Arts & Society

Georgetowner • December 22, 2015

Santa Claus and Rudolph made an early appearance Dec. 1 at the Fairmont’s 12th Annual Tree Lighting Ceremony. The event collected more than 500 gifts for Toys for Tots. Festivities included entertainment by the Georgetown Visitation Madrigals, presentation of colors by the U.S. Marine Corps Color Guard, family photographs as well as arts and crafts for children. NBC4 News anchor Angie Goff emceed, as 200 people enjoyed hot chocolate and cookies.
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Georgetowner •

A sold-out crowd of opera aficionados from Boston, New York and Washington celebrated Opera Camerata of Washington’s 25th anniversary Dec. 5 at the residence of Ambassador of Colombia Juan Carlos Pinzon and his wife.

The black tie evening featured a cocktail reception and elegant dinner buffet. Guests enjoyed a superb production of Puccini’s “Tosca,” featuring local singers Olga Orlovskaya in the title role and Jose Sacin, as Scarpia. An 18-piece orchestra was conducted by Peruvian Esparto Lavalle Terry, who arrived in D.C. especially for the event.

Guests included Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Ambassador of Japan Kenichiro Sasae and his wife, Nobuko Sasae, Bishop Mario Dorsonville and Ambassador Paul Hare.
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Georgetowner •

Bob Woodward, a Washington Post editor and Georgetown resident, was interviewed at Carol Joynt’s Dec. 11 Q&A luncheon at the George Town Club.

Woodward said he thought he had finished writing books on Nixon until he ran into Alexander Butterfield, who revealed the White House taping which led to the president’s resignation. He called the Watergate hearings a cultural event, which brought to light Nixon’s paranoia in feeling the need for “sanitization” of White House staff offices displaying a photograph of President Kennedy. Nixon was “rude and condescending” toward Butterfield, “borderline abusive” in his relationship with first lady Patricia Nixon and played “ego games with Kissinger.”

Woodward lauded the “mind on, hands off” approach of Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham during his and Carl Bernstein’s investigation and her determination to have the truth come out.

Georgetowner •

The 28th annual Washington Business Hall of Fame was held at the National Building Museum Dec. 2. About 1,100 attended the black-tie event, founded by Greater Washington Board of Trade, Junior Achievement of Greater Washington and Washingtonian magazine. A record $1.3 million was raised for Junior Achievement.

Five laureates were inducted into the Hall of Fame for their professional and philanthropic contributions to the Washington region: Seth Goldman, Sheila Johnson, Joe Rigby, John Toups, and Scott Wilfong. News anchor Leon Harris of WJLA-TV/ABC7 emceed with some help from caped JA Superheroes Vivian Poe and Kennedy Cawley. [gallery ids="102198,131560,131541,131554,131549" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney •

David Yurman’s first boutique in Washington, D.C., celebrated its grand opening Dec. 8 with Georgetown’s own cupcake queens, the Kallinis sisters and in partnership with Hope for Henry, a portion of the evening’s proceeds will benefit the organization. It joins Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Carolina Herrera, Paul Stuart, Salvatore Ferragamo and others at CityCenter, where holiday shopping is a must at D.C.’s newest top boutique headquarters.
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Georgetowner • December 21, 2015

Thinking about the life of Chaka Khan so far is like trying to read a really thick, epic novel in an hour. It’s some life, that life.

“More like two lives,” said the woman once dubbed the Queen of Funk in a recent phone interview. “Probably more than two.”

Khan will share some of the musical highlights of that life when the 10-time Grammy award-winning singer makes her solo debut in the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall on Dec. 31, kicking off the center’s New Year’s Eve celebration.

When you’re in the middle of thinking thoughts about the past, present and future, you could do worse than letting Khan’s songs wash over you. She and the songs, especially those from her rise to big-time stardom with the group Rufus — “I’m Every Woman,” “I Feel For You,” “Do You Love What You Feel,” “Tell Me Something Good” — are instantly recognizable. They filled the disco air at Mike O’Harro’s legendary Tramps in Georgetown, and everywhere else in the land of America, for nights on end.

The life is a Chicago girl’s. Born Yvette Marie Stevens in Hyde Park, she was influenced by a grandmother who loved jazz. “I heard lots of Ella around the house,” she said. She formed an all-girl singing group, the Crystallettes, in the neighborhood at age 11. By the early 1970s, she was working with Chicago groups like Baby Huey and the Babysitters, then was spotted by a member of the rising funk band Rufus.

The rest, you could say, is history. But, really, it’s just the beginning. Throw in two marriages, three children, acknowledged bouts with addiction, a kind of diva status that rivaled the other queens of the times (Aretha, Patti LaBelle, Whitney Houston), stints of living in Germany and England and enough awards to blind even the most modest eyes.

On paper, it sounds ritzy and glitzy, and probably justifiably dramatic. At its center, though, is always the music — all kinds of music, almost every kind that’s out there (except perhaps polka), including country, funk, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, Motown, jazz, folk and, yes, “I have too done classical music.”

Divas are, of course, notoriously difficult to deal with, yet Khan has managed to collaborate with countless top musicians in a variety of genres: Robert Palmer, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder (that’s him playing the harmonica on “I Feel For You”), Ry Cooder and a host of others. She swims in every musical ocean.

The woman on the phone doesn’t sound regal. She has all the attributes of someone deliciously contradictory: accessible, articulate, warm, funny (with a little salty sailor talk in her), down to earth. Asked to define “funk,” she laughed and said, “I have no idea,” but then expressed the all-embracing notion that funk is wide as a wing of wonder, about motion and moving, rhythm and a certain flamboyant style.

If you go on that magical musical time machine called YouTube, she’s represented at all phases of her career, a fabulous presence — her famous blossoming crowns of hair, those freckles on a beautiful face, the stylings, all sorts of songs. There’s the spectacular “I’m Every Woman” duet with Whitney Houston, for instance. “That whole thing, she and her daughter, such a tragedy. I know how that happens, what it can do to you, believe me,” said Khan.

“You know, you start out, and all of that being young, and the songs. And I’ve always wanted just to do the music justice, even if, well, like that song ‘I’m Every Woman.’ And I thought, ‘I’m every woman? What the hell do I know? But if you give it everything you have, that’s what I tried to do.”

Her songs, for me, have always been there, on the radio, on the jukeboxes, but I never thought of her broad range until recently. One time, my neighbor in Lanier Heights, Mickey Collins, and I were talking about the song “My Funny Valentine.” While we both agreed that the song was one of the greatest jazz-fueled love songs ever, we disagreed about its best interpreter. I proffered the usual suspects: Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and others. “Naw,” Mickey said. “It’ll come to me.” A few days later, he came out of his door and said, “Two words: Chaka Khan.”

I have to agree after hearing and seeing her version. I shared the story with her.

Truth is, jazz is something special for and to her. You can hear it like a sneaky foray into scatting on some of her hits, and especially on the amazing video of her singing Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” with the Funk Brothers from the movie “Standing in the Shadows of Motown,” bridging the road between jazz and funk.

“Jazz is my heart. Nobody scats much any more. It’s pure, it’s hard to do and it’s free and disciplined at the same time.”

On New Year’s Eve, you’ll be able to hear part of her musical life — and parts of ours. Who knows, maybe she’ll do “My Funny Valentine.”

Gary Tischler • December 14, 2015

If there’s ever a help wanted ad out there that reads, “Urgent, Pied Piper wanted,” they might want to have Francesca Zambello answer it.

Zambello, the Washington National Opera’s artistic director, showed up at The Georgetowner’s Cultural Leadership Breakfast at the George Town Club Dec. 3 and acted very much like the pied piper, not just for the WNO and its season, but for opera itself. 

She took turns in the roles of carny barker,  and  an enthusiast and story-teller, all of it backed up by a lifetime of acclaimed work as a director, including film, and musical theater (“The Little Mermaid” on Broadway), a reputation for fearlessness, like an intrepid explorer going into unexplored territories, regaling the gathering with how a season at the WNO is put together and what issues are addressed.

She has done this before many times, of course, most recently as the artistic advisor to the San Francisco Opera, where she directed Wagner’s Ring Cycle, and also currently as Artistic and General Director of the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York, where she competes with nothing less than the Baseball Hall of Fame during the summer.

As always, her approach was down to earth, straightforward and stirring all at the same time.

“The thing about opera audiences is that they’re about people who want different things,” she said. “There’s the people who love the classics, who want to see ‘Carmen’ on the schedule just about every year.  This is about the ABC’s of opera, you know, ‘Aida,’ ‘La Boheme’ and ‘Carmen.’ Truthfully, there’s only about ten operas in the repertoire that will be that popular, maybe even less.”

“Then, there’s the people who absolutely can’t abide seeing another ‘Carmen’ and want  and need more modern pieces—like ‘Appomattox’ or the series of one-act operas we’ve done, just this week, for instance, in the Terrace Theater,” she continued. “There’s also the middle ground of not so popular, operas which haven’t been done that much or aren’t that familiar which are a harder sell. Then there’s the young audience, kids who look at a young people’s opera like ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and say I want to do that or I want to see that. We began with that opera as part of a program that includes a holiday opera every year.” 

“My interests have always been in a combination of classical, contemporary, and American operas and music, and with that, also in using and giving opportunities to our emerging artists—we have 12 singers and two pianists,” she said. How has that worked out?  Well, there’s Solomon Howard, who starred as both Martin Luther King Jr and Frederick Douglass in “Appomattox”, has prominent roles in the upcoming behemoth “Ring Cycle”, starred in a WNO short opera “Approaching  Ali”, and worked in “The Magic Flute” and “Macbeth” at Glimmerglass this year. “He’s a true local success story,” she said. “Now, mind you, he’s very imposing, six foot six and much taller than Martin Luther King, Jr. But we’re not doing Ken Burns documentaries here. We’re asking people to imagine, to respond.

“I thought ‘Appomattox’ was risky, I really did.  Sure, Philip Glass is probably the best known contemporary music composer in the world. But it was a radically different kind of opera, and, personally, I thought we were very successful with it. So, that’s sort of a personal pat on the back for me by me.”

“Everybody says you have to cultivate a young audience, and that’s true,” she said “Like everyone else in the performing arts, we’re competing for an audience who gets much of its entertainment for free from a pad or a phone, a screen.  I understand reduced prices and discounts, because that works.  But I remember people would show up for a dress rehearsal, and it’s free, and then they’d come up and complain about this and that. And I thought, ‘Go drop off the end of the world, why don’t you?’ ” 

In full booster mode, Zambello talked about the upcoming one-act production of “Better Gods” about the last queen of Hawaii (directed by Ethan McSweeny) and  about the upcoming production of  Kurt Weill’s “Lost in the Stars” at the Eisenhower Theater,  “first time in a long, time.”

And she talked about the Wagner’s “Ring Cycle,” four operas, 16 hours—“It’s like a drug, it’s like binge watching on television, it’s about life, it’s about the earth, gods and global warming. It’s about everything. It’s a little bit of a monumental undertaking, and I’ll tell you, it’s something you’ll probably never experience again in your lifetime.  We’re starting rehearsals in February.”

Zambello will have experience going for her, having directed the cycle at San Francisco Opera. The Ring Cycle, aka “Der Ring des Nibelungen” by Richard Wagner, is comprised of “Das Rheingold,” “Die Walkurie,” “Sigfried” and “Gotterdammerung.”  When it comes to talk of contemporary or classic, Wagner and the cycle are in a category all their own—there’s nothing to which the operas and their composers can be compared, except maybe eras of history itself.  

Somebody—in fact, many people—have described Zambello as fearless for the projects she takes on, for her straight forward approach, for having a vision that she thinks she can fulfill every time out.  It’s courage combined with honesty, but also a kind of reveling in the world where she’s now a leading national and international role player.   She’s a gifted artist, for sure, but also more than a hand presser, a marketer for her work and for the WNO.

She embraces opera and all of its parts, its big tent that needs to bring in new works, but also respect its total body of works. It needs its “Carmen” and “A View from the Bridge.” It needs its altars to Verdi and Mozart and maybe a separate Bavarian castle for Wagner. Also, it needs its new voices, its new composers and writers—and an audience that’s rich in diversity.

For all of that, and much much more, Francesca Zambello is no less than opera’s pied piper.
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Georgetowner • December 8, 2015

Charlie Cerf and Cynthia Dunbar co-hosted with Katherine Field Stephen PEN/Faulkner’s Nov. 18 Founding Fathers Literary Luncheon. Author Andrew Cockburn spoke of his book, “Kill Chain: The Rise of High-Tech Assassins.” It takes the reader inside the world of national security. Cockburn opined that the present strategy of taking out the key person of a terrorist group by using drones and remote controlled technology has not yielded positive results. In his opinion, “Clearly, we’re not doing the right thing.” PEN/Faulkner initiatives include Writers in Schools, a literary arts outreach program committed to developing the next generation of readers.
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Georgetowner •

Tommy McFly was in the best of company on Nov. 20 as Carol Joynt interviewed him for her Q&A luncheons at the George Town Club. Weekday mornings, 5 to 9 a.m., Tommy hosts “The Tommy Show” on 94.7 Fresh FM joined with co-hosts Kelly Collis and Jen Richer and heard by approximately one million listeners each week. Tommy shared his early roots in Scranton, PA, and national prominence as first emcee at the White House Easter Egg Hunt. He also confirmed the recent announcement of his marriage proposal to partner Chrys Kefalas.

Patrick G. Ryan •

Some of Washington, D.C.’s top professional athletes from the Washington Nationals, Redskins and Wizards, as well as D.C. United, came together Nov. 19 for the Becky’s Fund 7th Annual Walk This Way charity fashion show at the Embassy of Italy. The event raised more than $150,000 for Becky’s Fund, a non profit committed to the prevention of intimate partner violence. [gallery ids="102179,132213,132221,132228,132232" nav="thumbs"]