Gary Tischler • April 21, 2015

Kim Sajet is shy.

All right, she’s not shy. Not at all.

The new (relatively, since 2013) director of what was frequently referred to as the venerable National Portrait Gallery looks, moves, talks and thinks as if she’s been freshly minted, in the moment, and looking ahead and not too much behind. She demonstrated these qualities vividly as the guest speaker at the Georgetown Media Group’s Cultural Leadership Breakfast at the George Town Club April 9.

Sajet, a striking blonde presence, is not the type to stand statically behind a podium (if there had been a podium). Personable and direct, funny with a self-deprecating sense of humor, Sajet proved to be rangy in both the way she managed to get to the heart of portraiture as art (and a pioneering art form of immediacy), and her role as chief embracer and explainer of an institution which, she said, she was surprised to be asked to head. She’s a gifted, natural storyteller, an emphasizer, a pacer and an embracer of the world of now and the next day.

Nothing stodgy here. Born in Nigeria to Dutch parents, raised in Australia, a mother (two young sons, ages 20 and 17 ), Sajet is bound to be an adept multi-tasker. Her credentials are diverse and impeccable—president and CEO of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania from 2007 to 2013, former senior vice president and deputy director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, curator and director of two Australian museums, a master’s degree in art history from Bryn Mawr College and one in business administration at Melbourne University Business School, arts leadership training at the Harvard Business School, the Getty and National Arts Strategies. That’s more than enough to give her resume arts gravitas and reason enough to get the job offer for heading the National Portrait Gallery. “Plus, I speak three languages, all of them with an accent.”

But wait, there’s more. She has a bottomless well of enthusiasm enriched by thoughtfulness, a love of challenge, a willingness to not only elicit and entertain new ideas, but to have a few herself.

The idea for an American portrait gallery came from the example set by the British who’ve had their own National Portrait Gallery since 1856.

“The British can be so annoying that way,” she quipped. “They have so many kings and queens and royals, it’s kind of irritating. But we do have Katy Perry with a tiara—and nothing befits a woman more than a tiara. But she’s here because of her accomplishments—how many millions of records?”

Sajat noted that the NPG, renovated and sparkling as part of the Reynolds Center with the Smithsonian American Art Museum downtown, is about accomplishment, about “people who have had an impact on history and our own lives.” “But,” she said, “it is a living thing, about living human beings, that’s what a portrait is. We are pursuing portraiture in real time, as well as the presidents, the first ladies (we are backfilling there), scientists, artists, athletes and so on.”

But to her it isn’t just about categories of achievement, but about human beings who made decisions in their lives on their way to becoming who they were.

“You look at people like Albert Einstein or Lance Armstrong, and they made decisions that led them to become who they are,” she said. “When you look at their portraits that’s what you think about .”

“We are different from other galleries and museums—we deal in persons and personalities as well as art. Art matters, but the person being portrayed matters, too.”

“We all come to art in different ways, and when we see portraits we see ourselves. I remember when I was thirteen , a young girl, and I saw an Edward Hopper painting, one of those diners, and there were sundry people in it. Young men, lost people, a lady of the night, and in the middle of all that was a clown, and he was so terribly sad, and I thought, immediately, that’s, me, that’s how I feel, exactly, it’s my life.”

And during the courses of that story, she gave a perfectly audacious and exaggerated physical portrait of her young adolescent self.

“To me it’s amazing what happens when people encounter portraits and how full of opportunity the process is,” she said. “It crosses generations—here’s a father telling a son all about Lucille Ball or George Carlin, or the teen talking about a contemporary singer.”

Technology, she says, draws people into museums and “that’s a good thing.” She adds, “People today have so many digital images at their fingertips, in the computer, the pads, the phones.”

She recognizes and talks with humor about the constant scrutiny the NPG is under, including on a recent portrait of President Bill Clinton which apparently has the shadowy presence of a blue dress recalling sex and scandal.

“You have no idea what it’s like to part of the Smithsonian Institution and what that means in terms of scrutiny, how much attention and feedback you get today as well. I check the social media all the time, how we’re seen or mentioned on Yelp,” she said.

She sees this sometimes maze-like place, with its holdings and collections, its videos and portraiture contests—“An Asian girl had done a portrait—because she noticed she was eating almost nothing but rice—a self-portrait made entirely out of rice”—as a kind of fun house full of ideas about how people see themselves, are seen by others, and remembered. And there’s room almost for everybody. “I’m interested in the concept of outsiders, of a different kind of categories, including more women, more minorities, we’re working now on an exhibition about members of today’s American military and the wars they haves fought,” Sajet explains.

The popular and very focused “One Life” series will include Dolores Huerta, who stood side-by-side with Caesar Chavez in his battles for migrant workers

She fairly bursts with ideas and stories. When you listen to her, the notion of the National Portrait Gallery as a somewhat stodgy record of triumphant lives of leading men begins to fade. “I noticed,” she said, “that the exhibition on Elvis Presley was our most popular.”

She talks about the academic rigor of the writing and labels that go with the portraits. She talks about possibilities—“We are a national institution, but we should also include the international.”

The world is clearly changing, and it appears the National Portrait Gallery isn’t so much adapting as pushing to the forefront.

And it’s Kim Sajet, chief ringmaster and pied piper, who’s leading the way, with an accent. [gallery ids="102049,134684" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Who knew that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia could be such an entertaining curmudgeon?

Justice Scalia probably does—after all he’s been known to act out a little on the court and he’s a huge opera buff—especially of the Verdi and Puccini kind—where acting out is an art form.

And playwright John Strand seems to think so—in his new play “The Originalist,” now in the Kogod Cradle of Arena Stage, he gives us a voluble, combustible Scalia sparring loudly, with strands of mercy, with a vocal, emotional self-described liberal law clerk. Scalia dominates the stage when he’s on it, which is as it should be.

Actor Edward Gero surely knows that, and a lot more, as he embodies the most lightning-struck justice on the court, the ultra-conservative darling of the right, the son of Italian immigrants, the family man, brilliant, the charismatic, funny, unrepentant and self-described defender of the United States Constitution.

Gero—who in his full maturity has taken on characters as diverse as the volatile artist Mark Rothko and Ebenezer Scrooge—dives into the character of Antonin Scalia (with due diligence of research and sitting in on Supreme Court sessions) as if it was a particularly inviting churning ocean. His portrait is full-bodied, and he also has the good fortune to bear a strong resemblance to Scalia—both men are built a little low to the ground, they’re strong and stocky in appearance.

“The Originalist” is of course a set-up play, a kind of fiction that works on our assumptions and biases, the things we think we know about the man, or that we’ve read about him. It’s also a setup in terms of the dramatic situation—Scalia has hired as a clerk a young Harvard law grad who he knows to be a very liberal type, or “flaming” as she describes herself. She’s an attractive, bi-racial young woman named Cat, who means to make a lasting impression on Scalia, perhaps even persuade him to reason when it comes to his well-known conservative and sometimes outrageous views on everything from affirmative action, (emphatically against it) to the death penalty (emphatically for it).

Cat, played with appealing energy by Kerry Warren, takes Scalia on from the get go and their sparring exposes some contradictions in the man—and this is borne out in what we know. While he and justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg are on opposite sides on most of the heated cases that have come before the court, he acknowledges that he loves and respects her, that they’re good friends. This may be because of a shared passion for the opera.

Opera is the background music for this production—directed with perfect pitch and pace by Arena Artistic Director Molly Smith—arias resound like punctuations periodically. It’s interesting that Scalia so loves opera—he insists that he is only interested in the law and its original meaning, not emotions, a kind of Sergeant Friday approach to legal cases, as in just the facts while opera, especially the Italian variety—goes straight for the emotional jugular.

Cat and Scalia spar almost all of the time—yet, while the stakes, especially for Cat—are high, they seem laced with a certain amount of affectionate respect. Scalia shows sympathy when he learns her father is in a coma, and he (the champion of the right to bear arms) takes her to a gun range to teach how to shoot, which she takes to with alarming delight.

To Scalia, the Constitution is stone—to liberals like Cat it’s a living document, amendable, changeable, flexible to fit the march of time. That’s the crux of the matter here, and it comes up again when the court takers up the Defense of Marriage act, in which Cat tries to change Scalia’s tone to a more inclusive one in his sharp, defiant dissent.

All of this is both intelligent and entertaining, until Strand sets up a straw man, not in Scalia but in the person of a rival clerk named Brad, an arch conservative young tea party type who battles no holds barred, literally at one point, with Cat to curry Scalia’s favor. He’s such a devious, hateful, smug and arrogant type that, by comparison, Scalia becomes almost loveable. You long the blond, buff, smarmy Brad to get his, and he does.

This detracts from the real battle for an easy moment.

To really get the full impact, watch your fellow audience members and see how, or if they react. I went to a Saturday matinee far from the body politic and it appeared to made up of almost 100% baby boomers like me, who got all the digs, the point-counterpoint jabs, some, like Cat’s contention that Scalia was a monster and lacked a heart seemed to give even Scalia pause.

I’m sorry. I meant Gero’s character of Scalia. This is one of those contradictory occasions when we choose to embrace the man on stage, to believe in him, which is what good theatre does. The newspapers and talk shows are always less forgiving.

Gary Tischler • April 14, 2015

Over the years, I’ve probably seen five or six productions of “Man of La Mancha,” the ground-breaking musical take on Miguel Cervantes’ classic tale of an aging, would-be knight errant who’s dubbed himself Don Quixote, beginning with a 1970s touring production starring the late Jose Ferrer, which I saw in San Francisco.

After seeing and experiencing the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production, directed dynamically and unerringly by Alan Paul, I can say without reservation that I’ve never seen a better production than this one. Even while hewing fairly closely to the look and feel of other productions, Paul, a splendid group of designers and an outstanding cast have given the audience a production that looks and feels as fresh as it surely was in 1968 when the Lew Wasserman scripted play debuted on Broadway and won a Tony for best musical, with another Tony going to Richard Kiley in the lead.

The idea still seems exciting to me, even though I feared that it might be overly familiar—after all, everybody of a certain age must have hummed, or even tried to sing in a piano bar or the shower “The Impossible Dream.”

I needn’t have worried. The idea of a brightly—and slightly demented—retired solider and member of the landed gentry taking to horse and arms to take on evil and “beat the unbeatable foe” in a Spain beset by the Inquisition seems almost like an urgent mission today, in a world where every other person’s a cynic, and every third person is a victim of malady, oppression, terror and the stupidity of the governing classes.

“Man of La Mancha,” then and now, is a novelty among musicals, it stands almost in a class by itself, while carrying the trappings of American musical traditions, especially with a backpack full of insidiously unforgettable songs. It doesn’t resemble Rodgers and Hammerstein efforts—missing a certain sentimental elan– it doesn’t have the rock-pop boom of a “Hair”, a “Jesus Christ Superstar” or “Godspell,”,amid which it landed. And it doesn’t have the overpowering need to overwhelm the audience often characterized by the later efforts of Andrew Lloyd Weber and his ilk.

It has itself—a brilliant book by Wasserman, with music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion—and the idea that you can create a major Broadway musical hit by going back into theater’s bag of basic tricks and let three enthralling characters and their fates carry the show to enduring fame.

I would guess to new generations not in thrall to old stories, “La Mancha” carries something of an extra kick—it lets the audience imagine itself into the play. Nothing fancy here—in “La Mancha’, theater is still a matter of improvising, using what’s at hand, allowing actors and would-be-actors to play their parts through imagination. The show follows both the dictums of Hamlet’s pep talk to the players and Sir Laurence Olivier’s idea that all you really need to put on a play is a fake nose, a few props and talent.

All of those things are present in abundance here—including the long-lasting gifts of Miguel Cervantes himself who not only wrote the original book in the early 1600s, but also serves as a principal character in “Man of La Mancha.” He and a squire have landed in a grimy, dangerous prison awaiting an interview with the Inquisition, always a terrible ordeal. He’s also in the hands of his fellow prisoners, who wait to grab all of his belongings, which include costumes, a trunk and a manuscript. The prisoners put him on trial, for which he will stage a play about the life and times of a certain Don Quixote, starring Cervantes himself. If it’s thumbs down, he loses everything.

So “Man of La Mancha” begins with a time-tested (see “Hamlet”) theatrical ploy, a play within a play. In it, Quixote, accompanied by his squire Sancho, does battle with windmills he sees as three-armed giants, encounters a roadside tavern, which he sees as a castle to protect, is knighted by the innkeeper as “The Knight of the Woeful Countenance,” mistakes a barber’s tool for a golden helmet, battles a gang of vicious muleteers, and most important of all, meets Aldonza, a hardened scullery maid and sometime prostitute, who, in his eyes is the adored-from-afar great lady Dulcinea, whom he loved with all of his fevered spirituality.

Nothing good can come of this, but in the fractured world of Quixote, he is in the thick of the fight for everything good. Aldonza is drawn to him, bewildered by his kind treatment of her. Sancho follows him because “I like Him” and his niece and her fiancé are embarrassed by him to the point of disaster.

Although the musical has always been touching and moving, there is hardly an ounce of cheap, or slightly more costly sentimentality in it—the songs, to be sure are stirring, but the setting—prison and inn, are rough, unprettified. There is the inquisition, the gang of thieving, murderous muleteers. There is rape. There is death.

And yet, you walk out of it feeling better by far for having been there. A major credit goes to Paul, who is only 30 and has won a Helen Hayes Award for the dazzling, hilarious magic act called “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. His direction—energetic, paced in a way so that the two-hour-without intermission show seems to go swiftly and in fulfilling fashion but somehow makes you want more.

Everybody brings something different to the roles—I’ve seen Ferrer, Raul Julia and Broadway dynamo Brian Stokes Mitchell in the role of Quixote, but for my money, the Australian actor Anthony Warlow, a veteran of numerous musicals, tops them all. He has a great baritone voice and pulls out the musical emotions from the songs, which reminds us that “The Impossible Dream” and “Dulcinea” and the rousing opener “Man of La Mancha”, are true Broadway songs. He’s a terrific actor and an even better singer.

Newcomer Amber Iman plays and sings the part of Aldonza with such gritty force that she almost steals the show—she embodies the part—the low to the ground woman “born in a ditch” and the idealized Dulcinea as two aspects of a very human woman. And Nehal Joshi has a wonderful and heartfelt, deadpan sense of comedic timing as Sancho.

“La Mancha” feels edgy still—even in these times when going viral is a virtue. It may not be brand new, but it’s a lot newer than what passes for much of the latest new thing. [gallery ids="102033,134818,134821,134820" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Mayor Muriel Bowser will deliver her first State of the District address—based on the theme of “Pathways to the Middle Class”—5:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 31, at the Lincoln Theatre.

The address concludes the mayor’s “Pathways to the Middle Class Tour,” in which she engaged in a week-long public effort to highlight ways her administration is and will create pathways to the middle class for all D.C. residents, an effort that began with a rollout of a program planned to improve child care across the District in neighborhood and home-based facilities .

District residents can expect to hear other matters addressed by the mayor, including the District budget, the state of the marijuana initiative, crime, transportation,  relations with the federal government,  affordable housing, the dramatic changes in the District and its neighborhoods. 

As is the case with speeches like these—the State of the Union speech, for instance—they tend to look forward, and or tout past achievements. As Mayor Bowser has only been in office for three months, this will be an address that’s likely to address future plans and needs rather  than past achievements, although it is fair to say that the mayor has been busy.

Look to our April 8 issue and read about the Georgetowner’s recent sit-down interview with Mayor Bowser.

Gary Tischler • April 13, 2015

Harry Schnipper, executive director and owner of Blues Alley, recalled the first time he went to “the nation’s oldest continuing jazz supper club.”

“I was 17, I was a kid. It was 1968 and guitarist Larry Coryell was playing,” he said during an interview at the National Press Club. “I’ve been going there ever since, in one way or another.”

“In a lot of ways, it hasn’t changed a bit.”

And in a lot of ways, it’s changed a lot.

This is Blues Alley’s 50th anniversary year, and, physically, it hasn’t changed much at all. The sign is the same, and in the namesake alley, just off Wisconsin Avenue down from M Street, you have to jump back if you’re occupying the same space as a delivery truck.

Outside, a window displays Down Beat magazine signs from 2012 and 2014, designating Blues Alley as a Great Jazz Venue. Inside, it’s almost an idling time machine. It’s Friday afternoon, and Senegalese guitarists Cheikh Ndoye and Baaba Maal and their group are setting up on the small bandstand, presided over by the classic Blues Alley logo, a tuxedoed player hunched over his trumpet.

There are amps and bongo drums and instruments all over the lit stage. Japanese pianist Manami Morita, who’ll be playing with the gang that night, is tuning things up on the piano. Manager Chris Ross, stepson of former owner John Bunyan, is overseeing things.

The bar is still smallish, not enough to host a rugby team, with the usual bottles of high-end blends and bourbons and what not. The posted sign says Capacity 124. Nearby are rows of black-and-white photos of performers who have appeared at Blues Alley, from stars like pianist Ramsey Lewis to relative newcomers like trumpeter Sean Jones.

The pictures are resonant of an international reputation. The storied history of Blues Alley as a place where big names got their start, and where bigger names came back time and again, have given the place a vibe that is indicative both of excellence and of the changing, swiftly expanding world of jazz.

The list of names is actually kind of astonishing: Lewis, Monty Alexander (still rolling hot), Mose Allison, Tony Bennett, the late jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd (who opened up his own place down the street for a time), Steve Jordan, Les McCann, Oscar Peterson, Charles Mingus, Peter Nero, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, George Shearing, the sublime vocalist Sarah Vaughan, Grover Washington, Jr., Nancy Wilson, Ron Holloway, Ahmad Jamal, Stanley Turrentine and Earl “Fatha” Hines.

And, of course, there was the great jazz ambassador with the big cheeks and the wholly original style: Dizzy Gillespie, the pioneering trumpet player who took bebop beyond Charlie Parker and brought it into the mainstream. Gillespie was closely associated with Blues Alley. He was honorary chairman of the Blues Alley Jazz Society, which – along with the Blues Alley Youth Orchestra, to which he lent his time and name – are thriving under Schnipper as audience- and artist-building non-profit enterprises.

Schnipper is an organized kind of guy. He knows what he wants to say, he has a plan, a schedule. But the more you talk with him, the more you see a guy who’s driven by a passion for jazz. There isn’t any question that Schnipper – who’s also an adept and busy businessman and real estate broker – is still smitten with jazz. He keeps his eye on every table and napkin in Blues Alley, and seems to remember every note from a quartet, a sax, a vocalist, that he’s ever heard there.

“The thing about this is that you really get to know all the players, the musicians, the performers. People have built their careers here.”

Notable among them is Wynton Marsalis, without question jazz’s reigning superstar. In December of 1986, when he was just 26 years old, he recorded “Wynton Marsalis Live at Blues Alley.” Other “Live” albums followed, including one by the haunting local vocalist Eva Cassidy, who died of cancer, age 33, in 1996.

A musician, clarinetist Tommy Gwaltney, opened Blues Alley in 1965, but it was Bunyan – a businessman who loved jazz unabashedly – who steered it to prominence, to the point that big-name musicians played there regularly.

This year is also the 30th anniversary of the Blues Alley Jazz Society. Schnipper, who came on board in the mid-1990s, likes to use the title of executive director, which is a job description, but in truth, he said, “I am the owner and have been so since 2005.”

With the two nonprofits, the Jazz Society and the Youth Orchestra, “we look to the future,” he said, “Jazz is different now.”

“We’re educating young musicians through the society and the orchestra. This, in turn, at some point, expands the audience, and expands the world of emerging artists.” Schnipper was named the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival’s Jazz Educator of the Year in February.

In many ways, the operation is a word-of-mouth happening that has persisted for five decades. While Georgetowners like the idea of Blues Alley and its international cred and rep, they don’t make up the bulk of the club’s audience. “Tourists, people from all over who have heard of the place“ are the majority, said Schnipper. “You can travel abroad in Europe and Asia and other places, and people know Blues Alley.”

Programming is changing, too. Blues Alley now sponsors a yearly Big Band Jam with a tribute theme, featuring top-notch players. This year’s jam – the eleventh – is a special tribute to the “Ella and Louis Legacy,” with Sean Jones as artist-in-residence. It will be held April 18-30 at venues including (besides Blues Alley) the Kennedy Center, Pershing Park and THEARC in Ward 8.

“Jazz itself is like this big umbrella, and it includes its roots, different kinds of music. Its singular core is improvisation, which is why it is such an appealing live performance event,” said Schnipper. “One of the things you’ll see just looking at the schedules and calendar is the variety – lots of emerging musicians and artists, but also established stars, and groups and artists from around the world. But we try to present the whole world of jazz.”

Check out Blues Alley’s rich, full-of-stories website and you’ll get a sense of that world.

He calls his wife, Madeline (they’ve been married 21 years), “the glue that holds the place together. She does everything here, and she knows everything.” An attractive, warm and straight-talking redhead, you can find her in the booth upstairs where the lights and sound get turned on, or all over the place.

Ross, the manager, pointed to the Green Room. “When Eartha Kitt sang here, she complained that there wasn’t a window in it. So we had an artist paint a window on the wall. That’s why this painting’s here.”

“In the end, this place, any real jazz place, is about atmosphere,” Schnipper said. “The music, the lights, the people. Listening.”

In Blues Alley, there’s a “quiet, please” rule while the musicians play. Out of respect, for sure. But also because you might miss something: a note that hangs out there like a curve ball, a riff that goes to a place musically unmapped, a song that takes you tripping.

And at times like those, you can hear the backbeat musical whisper of everyone who’s ever played there.

Dear Georgetowner,

I just remembered that when we met last Thursday you encouraged me to contact you on or before today. First, let me say that I am sorry that you two could not attend that evening’s performance. The shows were a game-changer and shall evermore change the way we present music at Blues Alley. Furthermore, I wish to remind you that my two favorite jazz artists are probably Duke Ellington and Quincy Jones for their instrumentational/compositional/orchestrational and inspirational abilities.

Finally, we chatted about some of the more identifiable personalities that have graced the Blues Alley stage over the past five decades. Stand-out artists would include the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Wynton Marsalis, Phyllis Hyman, Tony Bennett, Mary Lou Williams, Dave Brubeck, Sarah Vaughn and Billy Eckstine. Some of my own personal favorites include Dr. John, Miles Davis, David Sanborn, Boz Scaggs and Harry Connick, Jr. A compendium of all performers or performances should exist but regrettably does not. Thank you for honoring Blues Alley with our first feature article.
— Harry Schnipper [gallery ids="102022,134924,134916,134922,134925,134918,134920" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

As the smartly brief but epic musical “Freedom’s Song: Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War” moves to its inevitable end at Ford’s Theatre, a shot rings out, loud, sudden and startling – all the more surprising and emotionally powerful because it’s familiar, because we’ve been expecting it.

The sound comes from the hallowed presidential box. We know this because we know exactly where we are, if not in time, then certainly in history.

The moment is a punch, a kind of climax to the production at hand. It sparks a keen awareness of being here, in this theatre, and also that we are in the midst of the commemoration of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. He and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln were at Ford’s to watch a comedy, “Our American Cousin,” starring the noted actress Laura Keene.

That box to the side of the balcony is always there and always has been. In many ways, it’s the reason for the theatre’s existence, and nothing accentuates that fact more than an anniversary of the assassination.

The same day that “Freedom’s Song” opened, a press preview was held across the street at 514 10th St. NW, the theatre’s Center For Education and Leadership, for the exhibition “Silent Witnesses: Artifacts of the Lincoln Assassination.” The small space is filled with artifacts: the overcoat Lincoln was wearing, the oh-so-small derringer used to kill him, Mary Todd’s black velvet coat and fragments of her bloodied dress, letters, the president’s top hat and so on. It is an intimate space and show, but hugely resonant with the “Freedom’s Song” production.

Both events are part of “Ford’s 150: Remembering the Lincoln Assassination,” a season-long series of events that began with the play “The Widow Lincoln.” A highlight of the schedule is “The Lincoln Tribute,” a round-the-clock event on April 14-15, with talks, a one-act play, a panel discussion and living-history presentations on 10th Street about the two days surrounding the assassination, including Lincoln’s death at 7:22 a.m. at the Petersen House.

The proximity of the “Silent Witnesses” exhibition to the “Freedom’s Song” production creates a kind of reciprocal poignancy. Knowing what Lincoln carried in his pocket – two pairs of spectacles and a lens polisher, a watch fob, a pocket knife, a wallet containing a five-dollar Confederate note, a linen handkerchief and, apparently, newspaper clips that included articles critical of him – adds something to his words as spoken by members of the cast of “Freedom’s Song,” the human, earthy, prosaic stuff of a great man.

It is not the first time that the presence of the box – the loca sancta, if you will – becomes important at a Ford’s production. Recent plays about Lincoln, a previous offering of the musical “The Civil War,” which forms the basis for “Freedom’s Song,” “The Rivalry,” “The Widow Lincoln,” “The Stars Hung in Black” and so on, resonate in ways that they could not do anywhere else. These days, visitors take selfies with the box in the background before the plays begin.

“Freedom’s Song” is a series of songs as vignettes, bringing us through the Civil War as if we are riding in a musical carriage. The difference is that the words – speeches, musings, outtakes, stories – of Lincoln have been added, creating another kind of effect altogether. They are spoken by members of the cast, a group of young performers playing Union and Confederate soldiers, slaves, mothers, wives and the like as the war rolls over them in ever larger waves.

Lincoln speaks through the cast: the Gettysburg address entire, words of emancipation, a droll story of the kind Lincoln loved to tell, words on the end of the war and so on, punctuating the proceedings with his singular eloquence as we move through them.

What director Jeff Calhoun and designers Tobin Ost (sets), Wade Laboissonniere (costumes) and Michael Gilliam (lighting) have done is to create an ambiance of the Civil War. What composer Frank Wildhorn and writers Gregory Boyd and Jack Murphy have done is to overlay the narrative with a march of Americana music, songs that demand tears, emotional responses, soaring hearts and reminders of the past – and how it might have been lived and lived in.

The songs are the essence of historical pop, staged like living and lively frescoes. Slaves huddled under a table sing powerfully about “The Peculiar Institution” and its horrors, a wife sings beautifully about missing her young farmer husband, Confederates soar with “The Last Waltz of Dixie” and carouse around “The Old Gray Coat” and a fugitive slave powerfully lashes out in “Father, How Long?”

American pop music plays on emotions – it’s what makes the Great American Songbook great, after all. The cast performs it more than well, especially Carolyn Agan as the wife, Kevin McAllister as the Fugitive, Nova Payton as the Storyteller and Gregory Maheu as the Union Private, an appealing young soul who practically has a Dead Man Walking sign on his back.

The music doesn’t match the eloquence of Lincoln’s words; the words have the effect of elevating the songs to a higher level.
The shot, when it comes, carrying with it echoes from the exhibition, is a jolt. You can hear people stop breathing for a moment. That, too, is part of the music in “Freedom’s Song” – that small gun doing so much damage, bringing us here to this place.

“Freedom’s Song” runs through May 20 and “Silent Witnesses” through May 25. [gallery ids="118143,118137,118132" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

This week, a spry 92-year-old guy showed up at the Kennedy Center to give a lecture.

Close to thousands stood up and cheered.

As the man said, “Even this he got to experience.”

The man was Norman Lear, who in a long and productive life, gave us Archie Bunker, Meathead, Edith and the Jeffersons and Sanford and Son, “Good Times” and even “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” and with those shows and those characters left an indelible mark on the hearts and mind of what you might call the regular folks of America.

Lear gave the 28th Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Policy March 23, as a sort of pep talk to Arts Advocacy Day the following day on Capitol Hill. And what a whoop-dee-doo night it was. Folks nearly filled up the Concert Hall at the Kennedy Center and got a time well spent, for free.  

Lear was  there to give a life-and-times tall-tale sounding talk on a day that saw Republican Ted Cruz, the darling of the right and of the religious right, which fittingly is an old bête noir of Norman Lear’s,  announce his presidential run. There also was the 107-member Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra and the Voices of Inspiration for musical inspiration.

Not only that but there was the uncommon man  of the moment: Common, actor, composer, hip hop star, children’s book author and Oscar and Golden Globe winner for original song (with John Legend) for “Glory” in the film “Selma.”

Common noted that it was Lear shows like “Good Times,” “The Jeffersons,” “All in the Family” and “Sanford and Son” that allowed him to see himself and his people portrayed as part of the American cultural tapestry in a way that he could relate.

Lear’s memoir, “Even This I Get to Experience,” figured strongly and often in his talk,which was a riff on his life, and meaning, with asides to the importance of the arts in American life, especially in theses troubling times in which the arts, paradoxically, seem to be at once available in abundance in its delivery by new technology, but in danger of being robbed of their importance and stifled by that same technology.

Lear  walked onto the stage—not a very long journey—and received thunderous applause.   Lear showed he still knew his way around a set up and a punch line: “See, if I were 88 or something like that, why I’d still get applause, sure, but now that I’m in my nineties I  cross a room and I get an ovation.”

He was more than just being here—he had some things on his mind, and dealt with them with banter, comedic fury, a little anger, dispensing wisdom after having received it.  

He talked about his father, who ended up in prison during the depression, and about being left in the care of so-called uncles.  “They weren’t real uncles, and it wasn’t such a good thing.   One of my relatives  placed his hands on my shoulders, looked deep into the tear-filled eyes of a nine-year-old and announced with a smarmy solemnity, ‘Remember Norman, you’re the man of the house now.’ ”

“That’s when my awareness of the foolishness of the human condition was born,” he said.

He remembered when he breathlessly told his mom that he had been inducted into the Television Academy of Arts and Science—alongside David Sarnoff, Bill Paley, Edward R. Murrow and Paddy Chayevsky.  “My mother’s reaction was typically unforgettable. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘If that’s what they want to do, who am I to say?’ ”

He’s a man who knows how to laugh at human foibles, including his own. “I blew my fortune investing in businesses, which I knew nothing about, to the point I might have had to sell my house.  I’d made plans to be cremated on my death, but my son-in-law talked me out of it. He said I want to take your grand-children to a gravestone that reads, ‘Even this I get to experience.’ ”

Lear took stock of the world, by reciting climate change, income equality, ISIS, and most damning for the arts, a dwindling lack of support not only from government, but from the populace. And yet,  he remains steadfast to the importance of art.

“Despite everything I see and feel, however, I don’t want to wake up the morning I am without hope,” Lear said. “We will save the world.” He called the arts one of the things that brings us together, which cause us to see and hear as one.  “We are then free to delight in or disparage according to our individual tastes, but in the embrace of art and beauty, still one.”

He decried a culture that was numbers driven, spiritually sterile, dominated not by exploration or art but by consumerism.

“Republicans never mention Eisenhower anymore,” Lear said. “He warned us about the military-industrial complex, to which he had wanted to add congressional.”

Lear was often accused of editorializing in his shows. To this accusation, he replied, “I realized I was a man in my fifties then. So, why shouldn’t I have a point of view?”

It was more than that—in a television world dominated by sitcoms from the 1950s like “Leave it To Beaver” or, worse, “The Beverly Hillbillies,” Lear’s “All in the Family” and all the rest stood out for their freshness, their authenticity about working class and middle class America and their empathy.  He imagined his way into the lives of others to the point that years later, someone like Common and hip hop artists praised him for seeing their lives.

That’s an unforgettable  achievement.  When he was honored by the hip-hop community for the impact of his shows, he got an answer to what he called the basic question: “What do a 92-year-old Jew and the world of hip hop have in common?”

A lot, as it turns out.

“It has taken  a lifetime to understand the importance of the audience as well as the performers,” Lear said. “It has taken me 92 years, eight months and a day to get there tonight to tell you that.  On the other hand, it has taken every minute, every split second of each of your lives to come to the Kennedy Center to spend this time with me tonight. “

“Add it up. I win. And even this I get to experience.”          

Gary Tischler • March 31, 2015

If ever there was a man who personally and professionally, by deed, experience, action, intelligence, diversity of roles, talent and, no doubt love, embodied the world of classical music in Washington, it was Norman Scribner, the founder and artistic director emeritus of the Choral Arts Society of Washington.

Scribner died Sunday, March 22, at his home unexpectedly.

Scribner’s life in the classical music community of Washington, and for that matter, in the country and world, was exceptionally full-bodied, well-rounded and touched the lives of many, many artists, and large audiences throughout his career. He was and remains best known as the founder of a unique arts institution in this city, the Washington Choral Arts Society, which he founded in 1965 and led for 47 years as its director in regular yearly concerts at the Kennedy Center.

Under his leadership, Choral Arts, an ensemble of more than 170 singers, became a national and world class chorus, which appeared with the world’s leading conductors and orchestras, made frequent television performances, made popular and acclaimed recordings and toured nationally and internationally. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that he elevated the appreciation of choral music in this city, certainly, but also around the world.

The rest of his life includes a history of impressive checklists and accomplishments:

= Scribner assembled a professional choir (called the Norman Scribner Choir) to perform the world premiere of “Mass” for the opening of the Kennedy Center at the request of Leonard Bernstein. The choir also recorded the original cast recording of “Mass” as well as a Grammy-nominated recording of Hadyn’s “Mass in Time of War” in 1973.

= Was the staff keyboard artist for the National Symphony Orchestra—1963 to 1967.

= Was member of the choral panel of the National Endowment for the Arts.

= Produced the annual free Christmas and Spring festivals at the Kennedy Center.

= Was chorus master of the Washington National Opera.

= Prepared the annual Handel Festival.

= Was a well known composer—the choral symphony “Love Divine” was commissioned by the United Methodist Church.

= Became conductor of the American University Chorale and assistant organist at Washington National Cathedral after graduating from Peabody Conservatory.

= Was organist and choirmaster at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1960 to 2007.

= Was a Washingtonian of the Year and a 1998 Mayor’s Arts Award for “Excellence in an Artistic Discipline” and the Peabody Distinguished Alumni Award.

Debra Kraft, executive director of the Choral Arts Society of Washington, wrote: “We are deeply saddened to confirm that Norman Scribner, The Choral Arts Society of Washington’s founder and Artistic Director Emeritus, passed peacefully and unexpectedly yesterday at his home. A statement from Choral Arts is forthcoming with details on funeral arrangements.”

Gary Tischler • March 30, 2015

There’s an old saying that goes something like “by his deeds shall you know him” with regard to summing up a person’s life.

A. James Clark, the chairman and founder of Clark Enterprises, which became Clark Construction, died last week. For him, it was more like we knew him by his cityscape.

Clark, who died at 87, was probably the key player and builder in Washington’s construction boom, leaving a large finger print and foot print on the region.

There was a time—and to some degree it still exists—that the Clark Construction Group with its familiar logo seemed to have planted its cranes like flags on many of the most significant, life-and-landscape altering in the city and the region. Look around you today and you can say, “there was somebody who changed his surroundings, who made a difference.” The company was involved in hundreds of high-impact construction projects: the Verizon Center (which proved to be the engine for downtown revival), FedEx Field and Nationals Park, Washington Harbour, the new Arena Stage in Southwest (another harbinger of change in Southwest Washington).

Let’s not forget that the company built 28 Metro Stations, and it’s still making waves in the region with the Silver Line extension, as well as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History.

Clark wasn’t exactly a recluse, but he shied away from publicity and from being a visible public figure, preferring to try to snare major construction projects for his company out of the public eye.

When all is said and done, Clark was a builder who became a billionaire and who believed in giving back, making significant philanthropic contributions to Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, George Washington University, and the Samaritan Inns. Bearing his name is the University of Maryland School of Engineering, and the James Clark Engineering Scholars Program at George Washington University.

The company, according to the Washington Business Journal, contributed $16 million to charity groups in 2013 alone.

The Clark Construction Group came out of the George Hyman Construction Company where Clark was hired in 1950. He became general manager in the 1960s and bought the company in 1969.

Washington National Cathedral, which Clark did not build, will host a memorial service for Clark April 8, at 10 a.m.. The service will be open to the public.

Gary Tischler • March 26, 2015

Don’t be surprised this weekend if you should happen to be walking around downtown that you might hear the sound of a bagpipe playing.  Beyond that, it’s all surprise.

It won’t be the mournful tones of a pipe playing at a funeral, and it won’t be coming from a guy with a beard wearing plaid kilts,  marching in a parade.

It won’t really be a traditional bagpipe.   It will be a 34-year-old woman who lives in Greenwich Village, N.Y., and hails from Galicia, an autonomous community in northwest Spain, bordered by Portugal, Castilia and the Atlantic Ocean.  It will be Cristina Pato, a rising star bereft of genre except one: originality.

It will be Pato and her own ensemble, playing the gaita, a bagpipe instrument native to  Galicia, a place about which she’s almost as passionate as playing her music. 

In a concert presented by Washington Performing Arts, Pato will be at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue at 8 p.m Saturday,  March 14,  with her band,  playing a kind of music that you’ve never heard coming out of a bagpipe, although it resonates with all sorts of cross-cultural ideas and feelings.    

It will be lively, jazzy, energetic, make-you-want-to-dance and feel joy,  revved up, buzzed by drums and accordion and bass, and Pato’s own sharing, get-it-out there personality punctuated by high-pitched yells , and a long way from marching Scotsmen in tribal uniform.

“It’s the music I grew up with,” she said.  “The gaito is from Galicia, and so am I. “ The gaita is an instrument limited in notes, but in Pato’s hands and way of playing, the possibilities expand enormously.

Watch her on YouTube videos, and you hear her emitting high-note yelps.  “I sing,” she says, “but that’s not me singing. That’s a joyful exclamation. I like joy.”

The music in some ways, and certainly the instrument, sound ancient, which is appropriate, given that the people of Galicia go back to the beginnings of man.  There are Gaelic influences here, which seems only natural, but also Middle Eastern, Latino,  African, Miles Davis, the Chieftains and Paqo D’Rivera are here—and all the exotic and not exotic corners of a world.

“My parents moved to Venezuela at one point and came back to Galicia,” she said. “I try to go as often as I can.”

A conversation with Pato  is a little like her music. The talk is fast, quick-moving from here to there, and it touches on a lot of things: the diversity and variety of music,  her band, which is very diverse itself, her influences, but always you come back to the ideas of place, region, home, and how nations sometimes try to stifle diversity. 

“With Galicia, it was about language and independence,” Pato said.  “Often, when one group dominates a country, it tries to take away the identity, culture and especially language of smaller groups within that nation.”

Nothing like that can happen with Pato around.  She is passionate about her native home, but in the process, she makes it universal.  I mentioned my own Bavarian roots within the framework of Germany, that the people there were known for their music, their culture, for a little bohemian side and for festiveness.  “Sounds like Galicia,” she said.  Sounds Irish too, for that matter.

Less you think Pato and her music are somehow insubstantial, think again.  This is not her first appearance in Washington this year. She came only weeks earlier as part of master cello player Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, a much larger group with larger ambitions, a group in which she nevertheless manages to stand out.

Pato is part of the Silk Road Ensemble’s Leadership Council.  She has a Doctor of Musical Arts in Collaborative Piano from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and has Masters of Music in Piano Performance and a Masters of Music in Music Theory and Chamber Music  and a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Digital Arts (Computer Music).  She is also the founder and director of Galician Connection,  a world music forum celebrated annually at Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.  In Galicia, she and her husband, bassist Juan Pedron, also have a rock band.    She is also a fan of Schubert lieders.

“The piano and the gaita,” she said, “are two sides of me, which are not incompatible.”

In truth, when Pato talks about music , it is really world music—all the influences that flow into her play, playing what appears to be an unwieldy instrument as if it were a tango partner.  

Watching her—whether online or on stage—you get a sense of the music, of her personality as she moves through the vibrant music from her album “Migration.” National Public Radio called her music “wild and wonderful,” which is a nice description of a woman the Wall Street Journal called “one of the living masters of the gaita”. 

This is music that bonds people. “It is so easy to see how we are all connected and speak  the same language when it comes to the music,” Pato said. “The energy builds during a performance and I value the energy that flows between me, the audience and the other players. That is a moment of pure magic.

Magic she is.
[gallery ids="102015,135074,135077,135076" nav="thumbs"]