age of Charles III will be should he ever succeed to the throne.

The queen has sometimes gotten a bum rap both here and in her own country for not showing her emotions very often, for her corgies, for a certain dowdiness. But that sturdiness has also been her strength ever since she became queen in the guise of a shy, lovely young English rose. Periodically, the English go through bouts of sneering at the monarchy (the most recent of which was the contratemps surrounding the death of Diana,the Princess of Wales, and the crush of worldwide grief that followed). She has, in fact, carried her duties with honor and influence, and a grace that is all her own, falling in quite nicely when greeted as “queenie” by a D.C. resident whom she visited a couple of decades ago.

She — and all the ceremonial attachments to the monarchy — and she, alone, reminds us that Great Britain was once a great world empire. “Rule Britannia,” indeed. Everyone knows the coach will be out, the soldiers will march and the once colonials will pay the respects from all over the world. All the royals and quasi-royals will come out, and they will cheer the commoner duchess and the queen’s grandsons. Prince Phillip will walk stiffly, and the queen will smile and wave, and be loved for herself. It will be the kind of spectacle that will remind us of Shakespeare, of Shaw and Dickens, Pip and Falstaff, of the Scots, the Brits, the Welsh and Irish and cricket, (the game not Jiminy) and music halls, and Winston and the finest hour.

The queen’s reign coincided with the rise of the celebrity and paparazzi culture, and the royals were the biggest celebrities of all, climaxing in the rise and demise of Princess Di.

But the queen, like Victoria, like Elizabeth I, has endured. A diamond indeed.

God bless us everyone, and God bless the queen.

Gary Tischler •

The first time I ever encountered jazz in the sense that somebody told me I was listening to jazz was in Times Square in New York when I was a callow 19-year-old youth fresh from small-town Ohio.

It was a place called the Metropol, and inside, you could stand and milk one drink for a couple of sets, listening to the great and legendary vibist Lionel Hampton. It was 1960, and it was love at first sound and sight, and not for the last time either.

Not bad occasion for a first encounter, and I was fortunate enough to have quite a few ever since—to see the best, the legends, the Ellingtons and Basies and Fitzgeralds.Perhaps predictably, I loved the sound of the saxophone, in flight or as solos in a late-night group set at Blues Alley or a bar that I can’t remember in San Francisco.

What you get over time is the diversity of jazz, and what you should get in a jazz festival is that rich texture, that sheer volume of playing, music, genres, and personalities. A festival embodies both the history of the music, and the sense of place where it’s played and the DC Jazz Festival which we’re about to enjoy once again has all of that in abundance.

While the legends—those vivid stars whose lives were as attractive and charismatic as their musical gifts like Basie, Ellington, Billie and Bird, Miles and Dizzie—are less evident in today’s jazz world, there’s no question that jazz is bigger than ever, that there more jazz musicians, and venues in more places all over the world. More people are listening, (but in ways less easy to measure given the explosions of easy delivery systems), and more people are playing the music or training to do so, one of the legacies of the reigning family of jazz, the Marsalis clans, who emphasize music education.

One of those incomparable memorable occasions for me was the 2009 DC Jazz Festival—then called the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival—where I had occasion to hear the great New Orleans style jazz player Buckwheat Zydeco (with a little help from Paquito D’Rivera on sax) keep people dancing and jumping and dancing on the mall, and later I was present at a gathering of the entire Marsalis clan to honor patriarch Ellis Marsalis, in the company of the late, great Billy Taylor.

That was also my first contact with the DC Jazz Festival, which embodies the virtues of any great jazz festival.

What a great jazz festival reminds of us—in addition to the legacy and history of jazz—is that jazz—like all sorts of music, like theater and dance—best consumed and experienced in a live setting. With jazz, that can be anything at all and anywhere.

We certainly have the names in this festival, the prestige events, the legends—this year it’s the masterful jazz piano Kenny Barron and the master of all music bassist, cellist composer educator and author Ron Carter receving the festival’s lifetime achievement award and gathering up with the Classical Jazz Quartet (Stefon Harris and Lewis Nash), to perform in Jazz Meets the Classics, at the Kennedy Center, the festival’s premier event, which will also feature Paquito D’Rivera, the saxaphone’s master internationalist.

At the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue in DC’s downtown, you’ll find young jazz and virtuoso whiz rising star Anat Cohen, adept as a saxophonist but also playing the clarinet and leader of her group. Cohen is emblematic of the world –wide reach of jazz: the Israeli musician explores jazz through all the myriad gardens of music, from classic, to Brazilian choro, the Argentine tango and Afro-Cuban styles.

But festivals are all about place too, where stars and emerging stars, and local musicians, of which the city has a multitude and here the innovative Jazz in the Hoods program—growing by leaps and bounds—is at its richest, with a reach that stretches through every corner of the city.

The Jazz in the Hoods program includes 10 days of 80 performances. You’d expect to find some of this in jazz clubs like the thriving Bohemian Caverns on U Street or smaller clubs like Twins or Columbia Station in Adams Morgan. But Jazz in the Hoods also reaches into restaurants, hotels, galleries, and museums, most notably, but not exclusively like the now annual family oriented Jazz ‘n Familes Fundays which features free performances by on June 2 and 3 at the Phillips Collection.

Jazz in the Hoods has breadth, depth and focus—21 neighborhoods will take part, giving you a real sense not only of the popularity of jazz, but of the diversity of life in Washington DC beyond the monuments and the White House and Congress. Included are Dupont Circle, Foggy Bottom, Georgetown, the H Street Corridor, Southeast, Southwest, Takoma Park, Adams Morgan, the U Street Corridor and other places.

Everyone knows the stars at the festival, but if you make your way through the Jazz in the Hoods program, here’s some performers to look for—the Mark Turner Quartet, Rodney Richardson with Lena Seikaly, Marcus Strickland Quartet, the Randy Weston Trio, the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Octet, , the Kenny Rittenhouse Quintet, the John Scofield Trio, and at the Phillips the Paul Bailey Quaratet, theHerman Burney Trio, the Xavier Davis Duo, Janelle Gill, the Elijah Balbed Quartet and Michael Bowie and Sine Qua Non String Quartet, among others.

Gary Tischler • May 24, 2012

There was a time in the 1970s when disco music was both king and queen of pop. It was also fashionable for hard rockers to “diss” disco and all of its accompanying frivolity of flared white pants and vests, dance floor posturing and glittering mirror balls hanging from the ceiling. Add to that the wretched excesses of New York’s Studio 54 and the West Coast glitz, glitter and glam and you’ve got yourself a cultural history.

In Georgetown, as we watched the lines snake outside Tramps discotheque at Billy Martin’s Carriage House on Wisconsin Avenue and other places, we said disco was just too theatrical. It was like some magic show that damped heavy duty guitar riffs and the grit and echo of Dylan, Credence and Joplin.

Some of those feelings probably stemmed from high schoolish resentments at not making the doorman’s cut at disco clubs around the country—and you had to know how to dance as opposed to just strike a pose. Knowing where your local coke dealer lived probably helped, but it had nothing to do with the music.

But the music, as it turns out, was pretty good.

The death of two disco legends this past week, just two days apart, reminded us that there were big talents in disco with voices and figures that transcended the glitz and made a lasting impression on our musical landscape, lending proof to disco’s anthem, Gloria Gaylor’s “I Will Survive.” Last week saw the passing of the chanteuse, rangy Donna Summer, and Robin Gibb, the clearest highest voice in the Bee Gees, which turned the soundtrack album to the iconic “Saturday Night Fever” into a worldwide sensation.

Robin Gibb, suffering from both pneumonia and cancer, managed to rise from a coma, only to succumb to his ailments at the age of 62. He and his brothers, Maurice, Barry and Andy, all collaborated at various times, broke up and hooked up again, the last time an occasion which produced the music of the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack. Success didn’t sit well with the group, though you’d never know it by their music: they produced hits like “Jive Talkin,” “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” “To Love Somebody,” “I Started a Joke,” “How Deep Is Your Love” and more.

The brothers, who had done Beatles-like music in the 1960s, followed “Saturday Night Fever” with the disastrous soundtrack to the 1978 film, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” loosely inspired by the 1967 album by The Beatles. From then on, they suffered a backlash, sort of like disco. Theirs was a strange and tragic career—young brother Andy died shockingly of myocarditis in 1988. Robin’s twin Maurice died of a heart attack in 2003. Now, Barry Gibb is the only surviving Bee Gee.

Summer had an equally huge disco career. Some called her the queen of disco, but she hardly cared about such notions. She was a terrific singer, by reputation both sweet and tough, as well as level headed. She was a woman who looked like a diva but didn’t act like one. Her voice had range, and it carried her material, which both defined and transcended the genre. While much of the content of her songs were erotically and sexually driven—it had the kind of longing and drive that you could do more than just dance to—her strength was strength itself. “She Works Hard for the Money” was a song, upbeat, but powerful, that paid tribute to working-class working women, while the hard-charging “Hot Stuff” was, well…hot stuff. She delivered hit after hit in the 1970s, like “The long “Last Dance,” “Dim All The Lights.”

Summer shone like a disco star—she was slender, with a big bouquet of black hair, leggy and beautiful. And she had the singing chops to match the image, which is why she continued to perform long after disco died.

Disco—of which Summer and the Bee Gees were two of its leading lights—didn’t last. But the songs do, and the power of the performers provide vivid memories. The Bee Gees were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but Summer, as Elton John critically pointed out after her death of cancer last week, did not.

She deserved to be in there, to say the least. In that pop-rock-disco-all-genre-music hall of fame that swirls in our minds and memories, she’s already there and will never leave.

She worked hard for her fame: One last dance for Donna Summer.
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Gary Tischler •

If you want to know what Georgetown is all about these days, come to the Citizens Association of Georgetown’s next performance of Concerts In the Parks series. That would be Father’s Day, June 17.

You might be surprised—it’s not about the newest businesses, the university, the waterfront, parking or the power brokers who live in our midst.

In a few words, it’s about little kids, dogs, families, rolling green grass, cotton candy, cupcakes, honky tonk music, spreading out picnic blankets, playing catch and catching up with neighbors. It’s about the real news of the day, which might be about how kids did in first grade at Hyde-Addison—or elsewhere—as summer approaches, or the latest multi-million-dollar house sale.

At Volta Park, hometown favorite Rebecca McCabe headlined the May 20 kick-off of CAG’s Concert In the Parks. She sang about broken hearts, sundry temptations, (“Don’t Do It”) and, yes, “Do You Want to Dance,” along with touches of Elvis and Shania, and Georgetown folks gave up a pretty good imitation of a small town, summer gathering, a real community-village feeling.

The Concert in the Parks series, co-chaired by Elizabeth Miller, is celebrating its 10th Anniversary as a CAG enterprise, and local merchants and folks where handing out free ice cream, cotton candy, cookies, cupcakes and lemonade. Parents spread blankets and tried to keep track of their small children—there seemed to be hundreds—while various pooches took things in stride and settled in. At the baseball field, fathers and sons and brothers and younger brothers were taking turns batting, catching and running around, while blue balloons escaped to the sky.

Georgetown is, of course, not a small town: it is its own special thing, and what you saw at Volta Park was a Georgetown now being a part of the future with young couples and professionals and lots of children. To that end McCabe led a group of little girls in dancing—boys remain resistant at this age—while a contest for who was wearing the best color combination of pink and green was won by one of the youngest entrants.

Volta Park and Sunday set the scene—clouds but no rain, a heavy hint of summer, blue skies on the whole, a place where the sound and the music and feelings carried—that made you believe for an hour or so that we live in less troubling times and that this was not a year where politicians had turned into professional naysayers.

McCabe, who was celebrating her birthday in fine voice and blonde form, remains a singer-songwriter of note, splitting her time between Washington and Nashville, where she works one week per month on her music, writing and recording. Her optimistic ways and love of family fit the concert bill and Georgetown perfectly. It brought everyone together; it showed the town simply enjoying the day.

The occasion asked for contributions to Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center. The concert’s theme was “Pink and Green” to raise awareness for breast cancer and highlight the importance of living green; Sherman Pickey gave out the prize for best color. AOL’s Patch held a raffle for a 50-dollar Sea Catch coupon; Elizabeth Miller win it. (Shaun Courtney simply happened to pick that ticket blindly, really.) Concert-goers got the opportunity to plant seedlings or decorate t-shirts. Ball or Nothing Food Truck, run by Miller’s brother, sold gourmet meatballs on 34th Street.

Some of contributors, as indicated by CAG, included: Sprinkles Cupcakes, Long & Foster Realtors, Nancy Taylor Bubes – Washington Fine Properties, Tutt, Taylor, Rankin/Sotheby’s International Realty (Lawrence Calvert baked the cookies), the Friends of Rose Park, the Friends of Volta Park and Haagen-Dazs.
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Gary Tischler •

Live long enough in D.C. and you ended up hearing about, hearing and finally seeing Chuck Brown. If you didn’t live in the epicenter of Brown’s influence—where go-go music was as much a part of the culture as the air you inhaled—Chuck Brown and his marvelous musical invention was something of a rumor, a kind of urban legend in the outlying world, which sooner or later you would run across. And when you did, everything about him and the music turned out to be true.

Chuck Brown—the Godfather of Go-Go, the President, the Legend—passed away mid-week, and the city erupted. Not in tears, mind you, but in a kind of Bourbon Street and bar celebration, on the airwaves, in bars, outside the newly renovated Howard Theatre, in the U Street Corridor, around Ben’s Chili Bowl. It was a spontaneous, entirely appropriate reaction to sad news, like a call-and-response at a Baptist church, the kind that also permeated his music.

Brown was an inventor, and his invention was go-go music. Loud, endlessly energetic, full of drums, cymbals, clanging bells, brass, bongos, employing instruments that might be heard in Beirut or Africa, not Bayreuth. It made you want to, well, go-go. Go-go was the music of the city—not Capitol Hill, that white dome and pillars stuff, but the encompassing city of neighborhoods: the open-the-hydrants-in-summertime scene, the club on Saturday and church on Sunday neighborhood scene, where get-up-and-go dance is an urge.

Natty, sunglassed and hatted to a tee, Brown was a generous soul, always helping out up-and-comers from the next generation who spread the word and the music around the city. In some portions of my neighborhood in Adams Morgan he was a prophet. I knew this from my next-door-neighbor, Mickey Collins, who is three years gone now.

Still, in some ways, among the myriad neighborhoods of Washington, some each sporting their own history and culture, Brown and go-go might have been more like a legend or rumor, something not actually experienced in the age of disco, Michael Jackson, and Hall and Oates. Go-go was not exactly like jazz and its rich history in D.C. It wasn’t necessarily a fully shared experience.

Just ask Anthony Williams, Mayor of Washington, D.C., for eight years. He was a cerebral sort of man, famous for his bowtie, who tended toward jazz and classical music. When prompted, he had to admit he didn’t know what go-go was. A sort of mini-tempest emerged from this, culturally and politically, not long lasting but indicative of some of the divisions in the city.

Go-go and Brown, except for “Bustin’ Loose,” never exploded nationally the way it should have, but maybe that’s all right. Brown was ours, and so was go-go. It belonged to this city, and every year the Brown and go-go effect grew wider. It was a peculiar thing: even before his death at 75 from pneumonia brought on by blood clot issues, Brown and his music were becoming institutionalized into our culture, busting loose across all the neighborhoods and beyond.

Like I said, I’d heard the rumors, riffs and stories for years. But I never saw the man until I ventured out to Strathmore in Bethesda for one of its free summer outdoor music concerts.

It was Chuck Brown, and the night, blue skies, big stars, rolling grass, Rockville Pike strip mall lights, barbecues and such, rendered it a different Strathmore than it is today—more the dreams of one city every politician seems to share but never achieves, gathered in force together on the lawn.

He was 70 then, but you wouldn’t know it. What he and his band were doing was incorrigible. It was seductive, it was joyful, it was kickin’, it was holy happening, stomp your feet, clap your hands stuff, and not in a childish way. I guess go-go is as good a description as any because that’s what it made you want to do.

And Brown never stopped. He took a sip of water here and there, but, man, he played and could have played all night long. He kept going and shamed you into sharing the experience, like in James Brown’s music. You felt good.

At the end of the show, everybody was in the summer’s night place, sweating like a pack of dogs, shook it off and went on home, exhausted and more than a little exhilarated. We got home and my neighbor Mickey was outside. He asked where we’d been, because for all I know we glowed in the dark.

We told him.

He was impressed. “Chuck Brown?” he said, tinged with a little envy. “Wow. That’s something. That’s something, isn’t it?” We agreed.

If Chuck Brown was the Godfather of go-go, under my neighbor’s eye, I felt like a made man.

Somewhere else now, Chuck Brown is bustin’ out. I just hope they’re ready up there.

Gary Tischler • May 17, 2012

A circus troupe sat in front of me at the 28th annual Helen Hayes Awards at the Warner Theatre April 23, or at least it felt like that.

At this annual bash and awards show for the Washington theater community, actors, designers, directors and entire companies become winners but somehow never losers. Unlike the Tonys, the Oscars or the Emmys, there’s nary a snide comment–certainly not on stage, but who knows what goes on in the bathrooms–or cause consciousness-raising, or political statements. Nevertheless, on Monday evening, there were politicians also on stage, reveling–can you believe it?–in the spotlight.

And there was the cast and company of Signature Theatre’s “Hairspray” (which starred D.C. cultural critic Robert Aubrey Davis as Edna), up for a number of awards, including outstanding resident musical ensemble. One member of said ensemble (she had suffered an injury during a performance of the show) was Kara Tameika Watkins, just dazzling in a red-gown-crutches ensemble which she brought off with remarkable aplomb, with a little help from her mom.

I was sitting right behind them in row Y in the back, and I asked Watkins’s mother, Sheila, if they had thought about what would happen if they would win. Mom shook her head and said, “She’ll be just fine.”

You know how this story ends.

Up on stage, a voice rings out: “And the outstanding ensemble, resident musical is….”

“Hairspray, Signature Theatre.”

They squealed, they yelled, they screamed, they jumped out of their seats, and, what, maybe 50, I don’t know exactly how many, struggled into the aisles as if they had just opened the doors at Walmart for the first hours of Christmas shopping. Right there in the middle, wielding and walking and, I thought, running with her crutches was the vision in red, Kara Tameika Watkins.

They were up there, hugging each other, jumping up and down. Davis, at the mike but not in costume, showered them with eloquence, erudition and theater love, as he thanked them for accepting him in their midst.

It was a Helen Hayes moment–and a “theatreWashington” moment–one of many that seem to become an instant part of the lore and legend of each and every one of the 28 awards nights, all but two of which I’ve attended. I am a lot older than the young Ms. Watkins, but for a shining moment I felt, if not just as young, a little less old.

“Hairspray” was a big winner that night–the show’s super-charged star Carolyn Cole got best actress kudos in a resident musical, and the show itself was named Best Resident Musical

But that noise in the back–including the very loud sound of “The Sound of Music” supporters, is always something that seems unique to these awards, and mark it as a celebration not a competition. Sure, you can grouse about the results, the judges, the critics, the ties, the process and make perfect sense while you propose restructuring plans.

But the night isn’t about making sense. It’s about theater, which hardly ever makes perfect sense–oh, that nicely made play–but beats with the fever of heart, soul and imagination, and in this case, about a community.

“I don’t know, it hardly seems so local any more,” I heard somebody say in the street. “It’s getting a little big.”

Well, here’s a scoop: Washington’s theater world has indeed gotten bigger with 805 productions, 84 theaters, 9,903 performances and 2,261,509 audience members, according to the stats in the program. These numbers do not include dozens, maybe hundreds of critics, writers and freeloaders who have the audacity to take their tickets and still feel free to complain about what they’ve seen.

But I don’t think it has gotten too big for its britches, not even, and especially during the course of the Helen Hayes Awards. There are always ghosts in the house, puns in the air, and all these people to thank. If the first words spoken by a recipient was, “Wow” (I think it was Mark Acito, author of “Birds of a Feather” at the rising Hub Theatre in Virginia), it was not the last time the word was heard. It was topped only by the all-purpose “amazing,” a word–like “dude”–which should be retired or at least allowed to be used only once by each winner.

At these awards there are always luminaries who are honored and present for their star power–in the past we have had everyone from Angela Lansbury to Derek Jacoby. This year, we had Kevin Spacey.

Spacey was the recipient of the Helen Hayes Tribute–sponsored by Washington uber-theater benefactor and philantropist Jaylee Mead–and the man knows how to put on a show.

Spacey has roots here, as he acknowledged, but more than that he is one of those stage actors who became a big movie star (two Oscars), but never abandoned the stage, supporting young actors and now being the American head of the classic Old Vic in London.

He’s also an FOB–Friend of Bill–former President Bill Clinton who showed up in the form of a video tribute to Spacey. Spacey could have done it himself–he gave a wicked, thickly corn-pone accented impression of Clinton.

We remember Spacey here at the early stages of his stage career: awkwardly as the son to Liv Ullman’s mother in Ibsen’s “Ghosts” at the Kennedy Center (“My first Broadway play,” he said.); splendidly as the son to Colleen Dewhurst’s actress mother in Peter Sellars’s pitch-perfect “A Seagull” at the Kennedy Center; superbly as the son to Jack Lemmon’s father in Jason Miller’s strange version of O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” at the National Theatre; and winningly as the mobster uncle in Neil Simon’s “Lost In Yonkers.”

Spacey–he won Oscars for “The Usual Suspects” and “American Beauty”–was mindful of giving back. “I learned that from Lemmon, my mentor, my friend,” he said.

He was eloquent, funny, inspiring and profane–he managed to drop the F-word not once but twice, tying Robin Williams’s old record from the Mark Twain Awards, or maybe not.

The F word is easy. Pronouncing the names of many of the Synetic Theater performers and artists of the theatre company which specializes in a form of silent and action theatre created by the company’s directors Irina and Paata Tsikurishvili is not so easy, nor is spelling them. Nevertheless, the company’s production of “King Lear” (silent Shakespeare) won several awards, including outstanding ensemble.

There were outsiders here: elected officials and media types like Ward 2 Council member Jack Evans, who read the city-council official proclamation for theatreWashington’s theater week, D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

But mostly, there were these our players, our magic makers, such as Mitchell Hebert, who won best actor for Theater J’s quasi-Arthur Miller substitute in “All Fall Down,” Ted van Griethuysen, for “Dogberry,” praising his comrade-in-arms Floyd King. “Ruined,” the great play at Arena grabbed only one award, but it was the one that really counts — “outstanding resident play.” Adventure Theater under Michael Bobbitt continued its amazing rise with several awards. Holly Twyford was singing and hoofing her heart out. There were the ghosts of Helen Hayes and James MacArthur.

And, of course, the girl in red, her mom, all the kids screaming and yelling their hearts out. [gallery ids="100754,122616,122599,122612,122607" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

If you’re one of those persons who’ve been on a few Georgetown House Tours, you begin to get a notion about some of the things the tour might be about.

The tour is about history, for sure—about the homes being shown, about the people who have lived in them and live in them now, about change in Georgetown and change in how people live.  For all the historic, stately qualities of Georgetown, it’s a remarkably fluid place, and you can see that in the homes that are being shown.  Those houses, acting like official greeters, may show a part of the past, and a part of the present to visitors all at the same time

Georgetown is after all a historic district where wholesale physical change is difficult to achieve—but things are often going on inside that speak to the modern and to the future, as well as individual style and taste.

People flock to the Georgetown House Tour with expectations that they will see a portion of the lives and looks of the persons who occupy and own these houses and that they will reflect the village of people with residents who know how to live with style and grace.   They also expect to see the living breath of history—the occasional antique piece of eye-popping furniture, paintings, gardens, the work of fabulous interior decorator, the timeless touch of the history of the homes themselves.  To visitors, Georgetown can seem like Brigadoon, separate from its surroundings.

All of these elements come together in the annual spring Georgetown House Tour, sponsored by historic St. John’s Episcopal Church and benefits many of its long-time charitable activities. Like many “festive” or “tour” events in the city, it has grown and branched out over the years, adding social occasions—the Patrons’ Party, for instance—and mini-events on the day of the tours like the hugely popular afternoon tea at St. John’s.

And every year, there are people who gather together to lend their resources, talents, time and efforts to ensure the event’s success.  There are volunteers, quasi-docents, ticket-takers, information providers and so on. There are corporate sponsors, such as Washington Fine Properties, and there are the folks who lend their name and their time and effort as the co-chairs and the kind folks who open their homes.

This year, the co-chairs — Frank Randolph, a renowned interior designer and Stephanie Bothwell, who heads her own business called Urban and Landscape Design — combine with Frida Burling, long the soul and inspiration of the Georgetown House Tour, to bring together themes of history, interior and exterior designs, i.e., how we live in our homes and communities and share the best of those qualities with each other and the world.

Randolph, known for his enchanting interior designs, is ideally suited for his role as co-chair: He is, without a doubt, one of the village’s most unabashed boosters, a native son,  born and raised in Georgetown, a student at  Western High before it became Duke Ellington School for the Arts.  Bothwell  is a relative newcomer to Georgetown, having lived here with her family for 12 years, but she brims with a passion for the village and ideas about achieving ideal and workable designs for urban living.

Burling, who for years with an energy that surprises people to this day, made sure that the tour would come off every year—by marketing, by cajoling, persuading, charming, pushing and using her considerable contacts to make it happen. She became the face and voice of the tour, it’s most able, articulate promoter. In 2001, when Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn hosted the tour’s patrons’ party, the Georgetowner newspaper arrived at their N Street home to take a cover photo. An editor asked Bradlee why he was involved, and the Washington Post executive editor roared back: “Because Frida told me to.”

The combination of the three speaks the best of Georgetown, a sense of a community with historic offerings that presents a graceful face to the world and to itself, for that matter.

“It goes without saying, “ Randolph says. “One of the key components is the fact that all of us, the residents of Georgetown, get to visit each other at one time or another. It’s a community thing that way.”

Of course, Randolph combines the historic with designer know-how and appreciation as well as an articulate, busy knowledge of his favorite place. “I can think of only a few houses in Georgetown that I’ve not been in,” he says. “And, over the years, I’ve done the interior design for, I don’t know, 30 or 40 homes.   Of course, that includes my own home.”  It is on 34th Street near Dent Place and has a certain cache beyond his own ownership, which is no small thing either. “Henry Kissinger lived here for a few years,” he says. If you want cache, or just history chat, talk with Randolph. His father was a senator from West Virginia. Randolph was asked to redecorate the Vice President’s Residence when the Cheneys lived there. “I had a privileged upbringing, you could say, but not spoiled or extravagant,” he said. “I was and still am very appreciative of the opportunities.”

 The world comes to tour the nine Georgetown homes on Saturday, April 28. It used to spread over two days on a spring weekend but has since been held on Saturday only.  “Georgetown presents one of the better illustrations of livable urban design, I’m not talking about showing off a collection of solar panels or being green.  It’s about ease of movement, access and connection,” Bothwell said.

“The house tour shows people the history here, sure, but I think it also shows how you can manage change in interior ways, what you can do with old homes to make them more contemporary while keeping the history and beauty,” she said. “We have a remarkable variety in housing stock here—it’s not all mansions and big properties, although we have plenty of that here. It’s livable, manageable homes, some quite small. And the homes are very deceptive from the outside; they give off the historic feeling without revealing their depth or size.”
           
Echoing that theme, Randolph said, “I absolutely love Georgetown. I have everything here I need. I can walk to the Safeway or Whole Foods and restaurants galore.  We have the firemen at Dent Place nearby.  It’s fluid, it changes and the people change.  But it has tradition. It has history that’s permanent.  And I think you can see that reflected on the tour. I’ve lived here most of my life, and I wouldn’t live anywhere else

Randolph, a Georgetowner par excellence, can tell you about the various schools—Hardy, Hyde, Western—and the people who have lived here.  He knows lots of people and has a host of friends.  “I live by myself,” he says. “I don’t even have a pet. I have a porcelain dog. He’s the perfect pet. You don’t have to walk or feed him, and he’s always there for you. But I share this place with my friends, this lovely village.”

Frida Burling can tell you a little about life in Georgetown herself, too.  At 96, she’s seen and done a lot in her village. In a phone conversation, she tells you she’s slowing down—then rattles off a series of activities, meetings with relative, church, another meeting Sunday afternoon—that indicates she still keeps a busy schedule.  She is the tour chair emerita and is hosting the Patron’s Party on April 25. 

She recalls how she first got involved in the house tour, which had begun during the Depression as a small thing, probably with people in a bus going by houses. “My husband and I  (the late Edward Burling, whom she still refers to as Eddie) used to go on weekends out to Middleburg, but that’s hunt country, and it’s not Georgetown.  I got involved with St. John’s which is so much a center of all this with their many projects. Eventually, I got involved in the house tour, because that’s a way to support those charitable projects like the Georgetown Ministry.”

No question about it, she propelled the house tour into its next incarnation to the point where it has become an institution, a must-do event and an integral part of the community’s traditions. She did it by example—her energy became legendary as she got older. She remembers asking best-selling author and biographer Kitty Kelley, a Georgetowner to the bone, to host the first patrons’ party in the late 1990s. The patron’s parties were a Burling innovation, and it enlarged the image of the tour, created a higher profile.

“I think it’s one of the oldest house tours in the country,” she said. “I know it sets an example.  And, simply by being who she is, so does Frida Burling.

The 2012 Georgetown House Tour at a Glance:

From the east side to the west side, from 28th Street to 35th Street and from N Street to Q Street, the Georgetown House Tour spreads its welcome mat over Washington’s most historic neighborhood, Saturday, April 28, 11 a.m to 5 p.m.  For the price of $40 ($45 after April 20), visitors and residents may walk through nine homes and the home’s grounds.  It is a chance to glimpse some history, to get some decorating and home improvement ideas and to feel the ease of city living. Who would open their doors to strangers? Try at least three architects, an artist, a designer, a real estate developer and agent, a financial manager, a high-tech manager, a college dean, a lawyer and another lawyer who happens to represent Georgetown as the Ward 2 councilmember.

The following have opened their homes on behalf of the tour and deserve a big thank you from the community: Cherry and Peter Baumbusch; Kristin and John Cecchi; Pat Dixon; Michele and Jack Evans; Hugh Newell Jacobsen; Kristin and Greg Muhlner; Dale and Melissa Overmyer; Alice Hall and Peter Starr; Christian Zapatka.

There is a tea at St. John’s Church parish hall (O and Potomac Street), 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, April 28, the day of the tour. The Patron’s Party is on April 25 at Frida Burling’s house on 29th Street.

For more information, visit GeorgetownHouseTour.com or call 202-338-1796. [gallery ids="100717,120652,120618,120644,120626,120639,120633" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • May 10, 2012

Washington theater folks often complain that D.C. theater doesn’t get respect in New York.

It’s true that New Yorkers tend to get culturally snooty about D.C., mainly because, you sometimes suspect, the Broadway theater tickets are astronomical (as opposed to just outrageous in D.C.), because you have to take a loan out to go to the Metropolitan Opera, because where else is a musical about Bonnie and Clyde a good idea and because there is no such thing as a free museum in New York. Mama MOMA, indeed.

But, Gothamites, beware. D.C. theater is no slouch. Look what’s up for Tonys for best drama: Bruce Norris’s comedy-drama about gentrification, “Clybourne Park,” and wonder-writer-adapter David Ives’s “Venus in Fur.” We should be so lucky to see such plays. Hmm, wait . . . we are so lucky. “Clybourne Park” was staged twice at Woolly Mammoth, no less, where Norris is a particularly favorite playwright. “Venus in Fur” was last seen at the Studio Theatre, where Ives is a favorite there.

And look what may win a Tony for best revival of a musical and best performance by an actor (Danny Burstein) and an actress (Jan Maxwell) in a musical: the Kennedy Center production of “Follies,” directed by Eric Schaeffer (Signature Theatre) and studiously ignored by the Helen Hayes Awards here. “Follies” premiered at the Kennedy Center in a dazzling and difficult production, was tinkered with and made a big impression in its Broadway debut. It is now preparing for an Los Angeles run. All in all, “Follies” was nominated for eight Tonys.

Also, “Master Class,” starring Tyne Daly, is up for a best dramatic revival Tony. It began life at the Kennedy Center.

If that’s not enough to stand up and take notice of Washington theater, there’s the fact that the Washington Shakespeare Theatre Company, headed by artistic director Michael Kahn, received this year’s special Regional Theatre Tony. The award, which Kahn will receive at the Tony Awards ceremonies in New York June 10, marks a kind of climax of his 25-year tenure as artistic director. [gallery ids="100783,123754,123744,123749" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

The sounds of the great Western composers, such as Mozart, Beethoven and Bach, performed by internationally acclaimed musicians. The food, the socializing and networking, the kibitzing, the receptions at embassies, ambassadorial residences and international cultural centers. They’re all perfectly good reasons to check out the Embassy Series, Washington’s unique musical series.

But Embassy Series founder Jerome Barry had something additional in mind when he began and developed the series. It’s called cultural diplomacy by way of musical diplomacy, a vision which has allowed him to enlarge the series to embrace a truly international vista.

The Iraqi Cultural Center at 1630 Connecticut Ave., N.W., in Dupont Circle provides an ideal setting and example for conducting that sort of cultural diplomacy Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. when the Two Rivers Eastern Ensemble, a six-piece group of Middle Eastern and Western artists combine their talents to produce an evening of jazz fused with Maqam, a 400-year-old genre of Arab music which originated in ancient Iraq. The Two Rivers Eastern Ensemble will perform using both folkloric (the santour) and modern (the trumpet) instruments, singing in Arabic, and dressed in traditional ethnic outfits.

“Many instruments such as al-oud, a-santur and the tambourine were invented in ancient Mesopotamia,” said Jabir Habeb, Ambassador of the Republic of Iraq to the United States. “The Sumerians were the first to compose the musical system. This ancient music was shared by many ethnic groups who lived in this region including Arabs, Assyrians, Kurds, Armenians and Turks. The Maqams were considered by many to be the foundation of Eastern music.”

“These unique artists are meant to emphasize Iraq’s music , history and cultural influence,” Barry said. The artists are unique to the American scene while many are of Iraqi origin. In terms of the Embassy Series, “this is what we mean when we talk about uniting people through musical diplomacy,” Barry said. “We provide a forum–through concerts–that combines music with information about a country’s culture and history.”

In 2010, with the long, grinding effects of the war in Iraq still being felt by both nations, the first such concert at the Iraqi Cultural Center provided an electric evening of different cultures meeting–and often whistling with approval–on a musical playing field. Audiences used to the rapt listening atmosphere of classical music concerts also provided by the Embassy Series soon joined in the more participatory atmosphere of the concert of Iraq music using ancient musical instruments which created rhythmic, soulful sounds and songs.

In its 18-year history, the Embassy Series has performed in more than 60 embassies, residences, chanceries, diplomatic chanceries and cultural institutions, opening up the world of countries and cultures not encountered on such an intimate level. The series was the first to perform at the newly opened embassies of many former Soviet-bloc, Eastern European countries in the 1990s, and performed at the Cuban Interests Section, the Vietnamese Embassy and the opening of the new (and huge) Chinese Embassy in 2010.

Tickets are $80, which includes a post-concert reception. For more information, visit www.embassyseries.org.
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