Levine Music in the Air at Nat Geo
• May 11, 2015

Levine alumni Zak Sander, who has performed on Broadway, and Alyson Cambridge with the Metropolitan Opera headlined the program at the 2015 Levine Gala held at the National Geographic Society on April 29. Founded 40 years to bring the best music education through scholarships to children who could not afford it, today Levine has four campuses and offers instruction in 22 instruments and voice. Gala co-chairs Craig Benson and Robert Crawford thanked supporters for their commitment to the children of Washington and their dreams. [gallery ids="102078,134333,134332" nav="thumbs"]

White House Correspondents’ Weekend: More Mindful of Journalists, Still Fun
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While most of us knew (or even were on) the reception lists, we were reminded that the weekend was indeed about freedom of the press and White House correspondents. Speakers made a point to ask the audience not to forget imprisoned (and killed) journalists. While Canadian Ambassador Gary Doer advised party-goers, “Don’t peak too early,” President Barack Obama told those at the big dinner to keep martyred journalist James Foley and others in their thoughts. Yes, reporting the news can be hazardous to one’s health, as made more evident this year. Nevertheless, there is a time for some fun, and this was that weekend.

On Thursday, April 23, Story Partners hosted its second annual “Welcome to Washington: A Salute to Women in Journalism” at the home of Gloria Story Dittus. The United Nations Foundation hosted “The Global Beat,” a cocktail reception “celebrating journalism around the world.” Rock the Vote hosted a party with Fusion and Twitter at the Blind Whino.

On Friday, April 24, People and Time magazines held their annual reception at the St. Regis Hotel. Voto Latino’s sixth annual “Our Voices: Celebrating Diversity in Media” was again at the Hay Adams Hotel. Capitol File was the British Embassy again with comedienne Cecily Strong along the likes of cast members from “The Walking Dead” along with Valerie Jarrett and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. Party-goers made leather bracelets, too. The Hill newspaper, the Canadian Embassy and Extra co-hosted an energized party at the embassy on Pennsylvania Avenue. The New Yorker held its an annual reception at the W Hotel Rooftop. The New Media Party returned to bring together the next generation of media, entrepreneurs, policy makers and tech leaders at the Carnegie Library.

On Saturday, April 25, the annual Garden Brunch on R Street in Georgetown benefited Dog Tag Bakery and Blue Star Families. Pre-parties included the Washington Post, CBS News and Atlantic Media as well as U.S. Today. Then came the main event: the White House Correspondent’s Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton with President Barack Obama in attendance and comedian Cecily Strong telling jokes, too. After parties included the packed MSNBC after party at the U.S. Institute of Peace, the bright-white Reuters after party and the Bloomberg-Vanity Fair at the French ambassador’s house.

On Sunday, April 26, brunches included Politico at the Allbrittons’ house on Q Street in Georgetown, CNN in an alley off Connecticut Avenue and the classic Reuters get-together at the Hay Adams, overlooking Lafayette Square and the White House. Plus ca change . . .
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Studio’s ‘Murder Ballad’: Lost Love in Your Face
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Hey, guys and gals, looking for something new, something to do, maybe hang out in a bar you’ve never been in before?

Check out “Murder Ballad,”  the new show at Studio Theatre’s Stage 4, described as an “immersive rock musical experience,” which has been extended to May 16.   

“Immersive” experiences aren’t exactly new, although they’re primed to be part of the ideas percolating as theaters look for ways to bring in new audiences.  This one is a kind of rock opera or rock melodrama, mostly sung to music played by a stage-bound, sort-of, looks-like-feels-like rock band. It is surely immersive and thick with ambiance.  The audience gets to order drinks and sit at tables, munch on popcorn while bartenders fix drinks, wield a bat, and all sorts of faded scribblings, graffiti and posters reel you in. The place, with a bright green pool table at the center where the characters in the play often come together or circle each other in a contemporary take on love gone bad, love recovered, love gone bad again with a bad outcome for somebody.  It is, after all, called “Murder Ballad.”

I liked being there, truly—a beer, popcorn, urban audience and couples, young, younger and old and older, too, recalling the bad old days when 14th Street was a mess and not the restaurant-teeming, busy thoroughfare that it is today. Being at this show is a great opportunity for people watching, and the characters often stomp off angrily, and reappear elsewhere, from behind the bars, or off to the side or through the entrance.

Summing up quickly, “Murder Ballad,” set in New York,  has as its center the fortunes and misfortunes of a slightly lost, appealing young girl named Sara, who strikes tough poses to avoid being hurt.  She hooks up with a charismatic bartender  and  someday bar owner, named Tom,  a guy who’s always been catnip for the girls, especially wounded sparrow types like Sara.  They meet, and they hook up, passionately, until Tom, sensing that the word, “love,” might come out of his mouth by accident any day now, dumps her.

Horribly wounded, Sara is at sea, feeling hopeless, until along comes the appealing, caring Michael, a guy who really cares and has a real job, to boot.  They meet, they love, they marry and they have a child. Soon, however, a restless Sara starts to pine for and remember Tom.  “He made me weep,” she sings, as if this were a good thing.   Predictably, Sara and Tom meet, they hook up, she feels horribly guilty. Michael feels betrayed. Tom suddenly thinks Sara is the one that got away, the love of his life, and sings, ominously “You Belong to Me”.

The story is told almost entirely through music, driving, often soaring songs like “Answer,” “You Belong to Me,” “I’ll Be There,” “Built For Longing,” “Sara” and others.   The story’s driven by a kind of narrator played by the big-voiced Anastacia McCleskey,  who is always there.

But truth be told, it’s Christine Dwyer who carries the show, musically, dramatically, as Sara. It’s Sara’s story after all, and Dwyer, slight of build, often guilt-driven, makes her presence  felt. She can belt a ballad and carry a musical load, but it’s more than that.   She’s one of these young female performers who’s got chops and charisma, a deceptive, and ultimately beguiling kind of charisma that touches heart and soul

Tammar Wilson, who’s the nice guy Michael, does gentle and angry equally well.

The show—conceived by and with book and lyrics by Julia Jordan and music by Julian Nash and directed with verve by Studio Theatre’s artistic director David Muse—is appealing enough.  You even care about the people, and the ambiance alone is worth the price of the ticket.

This is not exactly new—the 1960s were full of shows that almost demanded that you be a part of the show, or occasions where body contact with the cast occurred, as it did with “Hair,” where cast members clambered over seats and ran through the aisles   Studio in the past has used its new spaces the same way. There was a terrific show a number of years ago about Jack Kerouac and the beats,  played out in a bar.

I’d like to have seen—not just immersion—but a little more direct contact from the cast with the audience.  I don’t mean physical contact, but playing to the audience.   If you’re this close to the action,  things ought to be a little more personal or reactive.  Opportunities sweep by, untaken. 

But there is room for surprises.  My lips are now sealed.
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Fulfilling Promises
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America’s Promise Alliance held its “Promise of America” Awards at the Howard Theatre April 15 to honor who fulfill the Five Promises for children and youth in their communities and in our nation: “Caring Adults, Safe Places, a Healthy Start, an Effective Education, and Opportunities to Give Back.” Honorees included Randall Stephenson of AT&T, Inc., Sen. Lamar Alexander, Wes Moore, founder of BridgeEdU, and Anthony and Beatrice Welters, co-founders of AnBryce Foundation. [gallery ids="102060,134538,134536,134534,134532,134530,134528,134524,134526,134539" nav="thumbs"]

Adrienne Haan’s ‘Berlin to Broadway-TransAtlantic’
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The tribe of artists and performers that belong to the family of cabaret singers is always multiplying, adding to a roster that is full of its share of eccentrics, originals, and unforgettables.

You might want to add chameleons to that category, a quality firmly embraced with pizzazz by the self-described chanteuse Adrienne Haan who is brought her show “Berlin to Broadway-TransAtlantic” to the Embassy of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg Saturday at 7:30 as a sparkling and unique part of the Embassy Series season. The remarkable Haan—who is part singer, part actress, part story-teller, multi-lingual and singular—presented a joy-ride through a variety of musical side-streets and international highways, accompanied by the internationally acclaimed pianist and conductor Richard Danley.

The program spoke to Haan’s chameleon musical bent—running through time, space and place from 1920s Berlin, a selection from a full bag of Broadway musical songs, French chanson from the tribe of Jacques Brel and Edith Piaf, the American Songbook, sung in five different languages, including Yiddish and Hebrew.

There’s a breathless quality to that lineup which says a lot about how Haan approaches the often conflicted world of cabaret, whose inspirations seem to come from everywhere at once.

She called us from Germany this week, after getting over a severe bout with flu. “Fever, coughing, the whole nine yards,” she said. Although she was born in Essen, Germany, and holds dual citizens ship with Germany and Luxembourg, it’s very difficult to spot an accent over the phone. You suspect that she’s mastered idioms and slang with a remarkable naturalness.

“It’s very hard to pin point what a cabaret singer is, or cabaret music, sometimes, especially today,” she said. “You always think of Marlene Dietrich singing “Lily Marlene”, of course and the world of 1920s Berlin, where it truly began. But there is so much else. And today, really, you have so many people out there who basically have a following of their friends, they have a biography of sorts, but that’s it. That’s not cabaret.

“Personally, I like to think of myself a chanteuse, a singer, a particular kind of singer,” she said. “I am an actress, I’ve been in musicals, in the theatre. So in this way you are a story-teller.

I’d add that she is a pro, in the sense that she has respect for the world of cabaret, that it should be done right, and with a certain spirit that also respects the audience, is demanding of it and at one with it. “The perfect audience is one that appreciates what you’re doing,” she said.

This was first performance—“it’s a debut—in Washington. She was a master of setting in the sense that she is at home any place where she performs, with a symphony orchestra quartet, a band of her own in an edgy New York Club, or a setting like the Luxembourg embassy, which was up close and personal and intimate. No problem—she at turns charmed, flirted with, seduced and made close personal contact with the audience.

Check her out on You Tube and her own website—you get a sampling of Adrienne Haan in full dudgeon, knocking it out of the concert hall in front of a symphony orchestra in bright red, dazzling gown, or singing with a spotlight, dark background, starting with a mask. Doesn’t seem to matter where she is—she traps and seduces her audience to the point of ownership. She is a mezzo, but with her languages, her range, she can go long vocal distances to everywhere. She is a bit of a mugger in both sense of the word, that face and blue eyes bite into the song and she sings it as it is.

One critic called her a time traveler and I suspect that’s true—she has a keen interest in history, in poetry, in what history has wrought in culture. “When you consider Berlin in the 1920s, its about the history of the times, the rise of the Nazis, but also the music itself.”

Being a chameleon is not about looks, or whimsy, but about making adjustment with ease—from being totally serious, to being funny, to going from light to heavy. She can change her looks for sure, but the steadying part of her appearance—I’m guessing here—is an aspect of unforgettableness.

She is a graduate of the American Academy of Arts, and she and her husband live in Harlem, “which we love.” “New York,” she says, “isn’t really an American city, it’s a world city.”

She also performs in the New York world, especially at the Cutting Edge, an eclectic club that’s very much a reflection of her personality. Eric Clapton plays there in May. She has brought her show “Rock le Cabaret!”, a program of French chansons by Brel, Piaf and Aznavour, with a rock beat. “It’s different, for me too, but it’s a different way of looking at and doing the music.”

Her program at the Luxembourg Embassy seemed a reflection, of her taste, her life experience, the music she loves, the musical challenges she’s faced. It careened from Weimar to Broadway, to 1930s Hollywood, to the deepest part of Piaf, , to a burst of Brel, even an Ute Lemper composition.

That was Adrienne Haan, original, a story-teller and truth teller, a chameleon: unforgettable.

Montmartre Magic
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The Washington Home and Community Hospices waved “the Magic of Montmartre” for its annual benefit April 11 at the Embassy of France with can can girls, singer Robin Phillips and violinist Rafael Javadov. [gallery ids="102061,134520,134523,134522" nav="thumbs"]

Patrick O’Connell’s ‘Magnificent Obsession’
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Two bastions of luxurious living came together on April 20 as chef Patrick O’Connell launched his newest book “The Inn at Little Washington: A Magnificent Obsession” at Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens. Joyce Conwy Evans, the British “fairy godmother” and interior designer of the inn, was the guest of honor. One guest quipped that Evans had only two clients: O’Connell and the queen. “Too much is just right,” said O’Connell, who thanked Ellen MacNeille Charles, Hillwood board president emerita, and Hillwood President Nancy Appleby. (Charles is the granddaughter of Marjorie Merriweather Post, who bought Hillwood in 1955 and then turned it into a museum.) The Inn at Little Washington’s legendary cuisine was well represented with lobster and caviar.
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Princess Michael of Kent Feted Royally & Hungarian Honors
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On April 24, Aniko Gaal Schott and Nash Schott elegantly hosted their friend of long standing, Princess Michael of Kent, at their home on the occasion of her visit to Washington to launch the first two volumes of her Anjou trilogy. The princess lectures on historical topics and regaled the guests with the story of Yolande of Aragon, a powerful and complex woman of her time. Several days later, Hungarian Ambassador Dr. Réka Szemerkényi bestowed the Order of Merit of Hungary, Officer’s Cross, on Aniko Gaal Schott for her outstanding achievements in promoting Hungarian-American relations. A tearful Schott rejoined, “I carry Hungary in my heart.” [gallery ids="102079,134330,134331" nav="thumbs"]

May 7 Cultural Leadership Breakfast: George Washington University President Steven Knapp
• May 7, 2015

Wrapping up Georgetown Media Group’s spring round of Cultural Leadership breakfasts, Dr. Steven Knapp, president of the George Washington University since 2007, will speak the morning of May 7 at the George Town Club about the university’s expanding activity in the arts, exemplified by the bringing of the Textile Museum and the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design into the GW fold. Until recently, the District’s largest institution of higher education had not positioned itself as a leader in the arts.

Dr. Knapp will speak at 8:30 a.m. and a light breakfast will be served. Admission costs $15. For more details and to RSVP, contact Richard Selden at richard@georgetowner.com.

Kesha Returns at the Black Cat
• May 6, 2015

Pop music can be fickle game for its many princesses. While Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry have hit seemingly unreachable heights, others, including Lady GaGa and Rihanna, are trying to reinvent themselves in different genres (in RiRi’s case, by throwing an eclectic mix of songs at the wall and seeing what sticks, judging by early singles off her eighth album) to avoid the pop industry’s cannibalization of its stars, which seems to happen when every time an album produces only one hit. The original princesses of the modern era, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, still manage to cash in on their celebrity and land songs on the radio sporadically but haven’t had big hits in years. Meanwhile, upstarts like Charli XCX, Kiesza and Tinashe are chasing stardom by reviving old pop tropes, often to the extreme. Lorde and a few others are just making it up as they go.

That’s what Kesha, America’s favorite valley girl turned ratchet, did when she debuted as Ke$ha in 2010 with infectious dance-pop tracks on which she sang, rapped and shouted about drinking, dancing, hooking up and dicks (among other things) in a language that young people ready to party were attuned to.

The star’s world has been tumultuous of late; after rising to the top of pop with her valley girl gone ratchet routine in the early 2010s, Kesha went to rehab for an eating disorder, decided to ditch the dollar sign from her moniker and filed suits against her long-time collaborator and pop music phenom Lukasz Gottwald (the producer better known as Dr. Luke) of rape and emotional abuse.

Amid controversy, Kesha surfaced a few weeks ago at a Haim-led charity event in Los Angeles where she dressed down and performed a stripped version of “Your Love Is My Drug” with the increasingly prominent pop-rocker sisters.

Then, out of nowhere, Kesha announced she’d be playing at the Black Cat, a grungy 750-capacity venue she played years ago on her rapid ascent to stadium and pavilion stages. Fans eager to see a pop princess from the past in an intimate venue snapped up the tickets in minutes but nobody could explain why she was playing such a small show. Would she have new music to play? Would she unveil a new persona as an artist sans-Dr. Luke? Would the show be more acoustic and less electronic like her performance with Haim?

The answer to all of those questions turned out to be no. Kesha played an all-out, bombastic dance-pop show replete with beefy and glistening bare-chested male back-up dancers, sequin leotards (yeah, that’s multiple), thumping backing tracks, animal costumes, choreography, confetti cannons and the singer’s bouncing blown-out blonde mane. Sure there were a few things that one wouldn’t necessarily expect at the show, like Kesha doing pretty impressive acoustic covers of Chris Brown (“Loyal”) and Nick Jonas (“Jealous”) and drag queens taking over the stage for the encore. But even those moments demonstrated to the crowd, consisting mostly of white women and gay men no younger than 19 and no older than 30, that this was the same Kesha they partied to and fell in love with during high school and college, just on a smaller stage.

Not that the size of the stage was a bad thing. Fans relished in the fact that they made it to this intimate show, where they could take close up smartphone shots of a certified popstar, who would notice their elaborate outfits (their “stockings ripped all up the side,” if you will) and glittered eyes. Every member of the audience had a legitimate chance to get sprayed by beer coming out of Kesha’s mouth or catch a sweaty shirt or headband tossed off the stage by the songstress.

But there were moments, or rather songs, where Kesha didn’t completely command the small crowd. The volume at the Black Cat was lower than it typically is, and as Kesha worked her way through lesser hits and the aforementioned covers, dancing slowed, talking ramped up and phones starting popping out of pockets, for photos or maybe some pre-“Tik Tok” texting. It was a bit depressing; fans who were able to get hands on tickets through tight planning, radio contests or expensive resale ended up talking and using their phones during songs they weren’t 100 percent familiar with.

Despite some in the crowd’s inattention, Kesha put on a fabulous show. She had ferocity in her eyes and swagger in her demeanor as she danced, marched, jumped and bounded on stage, her voice sounding almost exactly how it does on her records.

She was a force to be reckoned with. And when she whipped out the big hits, everyone turned up and became an ardent fan, shouting every word while dancing madly, arms in the air feet off the ground. First came “We R Who Who We R” and “Blow” early in the set, then “Blah Blah Blah” led into the classic “Your Love Is My Drug.” The show culminated with “Tik Tok,” Kesha’s debut song, before she left the stage only to return with drag queens for “Die Young” and then “Timber” sans-Pitbull wearing a sequined American flag bandana. Kesha left the crowd sweaty, drunk and blown away.

Where Kesha is headed beyond a slew of secret one-off American club shows is unclear. But her show at the Black Cat exemplified that she’s still got the star power America fell in love with in the first place. If she wanted to, she could probably bank off of college nostalgia for a few more years before figuring out something else. More likely though, the show indicated the princess’ (valiant) return to the volatile world of pop music that chewed her up and spit her out. Now, she just needs a new hit.