Schwartz’s Run Mixes Up D.C. Mayoral Race
• June 27, 2014

Former at-large city council member Carol Schwartz, who hasn’t run for mayor in 12 years, has duly noted that she’s often referred to as a “perennial mayoral candidate” in the media, having run against Marion Barry twice and against Anthony Williams once, both of whom were Mayor of Washington, D.C.

While the reference isn’t necessarily a happy one, Schwartz used it today when she announced that she was: running for mayor. Again. The announcement, which arrived by e-mail, was in its own way dramatic in the sense that it appeared to be unexpected and surprising, and dropped like a summer bombshell in the city’s political and electoral scheme of things. In her announcement, she said, “Well, it’s been 12 years since I ran for mayor. That was in 2002; It’s now 2014. That’s a long time. But since I’m still referred to in that vein, I might as well be what I’m called. So, today, I am announcing my candidacy for Mayor of the District of Columbia.”

“This city has been a major cause of my adult life, not only as an elected official for 24 years (with some gaps in between) starting in 1974, and ending in 2009, but also as a citizen.” Schwartz said she had repeatedly been asked by both friends and strangers to come back and run for mayor. “Plus, having the knowledge, the long-term experience, the commitment, a real record of proven results, and a love for this city and all its people, I could no longer stand aside.”

Schwartz stated three concerns for running this time: “the ethics in our city, or lack thereof and its effect on us and our reputation, 2) watching our town grow and thrive, which is good, but at the same time seeing many of our fellow citizens not be part of the growing and thriving, and 3) not seeing in this general election the leader we need.”

In the immediate aftermath of the Democratic primary in April, which Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser won handily, shedding of her early rivals in the homestretch and running right by the scandal-plagued incumbent Vincent Gray, Bowser had the look of a favorite, if not a sure thing, even though the formidable Independent at-large council member David Catania had already announced that he would run.

By entering the race with emphasis, Schwartz, who has always had a wide and broadly-based following in her time on the council, on the school board and in her runs for mayor, brings a true potential game changer to the race. The Texas native, who served on the council as Republican at-large member, was always ran as a Republican who looked an awful lot like a populist Democrat with fiscal conservative stripes, always brought a real energy to her work on the council and in her electoral runs. She had a passion for the elderly, education, she ran on anti-corruption issues, and engaged voters and her colleagues as well with a great deal of up-close intensity.

In three runs against Barry, she piled up impressive results, getting more than 40 percent of the vote in her last challenge to Barry, now serving on the District Council as Ward 8 member.

She brings a certain depth of experience and a thick track record to the race, the kind of experience, for instance, that Bowser can’t hope to match, having had a hand in, debated, or tackled issues the current council is still dealing with, from the budget to to earmarks, to transportation, and education.

Schwartz, too, like Catania, is running as an Independent, after being a Republican.

She has been out of office since 2009, having lost a convoluted race for re-election which first saw her lose a GOP primary contest to newcomer Patrick Mara, who was backed strongly by the business community, and failing in a write-in attempt, which saw the Browns, Kwame and Michael, win the two seats available. Both, as we know, have since been ousted from the council.

Schwartz’s entry into the race brings a renewed energy to the city’s political buzz and the campaign, which has been mostly quiet as summer moves along.

Through War, Movies and Baseball, We Remember Suzi Best
•

When we still can, we always remember in the days of our lives. People come and go, sleep next to us. They change our diapers and love us and leave us, too. People come and go, out there in the world, making history of note. We hear about their feats and their departures and we remember them as we remember those near to us, but not in the same way. We are all, in this time, making history, remembering it, forgetting it, too.

We are always reminded of this every day of the year. Yet for a time over a weekend, we saw how things work: for those left behind in history’s backwash, barefoot in the tide, death is always about remembering, long ago, and a day ago too. We remember the lives led, and in doing so, add up a life and count our losses.

Everywhere on television and in newspapers, and in those with memories going back far enough, we remembered the events, the heroes, the history and the survivors of what is remembered as D-Day, the storming of the beaches and assault of Fortress Europe on June 6, 1944, 70 years ago. We watched as veterans of that battle, frail, thin, weighty in medals, still in uniforms. Some, we saw, be interviewed, talk the memories, watched as Herman Zeitchik who was there lay a wreath at the World War II Memorial, a bus ride away, decades gone. We talked with him last year on Memorial Day, and shared his memories, and watched him talk with another veteran who was in Egypt doing different duties.

The remaining veterans—and there are fewer still every day—remember what actually happened, and still grieve over friends and comrades who lie in the fields of Normandy under rows of white crosses. We ourselves remember the events as history, trying at the same time to imagine who they were then.

It is one way of remembering. Another is when we note the passing of people whom we did not know, but remember nonetheless as being a curious imbedded part of our lives, singers, athletes, young movie stars in their prime. We count them as losses, and remember who we were, when they cast a kind of spell of memory on us. They are people like Don Zimmer, the inveterate, almost ideal ball player, as opposed to baseball star, a man who played for almost every Major League team, plus some in Japan and South America, who carried nicknames like “Zim,” “Gerbil” and Popeye” as player, coach or manager for the Dodgers, Cubs, Red Sox and Yankees. When he played he was a utility infielder, which is to say that he played shortstop, and all the three bases which is only fitting. By the time, he passed away, he looked like baseball itself and was 83 years old, and we remember him and his teams when we spent our time trading baseball cards.

Mona Freeman was an actress in the movies, on television, and on stage, but mostly she was the petite All-American blonde girl in movies during the 1940s and 1950s. She charmed teenage boys who may have not ever dated not only a starlet, but the cheerleaders in their high schools. It irked her some, this wholesome image, those same parts opposite everyone from Tab Hunter to Jerry Lewis, because she had talent, but it’s a hard game to beat. You may note that she played a young woman having an affair with Edward G. Robinson in the theater, but it’s all those pictures with the curly blond hair, the modest two-piece swim suits, the optimistic energy of her films and face in films when we too were young, and so in noting the deaths of Freeman and Zimmer, we remember ourselves as well as them.

More immediately for those of us on the newspaper and in the neighborhood was a June 7 gathering at F. Scott’s on 36th Street. It was a “Memory-All” in celebration of the life of Suzanne Johnston Causey Dwyer Gookin, a Georgetown luminary and vivid presence in Washington, D.C., a woman who, when she wasn’t being called mom or grandma by her daughters and their offspring, was still called Suzi by just about everyone else she knew.

At the Georgetowner, we certainly never called her Suzanne—we called her friend, respected her talents as a reporter, a gadfly, a talker and conversationalist, a bright star shining, and perhaps less kind names when she irritated, which as her daughters agreed, she also had a gift for. Suzi wrote the Georgetowner social scene column, “EEN&T,” as in “Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat,” a play off another popular column in the Washington Star, “The Ear.”

The gathering included the family, daughters Liza Lowndes Gookin Hodskins of Arlington, Va., and Allison Dwyer Utsch of New York City, as well as grandsons Philip and Adrian Utsch, and great-grandsons Josiah, Lucas and Phoenix, and friends, people she knew, who knew her, who got a.m. phone calls from her, who worked with her, and traveled with her and had adventures with her.

When we heard that she had passed away, it was kind of a shock—not matter what the age. It was hard to imagine that Suzi would deign to die. She knew everybody and was not afraid to use bluster, charm, bullishness, her considerable intelligence to get to do what she wanted—crash a party, get back stage, start an argument, rally for a cause, meet the most handsome man, or make you, if you were a grandson, a little dizzy on an outing.

She liked beautiful things, smart people, and convertibles and in Georgetown, maybe most of all—she was one of the people that deserve a hall of fame for most memorable. She had a challenging and consistent kind of courage which when encountered was often a little fearsome. Columnist and pundit Eleanor Clift was here, remembering getting early morning phone calls from her. Reportedly, Lyndon Johnson, having read her writings, said, “Suzi writes with more perception than the other reporters.”

At the restaurant, a grandson read parts of a short story she had written—“The Rumble Seat”—and its description of time and longing, and material and what an old car looked and felt like and what it meant. It had the after glow of champagne from a Fitzgerald story.

So, when we know and care, as family, as friends, we don’t think of history or old movies, we think squarely and sweetly of them—and that’s what everyone did at the “Memory-All” for “Suzi.”
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Jay Leno: First Late Night Host to Get Twain Prize
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Jay Leno — who retired four months ago as host of the Tonight Show for 22 years with one dramatic, controversial hiccup in the run — has been tapped to receive the Kennedy Center’s coveted 2014 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

That means a parade of Leno friends, peers, guests—no sure if the intern will show up or, for that matter, Conan O’Brien—at the really big show Oct. 19. Leno is the 17th recipient of the prize, the latest in a list that includes Richard Pryor, who inaugurated the event by being the first recipient on a somewhat anarchic and profane night as friends and peers like Chris Rock and Robin Williams saluted the ailing comedian in an irreverent style that had rarely been seen at the Kennedy Center.

Subsequent festivities—all televised, all big-star red carpet events—were not quite so footloose and featured salutes to a varied parade of talents, including, among others, the beyond-category Jonathan Winters, the great banjo player and comedian Steve Martin, the irrepressible Lily Tomlin, Bill Cosby, who turned the award down twice because of the profanity-full first award show, a parade of Saturday Night Livers like Lorne Michaels, Tina Fey and Will Ferrell, playwright Neil Simon and the funky George Carlin. Fey was the youngest performer (40 at the time) to receive the award. Three of the last awardees have been women—Fey, last year’s winner Carol Burnett and Ellen DeGeneres.

There is a certain amount of belated irony in the choice of Leno. The successor to the incomparably cool Johnny Carson, Leno’s undeniably the last king of late night television—having trounced David Letterman, the popular choice of the cool and the hip, and the first late night host to win the award. Leno is a survivor, often decidedly middle brow, a worker bee of the highest order, who works almost as obsessively on a monologue as Van Gogh might have on a painting. He survived a very public dispute-wrangle-and-dance with NBC, whom he regularly skewered on his show, when NBC made Conan O’Brien his successor, letting Leno implode on an hour-long prime time show. while O’Brien regularly gasped for air and ratings in his Tonight Show incarnation.

Leno came back and worked the audience like the pro that he has always been, having done his bit for 22 years, being an equal opportunity host in his targets, having presidents on his show as well as up and coming comedians, the usual movie stars and pop queens, kids, political candidates, and contest winners and animal trainers. He was recognizably one of a kind with his malleable face, the buffet of hair that turned white, the news bits, the man on the street bits, otherwise known as jaywalking.

Let’s hear it for Jay Leno. The Mark Twain Award for American Humor is the best kind of applause.

Ron Swarthout Honored by GBA at Warm, Exuberant Luncheon
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Sitting at a table for the 2014 Georgetown Business Association’s annual Leadership Luncheon at Tony and Joe’s Seafood Place at Washington Harbour, you could be forgiven if you felt a little blessed in this company of people who own or run businesses in Georgetown, in the company of fellow media types and your co-workers, in the company of local Washington political leaders.

You could see the Watergate, the Kennedy Center and the Potomac River flowing by and be pretty sure that you’re in the land of the high-powered.

But if truth be told, the luncheon was something a little better than that. It was hometown, happy and exuberant. It felt like a celebration of a community and a city all at once, and a celebration of small business entrepreneurship of the classiest kind, as embodied by the recipient of the 2014 GBA Lifetime Achievement Award Ron Swarthout of Georgetown Floorcoverings, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary.

All sorts of people were there, including representatives of the presenting sponsors Long & Foster of Georgetown, and sponsors like Friends of Hexagon, Georgetown Exxon & Georgetown Shell, The Georgetowner, and the Swarthout family, as well as GBA leaders like President Riyad Said, Vice President Janine Schoonover, Secretary Molly Quigley and Treasurer Karen Ohri, daughter of the honoree.

Some political leaders of this city were there, to honor the city, the community and Swarthout. There was a certain amount of celebratory swagger there, in the sense that there was a celebration of a booming city, a treasured, changing community that went beyond center-of-the-world braggadocio.

Muriel Bowser, the Ward 4 Councilmember and the Democratic candidate for mayor, was there, touting basically all the ways Washington was becoming a top-tier city in the eyes of the country and, yes, the world. Bowser, confident and assured, touted the city she will very likely, in the eyes of many, be running, if she can hold back two Independent challengers: at-large councilmember David Catania as well as former and long-time council member Carol Schwartz, who recently announced that she would be running.

Politics may have been a table-talk subject, but it wasn’t all that evident on the dais, where Bowser talked about Washington’s status as a go-to city for new residents, millennials, businesses and developers. “We are leaders in new construction, in fittest residents, in entrepreneurship, in visitors and as a vacation destination, in college graduates and as a technology hot spot,” Bowser said

Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans, one of the candidates whom Bowser defeated in the Democratic primary, recalled Georgetown and the city when things weren’t quite so economically sunny. “We had manholes blowing up,” he recalled. “You’d be walking down the street, and boom. Look where we are now.”

Yet both Bowser and Evans along with others were there to honor Swarthout, who was the very model of the kind of businessman who isn’t into bragging, beating his chest or taking all the credit. He succeeded his father, and his daughter, Karen bought the business in which he is still daily involved. “This was and is a family business all along,” he said. “It’s not I like I did this myself,” he said. “I had a lot of help. The people who worked here, steady as you go. The family, the community that made us welcome. And the residents here. Our customers, most important of all. Business serve their customers, and our customers are here. It’s like people say, it’s not about you.”

“It’s about helping people,” Swarthout told us earlier during a Georgetowner interview. “It’s about being proud of how you do the work and gaining people’s trust.”

You see the idea of community in his words and at the GBA leadership luncheon we attended, the community we work and live in, part of a great city to be sure. But you see the connections by looking at Swarthout at the Swarthout family table: wife, children, grandchildren and one great grandchild, by last count. You see the connections, reaching out into the village to include customers, the K Street location, the bridge overhead, and you hear the voices of the political leaders who in the best of times help create economic change, which means social and cultural change, which means the identity of a city.

You could find it all at a lunch: hot summer day, surf and turf on the plate with Key lime pie, gossip and news murmurs around the tables. You saw the accomplishments of change and the intimacy of people working together, the human parts interacting.

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‘Side Show’ is Back, Bigger Than Ever
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Once upon a time, say, Oct. 16, 1997, a musical opened at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway.

This is not news today, nor was it then. Musicals open on Broadway all the time, some to move on to glory and musical memories everlasting, and some to exit street left, never to be heard from again.

The musical in question was called “Side Show,” with a book and lyrics by Bill Russell and music by Henry Krieger of “Dreamgirls” fame. It was a show about the life and times of Violet and Daisy Hilton, conjoined (“Siamese”) twins who were sideshow (“carny”) attractions and even bigger vaudeville stars.

Directed by Robert Longbottom, it featured Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner as the sisters and received Tony Award nominations for best musical, best book, best music and best acting in a musical (Ripley and Skinner for one role).

But 91 days after it opened, “Side Show” was gone. Over the years, it became something of a legend, a theatrical rumor about remembered magical moments.

“I don’t know exactly what happened,” said Bill Russell when we sat down and talked with him. “It was a lot of things, I suppose. I think a lot of people thought the show would sell itself, and just about everybody we ever talked to who actually saw it loved it. Maybe it wasn’t marketed enough, maybe the whole idea of a musical about people who were very, very different from everybody else – and especially the twins and their attempts to find love – rubbed some people wrong.”

“Side Show,” of course, is back, bigger than ever with new characters and ten new songs added, directed by Bill Condon, the Oscar-winning director of the movie version of “Dreamgirls.” It’s a Kennedy Center production – part of the Michael Kaiser legacy of rescuing critically acclaimed shows with passionate followers such as “Ragtime” and “Follies” – in association with the La Jolla Playhouse in California, where it had a successful run.

“One thing I know, and one thing I saw, was that young people seemed to really get into this show,” Russell said. “And I’m not surprised. Thinking in terms of the characters in the show, people that were considered freaks, outsiders, and here they’re the main people in a musical and you see their yearnings and strivings to be like other people, to love and shine.

“The sisters were real people. They even played themselves in that 1930s movie ‘Freaks’ by Todd Browning. But they were never alone from each other, people always looked at them, they were different from each other.”

The production at the Kennedy Center, more of a musical drama than a musical, is by all accounts elaborate. And while it may appear larger and richer, and thick with memorable music and songs (not to mention memorable costumes and makeup) – “Here are the Freaks” still opens the show in rousing fashion – it aims straight at the hearts and emotions of the audience.

This is a show that includes not only promoters and ballyhoo folks, but the bearded lady, little people, the three-legged man, the living Venus de Milo, reptile man and, of course, the girls. Emily Padgett, a veteran of several national tours (“Rock of Ages,” “Cats” and “Legally Blonde), plays Daisy and Erin Davis (“A Little Night Music,” “Grey Gardens”) plays Violet.

Russell’s list of credits includes the long-running Off-Broadway show “Pageant,” which won two Olivier nominations for its West End production, as well as “Elegies for Angels,” “Punks and Raging Queens” and “Family Style.” But it’s probably fair to say that “Side Show” is something special for him, and not just because of the Tony nominations and the Broadway run.

“I know a little something about being an outsider,” he said. “Think about this: I was born in Deadwood and raised in a town called Spearfish in the Black Hills of South Dakota. “My father was a popular guy whom everybody called Cowboy. He was a cowboy, and here I am, coming out to him and the town newspaper as gay. He was not happy with me. He worked in rodeo, he herded cattle. Eventually we reconciled, and he got to see some of my work and I think he appreciated what I did and who I was. But it wasn’t easy.”

Fathers stay in the heart. Russell wrote poems about his father including one called “Cowboy.”

As for “Side Show,” which is in the Kennedy Center Opera House through July 13, what happens next? Broadway?

“Hard to say,” Russell said. “Sure would be great, wouldn’t it?” [gallery ids="116368,116357,116364" nav="thumbs"]

Five Americans Who Lived and Left America a Better Place for All
• June 19, 2014

Losses sometimes mount up.

In the past few days, we’ve lost a great American actress, who was, with her husband, also high in the list of eminent Civil Rights leaders, a radio deejay who defied the odds and the meaning of pop and rock popularity, a football coach who became an icon by winning four Super Bowls in Pittsburgh, a much beloved baseball star who spent his entire career in one city, and a jazz singer who never became a huge star but had an unforgettable voice.

So, we pay tribute to Ruby Dee, to Casey Kasem, to Chuck Knoll, to Tony Gwynn and to “Little” Jimmy Scott.

RUBY DEE

Ruby Dee was an indomitably brilliant actress in television, in movies and most especially on the American stage. Yet, even now, it is almost impossible to separate her from her late husband Ossie Davis, to whom she was married for 57 years, until his death in 2005. They were not only an enduring married couple, but also partners in their artistic, performing arts, in all sorts of venues, live and on film, but also in their highly visible participation in the civil rights movement. They were, if not joined at the hips, passionately united, heart, soul and mind.

They were also two unique sorts of performers. In this, Ruby Dee, who died at the age of 91 last week, was a slight head above her husband. Dee left an indelible impression, no matter what she did, she had the power as an actress to move the heart, disturb the memory and knock you around a bit in her presence on stage.

She was in “A Raisin in the Sun” on Broadway and in the movie version opposite Sidney Poitier. She played Denzel Washington’s mother in “American Gangster,” for which she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. She bowled over Broadway in her performance as Lea in the brilliant South African playwright Athol Fugar’s play, “Bozeman and Lea,” about a couple ostracized in Apartheid South Africa. She and Davis appeared together often most notably in “Purlie Victorious,” which Davis wrote and two films directed by Spike Lee, “Do The Right Thing” and “Jungle Fever.” They also partnered up even more notably and with courage by forging friendships with Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X . Dee emceed the 1963 March on Washington at which King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

They took risks together, risks that could have harmed their careers, including standing up for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the convicted spies who were executed in the 1950s.

But perhaps their most enduring work and partnership came as two people who loved each other with great passion, shared their passions for the work and were completely intertwined in matters of justice. According to a Washington Post profile by Will Haygood, she once gave him a note that said, “Dear Ossie, When I think of you let there silence and no writing at all. Ruby.”

This writer had the good fortune to interview them as a couple on the telephone. They were straight forward, forthright, and as best I can recall, neither interrupted the other. We saw her in “The Glass Menagerie” at Arena Stage in 1989. While the production had its problems, she was not one of them. She mesmerized. Still.

CASEY KASEM

If you were a commuter, if you rode around in a car, if you like to make a connection with the voices you heard over the car radio in the 1960s and onward through the 1970s and beyond to close to now, and if you liked rock and roll and the softer edges of pop music that would eventually lead you to a karaoke bar, you’d recognize the voice of Casey Kasem pretty much forever.

Kasem, who popularized a show called “America’s Top 40” (syndicated nationwide) over decades, passed away this weekend. His voice had already been lost from the airwaves and at 83, he had been suffering from a debilitating form of dementia. Yet, if his voice is still, it’s still remembered. He would single out songs and play them for individual listeners, a sometime sentimental ploy that proved to be highly effective. It was personalizing music in a way that shock jocks hardly ever managed. You can have fun with people that make you go deaf, but it’s hard to love them. His was an enduring voice, even as radio stations were splintering into genre choices—from jazz, to pop rock, to country, to alt, and every other taste. His top 40s show was consistently middle brow which is to say it was popular with just about everybody but the very edges, the very high brow.

It’s hard to argue with a guy who would without fail tell you: “Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars.”

CHUCK NOLL

Chuck Noll looked like a pro football coach. He had a burly build and a strong open face. He always looked like he was trying either to choke down a smile or a scowl during a game.

Career-wise, the man had a lot to smile about: he was the first NFL coach to win four Super Bowl titles, with Pittsburgh Steeler teams that played really stifling defense and were quarterbacked by Terry Bradshaw. Their biggest rivals in the AFC were the Oakland Raiders, owned by the Grinch-like Al Davis and sometimes coached by him. Watching those two teams go at in the 1970s was a bruising experience, especially if you happened to be standing on the sidelines—Mean Joe Green and the Pittsburgh Steelers would usually, but not always, prevail over Big Ben Davidson, George Blanda and others.

Noll won the old fashioned way. He didn’t trade away draft choices. He kept them and nurtured them. He had never coached an NFL team before he got the Steeler job, and he finished 1-13 his first year. He finished on top, in life and in football.

TONY GWYNN

Tony Gwynn died this week of cancer at the young age of 54. He lived a baseball life, he became a Hall of Famer, and he stayed in one town as a baseball player all his life. That town was San Diego, and you just don’t see that happening much any more.

But look at those stats from a guy whom his peers described as a happy guy, a good man and a brilliant baseball player, roaming right field for the San Diego Padres. They called him “Mr. Padre,” and here’s what he did: he played in two World Series, hit a bunch of singles, batted .338 lifetime, had 3,184 hits and eight National League batting titles. In 1997, he was inducted in the hall of fame with Cal Ripken, Jr., who spent his whole career in Baltimore. He was in a class all his own.

JIMMY SCOTT

If you’ve never heard of Jimmie Scott or heard him at all, it’s still not too late. He’s another reason why they created YouTube.

Scott, who died at the age of 88, has described as “star-crossed,” “under-rated,” “hard-luck” and so on, all of which is true, since he was not a huge star in the crowded firmament of jazz and pop and great song vocalists.

Given all that, he sure shone and shines bright: this thin, frail-looking guy with a high and tremulous voice who sang with the greats, including Lionel Hampton, who recorded a memorable album called “Falling in Love Is Wonderful” and had a hit with “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” which could just about slam-dunk you with emotion and feeling.

Check out him out on YouTube. Listen to him. “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” Try “Nothing Compares to You.” That’s “Little Jimmy Scott.” See if he just doesn’t break your heart.

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Mighty Night for Jazz With Blue Note at Kennedy Center
• June 9, 2014

They called it “Blue Note at 75 — The Concert.” In truth, it was exactly what record producer Don Was said it was: “What you’ve got here with Blue Note is the history of jazz in America.”

The concert itself was made up of some historic figures from the Blue Note canon. The newer staples and mainstay star artists contained that history, too, as performers, including host Jason Moran, the Kennedy Center Artistic Advisor for Jazz, and a Blue Note Records artist himself.

In the process, they showed off the rich terrain of American jazz: its diverse personae and personalities and styles, its ageless qualities and that part of the music that continues to refresh itself in bubbling, sometimes on-fire like a musical baptismal font and stream of improvisation.

Jazz lovers, fans and friends, knowledgeable cool men and women bathed in the familiar sounds and music, were always jolted by something new. After all, you can’t have jazz without something new. Moran, a standout and individualistic pianist, played in his tennis shoes.

Blue Note, the iconoclastic jazz recording company, was founded by two German immigrants. Maintained by a tireless engineer, it continues to be a producing company and label like no other.

“Everybody knew and recognized Blue Note, by its music, its artists its energy, but also by its album covers. Those photograph, those stylized images, they were jazz,” said Moran, while hosting the concert that put a cap to the Blue Note 75th Anniversary Celebration.

For the folks who played that night and for jazz buffs, it was like being in some kind of boogie-blues-riff-and-rolls and solo heaven.

Moran himself, joined by pianist Robert Glasper, tripped the fantastic light of boogie woogie — “one of the cornerstones of jazz”, Moran said. Like some kind of wizard, he got notes out of the piano that came out like some really cool staccato, rain falling like music.

Youth was served here — Lionel Louke on guitar, Kendrick Scott on drums, the brilliant pianist Fabian Almazan, Derrick Hodge on bass, John Patitucci on bass and Brian Blade on drums.

You want star singers? There were two, opposite stars shining on opposite sides of the jazz firmament. The dazzling Dianne Reeves, who joined blockbuster trumpeter Terence Blanchard on “Dreams” and made “Stormy Weather” very much her own and more like a hurricane followed by hearts breaking and reviving.

Norah Jones —who burst on the national jazz and music scene with a slew of Grammys for her first album like a quiet surprise —came to the concert that way, too. The spotlight found her black-outfit elfin self on the piano, about to launch into the standard “The Nearness of You” with her distinctive smoke-and-butter voice.

If you want veterans, take the presence of pianist McCoy Tyner, soft voiced in his talk, and Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, who seemed to be forever pulling secrets out of the music and his instrument, playing it like a thinker and a shaman. Meanwhile, Tyner played like a train, pulling out the blues of the keys.

The sax virtuoso Wayne Shorter ended it all by reminding us that there is no end to moments or notes, held and thrown away. They are retrieved and come back renewed and charmed. The new survives in the playing as much as the old.

Speaking of somewhat older—there was “Sweet Poppa Lou” Donaldson, at 87, as he noted, the oldest guy on the label and perhaps in the house, but close to the youngest, too. Because he played the sax, with the formidable Dr. Lonnie Smith on the piano, like it was a baby, spanking out notes, teasing, soothing, then playing hard without a sweat, and giving us what it is.

“We play straight ahead jazz and blues,” Donaldson said. “No fusion, no confusion, no P. Diddy, no nothing else.” He and the rest launched into “Alligator Boogaloo.” You looked, listened, heard and felt some kind of slight scuffed magic, which is what jazz is. It’s shaman stuff, story music. The made-up stuff comes straight for you, and you don’t ever want to get out of the way.

Gero and Keach: Shakespearean Roles of Two Lifetimes
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When you hear a couple of guys, great actors both, talk about William Shakespeare, you immediately start thinking about: Shakespeare.

In the case of listening to the conversation that swirled around actors Ed Gero and Stacey Keach and moderator John Andrews, the president of the Shakespeare Guild at the Woman’s National Democratic Club recently, you particularly started thinking about the great “Seven Ages of Man” speech in the Bard’s “As You Like It,” which begins thusly:

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages . . .”

Shakespeare being a man of the stage often referenced the stage—the play within a play in “Hamlet” and Hamlet’s instructions to the players, Prospero’s farewell speech in “The Tempest.” The “Seven Ages of Man” speech is direct and precise, and it’s about theater as well as life its own self.

This resonated when you heard Gero and Keach — who could and probably have given master classes on acting — started talking about the roles they were playing at Harman Hall in the two parts of “Henry IV.” Gero played the king of the title role, and Keach took on Falstaff, the boisterous boon companion to Prince Hal, the future Henry V.

The professional lives and trajectories of Gero and Keach have been different. Keach, although he is one of our finest Shakespearean actors, has taken a few detours into movies and television, not always choosing wisely, as he has acknowledged, Nevertheless, he has played his characters memorably. Gero has spent a lot of time on the stage in Washington (and elsewhere), assaying 60 Shakespearean parts along the way. Whatever stage of man they may be in now, rich in family life, children and so on, the roles they have played brought them together on stage—notably in a Chicago-Goodman-Theatre-based production of “King Lear,” in which Gero was Gloucester to Keach’s Lear—but the roles themselves have criss-crossed and bumped into each other.

“I played Falstaff once when I was in my twenties,” Keach said. “I had to gain some weight and wisdom I think to play him then. I didn’t have to do that this time around. I need to lose some weight now.”

Gero’s experience with the history plays and the paths of the Henry’s in particular seems like an alternative life lived inside the theatre. He played the lead in “Henry V” at the Folger, when he too was much younger. Then, he performed in “Richard II” as the rebellious Bolingbroke who usurps the crown of Richard II, not once but twice, opposite Philip Goodwin and Richard Thomas. Bolingbroke would become a troubled and often guilt-ridden Henry IV, fending off rebellions and uprising, trying to separate his son Henry from Falstaff.

“Things can get circular, but I think all of that helps you bring the virtue of experience to the parts,” Gero said. “I’m the father, I was the son, I was the usurper and now the king. Henry IV has become a master politician. He knows how to manipulate people, hold and exercise power, like a modern politician. He’s a modern man and that resonates today.”

“I’ve tried not to play Falstaff like a buffoon, which is often done,” Keach said. “There is a huge amount of comedy in the part, but he sees himself as a serious man. You not only have to get the laughs, you have to get the audience not just to like Falstaff but to respect him. His biggest audience is Prince Hal, and when he becomes king in the second play, the comedy stops. Things become more like an elegy. You should take into account that now Hal has to be Henry. He has to act like a king, and he can’t embrace Falstaff, who has some hopes. You can see that again in “Henry V”, when he has to approve of the execution of one of his old companions for desertion.”

Keach is associated with many screen roles, big and little, and is therefore better known. For anybody who goes to the theater a lot in Washington, he has performed brilliantly here as “Richard III.” For this writer’s money, he played the best Richard III ever: dangerous, mocking, self-aware and funny. He also played Lear and Macbeth. But then, there’s a woman who comes up to him after the talk and says ,“You’re my favorite Jesse James.” It was a reference that means a lot to Keach obviously but very little to anyone who hasn’t seen Walter Hill’s “The Long Riders,” a wondrous, stylized, banjo and guitar-driven Western about the outlaws Jesse and Frank James and the Younger boys, robbing banks, one step ahead of a fatal bullet. If you watched television and the “Mike Hammer” private eye series, where Keach was tough and slick with a mustache and a cocked hat, well, there you are. You remember.

Gero, too, has had his share of parts—on the stage—where he’s delivered memorable performance and been rewarded with Helen Hayes Awards. He’s been Scrooge at Ford’s Theater and the artist Mark Rothko. Now, he’s taking on the part of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia for Arena Stage next season.

“Interesting, fascinating,” Gero said of his preparation for the man and the role.

The world remains the same: a stage for a man to play many parts.

— “Henry IV” parts one and two will be playing at the Harman Theatre through this weekend. Check the Washington Shakespeare Company for tickets, dates and times.

Maya Angelou: a Vivid, Grounded, Transcendent American Woman
•

At the Woman’s National Democratic Club in Dupont Circle, the Shakespeare Guild, hosted by John Andrews, was sponsoring a talk and back-and-forth between actors Ed Gero and Stacy Keach, who were starring at the Shakespeare Theater Company in the two parts of “Henry IV”, playing the title role and Falstaff, respectively.

It was high-spirited talk and theater memories—about Keach playing Falstaff for Joe Papp in Shakespeare in the Park when he was in his twenties, Gero taking on Bolingbroke twice in different productions of “Richard II.” But in the end, because this was the week that it was, Gero got up and read from “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” He spoke crisply and with emotion, because the day before, the poem’s author Maya Angelo had died at the age of 86. That news meant a lot to a lot of people, including the people here to talk about Shakespeare and acting and fathers and sons, and lines and words written by the man—William Shakespeare—whom Angelou once called “my first white love.”

If words were enough—that is writing lasting words in the form of several memoirs, many, many poems, written, recited, remembered—as achievements honored and remembered, then Angelou would be in a pantheon of the many: those gifted writers of songs, plays, novels, memoirs, histories and tales we tell ourselves down the generations. She would be among the finest practitioners, no question, and she has always been accredited in this way.

But there was more to Angelou than her status as a poet, wordsmith or writer, because she was and remains a source of inspiration not just for what she wrote, but for the life she lived — a life richly lived. Her life was the source of all the words, her youth growing up in segregated Arkansas, an African-American girl growing up in the American South were the signs of separation were everywhere, crept into your mind walking around town, bending over to get a drink of water

She wrote words, sure she did. But she did things. She had a voice that was hard to forget as a young girl by all accounts, but also as an icon, as a woman pulling the beautiful words of “On the Pulse of Morning” out into the cold inaugural air when Bill Clinton became president in January 1993: “Here on the pulse of this new day/you may have the grace to look up and out/and into your sisters eyes, into/your brother’s face, your country/and say simply/very simply/with hope/
Good morning”.

She was at some point or another a singer, a dancer, an actress—see that challenging woman in “Roots”—a mother, a wife, a number of times, a streetcar conductor. She once toured 22 countries in a production of “Porgy and Bess.” She was a traveler, a civil rights activist, and a symbol for young, and not so young African-American women just about everywhere.

She was just plain vivid. If her voice was sometimes angry, it was also pushing forward, encouraging women to do more than just keep on keeping on, to aspire, to achieve, and always recognize unfairness and injustice for what they were.

Her poem, “And I Rise,” flies out like a sharp bird, challenging everyone not to accept, to be themselves: “Does my haughtiness offend you?/Don’t you take it awful hard/’cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines/Diggin’ in my own back yard.”

Women who became teachers, who rose, too, like the sun and famous people and mothers raising children were inspired by her, as was our current National Poet Laureate Natasha Tretheway, herself a mighty poet.

She wrote, in the 1970s, the first of several memoirs and the most memorable: “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” She became after a while, and into time, an icon who transcended race while bringing it to the fore, and everyone, at some point or another, listened to her, and thought about what she said. She didn’t lack honor or honors.

So, on a Thursday afternoon, Gero, who had played Scrooge and painters, and kings and princes and blinded dukes began and then ended:

“The caged bird sings/with a fearful trill/of things unknown/but longed for still/and his tune is heard/on the distant hill/for the caged bird/

Sings of freedom.”

WPA’s Bilfield Touts D.C.’s Musical Collaboration
• June 2, 2014

The first time we met Jenny Bilfield, she was just settling into her new job as the president and CEO of what was called the Washington Performing Arts Society.

Even then, we kind of figured that Bilfield, who came to Washington from her job of artistic director of Stanford Live at Stanford University, was a woman well met. She could easily fill a room with her presence, even at a small downtown coffee shop like Bourbons.

That was during late summer 2013, and she’s still filling rooms, charming and inspiring people with her intelligence, down-to-earth warmth, vision and a few other gifts. She was at it again May 22 at the George Town Club, where she appeared at the Georgetown Media Group’s Cultural Leadership Breakfast, one of a series of such talks and gatherings, sponsored by GMG—which publishes The Georgetowner and The Downtowner newspapers—featuring D.C. and Washington area cultural leaders.

Since then, there have been some changes at WPA(S), changes that involve branding—see the single logo W—and the dropping of the letter “S” and word “society.” There’s a new slogan: “We make it happen.” More than that, there’s a self-evident bounce and energy upgrade in what is and has been the area’s and the city’s largest presenting institution for decades.

“It’s been a year now since I’ve been here, and I suppose that you can go about this sort of thing several ways—make big, sweeping changes right away, make a big splash, make your mark, or share in the changes, engage the community at large and our institutional one also,” Bilfield said during her breakfast talk. “I was advised not to try to do anything about branding or the name or anything like that. But then we discovered something in the process of talking and engaging with people. They talked about the name.”

Bilfield said the changes were made to send an inclusive message to broaden Washington Performing Arts’ presence in the community, schools and on a larger scale.

It’s also a measure of Bilfield’s approach to WPA’s mission. When you hear her talk about going into the schools, the WPA gospel choir and its graduates, about pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s involvement in area schools during her last concert here, not only do you understand the importance of education in the performing arts, but you want, like Bilfield, to do something with it and about it.

“What we would like to see is our artists work with local schools and students in some fashion or another,” Bilfield said. “That’s not possible all of the time, but when it is, you have something special.”

She’s also a believer in cooperative efforts and creating partnerships among disciplines and genres, both with local groups and those that come here as part of a season.

“I spent a lot of time in Washington neighborhoods, at the resources, and see the gifts beyond the politics of things. The city is rich in talent and culture,” she said. “The people that book talent, the managers and artists, know about the opportunities here and the potential for more. We have this big international community. I think that reputation is already there with venues like the Kennedy Center and Strathmore, but we want to spread that, increase the profile of music, jazz, classical music, to encourage local groups and artists.”

“We don’t have a venue,” she said. “That’s significant, and my first reaction, honestly, was relief.” (She was instrumental in the creation of a major arts venue at Stanford). “What we can do instead is interact with the whole community, its various strands, and venues that we do have, artists, groups and bring them together. That’s exciting.”

Bilfield saw this partnership come together in April at the WPA concert, which honored the 75th anniversary of Marian Andersen’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial.

When you listen to her talk about encouraging new works by new (and veteran) composers, of highlighting more groups and of cross-pollinating you can see that she’s done her homework in the city and she’s got ideas that may well become identifiers for what we can call in the future Washington music, Washington sound, Washington art.

“She makes you want to do things,” one attendee at the breakfast said. In other words, as always, she fills a room.

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