Arts & Society

Robert Devaney • November 10, 2015

The theme was “Fly Me to the Moon” for the annual Georgetown Gala at the Italian Embassy Oct. 24 with a definite 1960s Sinatra and “Mad Men” vibe — and Georgetowners responded by getting down and dancing to “Shout” and other popular tunes. The ball is the main fundraiser for the Citizens Association of Georgetown, the town’s biggest booster and protector.

Gala co-chairs Jennifer Altemus, Colleen Girouard and Robin Jones brought back Danny Meyers and his D.C. Love band.
There was a silent auction and then a live auction, called by Griff Jenkins of Fox News. The after party put deejay Trophy Brothers on the stage. The main dinner buffet was by Cafe Milano catering — with pizza baked outside later in the night.

Councilman Jack Evans and his Michele were the gala’s honorees. Jack is the longest-serving District councilmember, and Michele is involved in many community projects. CAG President Pamla Moore in her presentation to the couple — who live on P Street with their six children — said, “Everyone in the room can look around at someone whose life has been touched by the Evanses.” [gallery ids="101902,136458,136462,136453,136432,136438,136444,136449" nav="thumbs"]

Neshan Naltchayan •

The 2015 D.C. Chamber of Commerce’s Choice Awards and Gala, drew more than 1,000 of Washington’s dignitaries, national political figures, corporate citizens and business owners to celebrate the year’s business and civic successes together at the Marriott Marquis Hotel Oct. 30. PEPCO held the title as the event sponsor, and awards were presented to Joe Rigby, chairman of the board of director as well as president and CEO of Pepco Holdings, Comcast, George Washington University, Washington Nationals Dream Foundation, Marcella A. Jones, and the Washington Area Community Investment Fund. The award show was emceed by Fox5 News-WTTG meteorologist Tucker Barnes and Mary Abbajay of Careerstone Group. Guests enjoyed entertainment from the legendary S.O.S. Band to top off the amazing festivities. [gallery ids="102354,125445,125450,125457" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • November 9, 2015

From 1979 to 1993, “Knots Landing,” a hugely popular television melodrama which was itself a spinoff of the even bigger “Dallas,” occupied a major part of the life of triple-threat performer Michele Lee, who headed and starred as part of a large cast playing the part of Karen Fairgate. 

It was a momentous time of change in American life, and the show blocked out the sum and sun of Lee’s professional life, before and after, to some degree.  She appeared in all 334 episodes, the only member of the cast to do so and was considered the focus of the show.  During that time,  she won a Soap Opera Digest Award for Best Lead Actress in a Prime Time Soap Opera and was nominated for an Emmy in 1982 for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Show.  On the show, she lost a husband and in real life, her marriage ended, and she became a single mom, as she did on the show.  In the process, she became nationally and instantly famous and a kind of forever person since the depth and breath of television in modern time is a time machine, a streaming memory vault.

I must admit that— if push came to shove—I do recall the recurring phrase, “Who shot J.R.?” on “Dallas.” Nevertheless, I never quite succumbed to the charms of prime soaps, including the latest reinterpretation, “Blood & Oil,” which is a “Dallas” redux starring Don Johnson. 

Talking with Michele Lee on the telephone, it soon became apparent that soaps were not the main course on the conversation menu. Lee was instantly recognizably as a most honored and vivid member in good and better standing of the tribe of on-stage performer, those razzler-dazzler types who will do almost anything to seduce you, wow you, make you laugh, make you cry, make you want to dance and spend too much money on a Broadway show. She has all the gifts that can dominate a movie and a television series, to be sure. Those same gifts make her unforgettable on stage and — wouldn’t you know it? — over the phone.

Some of those gifts will be on display 7 p.m., Friday, Nov. 5, at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, when the two-time Tony Award and Emmy-nominated star brings her show, “Nobody Does It Like Me: The Music of Cy Coleman,” part of the Kennedy Center’s “Barbara Cook’s Spotlight” series of cabaret evenings and singers. What you get instantly is what Lee’s always been first and foremost: a Broadway star long before television made her a household name.

The stage brings out her inner entertainment soul. “I don’t really like the term cabaret,” she says. “I’m an entertainer, that’s always from when I was little that I ever wanted to be. I wanted to entertain people, make them happy, make them pay attention.” 

It’s a funny feeling talking at first in the usual way—ask a question, get an answer, the process. Soon, however, you sense that she’s that person, that performer.  I don’t mean to suggest anything false or phony, not at all. She is, by any definition, down to earth, a lady mensch, if you will. It’s more like a feeling you’re in her dressing room, or living room, or on a small stage and there’s nothing so distant as a television  or computer screen separating you. It’s not the content but the context, the experience of conversation that’s memorable.

Lee started early, gaining almost instant success on television with a role in the sitcom, “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” at age 19. But her Broadway musical life truly began in the same year when she made her debut in 1961 in the role of Rosemary Pilkerton in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” a landmark musical which featured Rudy Vallee and Robert Morse. 

It was Cy Coleman’s presence and his unique gift as a composer that left a mark on her life, an influence to which she continues to pay tribute.

“He was a remarkable man,” Lee said. “Everything he did was original. He was my friend and my mentor. He made people laugh.” Lee also starred in “Seesaw,” another Coleman work on which he collaborated with Michael Bennett of “A Chorus Line” fame.”

“I love doing what I’m doing now,” she said. She’s proud of her television and movie work, including a made-for-television film on the life of the star-crossed country singer Dottie West and a much-praised film “The Comic,” directed by Carl Reiner and featuring Dick Van Dyke. She also recently took up the role of Madame Morrible in the Broadway mega-hit “Wicked.”

“What I’m doing now, that was my first love, and being able to sing Cy’s songs, that’s special,” she said. She sang lines from “Hey, Big Spender,” the big number from “Sweet Charity,” another Coleman hit.

Kaitlyn Davidson, who’s starring in the title role of the Disney musical, “Cinderella” — coming to the National Theater Nov.18 through Nov. 29 — recalled working with Lee in a production of “Mame” in Pittsburgh.  “I had a small part and she was awesome,” Davidson said. “Working with her was like having a master class in musical theater.”

It’s a safe bet that you can catch her act online somewhere.  In her show, Lee often includes a song by Joni Mitchell, the mistress of cool sadness. It’s “A Case of You,” a song that’s full of rue, the kind of song that travels and changes through time and to listen to Lee grab it by the heart is to witness a transformation. She makes the song hers, and more importantly , yours, the way we live now. 

You hear and see the affinity with Coleman: one of a kind.

Mary Bird • November 6, 2015

“Imagine: Shakespeare” was the theme of the Harman Center for the Arts Annual Gala Nov. 1. Chairman of the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s board of trustees Mike Klein presented the Sidney Harman for Philanthropy in the Arts Award to JM Zell Partners, Ltd. for its continuing support of STC’s programs. Actress Helen Mirren came specifically to honor Julie Taymor, who received the William Shakespeare Award for Classic Theatre from Michael Kahn, artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company.

The performance began with selections from the company’s upcoming production of “Kiss Me, Kate” and was capped by original “The Lion King” cast member Tsidii Le Loka’s show-stopping rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagination.” Guests then continued on to the National Building Museum for dinner, dancing and other performances. The annual gala benefits the artistic and community engagement programs of the theater company. [gallery ids="102351,125510,125498,125515,125477,125520,125492,125469,125505,125485" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner •

On Halloween, event planner André Wells hosted his fifth annual costume party. Each year, the who’s who of Washington, D.C., gather and dress up creatively for this highly anticipated party. Spilled Milk catering and Design Foundry provided a pop-art atmosphere and fine cuisine to complement the “Imagine” theme of this year’s fete in the Carnegie Library at Mount Vernon Square. Wells’s grand entrance included the entire Eastern High School marching band with him as the drum major bursting through the crowd with excitement, which parted like the Red Sea to let the parade through the building.
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Gary Tischler •

The spirit of Halloween, situated as it is in the heart of fall, has a way of lingering amid the spidery white threads on bushes, the leaves falling and falling and piling up, the nights earlier and longer, the air a little damp and the vistas full of fading beauties everywhere.

It lingers also musically with the presence and presentation of choral and chamber music composer and performer Nicholas White and the Raven Consort, performing Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and other poems as part of the Dumbarton Concerts series Saturday at 8 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 7, Dumbarton United Methodist Church in Georgetown.

The musical work, a chamber union of words by Poe and music by White, a noted conductor, composer, organist, pianist, is making its second appearance at the Dumbarton Concert Series being first presented in February,  2013.   White, who is a native of England,  is currently Chair of the Arts and Director of Chapel Music at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, as well as being the Music Director of the Boston Cecilia.  One Washington critic called the work “an evening of sheer heaven in an acoustically ideal performing space.”

“The atmospherics, the candlelight, the intimacy, and the spiritual feeling at Dumbarton is, I think, perfect for Poe,”  White said.  “’The Raven’” is also an ideal poem for performance as music, as choral music for voices and instruments—strings and piano.”

White is very much the modern composer, not in the sense that his work is modernist in an atonal way—listening to “The Raven” is to experience rushes of lyricism throughout.  “I think perhaps there’s too much made of what modern classical music should sound like in contemporary times,” he said.  “And in this setting, this very intimate place, what you’ve accomplishes echoers and lingers, just like the poem.”

While the concert deals with other Poe poems—“Annabel Lee” and “The Bells”—the main work is a cantata for ensemble performance, voices, string quartet and piano, likely a first for any poem by the great American poet and prince of poetic darkness, who died at age 40.

Dumbarton Concerts commissioned the work, which proved to be very popular when first performed.  “You know, I think what happens with Poe, there’s a romanticism associated with his melancholy, he was an unhappy man, haunted, and his work is haunting.  But the music doesn’t have to be as dark as Poe’s life. ‘The Raven’ is a very musical poem, it’s a man calling out his anguish, his hope and feelings, confronting an apparition.  I kind of doubt that he was as miserable as all that’s been made out.”

While White has written big works, in  the “The Raven,” he said,  “I wanted to evoke the idea of a Victorian parlor, which quite often is how most people in the 19th century received their entertainment, gatherings in homes, or in churches, by natural light, it was very social, but also very cultural.”

“I think Poe had a unique appeal. He was enigmatic, lonely, often alone. He had this dark side,  which was mystical. He was, by all accounts, self-destructive, but what he created, the poetry especially, but also his stories, they endure. They remain, in their own way, modern, and it’s material ideally suited for music.”

White is something of a prodigy in the sense that he held his first organist and choir master position at the age of 15 in England, and became Organ Scholar of Clare College in Cambridge.  After coming to the United States, he held positions in churches, colleges and schools, including Washington National Cathedral as assistant organist and choirmaster, the Cathedral Choral Society, as keyboard artist, and music  director of the Woodley Ensemble.   He is the founder of the Tiffany Consort, an acclaimed group of eight singers, whose first CD “O Magnum Mysterium” was nominated for a Grammy.

= Nicholas White and the Raven Consort, performing Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and other poems as part of the Dumbarton Concerts series 8 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 7, Dumbarton United Methodist Church, 3133 Dumbarton St. NW; 202-333-7212.
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Ari Post •

In preparing to write a piece on a new exhibition, I often sit down with the catalogue after my visit and bookmark certain pages with cut-up bits of paper, on which I write little notes and reminders to myself. If someone were to stumble upon one of these marked-up catalogues, seeing it stuffed full of paper shreds with scribbled words — “Victor Hugo,” “divine bones,” “gothic horror!” — they might well believe its owner to have been a mild schizophrenic.

But if someone found my latest catalogue, from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s “Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty” (on view through March 20), they?d be staring down the barrel of something more akin to an art student?s nervous breakdown.

Irving Penn is one of the most iconic photographers of our time. Both a commercial and art­house sensation throughout a greater portion of the 20th century, he is among the rare breed of artists who successfully survived for his entire career in the narrow, highly combustible space between mainstream and critical popularity.

Penn began as an art student in 1930s Philadelphia. After working as a freelance designer, he did a brief stint in 1940 as the artistic director of Saks Fifth Avenue, before dropping it all to spend a year traveling and taking photographs around the United States and Mexico (some of these shots are included in this exhibition).

Returning to New York, Penn took a design position with Vogue magazine, where his director suggested he try working with photography. His first cover shot for Vogue hit the stands in October 1943. Penn was not quite 26 years old.

Over the next sixty years, Penn took some of the most unforgettable photos of our time, with a meticulous eye that redefined and obliterated the perceived limitations of photography as art. He ran the gamut of fashion photography, commercial and advertorial work, portraiture, photojournalism, formal studies of still lives and Romanesque nudes, and the lid-popping delirium of avant-garde experimentation.

He composed and lit every subject with equally compulsive attention, from Truman Capote and Alberto Giacometti to used cigarette butts that he had his assistants pick up off the street. He played with chemicals and exposures in the darkroom the way a painter experiments with glazing mediums, extenders and stabilizers. His tones were rich and warm, and his manipulation of light and atmosphere bore such lush and striking contrast that his subjects seem to flower from seeds of darkness.

As fine as his technique was, however, this isn?t what made Penn?s work so beloved and admired (any more than Picasso is remembered for his brushstrokes). There are a lot of technically talented photographers in the world. It is the spirit of what he captured through his lens, the ineffable artistic matter of both beauty and relevance, that left such an indelible mark across the ether of American iconography.

I suppose it is this that I am expected to decipher as a writer and an observer of fine art, but frankly I?m not sure that I can. So many artists attempt to do exactly what he did and fall short. To make work that is emotionally charged, aesthetically fresh, innovative and transfixing is a colossal achievement. To do it for over half a century is nearly supernatural.

Penn could maneuver so deftly through such vast stylistic ranges it is mind­boggling. In some cases, his still life studies — stacked marrow bones and steel blocks — are as buttery, geometric and tonally delicate as those painted by Giorgio Morandi. In others, such as in “Composition with Pitcher and Eau de Cologne” of 1979, they take on the overwrought bounty of 17th-century Dutch still-life traditions.

His studies of muddy gloves and cigarette boxes buzz with the textural amplitude of Chuck Close’s immense portraiture. His own portraits, however, range in style from nightmarish surrealism (“Two Rissani Women in Black with Bread”) to formal (his portrait of Giacometti is a master class in value study) to Winogrand-like cultural snapshots and smoky, dreamlike odes to women and haute couture (fashion has never looked better than through his lens).

If there is a shortcoming to Penn?s work, it is clear that he was better in a controlled studio setting, over which he could exercise his aesthetic governance, than the uncooperative, disorderly environment of the outside world. The few images within the exhibition of urban street scenes and natural environments — all of them from very early in his career — are oddly disconnected from their subjects.

There is a mystifying painterly essence to his photographs. Your eyes traverse his terrains of texture, gradation and tone not like a typical photographic image — where you seek to gather the necessary informational content of “what is it?” — but with the nervous curiosity of a painted abstraction, for which we have trained our minds to seize esoteric intellectual feelings as literally as physical ballasts.

In a nutshell, this is why my brain blew an art fuse. Not that I mind. In fact, it?s one of the greatest meltdowns I?ve ever experienced.

Georgetowner •

Julian Raby, the Dame Jillian Sackler Director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art, is the November speaker in Georgetown Media Group’s Cultural Leadership Breakfast Series. Born in London, Dr. Raby earned his doctorate in Oriental Studies from Magdalen College at the University of Oxford, where he was series founder and series editor of Oxford Studies in Islamic Art. He became director of the Freer-Sackler in 2002.

Tickets for the breakfast are $20 ($15 for George Town Club members). RSVP to Richard@Georgetowner.com. George Town Club, 1530 Wisconsin Ave. NW.

RSVP by November 3, 2015 by emailing Richard@georgetowner.com

Mary Bird •

“Creating New Horizons” was the theme of AFTA’s Oct. 27 event, hosted at the Society of the Cincinnati’s Anderson House. The late Lolo Sarnoff, a Swiss-German artist, scientist, entrepreneur and philanthropist, founded AFTA to bring the arts and provide life-enhancing and innovative experiences to impaired, vulnerable and isolated older adults. Olga and Bob Ryan co-chaired the evening. The Phillips Collection Director Dorothy Kosinski presented the seventh Annual Sarnoff Award to Trish and George Vradenburg for their dedication to addressing the impact of Alzheimer’s disease and their lifelong engagement in the arts. AFTA teaching artists provided entertainment. [gallery ids="102343,125569,125558,125564" nav="thumbs"]