Arts & Society

Gary Tischler • March 26, 2015

Don’t be surprised this weekend if you should happen to be walking around downtown that you might hear the sound of a bagpipe playing.  Beyond that, it’s all surprise.

It won’t be the mournful tones of a pipe playing at a funeral, and it won’t be coming from a guy with a beard wearing plaid kilts,  marching in a parade.

It won’t really be a traditional bagpipe.   It will be a 34-year-old woman who lives in Greenwich Village, N.Y., and hails from Galicia, an autonomous community in northwest Spain, bordered by Portugal, Castilia and the Atlantic Ocean.  It will be Cristina Pato, a rising star bereft of genre except one: originality.

It will be Pato and her own ensemble, playing the gaita, a bagpipe instrument native to  Galicia, a place about which she’s almost as passionate as playing her music. 

In a concert presented by Washington Performing Arts, Pato will be at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue at 8 p.m Saturday,  March 14,  with her band,  playing a kind of music that you’ve never heard coming out of a bagpipe, although it resonates with all sorts of cross-cultural ideas and feelings.    

It will be lively, jazzy, energetic, make-you-want-to-dance and feel joy,  revved up, buzzed by drums and accordion and bass, and Pato’s own sharing, get-it-out there personality punctuated by high-pitched yells , and a long way from marching Scotsmen in tribal uniform.

“It’s the music I grew up with,” she said.  “The gaito is from Galicia, and so am I. “ The gaita is an instrument limited in notes, but in Pato’s hands and way of playing, the possibilities expand enormously.

Watch her on YouTube videos, and you hear her emitting high-note yelps.  “I sing,” she says, “but that’s not me singing. That’s a joyful exclamation. I like joy.”

The music in some ways, and certainly the instrument, sound ancient, which is appropriate, given that the people of Galicia go back to the beginnings of man.  There are Gaelic influences here, which seems only natural, but also Middle Eastern, Latino,  African, Miles Davis, the Chieftains and Paqo D’Rivera are here—and all the exotic and not exotic corners of a world.

“My parents moved to Venezuela at one point and came back to Galicia,” she said. “I try to go as often as I can.”

A conversation with Pato  is a little like her music. The talk is fast, quick-moving from here to there, and it touches on a lot of things: the diversity and variety of music,  her band, which is very diverse itself, her influences, but always you come back to the ideas of place, region, home, and how nations sometimes try to stifle diversity. 

“With Galicia, it was about language and independence,” Pato said.  “Often, when one group dominates a country, it tries to take away the identity, culture and especially language of smaller groups within that nation.”

Nothing like that can happen with Pato around.  She is passionate about her native home, but in the process, she makes it universal.  I mentioned my own Bavarian roots within the framework of Germany, that the people there were known for their music, their culture, for a little bohemian side and for festiveness.  “Sounds like Galicia,” she said.  Sounds Irish too, for that matter.

Less you think Pato and her music are somehow insubstantial, think again.  This is not her first appearance in Washington this year. She came only weeks earlier as part of master cello player Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, a much larger group with larger ambitions, a group in which she nevertheless manages to stand out.

Pato is part of the Silk Road Ensemble’s Leadership Council.  She has a Doctor of Musical Arts in Collaborative Piano from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and has Masters of Music in Piano Performance and a Masters of Music in Music Theory and Chamber Music  and a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Digital Arts (Computer Music).  She is also the founder and director of Galician Connection,  a world music forum celebrated annually at Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.  In Galicia, she and her husband, bassist Juan Pedron, also have a rock band.    She is also a fan of Schubert lieders.

“The piano and the gaita,” she said, “are two sides of me, which are not incompatible.”

In truth, when Pato talks about music , it is really world music—all the influences that flow into her play, playing what appears to be an unwieldy instrument as if it were a tango partner.  

Watching her—whether online or on stage—you get a sense of the music, of her personality as she moves through the vibrant music from her album “Migration.” National Public Radio called her music “wild and wonderful,” which is a nice description of a woman the Wall Street Journal called “one of the living masters of the gaita”. 

This is music that bonds people. “It is so easy to see how we are all connected and speak  the same language when it comes to the music,” Pato said. “The energy builds during a performance and I value the energy that flows between me, the audience and the other players. That is a moment of pure magic.

Magic she is.
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Gary Tischler •

Wolf Trap Foundation announced its first group of over 50 offerings for summer 2015 at the Filene Center in Vienna, Virginia, on the grounds of Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts.

Pop, rock, country, opera and classical, international music and dance groups and some things that go beyond category get their due.

Here’s an early sampling of what’s on tap this summer: You can go from pop-rock chanteuse Sheryl Crow in May to jazz legend Diana Krall in July, country stars Little Big Town in August, and classic rocker Santana, also in August.

There is no taste that’s unaccounted for. Wolf Trap will welcome “Weird Al” Yankovic, comic performer David Sedaris, the Cuban flavors of the Buena Vista Social Club, Frank Sinatra Jr., the brother-sister duo of Julianne and Derek Hough in “Move” and the National Symphony Orchestra – in residence at Wolf Trap – accompanying a screening of “Star Trek,” where you can say goodbye to the late Leonard Nimoy, aka Mr. Spock.

The Wolf Trap Opera lineup is Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” a concert opera performance of Verdi’s “Aida,” Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” and John Corigliano’s “The Ghosts of Versailles.”

Caitlin Franz •

The Annapolis Film Festival runs from March 26 through March 29, featuring more than 70 films at venues along West or Main streets and including St. John’s College and Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts. Visit annapolisfilmfestival.com for complete show times and film listings. Each screening will cost $12; a festival pass, $105.

The event will feature question-and-answer sessions and panel discussions. Don’t miss the Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Act of Killing,” which showcases members of an Indonesian death squad reenacting the murders they committed.

The Bethesda Film Fest takes place on March 20 and March 21 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., featuring five short documentaries produced by local filmmakers. The event includes a discussion with the filmmakers after the screening at Imagination Stage, 4908 Auburn Avenue. Tickets are available for $10.

The Environmental Film Festival provides you with nearly two weeks of film screenings from March 17 to March 29. More than 150 films will explore topics ranging from climate change to endangered wildlife to clean-water issues. The festival will feature several local, national and world premieres. Venues are all around the city from the National Arboretum to embassies and theaters.

Filmmaker Luc Jacquet (“March of the Penguin” and “Ice & Sky”) will present a survey of his films, including a new piece.

Visit DCEnvironmentalFilmFest.org for more information. Selected films will cost $10 to $12; others will be free. This year’s festival goes is partially funded by a $15,000 contribution from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival, featuring 16 films, will run from March 19 to March 29. Its opening night will take place at Theater J and the other screenings will be shown at Angelika Mosaic. Some films will have a focus on the Jewish faith, while others will offer non-sectarian views by Israeli artists. Each showing will cost $12, and a pass for the whole festival is $64.

Some highlights include “The Green Prince,” based on the memoir of Mosab Hassan Yousef, a Palestinian who spied for Israel, and “Above and Beyond,” which is about the early days of the Israeli Air Force.

Linnea Kristiansson • March 22, 2015

“Our embassy has gone from green to gold, and now platinum,” said Finnish Ambassador Ritva Koukku-Ronde, as she welcomed guests to a Jan. 28 party to celebrate the embassy’s singular honor.

The Embassy of Finland was awarded the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification – and is the first embassy in the United States to do so.

”All this reflects Finland’s strong commitment to environmental sustainability,” Koukku-Ronde said. ”We are a leading country in renewable energy and clean technology and are happy to share leadership in this area with our friends at the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki.”

The Finnish Embassy building is the second in the world to be awarded the LEED Platinum, which is the highest of four levels of certification. The other LEED-Platinum building is the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki.

Roger Platt, president of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), was at the event to present the LEED plaque to Koukku-Ronde.

Peter Stenlund, Secretary of State at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, was pleased with the Finnish Embassy’s top certification but also wanted a higher goal or rating to strive for. Perhaps, he said, it could be called ”Titanium” or ”Finlandia.”

On Massachusetts Avenue across from the Vice President’s Residence, the Finnish Embassy is known for its contemporary architecture and open design to the surrounding woods.

As an internationally recognized mark of excellence in green buildings, LEED’s success as a global green building tool is based on many factors but is primarily due to the leadership and commitment of volunteers, members and partner Green Building Councils around the world.

Introduced via a video greeting by the U.S. Ambassador Bruce Oreck, in Helsinki, the popular journalist-heavy rock-n-roll band, Suspicious Package, entertained the crowd, which enjoyed such specialities from Finland as herring, smoked salmon, duck liver pate and Finnish meatballs.

Gary Tischler • March 19, 2015

Washington Concert Opera  is known for putting on rare productions of sometimes legendary or little known operas.  “Guntram,” Richard Strauss’s first opera from 1894, certainly fits the bill, and it will be performed at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium Sunday, March 1.

Last produced for the first time in the United States 32 years ago, “Guntram” is a kind of two-for-the-price-of-one opera  in the sense that it presages both the great and later operas of Strauss, such as “Der Rosenkavalier,” and mightily echoes strong Wagnerian themes and operas.

“Guntram” premiered in May 1894 at the Grossherzogliches Hoftheater in Weimar, Germany, and later in Munich and Frankfurt—and then in Prague, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time. It was not considered a failure after its debut, which may account for the lack of later performances and interest.

In 1940, Strauss revised and trimmed the opera, making it  a more readily accessed work for audiences. But the plot—and the music—remains Wagnerian in scope and approach. Wagner was an idol of the young Strauss,  and Strauss took on the task of writing the libretto which is Wagner to the core. 

“Guntram” concerns a sweet, brave minstrel knight—middle Europe and the lands of Germania were full of such swains in medieval times—named Guntram, who sets out, as knights were wont to do, to promote kindness, peace and brotherhood. Instead, he manages to kill the husband of the woman he loves.  German to the core, Guntram renounces pleasures of the flesh and departs to contemplate and to suffer deep, guilty feelingst—perhaps not real life but operatic and surely Wagnerian.

Plot in opera isn’t everything and the Washington Concert Opera’s artistic director and conductor Antony Walker (who is also conducting “Dialogue of the Carmelites” at the Washington National Opera) saw a work that “heralds a new period in his [Strauss’s] compositional maturity.”

The Washington Concert Opera is presenting the 1940 version which trimmed 45 minutes of music and, according to Walker,  “turns what was a slightly unwieldy work into a tightly dramatic and beautiful opera. As well as using Wagnerian inspired leitmotifs and philosophical ideas, Strauss clearly presents us with the beginnings of a very personal operatic style: through his daring use of harmony, the virtuoso demands of the orchestra and the very “modern” idea that concludes the opera. Walker is in his 13th season at the Washington Concert Opera.

Because of the demands of the music, the Washington Concert Opera orchestra has been increased to 65 musicians.

The cast is led by artists who know their way around both Strauss and Wagner.  Critically acclaimed for heroic Wagner roles, tenor Robert Dean Smith takes on the title role, with soprano Marjorie Owens singing Freihild.  Smith, who lives in Switzerland,  starred at the 1997 Bayreuth Festival in “Der Meistersinger.”

This performance will be only the second American production: the first was a production by the Opera Orchestra of New York in 1983.

Donna Shor •

Shirley MacLaine, Wayne Newton and William Shatner headlined Palm Beach’s 58th Annual International Red Cross Ball. Highlight event of the “Florida millionaire playground’s” social season, the ball drew 700 supporters to the $1,000-per-plate dinner. Matching the theme, “Around the World in Eighty Days,” the pre-dinner poolside reception featured caviar among the 20 international culinary stations. Held at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, Trump and his wife Melania were honorary chairs. Ball proceeds help fund the organization’s vital work of preventing and alleviating human suffering in emergencies. [gallery ids="102010,135131,135128,135126,135124,135122,135120,135118,135116,135114,135112,135104,135110,135108,135106,135130" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

If you’re one of those people who drop by occasionally by plan, or just come as a tourist, the Kennedy Center often offers surprises of the sort that are both dazzling and a little dizzying.

That was the case on a cold and wet night when the center opened “Iberian Suite: global arts remix,” another one in a series of international festivals held yearly by the folks at the center, displaying to often wondrous effect the arts, culture, music, fashion, food, theater and dance arts of a particular region or country.

“Iberian Suite” is a vast, nearly month-long festival of the arts and many other things, focusing on the world-wide cultural offerings of Spain and Portugal, and how, Iberian explorers and artists had affected and influenced the rest of the world including the Americas, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, but had been in turn influenced by other cultures including those they encountered in their explorations.

If you just happened by on opening night or were there for the festival opening at the Eisenhower Theater, you could be forgiven if you ended up a little disoriented and pleased all at the same time. Right there in the nearly full length of the Hall of States, you were confronted with a spectacular fashion exhibition that told the story through a very cool display showing how the blue porcelain trade influenced fashion to this day, with works by Portuguese, Brazilian and Spanish designers.

While casual visitors as well as ticket-holders gawked at the mannequins decked out in 50 shades of blue, Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter greeted guests for a 400-people, sit-down dinner who were also attending the opening performance. Tourists mingled more or less with black tie Spanish and Portuguese officials and diplomats, mixed in with critics, a senator (Tim Kaine, Democrat from Virginia) and media types. The former King of Spain – the dignified, regal and tall Juan Carlos – was also in attendance at the performance.

The performance itself was one of those events that is designed to make you salivate for the whole ball of festival wax. The evening also gave you sense of the powerful palate of Iberian visuals (a big exhibition of Pablo Picasso ceramics has been installed upstairs) and performance arts.

There were national and international treasures on stages, complete with a narrated story, film and video clips (including a to-be-treasured video of cello master Pablo Casals in concert at the White House watched over by Jack and Jackie Kennedy). Casals’s widow, Marta Casals Istomin, was in attendance.

Casals was present, with remembered honor, and a performance by the intense international cellist, Amit Pellet, holding and playing Casals’s very own cello, was like a living artifact.

Iberian styles of music and performers and singers were on hand, conducting a highlight lesson in range. There was the powerfully emotive Mexican legend Eugenia Leon—dubbed the soul of Mexico—who sang with great passion and a kind of supernatural royalty. Fado, Portugal’s brand of soul music, was exemplified by Carminho (aka Carmo Rebelo de Andrade), who was a sleek onstage presence, sliding easily between the deeper aspects of Fado into pop.

Periodically, you heard the voices and saw videos of the imagery of writers and poets—the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Jorge Armado of “Donna Flora and Her Two Husbands” fame and others. The language and the voices rose rich as a memory of landscapes locked securely in the mind.

Groupo Corpo, a vivid, tony and relentlessly beautiful and energetic dance troupe from the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais wowed the audience with a perpetual motion dance coat of many colors.

If you wanted a historic moment, you got one when it was announced that the Spanish dancer Angel Corella, a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater, a native of Madrid and now the artistic director of the Pennsylvania Ballet, would be retiring and making his last public appearance. It was a little hard to believe that the 40-year-old Corella was ready to be retired or retiring—he and his beautiful sister Carmen Corella dance with power and grace, spinning, springing across the stage. That was some moment, with a little boy delivering flowers to both.

The finale offered everyone who had performed a chance to sing together, gathered around like a bouquet that launched into “The Impossible Dream,” from “Man of La Mancha,” an eternal Broadway hit show about the great Spanish literary giant Miguel Cervantes and his creation Don Quixote.

It was a Kennedy Center night, the rhythms of the world, moving musically and physically back and forth from Portugal and Spain around the world and back again. In the hall earlier, designers and women in sleek black patron dresses mingled among the blue dresses, taking selfies. Rumor has it that the King of Spain did, too.

Richard Selden •

Three special exhibitions in 2015 will mark the 25th anniversary of the National Gallery of Art’s photography collection. Two will open May 3: “In Light of the Past: 25 Years of Photography at the National Gallery of Art” (through July 26) and “The Memory of Time: Contemporary Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Acquired with the Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund” (through Sept. 7).

The third, which will open Nov. 1 and run through Feb. 28, 2016, is titled “Celebrating Photography at the National Gallery of Art: Recent Gifts.” Displaying works donated to the museum in honor of the anniversary, it is likely to include gifts that have yet to be made.

Though the collection was launched in 1949 with a spectacular gift – Georgia O’Keeffe’s donation of the “Key Set,” more than 1,600 photographs by her late husband, legendary photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz – the National Gallery began to actively collect photography in 1990.

The collection has expanded under curator Sarah Greenough to nearly 14,000 American and European photographs from 1839 to the present. Photographs are fragile and deteriorate when exposed to light. Most of the collection has never been exhibited and the works that have been exhibited have been on view only briefly.

Curated by Greenough and assistant curator Andrea Nelson, the exhibition of contemporary photographs will include works exploring the complexity of time, memory and history, by photographers including Sally Mann (b. 1951), Vera Lutter (b. 1960), Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948), Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953) and Sophie Calle (b. 1953).

Georgetowner • March 16, 2015

The Georgetown Garden Club has published “Gardens of Georgetown: Exploring Urban Treasures,” profiling 38 neighborhood gardens. The book’s author is well-known town observer Edith Schafer and the photographer is Jenny Gorman. For details, visit GeorgetownGardenClubDC.org, or call 202- 625-1175.

Mary Bird •

On March 6, the Embassy Series, a non-profit which Jerome Barry founded with the mission to unite people through musical diplomacy, presented internationally acclaimed Austrian pianist Till Fellner at the Embassy of Austria. The program featured works by Mozart, Bach and Schumann as well as a specially commissioned work dedicated to Fellner by contemporary composer Aleksandar Stankovski. The evening concluded with a buffet of Austrian treats prepared by the embassy chef.
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