Arts & Society

Mary Bird • October 17, 2012

upporters and friends from the arts, diplomatic, business and philanthropic communities celebrated the 20th anni- versary of Dana Tai Soon Burgess & Co. and the world premiere of Caverns at a Sept. 21 reception at George Washington University. The event was hosted by Ambassador of the Philippines Jose L. Cuisia, Jr. The acclaimed company has performed worldwide, often under State Department sponsorship. [gallery ids="101024,135806" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

George Vradenburg beamed as he hailed his wife Trish as “the most glorious playwright on the face of the earth.” The audience at the Phillips Collection fortunate to attend a reading of Act I of “Surviving Grace” on Oct. 10 clearly agreed. The play, cleverly infused with wit, was read in the capable hands of Diane Rehm, Marilu Henner, Dan Glickman, Meryl Comer, Terry Moran and Stephen Schmidt. The evening’s message hit home as George Vradenburg urged the rapt audience to talk about Alzheimer’s, give it wisdom and resources and activate personal and professional networks to mobilize the nation to seek a cure. The evening raised $150,000 toward that goal. [gallery ids="102487,120255,120250,120262" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

Sibley Memorial Hospital celebrated its 12th Annual Celebration for Hope & Progress at the Four Seasons Hotel on Oct. 13. The elegant black tie evening was chaired by Georgetowners Niloofar Razi Howe and David Howe. In her eloquent patient testimonial, CBS News’s Lara Logan said, “No one at Sibley ever says no.” That quality of caring was evident in the support that augured Sibley to triumph as a “national, innovative, commu- nity hospital” in the vanguard of health care. [gallery ids="102486,120279,120260,120272,120268" nav="thumbs"]

Nico Dodd • October 11, 2012

British singer-songwriter Donovan appeared at the Hamilton this Saturday, Oct. 6. The “Sunshine Superman” took the packed house on a trip down memory lane, recounting how the Carter family taught him clawhammer picking and how he joined the Beatles on their life-changing trip to India.

Donovan will be performing next Sunday, Oct. 14, at This Land is Your Land, A Woody Guthrie Centennial Celebration Concert at the Kennedy Center. The concert, in collaboration with the Grammy Museum, will celebrate the life and work of folk singer and icon Woody Guthrie with performances by John Mellencamp and many others.
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Mary Bird •

The star-studded “Women, Music and Diplomacy” Gala honoring former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the Kennedy Center on Sept. 23 showcased not only award-winning Jamison Ross, who took the $25,000 first place price and recording contract, followed by Justin Brown and Colin Stranahan, but an “only in Washington moment” of Tipper Gore and Albright jamming with the best. If that were not enough, actress Helen Mirren who quipped, “I can say that I know a queen when I see one” shared the stage with luminaries including Institute Chairman Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and special guests Chris Botti and Aretha Franklin, who garnered her well-deserved “Respect.” [gallery ids="101004,133558,133552,133548" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney • October 10, 2012

The 43rd Meridian Ball at the Meridian International Center off 16th Street gathered guests from the White-Meyer and ambassador-hosted dinners Oct. 14 and got down to real diplomatic fun: dancing, drinks and international desserts. Ball chair Mary Ourisman was joined by Susanna Quinn, Clara Brillembourg Chopivsky and Mary Kathryn Covert to direct another social smash for Meridian, a global leadership non-profit dedicated to strengthening international understanding. [gallery ids="100341,108698,108677,108694,108682,108690,108687" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • October 4, 2012

It was a Saturday night in Washington D.C., urban living night and day, street festivals, parades, the Nationals, the Redskins, concerts and plays and symphonies and singers, and restaurants galore, the weather being fallish, all sorts of things to do everywhere.

Some things go unnoticed, too, unheralded. At the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania, a group of people had gathered Sept. 22 to listen, to remember and honor another place, another time, in song and music in commemoration of the Lithuanian Holocaust Memorial Day.

At the start of the Jewish Days of Atonement, before their eyes, another city, a ghetto from a harrowing time of tragedy and loss, rose up, demanding that attention must be paid, that some things can never be forgotten and that the dead can be honored even now, when memories start to fade.

That was the lingering impression during the course of an evening when baritone Jerome Barry, the founder and director of the Embassy Series in Washington, accompanied by pianist Edvinas Minkstimas, with clear and deep emotion, and strong-voiced and passionate, gave voice to the long-ago Jewish residents of the Vilna Ghetto, with their music, their songs, their memories, almost all of them rounded up, oppressed, systematically shot and eventually transported to the death camps of Nazi-occupied Europe.

The Ambassador of Lithuania to the United States Zygimantas Pavilionis noted that in remembering the Liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto, both the victims of this tragedy of the Holocaust and the whole nation of Lithuania were profoundly affected. “The pain of the Holocaust is also the pain of Lithuania because we lost Lithuanian Jews with whom we had lived together for centuries and suffered together the occupiers of our land,” Pavilionis said.

Barry sang a powerful array of songs, some of them written during the time of the ghetto by the persons who lived and died there and others by survivors as well as songs and music that are intrinsic parts of Jewish cultural and spiritual life. Taken together, the songs re-created what was the emotional, the fear-filled, the still life-filled environment of the ghetto, in which eventually families disappeared daily, in which hundreds of individuals were rounded up regularly and shot, in which people took solace in song and music.

Barry, in moving from song to song, beginning with “Geto” which was written in the Vilna Ghetto by Kasriel Broyde, who continued to direct theatre revues and concerts, to a Jewish prayer expressing longing for the Holy Temple of Jerusalem, brought different skills and feelings to bear on each song. The tone gave us the beating hearts and the pain of the Vilna Jews, suffering under a cloud of daily losses and doom.

For Barry, it seemed that the songs—let’s say the song by the poet Abraham Sutskever, or a song by a young boy who won a composition competition in the ghetto, and the impassioned “Partizaner Lid,” which became an anthem for the underground resistance movement—inspired the best that he had to offer, with all of his gifts on display. He managed to make what was clearly personal for him, personal for everyone there, thus raising an occasion that in the hectic scheme of urban activity to the level of an important occasion both intimate and universal. The songs made you confront the lives of those that perished in terrible times.

By his performance, Barry enriched the material and gave the music the level of emotional authenticity and in the end, punctuated an evening that was more than just another Saturday night.

(Nearly 200,000 Lithuanian Jews died during the Holocaust.)

Gary Tischler • October 1, 2012

The Washington Post described Pat McGee this way: “looks like Brad Pitt, sings like James Taylor, sweats and struts like Springsteen. You can’t deny McGee’s charisma.”

Well, I’m gonna have to wait and see on that. But I did talk to McGee, a homegrown, in-50-different-ways guy, on the phone. He sounded to me like a guy you could sit with at a diner here, or where he lives in Rhode Island, or where he came from—Alexandria—or somewhere on the road, where he is often, performing as the Pat McGee Band with its brand of semi-country-rock-hard-driving-sound rock.

McGee will be here performing Friday, Sept. 28 (and opening the 2012 season) at the Music Center at Strathmore, something he’s been looking forwards to for a long while. (The Pat McGee Band concert will be preceded by a first-time ever tailgate party at 5:30 p.m. The concert is at 8 p.m.)

“Oh, man, yeah, I’ve been wanting to play here, because you hear about the acoustics here all the time,” McGee said. “Plus, it’s sort of a homecoming, like every time I play in the area, we play at Wolf Trap and the Barns and I’m from Alexandria. So, I think people are pretty familiar with us.”

Still, listening to McGee, who is 39 now, you hear a man with some life experience under his belt, a thoughtful guy who’s watched how the music business itself, and the world of performing has changed. “Oh sure, we all thought about being rock stars, you know playing the music the road, lots of fans,” he said. “And we’ve done that to some extent. But things change, you grow up a little. Plus, just the way music is sold and delivered—on the Internet, iTunes and on phones, downloading and everything, makes everything different. You have to keep up with that.”

McGee formed the band in the 1990s, and got it going good when the band was signed by Warner Brothers, from which emerged the album, “Shine,” in 2000 with such hit singles as “Rebecca” and “Runaway.” Another album, “Save Me,” followed in 2004 . There have been nine albums altogether, including the latest, “No Wrong Way to Make It Right,” a bitter-sweet album full of songs about youthful memories, relationships, the future, and full of guitar-driven rhythms.

There’s still a lot of youth in his songs and voice—and in photos and videos, he can play the part of a rocker, but a rocker who knows whereof he sings. He thinks about music—all kinds of music, a lot. To McGee, things have been about change, about moving forward, and still playing the music strong

“To me, performance is the most important part of music. It’s what I think we should respect the most,” he says. “I love performing on the road with other musicians.”

In that case, the Strathmore gig should be a hoot—he’s brought together a lot of people for the ride. “This is going to be like a reunion show, you know,” he said. There’ll be current and former Pat McGee Band members like John Small, Michael Ghegan, Patrick McAloon and Ira Gitlin. And there’s Eddie Hartness, the lead singer of Eddie from Ohio, and Nate Brown from Everything and John “Red” Redling from New Potato Caboose. He’s also invited former high school student musicians from his alma mater Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington, Va.

That’s right. McGee is a local boy in more ways than one.

Not only is he an O’Connell grad, an Alexandria native, he started out like a lot of would-be rockers, with a band playing in the Richmond area, but later, also up here in Georgetown. “We played in a place called Dylan’s Café . . . [near] where Café Milano is, in that courtyard. And then we played the Bayou. And, man, when we did that regularly, that’s when I knew we could make it.”

“No Way to Make It Right” is kind of a reunion effort, too, with old music comrades like Jason Mraz, Emerson Hart, Stephen Kellogg, Keaton Simons and Ryan Newell of Sister Hazel, and working with producer Doug Derryberry who produced the group’s first album. Plus the sound is both fresh and familiar. It’s the sound of folk instruments like acoustic guitar, mandolin, banjo, dobro, fiddle and bouzouki.

He thinks he’s mellowed, gotten a better bead on the future. He’s writing more and more, and the writing is mature. It has something to say and reacts to the things that happen in life—from “riding in my grandma’s Cadillac when I was a kid” to a song called “Elegy for Amy,” which he wrote early on his career. “See, when we were playing in clubs and bars, there’d always be this group of girls sitting up front, and then I went away for a while and when we came back, I noticed that this one girl named Amy, always a fan, always nice and enthusiastic, wasn’t with them. They told me she had died of a really fast-acting cancer. So, I wrote this song.” Then, there’s the powerful “Come Back Home,” written in 2009 and dedicated to the troops serving in the Middle East.” It was also dedicated to his drummer Christ Williams who died of a heart attack. Williams’s younger brother Blake was killed in Iraq.

McGee now lives in Barrington, R.I., a few blocks from his ex-wife with whom he shares custody of their three daughters, Juliet, 6, Elizabeth, 8, and Anna, 10. Both McGee and his ex have moved on to new marriages.

“I guess I’ve grown up some, being a parent and things that happen will do that,” he said. “I want to do more writing, writing country songs and I’ve been going back and forth to Nashville, trying to make that happen.”

But this Friday, he’s here. It will be, for the Pat McGee Band, like old times, from the beginning, the journey until now.

Ari Post • September 21, 2012

Unique things are happening in Georgetown’s gallery community. From microscopic sculptures, to affordable contemporary art sales, to themed shows devoted to relationships and natural wonders, it’s a great time to get involved with the local gallery scene before the fall art season kicks into high gear. Don’t miss these late summer exhibitions.

Addison/Ripley Fine Art
On view through Aug. 31, Addison/Ripley Fine Art is presenting a group exhibition guest curated by gallery artist Dan Treado. In his work, Treado uses squeegees, scrapers, and invented brushes to build up many thin layers of paint that produce taut, skin-like surfaces that have almost no evidence of a mark of the hand. Often individual images are combined to form a single larger painting. Treado also takes on interactive projects with friends and fellow artists and has worked on a few series with the theme: “All My Friends Are…” The latest project, titled “All My Friends Are Painters,” a continuation of this theme, is currently on view at Addison/Ripley. Artists include W.C. Richardson, Jeffrey Smith, Tom Bunnell, Steve Cushner, Colin Treado, Katherine Mann, Chris Gregson and Maggie Mitchell.

1670 Wisconsin Ave., NW – www.AddisonRipleyFineArt.com

Heiner Contemporary
“Winging It,” a group exhibition devoted to all things ornithological, has been extended through Aug. 24 at Heiner Contemporary. The exhibition takes as its starting point three works by American naturalist painter and ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson. Peterson’s 1934 field guide, “A Field Guide to the Birds,” was the first available to amateurs, which revolutionized and popularized bird watching through a new identification system. “Winging It” brings together Peterson’s bird studies with work by a new generation of artists who share his fascination and appreciation of the natural world and its feathered inhabitants.

1675 Wisconsin Ave., NW — www.HeinerContemporary.com

Parish Gallery
Parish Gallery is exhibiting the pea-sized work of Willard Wigan in “The Half Century Collection,” on view through Jan. 31, 2013. To the naked eye, Wigan’s work is virtually invisible. Yet when viewed through magnification, the effect is truly mesmerizing. Wigan’s micro-sculptures are so minute that they are only visible through a microscope—each piece commonly sits within the eye of a needle or atop a pinhead. To create his art, Wigan enters a meditative state in which his heartbeat slows, allowing him to reduce hand tremors and sculpt between pulse beats. Even the reverberation caused by outside traffic can affect Wigan’s work. So, he often works through the night when there is minimal disruption. Wigan has been honored throughout the world for his work and his exhibitions frequently sell out. Washington is lucky to have such an intimate venue available to view the work of this micro-visionary.

Canal Square, 1054 31st St., NW — www.ParishGallery.com

The Old Print Gallery
The Old Print Gallery, like Heiner Contemporary, is featuring a themed show devoted to nature’s beauty. “Water,” a group exhibit featuring prints by local, national and international contemporary artists, yields both personal and universal interpretations among artists, which turns into a very natural and effecting conversation with viewers. No matter how it is represented—abstracted or literal, meticulously detailed or vaguely suggested in loose and emotionally charged compositions—its capacity to mesmerize and captivate artists’ attention is undeniable. It’s a swell viewers are sure to get caught up in as well. “Water” is on view through September 14.

1220 31st St., NW — www.OldPrintGallery.com

Susan Calloway Fine Art
Susan Calloway Fine Arts is presenting a new exhibition tailored to new collectors and first-time art buyers. “You Too Can Buy Art: Affordable Art for Young Collectors” will open on Friday, Aug. 17, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibit features a selection of affordable contemporary and vintage artworks, hung in an assemblage style—in other words, there’s a lot to see. Since she opened her doors almost 20 years ago, Susan Calloway’s unswerving commitment to quality, along with a sharp eye for curating an array of periods and styles, has earned her a following. This exhibit will showcase the gallery’s taste in unique fashion—and allow anyone to join in the experience. The show runs through Sept. 8. To RSVP to the opening, call 202-965-4601.

1643 Wisconsin Ave., NW — www.CallowayArt.com
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Georgetowner •

On August 12, 2012, the Washington Harbour was transformed into an enchanted wonderland of dancers, music and festive costumes. Midsummer Night’s Dream event was hosted and organized by Art Soiree with the help of Nick’s Riverside Grill, Tony & Joe’s Restaurant, Roche Salon, and MRP Realty, the 3rd Annual Midsummer Night’s Dream Extravaganza was the perfect follow up from the Art Metamoprhosis Gala that took place June 14, 2012.