Remembering some of America’s Sensational Personalities
• June 17, 2011

The famous, the near-famous, the once-famous seem to pass on in threes and fours, and so we will note the passing of a group of disparate folks who enriched our lives, made their names, made us stand up and take notice.

We give you a Dodge City marshal, an edgy jazz musician, a secretary of state, and Doctor Death himself. We give you James Arness, Gil-Scott Herron, Lawrence Eagleburger and Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

JAMES ARNESS Back in the days of my growing-up youth in a small town in Ohio, my step-father, who was a Serbian immigrant, didn’t spend much time watching television. Except for on two occasions: we would watch the Cleveland Indians battle the New York Yankees together, and every Saturday night, we watched “Gunsmoke,” in which James Arness, the hefty, 6 foot, 7 inch actor would open the show by gunning down the same hapless gunslinger in the streets of Dodge City.
Dad liked westerns, and so did I and “Gunsmoke,” once a hugely popular radio show, was one of the longest-running series on television ever—it stayed a fixture on CBS for 20 years along with Marshall Dillon, Milburn Stone as the Doc, Amanda Blake, as Kitty who ran the saloon, and Dennis Weaver as a limping deputy. It was the first so-called “adult” western—meaning that people actually got killed and stayed down instead of being knocked out by Roy Rogers or the Lone Ranger in a fist-fight. It was full of character and characters, and Arness cast the biggest shadow of all.
I would guess they will be tempted to put Marshall Dillon on the tombstone; it’s what made him famous although he did play the Thing in “The Thing,” an outer space monster movie of the 1950’s. His brother was Peter Graves of “Mission Impossible” who died last year. Arness was 88.

GIL SCOTT-HERON
Even in the world of jazz which attracts outsiders, gifted and wounded geniuses, and outspoken personalities, Gil-Scott Heron was something else. Only 62 when he died, he was as much a prophet as a musician who came out of the angry-young-black-man milieu of the 1960’s, a full-of-fury percussionist who pre-staged rap and spoke word music.
He was also deeply political, deeply troubled, a composer who wrote songs like “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and “Home Is Where the Hatred Is” and, more recently, “Who Will Survive in America?” He was also a poet, the author of a mystery novel called “The Vulture” and a man who battled various addictions most of his life.

LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER
Not everyone spends a lifetime in his chosen field and career path, especially at the level of national service, especially in the State Department. But Lawrence Eagleburger did, serving 40 years as a foreign policy adviser and official, working with a variety of presidents, and acting often as a foreign affairs troubleshooter.
He was not of the elegant school of diplomacy—he was rumored to have a bark and bite approach, never seemed to find a suit that fit him perfectly. But he was also the classic professional whom his superiors trusted with delicate tasks. He was a top aide to Henry Kissinger and became Secretary of State under President George Bush (the first) after the departure of James Baker.
Eagleburger was a frequent adviser on Balkan issues, which became a hotbed after the implosion of Yugoslavia into warring states.

JACK KEVORKIAN
The man who became famous for advocating (and performing) doctor-assisted suicides of terminal patients died himself recently, unassisted, if not untended. People were frequently put off by Kevorkian who many felt sensationalized the end-of-life and death-with-dignity controversies that followed him and that he sometimes publicized and gave a public face: himself.
But his methods, including a self-constructed suicide machine which he used with patients and which was crude and sometimes not entirely effective, did eventually lead to the death-with-dignity legislation. He was polarizing, controversial and perhaps self-serving dubbed “Doctor Death,” but he did go to prison for eight years doing what was then illegal but is no longer.

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DC Jazz Festival Kicks into Gear
• June 16, 2011

Charles Fishman, the executive producer of the DC Jazz Festival, likes to compare jazz to basketball, a sport he loves.

“Watch a game sometimes,” he said. “You’ve got the basic positions: center, forward, guards, and they all have their tasks but operate as a team. Just so, a jazz trio or quartet works the same way. Everybody works off a basic theme, plays together, and then you improvise—like a great shooter, or dribbler or passer—off of that. It’s a team thing where individuals shine, and that’s what your solo is, a riff on what everybody’s working on. The first solo sort of sets the plate, and the next guy works off of that and incorporates and creates.”

Fishman is a huge Celtics fan, and he could probably talk about Red Auerbach and Bill Russell and the Celtic glory teams for hours on end.

If jazz is like basketball, then talking with Fishman about the festival, which kicked off this week and runs through June 13, is a little like jazz itself. The talk inevitably leads to the whys and wherefores of jazz, true stories and tall tales about the music and musicians. In the course of things, you know why you’re here, where you’re going and what you’re going to talk about—like knowing the lyrics to “My Funny Valentines,” then playing off the melody.

That conversation encompasses a lot for Fishman. He can talk jazz history from his longtime stint as Dizzy Gillespie’s manager. He can talk current news and he can talk jazz futures, and the DC Jazz Festival is one of the exemplary and characteristic events of the state of jazz and where it is going.

“The world of jazz today is different,” he says. “In a weird way, it’s sort of happening off the radar, but it’s one hundred percent bigger in terms of audiences and artist, not to mention the range of music and venues, than what it used to be. What you’re seeing now is the international explosion of jazz. It’s a brave, interesting new world, let me tell you. Jazz is being listened to and played in Latin America, in Japan, in the Middle East and Africa. Jazz is different, the music is more expansive.

“But then, it’s always been like that, jazz is fluid. It moves, it soars and it changes, and you can see that in the festival.”

This is a festival that, since it started out as the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival seven years ago, has grown like topsy to the point where an almost inevitable name change occurred last year. “We wanted a national, an international presence,” Fishman said. “It’s about the city, and we wanted the city to be presented as a center of jazz.”

DC is for Jazz Lovers

“One of the things we’ve always wanted to do is showcase Washington as a jazz city,” Fishman said. “It’s got such a rich tradition in the U Street area—back in the days of Ellington, the big bands, the big singers and performers who came here to the clubs and venues. We still have that today.

This year, with a slew of sponsors, one of the key components is Microsoft Bing—a search engine if you haven’t heard—which is joining the festival in bringing new musical education programs to the city and which will co-present the Jazz on the National Mall free concert on June 12, featuring Toby Foyeh and Orchestra Africa, Frederic Yonnet, a local favorite, the great Cuban singer Claudia Acuna, Roy Hargrove and the RH Factor, and the Eddie Palmieri All-Star Salsa Band.

Bing, which supports the festival’s year-round Roberta Flack Music Excellence Program, will also sponsor three master classes and a financial literacy workshop for professional musicians at the Bohemian Caverns, the “official” club for the festival.

As for presenting DC as a jazz town, there is the festival’s Jazz in the ‘Hoods program, being presented all over the city with 80 performances at 41 museums, clubs, restaurants, hotels and galleries, and featuring some 70 DC-based jazz groups. “It’s a chance to show off the city and what it is,” says Fishman. “This diverse city of long-standing cultural and jazz history… We have a lively jazz scene here, with lots of gifted, talented young players, which says a lot about what jazz is—a continuing, ongoing kind of music with a rich mentoring and educational component.”

You’ll get to sample jazz as it’s played in the neighborhoods, including Adams Morgan, Capitol Hill, Downtown DC, Dupont Circle, Chinatown, the H Street Corridor, Georgetown, the U Street Corridor, Woodley Park and others.

For good jazz in this city, says Fishman, there are a number of standout venues: the Bayou—a new club on U Street—the Black Fox Lounge, Cashion’s, the Grill from Ipanema, Twins and Bohemian Caverns. Bohemian Caverns, a huge supporter and key venue for the festival, will feature Cyrus Chestnut June 3 and 4, Antonio Hart June 8 and 9, and the Heath Brothers June 10 and 11.

As usual, the Festival is not without its big headliners. Bobby McFerrin, a multi-talented, big-name performer with a huge pop hit (“Don’t Worry Be Happy”) to his credit will be at the Warner Theater June 11, performing with the Howard University Afro Blue Reunion Choir.

As always, the festival will pay tribute to legendary performers. This year, two life time achievement awards will be presented, to the brilliant saxophonist Jimmy Heath and the incomparable Puerto Rican pianist Eddie Palmieri. Both men have left a legacy of teaching, creativity, composition and respect. “These two men have dedicated their lives to jazz as an art form, educational tool and unifying force,” Fishman said. Palmieri is a nine-time Grammy winner noted for his unique blend of jazz and Latin rhythms, with a career spanning 50 years as a composer, pianist, leader of famed salsa and Latin bands and smaller ensembles. Palmieri will be part of the free Jazz on the National Mall concert June 12.

Jimmy Heath is the second oldest brother of the legendary Heath Brothers. He’s a major composer, artist, performer, mentor and jazz icon who has performed on over 100 recordings with his own group and with Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.

Think jazz isn’t hip or doesn’t hop? Check out the DC Jazz Loft Series, with edgy new national jazz bands performing at such eclectic sites as Red Door, the Fridge (part art gallery, performance space, and classroom and music venue at Eastern Market) and Subterranean A near Logan Circle.

Concluding the festival will be “A Night in Treme: The Musical Majesty of New Orleans” at the Kennedy Center, with the HBO Series’ star Wendell Pierce, the Rebirth Brass Band, Dr. Michael White, trombonist Big Sam Williams and trumpeter James Andrews.

“It’s grown, no doubt about it,” Fishman said about the festival. “But you can see what a world it encompasses. There’s so many different kinds of music we now call jazz, and it originated with the legendary pioneers like Gillespie, the Duke and the Count, Bird, Miles, Monk.”

When you listen to Fishman, sitting in his office—which is more like an improvisational shrine to Jazz and Dizzy and clutter—you feel a lot of love for the music. He’s like John the Baptist for the great American musical invention.

We talk about the neighborhood, we told stories about concerts we’d attended over the years, about the great tribute concert to Elllis Marsalis two years ago at the Kennedy Center: “That was maybe one of the best all-time concerts, period,” said Fishman.

And there’s Moses, Fishman’s six-year-old son, a preternaturally charismatic boy who may one day run the festival. “He’s taking piano lessons now,” Fishman said proudly. “He gave up the drums.” For a parent, even one as musically inclined as Fishman, a kid giving up drums can’t be all that bad.

For a complete list of performances, venues, times and dates, jazz buffs should go to the festival website at DCJazzFest.org or pick up a festival program guide which can be found all over Washington.
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You Can’t Hide the Elephant in the Room
• June 15, 2011

National politics has its attendant scandals, farces, tragedies and controversies; we give you Wiener, Schwarzenegger, Edwards, Palin and Gingrich, in various ways.

But there’s nothing quite like the permanent dark cloud that seems to have settled over the workings of the government of the District of Columbia and the early months of the administration of newly-elected mayor Vincent Gray.

No matter that the council and the mayor seem to have settled their differences over the Fiscal 2011-2012 budget, or that redistricting seems to have moved on apace, or that almost out of sight, some things are getting done on the council.

Ever since the inauguration of Gray as mayor, and of new council members and a new council chairman, the charge aired by unsuccessful mayoral candidate Sulaimon Brown that he was paid by Gray aides and promised a job in the Gray administration have cast a pall over the city. The ongoing scandal, already the subject of several council hearings, continues to periodically erupt with pronouncements by the volatile Brown, charging that “the mayor is a crook”.

When Brown showed up in dark specs recently to testify at the latest council hearing, bringing with him copies of money orders and causing a circus-like atmosphere at the hearings, it only served to remind people of the scandal, which is under investigation by various bodies, and other controversies plaguing other council members.

It never quite goes away, this dispiriting reminder of a DC government which is beholden to the federal government but wants statehood and voting rights, yet is unable to shake off the myriad controversies that are disrupting its work.

For instance, a May 23 Washington Post headline read: “ Disillusioned, some backers of D.C. mayor call for reset; It’s going to be a long four years’ one says; At meet of campaign workers, Gray apologizes to those felt sidelined.” Not so long afterward on June 7 came this: “Council told ‘mayor is a crook.’ Sulaimon Brown ties Gray to alleged payoff,” and “Officials clash with witness in hearing filled with twists and bemusement.” Two days after that, “Scandals cloud Gray’s agenda,” “D.C. Mayor Faces Media,” and “City is reliving ‘80s-era problems some say.’”

The mayor’s problems have been accompanied by numerous other squabbles: most recently, council member Harray Thomas Jr. has been accused of misusing public funds, strongly reminiscent of council chairman Kwame Brown’s problems with luxury vehicles and campaign fund issues. Meantime, tapes have emerged purporting to show Ward One Councilman Jim Graham’s chief of staff—who resigned last year over bribery charges — taking bribes.

Everywhere you go, the mayors’ critics say that Gray is creating an atmosphere similar to the one that existed during Mayor Marion Barry’s last two terms—one in which he ended up in jail, the other which resulted in the district being put under a control board.

While some suggest that Brown is beginning to sound credible, it’s hard to believe that what he says happened actually happened. You have to ask why anyone would pay Brown for something he was already doing, which was disrupting candidate forums with blistering attacks on Fenty and telling attendees to vote for Gray if not for him. Yet, the bottom line right now is two-fold: one of Gray’s aides whom Brown implicated in the transfer of moneys refuses to testify on Fifth Amendment grounds, and Brown did actually get a $100,000 job in the administration from which he was fired. “He got the job,” is a frequent refrain and conversation stopper when you start to talk to people about the situation in the district.

The mayor, who has already fired his chief of staff (and not replaced her), has so far been extremely reluctant to talk about the scandal surrounding him, preferring to talk about budget issues, redistricting and other matters.

The silence appears strange and damaging to some. It’s hard to imagine that the mayor would have a direct hand in any of the charges leveled against him. His reputation for integrity, until recent charges, seemed strong. But silence lets Sulaimon Brown go everywhere and say “The Mayor is a crook,” without the mayor saying anything at all. It might behoove the mayor not so much to answer the charges, per se, but to talk at length about what’s going on, what happened and what didn’t happen in terms of what he knows, his feelings and plan of action. It might be time for him to get out in front of the talk and the buzzing, even though one official said “that train’s left the station.”

Gray’s dream for One City is just that now: a figment, because the city is once again as divided as it has ever been along racial and political lines. It’s pretty clear that with the mayoral scandal on top of all the other problems of members of the council—that the council itself is in disarray.

That’s no way to run a city: a mayor under a cloud, a city council distracted by controversy. Somebody on the council, or Mr. Mayor, won’t you please speak up and take the bull by the horns. Somebody, somebody, say something.

Venus in Furs
•

Who knew that Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch could be so entertaining? Especially with a name like that.
Who knew that S & M, named after the very same Sacher-Masoch without the von, could be so much fun?
Readers are not required to answer the last question for the usual reasons, but really, folks, go check out Venus in Furs at the Studio Theatre, where playwright David Ives’ take on the 19th-century novella by Sacher-Masoch of the same title is being staged (by Studio Artistic Director David Muse), with bravura intensity, wit, and high energy.

And yes, it is about sado masochism, but it’s also about power and men and women and actors and directors, so just about everyone can have some fun with this, not excluding politicians, but perhaps prudes should attend only if they leave their noses at the door.

Here’s the take: a director named Thomas is holding auditions for a play based on the very same novel in a shabby New York studio, looking for the role of an aristocratic woman named Vanda who engages in a kinky power struggle with a man named Severin Kushemski, who, affected strongly as a boy by tannings at the hands of an imperious aunt who wore furs looks for a special love at the hands of a strong woman.
Knock knock, who’s there, but a seemingly crass pop tart named, wow, Vanda, complete in thigh high, plastic shiny boots, a snarky, loud attitude and a bag full of surprising goodies. Imagine Mary Poppins carrying a big full of whips, corsets and none-such. She wants to read for the part, he wants to go home to dinner with his fiancée. Vanda sounds as if she’s never read anything longer than a parking ticket let alone a 19th-century novel, but she’s also pushy, whiny and bossy in a sort of sexy way.

Thomas gives in and lets her read and lo and behold, something happens: the near-Brooklyn, streisanesque mouthings disappear, and out come rounded vowels, tight enunciations and poetic line readings.
What is going on here? As they continue on, with Thomas taking the male lead, they seem to not only come closer together, but also to inhabit the parts to a degree that’s completely changing our perception of them. There are subtle, and then shocking power shifts going on, with the help of more and more kinky costumes and lighting.

The novel is a story about a man who seduces a woman into doing things she insists are against her nature—i.e., finding ever new ways to torture, humiliate and punish the man she’s obviously attracted to. The course of true love was never this twisted, but it’s also funny, kind of thrilling in its own way, perhaps erotic to some or one and all, you pick.

And quite frankly, most of that is due to the Vanda of this play, a young actress named Erica Sullivan, whose transformative gifts are award-worthy, and awe-inducing. She goes from slutty, bad-mouthing, down-to-earth and off a walk-up apartment struggling actress to svelte, graceful, classy, educated, vaporous Vanda on a dime, back and forth until she makes you dizzy.

The relationship between director and actors is of course all about power as well as collaboration, it’s always about seeing eye-to-eye or succumbing. But it’s the brash, crude Vanda who pushes Thomas into submitting to the novel’s Vanda, and apparently his own predilections.
It’s an often physical struggle—there’s lots of grabbing, pushing, positioning, approximating a rough courtship, with no safe word.

Watching this, with a very involved audience who laughed, apparently in the right places, and were startled in the right places, I kept thinking of an old joke: Masochist to Sadist: Beat me, beat me. Sadist to Masochist: No.

And so it goes: in this play, so tightly paced, without intermission, heading towards a conclusion that maybe isn’t quite the shock or surprise it should be, it’s a real fight for love and glory, a sweaty, rough-and-tumble sexy brawl.

You have to ask, where did Vanda—who said she’d glanced at the script on the subway—get this perfect memorization, this well-spring of motivation, this spell-binding perfection? It looks like a gift from the gods.
Maybe it is. But there’s no uncertainty about Ms. Sullivan. She too, is a gift from the gods.
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The Memorial Days of Our Day
• June 8, 2011

I imagine that every Memorial Day, especially here in Washington, where we live in the same moonlight and sunshine that falls on Arlington National Cemetery, is the same.

The President comes to say the right things, to lay wreaths, to honor our soldiers. There is a parade, there are speeches, and the Rolling Thunder roars into town. Grizzled Viet Nam vets come again to the memorial wall, tattooed, their wives and families with them, and still hold their breaths at the sight of a familiar name among the 55,000 engraved in the marble.

You can imagine this happening in towns small and large, any town worthy of a city hall and a statue, all over America. This memorializing, this home stand before the long hot summer, accompanied by furling flags, salutes, picnics, noisy cars and furniture sales. These are the customs of our land.

And we are at war, our soldiers in harm’s way, as they put it. The harm now is from roadside bombs, suicide bombers, rifle and mortar fire, the random explosions of fire from across the way.

And since 1983 or so, every Memorial Day is a little different, the picnic smoke, the music of taps, the memories of other years, because the list of the fallen grows every day.

In a commendable service, The Washington Post began an occasional section called “Faces of the Fallen,” which lists the soldiers with their pictures and particulars, and it always runs on Memorial Day. And so the day is different, as the war in Iraq rolls on and continues to do so. These faces are immediate, not terribly long gone, fallen not on the wayside but in places they never imagined to be growing up.

They have military faces in the way military photographs and IDs are taken, dogtags with eyes and ears and a stare. They are from all over, representative of the way we are now, so much more diverse than before, with many Hispanic names among the dead, and the faces and names of women, too.

Looking at the faces, the clichés gurgle up like water in a desert, a kind of relief. To name them is to create an echo: Senft and Locht and Pape, and Ortiz and Holder and Gassen and Harris, Middleton and Buenagua, Ramsey and Robinson, Flannery and Chihuahua, Carver and Carroll, Luff and Finch Lancaster and Cruz and Crouse, Simonetta and Villacis Gandy and Jones.

And to friends, they are Jason and James, Kelly and Ethan, Chad and Austin, Devon and Ardenjoseph, Austin and Buddy, Sean and Amy and Omar and Conrado.

And they come from places that in some other life we all imagined living in America, from Conway, NC, from Marina, CA, from Hutto, TX, from Hagerstown, MD, from Redwood City, from West Palm Beach, from Pittsburgh, from Princeton, from Tell City Indiana, from Derry New Hampshire and Akron Ohio.

And they died, were “killed while conducting combat operations,” from makeshift bombs at the hands of suicide bombers and other service-related causes.

And they are the reason why all the Memorial Days of our day are different.

Information and names are taken from the Washington Post’s “Faces of the Fallen” section, which ran on Memorial Day, May 30, 2011.

Q&A with Michael Kahn
• June 2, 2011

The Shakespeare Theatre Company began planning for what’s now the ongoing Leadership Repertory of “Richard II” and “Henry V” nearly a year and a half ago. We recently talked with Artistic Director Michael Kahn, who directed “Richard II,” about the plays and the process.

“We planned to do this for some time and were in the early stages during the presidential election,” Kahn, who is tackling “Richard II” for the second time here, said. “We wanted to look at leadership, what makes a good king and leader, how does he behave in a crisis?

“Richard doesn’t know how to be a king until he’s lost his crown, Henry has to overcome the dissolute reputation of his youth to lead men into battle. And more important, it’s about the humanity of leaders, and that issue is paramount in both plays.”

Kahn directed “Richard II” with Richard Thomas a number of years ago at Lansburgh.
“What makes this different?” he said. “Well, I’m a bit older, and you learn more, I’ve learned more about myself and Richard both, I hope.”

Holiday Cheer
•

 

-The Christmas holidays are upon us and its not even Thanksgiving yet. Everywhere you look — in malls, in television ads, in the streets and storefront windows — ‘tis the season.

That’s especially true for the performing arts, where seasonal favorites of all sorts are being prepared, sugar plum fairies being outfitted, little boys everywhere practicing how to say “God bless us, every one,” venues large and small brightening up their stages and halls with traditional holiday fare searching for a new and all-inclusive way to celebrate the season for their patrons.

Christmas is about pleasing the most people, it’s about sharing in the spirit of the season, and so old stories are resurrected in old and new ways. Music as familiar as a hometown is heard again, the atmosphere and environment become rich and thick with iconic elements, from Scrooge’s nightshirt and the ghosts that haunt him to stars to wrapped packages under a tree to the full-lunged glories of symphonic music and the quieter joys of quieter carols.

We’re offering a sampler of what’s in store in the way of Christmas in the performing arts around the Washington area, and we’ll take a close look at how two institutions are approaching something old and something new, one making a traditional holiday offering new again as an institution, the other attempting to create a new tradition.

An Old Story and a New Scrooge

There is probably no story that says Christmas more loudly, more intensely and with more familiarity than Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” Scrooge, Marley, Tiny Tim, the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future have become such a staple of American film, television, and theater that it’s hard to imagine Christmas without it.

Right now, productions are being prepared all over the country and a new digitally created movie starring a facsimile Jim Carrey as Scrooge has already hit theaters.

Meanwhile, the folks at Ford’s Theatre are busy finishing rehearsals for its own production. With some interruptions, “A Christmas Carol” at Ford’s Theatre is as much a Washington seasonal tradition as the lighting of the National Christmas Tree. As a result, the show has been seen by critics as something of a sentimental chestnut. Audiences, tourists and locals alike flock to it.

This year, it’s a brand new show. “We’ve added lots of music to the show, Christmas music and carols,” new director Michael Baron said. “That’s going to be a crucial element of the show. They say Dickens practically invented Christmas, so we added a true magical, seasonal element with the music. There’s a real flavor and sense of period and place to.”

“The odd thing,” Baron, who directed Signature Theatre’s cabaret series, said, “is that in England they don’t do the show. They do pantomimes and such.”

This production has something else that’s bound to make it fresh. That’s the presence of Edward Gero, one of Washington’s most honored, down-to-earth, natural actors taking on the part of Scrooge. Gero, who’s played everyone from Nixon to Bolingbroke to haunted, drunken contemporary Irishmen, knows that there’s not just the ghost of Christmas past here, but the ghosts of Scrooges past too.

“Oh God yes,” he said. “That dark, really scary Alistair Sims, George C. Scott, Albert Finney, Patrick Stewart, and, yeah, Mr. Magoo. That’s a long line, not to mention the people who’ve done it here. It’s a challenge, but you know, performing here at the Ford’s Theatre has always been on my bucket list, and I suppose, yeah, doing Scrooge.”

It’s hard to imagine Gero as Scrooge, or as anyone. He is the least chameleonlike of actors, a regular guy, blunt, funny, of Italian heritage, almost a working man’s actor. His wife is a district elementary school teacher, and while he teaches at George Mason University and does narrations and voice overs and some television, he is the essential great community actor who’s performed with almost all of the theaters in Washington.

“It’s a ghost story, it’s the Christmas story,” he said.”I’m looking forward to being Scrooge, he’s a haunted man long before the Marley and the ghosts come, haunted by his childhood, haunted by the past.”

“A Christmas Carol” begins Nov. 23.

Out of the darkness, into the light

If Scrooge rewards and reassures audiences with traditional material made rich again, “Take Joy!” the big Christmas show at the Music Center at Strathmore, takes a radical new approach to seasonal entertainment.

“It’s different, it’s spectacular, we’ve tried to present something that will be special to people who are living regular lives today, right here and now,” Eliot Pfanstiel, president and CEO of Strathmore and executive producer for “Take Joy!” said. “It begins almost as soon as you walk toward the center, over the bridge, with the sights and sounds of all sorts of music, carolers, people dressed for the season.”

“It’s the solstice, the darkest night of the year,” Pfanstiel said. “It’s a journey from the darkness into the light, a journey taken by a group of people, family and a shepherd in search of a pageant.”

At play is the poetry of Dylan Thomas and Emily Dickinson, traditional Christmas music, gospel music, hip-hop, classical, folk and Celtic. “Call it a new kind of holiday show, wholly original, transforming and transporting. It’s not any one thing, just as the holidays don’t mean one thing for everybody. It’s about a community gathering together on the darkest night of the year and coming out into the light at evenings end.”

Pfanstiehl, sometimes the perfect example of CEO as inventive boy, nurtured this project with Director Jerry Whiddon, Composer Roger Ames and Producer Jeff Davis. They all worked together at Street 70 in the 1970s, a homegrown theater which evolved into the Roundhouse Theater.

“Take Joy!” which includes the wondrous F. Faye Butler, Jennifer Timberlake and Robert Quay in the cast, will be performed Dec. 18 and 19.

Nutcracker, Nutcracker, Nutcracker

If you look long enough during the holidays, you’re going to find a Nutcracker. Here’s three for everyone.

For the Washington Ballet, no less a personage than George Washington is featured in Septime Webre’s beautiful, lush imagining of “The Nutcracker,” with Washington in full uniform taking on the role of the heroic Nutcracker and King George III donning the role of the Rat King. It’s a Washington tradition that’s presented at the THEARC Dec.3-5 and at the Warner Theatre Dec. 10-27.

At the Kennedy Center, the Pennsylvania Ballet comes to town for seven performances of George Balanchine’s “The Nutcracker” Nov. 24-29.

What’s special about this production is that it marks the D.C. premiere of the Balanchine version, which the Pennsylvania Ballet has performed since 1969. It’s a spectacular production with 192 costumes designed by Judanna Lynn and new sets by Peter Horne. The Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra will accompany the production, which will feature the Norwood Middle School Chorus.

Meanwhile, the Puppet Company at Glen Echo Park will present its puppet version of “The Nutcracker” through the holiday season.

Christmas at the National Gallery

The National Gallery of Art will have caroling in the west building rotunda with families and visitors singing along with guest choirs and ensembles Dec. 12, 13, 19 and 20. In addition, there will be holiday concerts on Sundays in the west garden court of the west building Dec. 13, 20 and Jan. 3.

Music, music and other occasions

Washington Revels presents its annual Christmas Revels December 12 and 13 at Lisner Auditorium, featuring Renaissance Italy, Leonardo Da Vinci and celebrating Italian holiday traditions with music and dance.

The Dumbarton Concerts in Georgetown present one of the most alluring, beautiful holiday concerts in town with its annual “A Celtic Christmas” with the Linn Barnes and the Allison Hampton Celtic Consort

It’s at Georgetown’s historic Dumbarton Church December 5, 6 and Dec. 12 and 13.

The Folger Consort will be celebrating the Christmas holidays in the Elizabethan Theatre at the Folger Shakespeare Library Dec. 11-20 with “In Dulci Jubilo,” a concert of the festive Christmas music of 17th-century composer Michael Praetorius, considered to be the man responsible for creating the German Lutheran chorale tradition.

The 21st Annual Christmas Concert for Charity at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception will be performed on Dec. 4, featuring the Catholic University Chorus and Symphony Orchestra and other artists.

Discovery Theater will present its seasonal extravaganza “Seasons of Light,” celebrating the holiday traditions of Sankta Lucia, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas and Ramadan in December.

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Conductor Marin Alsop brings a very different version of Handel’s “Messiah” with a re-envisioned gospel version “Too Hot to Handel: The Gospel Messiah” at the Music Center at Strathmore Dec. 13.

At the Kennedy Center, there’s the NSO Pops with “Happy Holidays,” conducted by Marvin Hamlisch Dec. 10-13 and the National Symphony Orchestra performing the “real” Handel’s Messiah Dec. 17-20.

The Waverly Consort brings its performance of “The Christmas Story” to the Terrace Theater with its eight singers and five instrumentalists Dec. 16.

There’s also free stuff: the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center will include performances by the U.S. Army Blues performing Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s “Nutcracker Suite” on Dec. 1, a “Merry TubaChristmas” on Dec. 13, holiday vaudeville on Dec. 26-27 and an all-star Christmas Day jazz jam.

Plus there’s the annual “Messiah Sing-Along” performed since 1972 in the Concert Hall.

Finally, there’s the annual holiday doings at Union Station, featuring all things Norwegian, including a tree-lighting ceremony of a 32-foot Christmas tree on Dec. 3 and Toys for Tots and a model train ceremony Nov. 24.

Washington National Opera
•

Change — big and transforming — seems to be a part of just about any human endeavor
these days.

Major change is coming to the Washington National Opera. Placido Domingo, the world-renowned
tenor, who has been general director of the company since 1996, helping to launch it to another level of respect, stature and accomplishment, will be leaving his post as of June, 2011.

If you read the public announcements from both Domingo and the WNO board, the change was mutually arrived at, and apparently under consideration in recent times. The statements sound a lot like those surrounding the news of the breakup of a much-beloved couple who have come to a convivial agreement to go their separate ways.

Herewith: “We appreciate all that Placido Domingo has done for our great company. He will be missed, but all good things come to an end,” WNO President Kenneth R. Feinberg said. “Placido’s association with WNO was essential to the company’s artistic development and helped it to gain recognition nationally and internationally. We are looking forward to him being with us in Washington this spring to sing in ‘Iphigenie in Tauride’ and to conduct performances of ‘Madame Butterfly’ and ‘Don Pasquale.’ While today’s news may mark the end of the formal marriage, we are looking forward
to artistic collaborations in the future.”

Domingo brought the white heat of star power to the company, by way of talent, reputation and international appeal, giving it something it probably did not have before — glamour. In addition,
he brought innovative programs to the company including free simulcasts of season-opening operas, the WNO’s Center for Education and Training, international tours, and, essential for the future, the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program

Domingo at 69 remains a busy director and performer, and is still the General Director of the Los Angeles Opera. Under Domingo, who took over after Martin Feinstein, the company experienced international growth and saw the arrival of star conductors, directors and performers, including Jose Carreras, Renee Fleming and Franco Zefferelli. The company also embraced newer American works like the recently acclaimed “A View from the Bridge.” But there were also problems and some critical grousing as a result of difficulties in the current economic climate.

It will be interesting to see which direction the WNO will be headed with the departure of Domingo, a decidedly marquee big name brand. The possibility that the company might merge with the Kennedy Center, where it pays rent for its use of the Opera House, has already been bandied about.

WNO Welcomes Francesca Zambello, Artistic Advisor
•

The momentous recent times of change at the Washington National Opera just saw another one or two big changes about to materialize.

First Mark Weinstein, the Executive Director of the WNO, left during the 2009-2010 season. Then Placido Domingo, the bread-and-butter star power of the WNO, announced his resignation, effective at the end of this season (but not, it should be added, without delivering an assured star turn in the spring production of “Iphigenie en Tauride”).

Then the WNO announced that the company would become an affiliate of the Kennedy Center, where it has performed almost always at the Opera House, barring periods of renovation.

Now the WNO announced that the dynamic and gifted opera and theater director Francesca Zambello would become its Artistic Advisor. That’s a few steps short of actually being the Artistic Director. For now she will be working with others, including the KC President Michael Kaiser, as well as WNO officials, including Michael L. Mael who was appointed Executive Director in May. He was previously the WNO’s Chief Operating Officer.

That might mean that there will be a bit of the old breath of fresh air and more contemporary and cutting edge works on the horizon with Zambello placed in a critical role.

Zambello, a very busy woman these days already, has always had eclectic and diverse ambitions and tastes—and she’s not shy about trying new things. These days, she is currently the Artistic and General Director of the Glimmerglass Festival, and she holds an Artistic Advisor role at the San Francisco Opera, where she is directing the “Ring Cycle” next month.

Doubtless, Wagner and the cycle may get a new life in the future, after plans had to be abandoned at the WNO in recent years.

Zambello, by her track record, is always seeking new challenges, and in fact provided some of the more contemporary work seen at the WNO, where she’s been a familiar figure ever since she directed “Of Mice and Men” in 2001. She’s tackled Wagner before here with “Das Reingold,” “Die Walkure” and “Siegfried,” as well as material as different as “Porgy and Bess,” “Billy Budd,” “Fidelio” and last year’s scintillating “Salome.”

Zambello has staged plays on Broadway, including the musical “The Littlest Mermaid,” and directed in venues as varied as the Sydney Festival, the Bregenz Festival, Disneyland, Berlin’s Theater des Westens, and Vienna’s Raimund Theater. She has also staged opera and theater productions at the Met, Teatro alla Scala, the Bolshoi, Covent Garden, the Munich Staatsoper, the Paris Opera, the New York City Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the English National Opera.

By the awards she’s received, you can get a pretty good picture of her eclecticism: she’s been awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government as well as the Russian Federation’s Medal for Service to Culture. She has received three Olivier Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, two French Grand Prix des Critiques, the Helpmann Award and the Palme d’Or in Germany.

She was quoted in the Washington Post as saying that her role at the WNO would include: “Addressing how to make opera more a part of the city at large.”

Welcome, Zambello.

Explore “Maximum India”
•

Here is India, according to stats provided by the embassy: 1.2 billion people, 24 languages, 1,600 dialects, 28 states, a rich variety of regional cuisines, 330,000 gods and goddesses, and 300 ways of cooking a potato.

The Kennedy Center’s huge, month-long festival celebrating Indian culture (March 1-20) is thus called “Maximum India.” And as it would seem, there are thousands of reasons for that.

“What you will find in this festival is a celebration of India’s diversity,” said Ms. Meera Shankar, the Indian Ambassador to the United States since April of 2009, in a small press gathering at the Cosmos Club, showcasing parts of the festival.

“India,” she said, “is a great kaleidoscope of cultures, ethnicity, religions, geography, languages, literature, music, dance, paintings, architecture, festivals, cuisine and customs going back thousands of years. And you’ll find much of that in this festival.”

The festival is another in a series of festivals that has focused on geographical regions of the world at the Kennedy Center, including China, the Middle East and Arabia, the Silk Road and others. “Maximum India” is presented in cooperation with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, which has brought and sponsored several of the attractions in the festival to the United States.

“The arts create a unique platform for understanding each other,” Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser said. “This festival will highlight India’s magnificent arts and culture offerings on the Kennedy Center’s stages and throughout the building.”

Much of India’s cultural offerings—its literature, music, dance and performance arts—are rooted in the ancient past, so that even modern creativity in India has a flavor of the old Gods, of religious practices, of re-inventing old arts and understanding them anew, and of enduring faiths in a contemporary setting.

“You’ll find similarities through the regions of India—it’s the cradle of many religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, which are known as the Indian religions. But there’s also Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism and the Bahai faith, which makes the country a hotbed of inter-faith activities and cooperation.”

“The past is always a part of the present here,” the ambassador said. “But there is also Bollywood, with its very modern cinematic pulse, which is now exported all over the world. We have western pop music, as well as traditional music. We are at once very modern and very old.”

Not all of that may make its way into the enormous festival with its many free events, but there is definitely a flavor of a vast nation at work in the offerings of the festival.

Here are some highlights:

Madhavi and Alarmel Valli fuse two classical dance forms in a joint creative experience called “Samanvaya: A Coming Together.” Valli is the leading choreographer of one of the oldest dance forms in India, the classical bharatanatyam.

On the other hand, there’s Tanusree Shankar, a choreographer and artistic director of a company that specializes in contemporary Indian dance.

Anoushka Shankar, daughter of the legendary sitar player Ravi Shankar, and who accompanied her father on tour recently, will be performing with the National Symphony Orchestra.

The Rhythm of Rajasthan, a group of musicians and dancers, perform a diverse program that includes folk music and ecstatic Sufi music. Want a mix of the modern and the old? Try the Raghu Dixit Project from Bangalore, an Indo-World-Folk-Rock Band.

Naseereuddin Shah will bring his Motley Theater Group from Mumbai (the setting for the popular Oscar-winning movie “Slumdog Millionaires”) to the festival. The group is famous for its storytelling abilities and for performing western plays in Hindustani, including “Waiting for Godot.”

The Kennedy Center has also created for this festival the Monsoon Club in the Terrace Theater, where contemporary Indian musicians and other artists will be performing

India is of course a center of the world film industry, and many key films from India over the last 50 years will be screened in the Terrace Theater throughout the festival. There will also be a major discussion of the Indian film industry and Bollywood.

The grand halls of the Kennedy Center will be filled with images and objects reflecting the arts of India, transforming the center into more than a little piece of India.

In terms of cuisine, the Kennedy Center will be serving up the tastes of India in the KC Café and the Roof Terrace Restaurant. Chef Hemant Oberoi, Executive Grand Chef of the Taj Mahal Palace and Towers in Mumbai, will lead a team of 12 chefs from around India to introduce festival-goers to the cuisines of India.

For all the details of maximum India visit Kennedy-Center.org/India.