Arts & Society

Georgetowner • April 9, 2015

On March 24, the City Club of Washington and Christine Warnke hosted the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women celebrating International Women’s Month and honoring people and organizations that empower women through education and leadership training. Since 2002, the Initiative has partnered with U.S. colleges to provide undergraduate degrees and leadership training to 67 Afghan women who now hold leadership roles in the economic and social development of their homeland.
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Georgetowner •

The seventh annual D.C. Capital Stars at the Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts April 1 brought in more than $1.1 million to support its services, including high school and college counseling college scholarships. Yousef Al Otaiba, Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United States, was the presenting sponsor of the event. First prize winner was dancer Jiamond Watson, 17, a junior attending Duke Ellington School of the Arts: he won the $10,000 scholarship grand prize. Donald Graham, D.C.-CAP founder and former board chair, was given a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Celebrity Judges headlined an “Idol”-style competition: audience members voted using handheld devices and the celebrity judges commented on each performance. Winners were determined 50 percent by judges’ input and 50 percent based on audience vote. Judges were: Tony-winning tapper Savion Glover, Broadway and film star Alyson Reed, musician and long-time Billy Joel bandmate Mark Rivera.

The winners — 10 finalists, singers, dancers, and musicians, ranging in ages 15 to 17 from D.C. public and public charter schools — performed and competed for college scholarships.

1st prize winner: dancer Jiamond Watson, 17, a junior attending Duke Ellington School of the Arts, won the $10,000 scholarship grand prize.

2nd prize winner: rapper-singer-ukulele player Carlos Hood, 18, senior at Woodrow Wilson High School, won a $6,000 scholarship.

3rd prize winner: pianist Jennifer Li, 17, senior at Woodrow Wilson High School, won a $4,000 scholarship.

The remaining runners-up each received $2,000 scholarships. (View audition videos and read essays written by the top 10 finalists at dccap.org/gala.)

The evening’s special honoree: Donald Graham, founder of D.C. Capital Stars and former board chair, was given a Lifetime Achievement Award for “making tens of thousands of D.C. students’ college dreams come over the past 16 years.”

ABC7/WJLA News anchor Leon Harris was master of ceremonies.
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Robert Devaney • April 4, 2015

The new showroom for Thos. Moser Handmade American Furniture was celebrated March 19, as guests and clients got to meet company founder Thomas Moser. The happy crowd, which included Maine’s congressional delegation, sang “Happy Birthday” to Moser, who just turned 80. Next to the C&O Canal, the store is only doors away from its earlier showroom at 33rd & M Streets. [gallery ids="118134,118127,118123" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • March 31, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

= Was chorus master of the Washington National Opera.

= Prepared the annual Handel Festival.

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

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

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

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

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

Mary Bird • March 26, 2015

On March 16, the Community Foundation for the National Capital held “Here for Good,” a one-of-a-kind fundraising event at the Mead Center for American Theater. Today, the foundation is the largest funder of nonprofits in and around Washington, D.C. Performances included the Double Nickels Theatre Company and Metropolitan Ballet Theatre and Academy. Proceeds benefit the Community Foundation’s Fund for Greater Washington, which supports community investment to make the region “a place where opportunity is available to all.” [gallery ids="118102,118119,118113,118108" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner •

To highlight the 2015 theme of International Women’s Day, “Make It Happen,” Gayela Bynum, who founded the nonprofit We Will Survive Cancer to support the families of cancer patients, invited author Ann Atkins to speak at a charity brunch at the Willard InterContinental March 8. The author of “Eleanor Roosevelt–Unleashed” and “Golda Meir–True Grit” traced similarities in the lives of the two leaders who evidenced early activism. With high energy, integrity and devoid of arrogance, both Roosevelt and Meir advanced international justice through their often controversial actions.
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Georgetowner •

Maha El-Khalil Chalabi, founder of the Tyre Foundation, briefed supporters of the ancient city of the UNESCO site in Tyre, Lebanon, Feb. 27 at the National Press Club. Chalabi also spoke about the American Committee for Tyre Symposium to be held June 3 at the Library of Congress.
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Gary Tischler •

I went to see the Washington National Opera company’s production of “The Flying Dutchman” at the Opera House recently.   The joint was jumping.  A fashion exhibition lined the entrance, glittering with blue, part of the Kennedy Center’s Iberian Festival of Spanish and Portuguese art, as was a live performance at the Millennium Stage.

Part of me was thrilled by the crowds, not only for the opera, but also the exhibitions and performance for the  center’s yearly arts festival focusing on a nation or region, which were part of former Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser’s tenure. 

A part of me was also a little anxious. I had just finished reading “Curtains? The Future of the Arts in America,”  Kaiser’s latest book, a cautionary tome and vision of a troubled, struggling  American arts world now and 20 years hence. 

Kaiser, now the director of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland since last year, posits the problems now facing the American arts community, envisions that world 20 years from now and offers some solutions, one of which is for arts leaders to acknowledge and embrace the new technology, which is, for all intents and purpose, both the new delivery system for art and a road to new, more intimate venues.

“I don’t mean to make anybody depressed,” Kaiser said in a telephone interview with the Georgetowner.   “I’m not  suggesting that there will be no more art. I  am suggesting that the arts—performance art institutions and venues, as well as museums—will be very different, as will audiences.  You and I, and people of a certain age and generation, we’re used to consuming art in a certain way. You plan, for instance, to go to an opera at a certain time, on a certain night. You get dressed for the occasion,  same as you do for a play, a dance performance, a symphony orchestra concert or a jazz concert.”  

“But the newer generations don’t necessarily do things that way,” he continued. “They don’t prefer to do things that way. I travel all over the country, and I spend a lot of time in airports and I see how many people in airports are on their phones or tablets, often watching a show, a movie, listening to music.”

Kaiser has seen that many arts organizations are already heading toward using the new technology to build and grow audiences.  “It’s expensive, too expensive, to go to the opera, to concerts, and the theater,” he said. “More and more opera performances, for instance, are now being screened in movie theaters .”

Critics and arts writers—myself among them—often tout the fact that a  play, a concert and an opera, are authentic experiences of engagement with an audience, impossible to replicate on a screen.  Kaiser probably agrees with that, but he also suggests that new audiences don’t really care how they view or engage performance art or the visual arts, for that matter.   While art enthusiasts can debate authenticity all they want, the truth of the matter is that exhibitions, plays, operas, dance, music and the like can be experienced in different ways, more fragmented, and less expensively.

“Companies, producers and managers, in the past, faced with economic constraints and trouble, have tended to think they have two choices—raise prices or cut back on spending and resources, and produce tried-and-true popular projects that are popular with audiences,” Kaiser said.

In terms of content, Kaiser, who has warned about the high cost of tickets before, also insists that producers and managers need to raises their sights and be more adventurous.  “You don’t get new audiences with old works and hope that it works,” he said. “Performance arts companies need to do new work to be viable and vital. They need to take risks, engage with the world, challenge the audience. That’s what will bring in new audiences.”

But it won’t be easy. The odds, he suggests, are daunting, for several reasons. 

“The generations now coming into their own, into theater-going age and capability, are woefully under educated in the arts,” Kaiser said. “The emphasis on arts and culture in our public and private school system has declined dramatically. They come to the cultural marketplace absent a body of knowledge and desire.”

The decline of media outlets—and especially newspapers of old, which usually featured knowledgeable, professional and opinionated arts critics—is also a critical factor in the worrisome decline and problem of the arts in America, according to Kaiser. 

Also a factor is the erosion of a long-term donor class. “That generation of donors whom you could count on is dying out and donors have to be found from a new generation,” he said. “This generation, it’s been said, is more interested in politics or causes.  And if they get involved, they won’t do it at the level the arts are used to having from donors.”

Kaiser is concerned, not so much about large institutions like the Kennedy Center or the Metropolitan Opera, (although major opera companies and orchestras face the additional problem of labor costs and have been plagued by strikes), but about mid-level groups and institutions which are struggling to adapt and compete.   “I think you’ll find that large institutions will engage with, adapt to and use the new technology,” he said. “It’s already happening, with screenings and streaming of live performances. But smaller groups might not be able to compete.”

Kaiser’s thin book is pragmatic, structured and thick with facts, ideas and anecdotes, including telling and knowing observations about technology—and oddly, sports, where he finds similarities.

“Think about what happens, how sports have grown into this kind of eco-system that embraces delivery, technology and changing attitudes in the fans,” he said.   “This may happen to the arts to—what if we have an audience that doesn’t want to hear an entire symphony or opera, but just the highlights,” he said. “This is what happens in football and sports now.”

Much of what Kaiser talks about in his book—and I couldn’t recommend it more to anyone interested in the arts,  in plays, in music, in live performances—seems already on the horizons.  You see and hear more and more operas in English, there’s Opera in the Outfield, a screening of a WNO Opera at Nationals Park,  an emphasis on new and shorter work, the cross-pollenization of genres, the uses of add-ons in theater. Many theaters now add interactive aspects to plays—post-play discussions, quizzes, trivia games in the lobby and so on.

These days, Kaiser travels extensively. He still lives in Washington and is proud of his tenure at the Kennedy Center.  “I certainly miss the people I worked with there,” he said.  He writes a blog for the Huffington Post on topics  that range across the whole spectrum of the arts.

From the bird’s eye view of Washington, where the arts seem, with some notable exceptions, for the most part to be flourishing, Kaiser’s book is a warning about a rapidly and dramatically changing arts world .

There may come a time when “Dutchman” and Iberian nights — or the time in 2007 when Kaiser and Michael Kahn, the artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company,  pulled together people and places of the D.C. arts community into a six-month “Shakespeare in Washington’ Festival — will be a fond memory.

Kaiser, who steered the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, the Royal Opera House and the American Ballet Theatre as well as the Kennedy Center, is more optimistic  and pragmatic than nostalgic by nature.  “I’m not predicting the end of the arts, “ he said.
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