2011 Fall Opera Preview

May 3, 2012

Washington experienced a wrenching and rare one-two weather punch in one week — an unprecedented earthquake followed by a hurricane.
The Washington National Opera Company had a year that was almost as momentous and earthshaking, but with much more salutatory results. In 2011, the company saw the resignation of its long-time maestro, Artistic Director Placido Domingo. This was followed this summer by the announcement of an Affiliation Plan by the WNO with the Kennedy Center, a far-reaching development that brings a great deal of stability, while adding the musical jewel that is the WNO to the Center. In addition it was announced that Francesca Zambello, a renowned director familiar to Washington audiences, was appointed the WNO’s artistic Advisor. No replacement has yet been named for Domingo.
That’s a lot of change and upheaval for any artistic institution, yet the WNO is preparing to start the 2011-2012 season with its production of Puccini’s “Tosca” Sept. 10 in an upbeat, high-energy mood.
“Obviously, the affiliation is a win-win for everyone,” said Christina Scheppelman, director of artistic operations for the WNO. “It’s been in the works and talked about for a long time and that makes it an exciting time for us. But the 2010-2011 season has been planned four to five years in advance and was in place already before all of this came about.”
With “Tosca” to be followed by Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” in November, the WNO starts its season with two operas that are more operatic than most. “They’re very dramatic operas, they’re full of the kinds of devices and characters with over-the-top situations with grand, familiar, classic music and singing and arias,” Scheppelman said. In other words, they’re full of murder, tragedy, great passion and sacrifice and larger-than-life heroines and villains, not to mention suicide, madness and other sundry deeds on wind-swept battlements.
It’s familiar stuff, to be sure, and familiarity and popularity sometimes grates on critics who want to see more cutting edge stuff. “Our first responsibility,” Scheppelman said, “is to our audiences, and to make sure that we deliver artistic productions of the highest quality. So, yes, you’re going to see a ‘Madame Butterfly,’ but people forget that we’ve also, successfully I might add, done terrific productions of ‘A View from the Bridge’ and ‘Billy Budd’ among other more contemporary operas.”
Michael Mael, the newly appointed executive director, hailed WNO’s new affiliation. “It gives us all the resources which the Kennedy Center can bring to bear, plus we have the center’s president, Michael Kaiser, who has run an opera company, who has a great passion for opera, who is an exceptional representative and leader for the arts world-wide.”
“My responsibility is to make sure we have a world-class company and that we never sacrifice artistic excellence,” Mael said. “I came to opera relatively late, but when it happened, I fell in love with it”
Many of the programs put in place by Domingo remain including the Celebrity Artist series, which won’t begin until March with soprano Angela Gheorghiu. Domingo himself has not disappeared—he returns to conduct “Tosca” which will be directed by Dzvid Kneuss.
“Tosca” will also be part of the WNO’s hugely popular “Opera in the Outfield” series, in which a live performance of the opera will be simulcast to audiences at the Washington Nationals Park for free on Sept. 22.
“Tosca” is why Puccini, as a composer of classic opera, is the king, all Wagner devotees aside. Puccini has the three most popular, most enduring and tear-stained, high-drama operas ever written. And the music that goes with them lives outside them in familiar forms. Giacomo Puccini, as the composer of “La Boheme,” “Madama Butterfly” and “Tosca,” made an achievement something on the order of hitting 60 home runs three season in a row without the aid of steroids.
The promos call “Tosca” an “irresistible combination of passion, pathos and despair,” the trifecta of tragic opera. It includes the classic arias “Vissi d’arte” and “E lucevan le stele.” It stars the country’s top singing actors in soprano Patricai Racette as Floria Tosca, a hot-blooded singer placed in impossible situations trying to save her lover from the double-crossing, impassioned and lust-struck Baron Scarpio, performed by bass-baritone Alan Held. (Natalia Ushakova will sing Tosca Sept. 23).
There are nine performances on Sept. 10, 12, 14, 16, 20, 22, 23 and 24 and one matinee Sept. 18.
Donizetti may not have had as many super-legendary hits as Puccini (who has?), but he came up with one of opera’s most hysterical, hugely dramatic, over-the-top and, well, operatic, operas in “Lucia di Lammemoor.” Famous for its mad scene (see the late Joan Sutherland), a challenge to any living, high-note soprano in the world willing to take on the role. It’s directed by David Alden and double-cast with Russian soprano Lyubov Petrova and Sarah Coburn as the Lucias. There are eight performances Nov. 10 through 19.
Let the season begin.
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Fall Performance Art Preview 2011


When Arena Stage brought back its hugely successful season and theater opening production of the very-much-a-staple Rodger Hammerstein musical “Oklahoma” for a late summer run, the theater community stood up and took notice.

Theater folks noticed too that Woolly Mammoth had also done a similar thing bringing back its production of Bruce Norris’s Pulitzer-Prize winning “Clybourne Park” to record-breaking (for Woolly) box office success. Both productions brought back original casts and energized productions. People saw a trend.

In truth, while innovative and smart marketing and scheduling strategies may have been at work, what happened wasn’t really new. Arena Stage, in fact, had been doing a similar thing with productions of “Crowns,” the popular musical about the importance of hats in the lives of African American women.

In theater, in fact, the adage that “everything old is new again” is the life blood, the bread and butter, the staple of theater world. What Arena and Woolly did was to bring back almost identical versions of the plays they had already done, thinking correctly that a larger audience as well as a repeat audience remained for the two plays. They were right. But theater exists on reviving, re-doing, and returning to a repertoire of plays and musicals that make up the core of what theater does on Broadway, in regional companies, in dinner theaters, amateur companies, high school and college. Road companies of big hit Broadway musicals are hugely profitable, same-version, different casts of eagerly awaited shows.

The staple of classic and therefore “old” theater literature are revisited time and time again over the centuries and decades—that’s why we have theater companies whose repertoire is rooted in Shakespeare, Shaw, the Greeks and American classics by O’Neill, Miller and others.

The reliance on the old and familiar—along with revisits that cast fresh light on the old plays—make new plays all the more thrilling because we don’t know how the story ends, what the characters will say or do, and we haven’t heard the songs by new composers and lyricists sung and played. This mix and mash of old and new is the heart of theater—we find surprises in the way an actor might play Hamlet—in fact hope for it—and are surprised how familiar and close to our lives the work of a new playwright is.

Every theater season begins with those anticipations of the familiar, the hope for surprise and connection and, of course, all of it accompanied by the possibility of awe and wonder, of moments in the dark that will lie in our memories like special dreams, the come-and-go moments for which, as I’ve noted elsewhere, there is no app.

The season kicks off with a hefty mix of old and new. Here, with some things to look forward and backward to.

SILENT SHAKESPEARE AT SYNETIC

Synetic Theatre, headed by the dynamic husband-wife team of Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili from the Republic of Georgia, has become and always was just about the most innovative, beyond-category theater company in the Washington area.

Whether performing at its original Church Street locale, at the Kennedy Center, in Shirlington or its new digs in Crystal City, the company has propelled a mix of mime, choreographed movement and spectacle to create its own kind of (classical, but silent) theater, borrowing its subjects from sources that include classic Russian literature, Dante, Cervantes and Shakespeare.

Its productions have reaped dozens of Helen Hayes Awards and almost instantaneous and consistent critical acclaim. Synetic’s form of theater is new, but its base subject is classical theater, minus the words. This brings new meaning to Hamlet’s “The Rest is Silence,” a play Synetic did ALL in silence.
The company is kicking of its 2011-2012 season with three best-of productions under the banner of “Speak No More,” three of its most popular versions of Silent Shakespeare, its 2008 production of “Macbeth” (Sept. 14 through Oct. 2); its 2010 production of “Othello” (Oct. 19 through Nov. 6) and its 2008 production of “Romeo and Juliet” (Nov. 25 through Dec. 23).

Synetic covers the criteria—everything really old is really new again and again—and again.

FRIENDS, WASHINGTONIANS AND COUNTRYMEN : IT’S FREE!

Michael Kahn’s Washington Shakespeare Company is presenting its 21st Annual Free for All. This time “Julius Caesar” is doing the honors and also kicking off the company’s 25th anniversary season.
This Julius is a revival of the critically acclaimed 2007-2008 production and will be performed at Sidney Harman Hall through Sept. 4. The Bard’s best play about politics and ambition echoes mightily, featuring as it does among its main characters honorable Republican senators whose fears of centralized government leads them astray. But that’s just one man’s opinion David Paul directs with a cast led by Aubrey Deeker, Tom Hammond and Tyrone Henderson.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN WITH LES MISERABLES AND THE JERSEY BOYS OR UP THE BARRICADES AND WALK LIKE A MAN

It’s a 25th anniversary for the Cameron McIntosh juggernaut “Les Miserables” and for the occasion there’s a brand new fully-staged production of the legendary Boubil & Schonberg operatic musical which set records in London, on Broadway and in dozens of road companies. The tale of the escaped convict (serving time for stealing a loaf of bread) Jean Valjean and his nemesis the relentless Inspector Javert is epic in scale with soaring songs a plot to fill several books by Victor Hugo and spectacle that stirs the heart and mind, and songs and music that make you want to run to the barricades (or from them, depending). Set in 19th Century France during yet another revolutionary time, the songs include “On My Own,” the stirring “Bring Him Home” and last but not least, “Can You Hear the People Sing.” If you can’t, you need a hearing aid.

It all happens at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House (Sept. 28 through Oct. 30).

If Victor Hugo isn’t your cup of tea, how about them boys from Jersey, as in “The Jersey Boys,” the earthy, hit-rich musical that traces the success, pitfalls, rags-and-juvie-to-riches story of Franki Valli and the Four Seasons, arguably one of America’s biggest rock-pop bands ever, not excluding their peers The Beach Boys.

The hugely popular show returns to the National Theater for quite a long stint and why not. (Nov. 10 through Jan. 7). Walk like a man, my friend.

HOLLY TWYFORD DIRECTS

Holly Twyford is one of the most gifted, eclectic actresses on the Washington theater scene who’s done just about everything except have her own reality show; from Shakespeare to an outrageous Woolly play to a gig as a dancing pig at Adventure Theater, she has plenty to round out her resume. What she hasn’t done is direct, and she’s taking care of that with her directorial debut at No Rules Theater Company, named Outstanding Emerging Theatre Company.

That would appear to be a nice fit for Twyford, who’s always been a little edgy and is now directing Diana Son’s “Stop Kiss,” a play about two women, a scattered New York City traffic reporter and a St. Louis school teacher, who meet and fall in love. “The play chose me,” Twyford said. She had appeared in the play ten years ago. “The play had been special to me when I was in it and to be able to help shape the entire telling of this beautiful story as much as a director can was a chance I couldn’t pass up,” (Sept. 7 through Oct. 2).

HISTORY IN THE MAKING AT SIGNATURE (AGAIN)

Signature, no slouch in the ambition department, will be by all accounts the first theater to present two original world premiere musicals in repertory by presenting “The Hollow,” and “The Boy Detective Fails,” now in prevues.

“The Hollow,” with a book by Hunter Foster and music and lyrics by Matt Conner, is based on the Washington Irving Sleepy Hollow story and features a headless horseman but not Johnny Depp (through Oct. 16, directed by Eric Schaeffer).

“The Boy Detective Fails,” with a book by Joe Meno and Music and Lyrics by Adam Gwon, is about self-styled boy detective Billy Argo, who must face the shocking death of his partner-in-crime-solving and sister. Ten years later, he’s on the case (through Oct. 16, directed by Joe Calarco).

BERNIE MADOFF AT THEATER J

One of the more anticipated plays of the season is coming to Theater J where Bernie Madoff in his new home, a jail cell, will make an appearance in Deb Margolin’s “Imagining Madoff,” a play which posits Madoff setting the record straight and telling the story of an interview with Holocaust survivor, poet and investment client Solomon Galkin.

Bernie Madoff defrauded clients for hundreds of millions of dollars in a vast Ponzi scheme and he didn’t’ quibble, destroying friends, family, charities and celebrities with quiet gusto. Rick Foucheux stars as Madoff, artist-in-residence and Washington favorite Jennifer Mendenhall plays Madoff’s secretary, and Alexandra Aron directs. (Aug. 31 through Sept. 25)

BOOKS BURN AT ROUND HOUSE

Ray Bradbury, now in his 90s and still writing, has often been pigeonholed as a writer of science fiction novels and short stories through his long career (“The Martian Chronicles” “Something Wicked This Way Comes”). But in truth, he’s been much more than that; celebrator of literary favorites, teller of Irish tall tales, and prophet might be good, for starters.

Long ago, he wrote a slim novel imagining a world in which firemen occupied themselves with burning books by state directive because, well, you know, books are dangerous things. (Bradbury did not, however, envision Kindle as far as we know). The book became a haunting, if imperfect, film directed by Francois Trufautt and starring Oscar Werner and Julie Christie. The writing in the book and the images from the film are haunting.

Now Round House Theater in Bethesda is staging Bradbury’s own theatrical adaptation of the novel, a multi-media production incorporating cutting edge video, projection and a sound design created by the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Sharon Ott directs with a cast that includes Katie Atkinson and John Lescault, among others (Sept. 7 through Oct. 9)

A “PARADE” OF A DIFFERENT SORT AT FORD’S THEATRE

The trial and lynching of Leo Frank in early 20th-century Atlanta seems an unlikely subject for a Broadway musical, but the show, with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and with Harold Prince as co-conceiver, won a Tony award for musical drama and is now getting a Washington premiere as a co-production with Theater J.

Frank was a Jewish factory manager who was accused of murdering a teenage girl on the day of the Confederate Memorial Day Parade.

The musical kicks off Ford’s 2011-2012 season and is also the first selection for Ford’s five-year “The Lincoln Legacy Project,” which aims to create a dialogue around the issues of tolerance, equality and acceptance (Sept. 23 through Oct. 30).

MICHAEL KAHN DIRECTS WORLD PREMIERE OF “THE HEIR APPARENT”

It’s not Shakespeare, it’s not even British, but it is old and funny. That would be “The Heir Apparent,” a variation of Jean-Francois Regnard’s 1708 comedy adapted by David Ives. It’s a play with a familiar plot—young swain wants to marry young girl, but needs an inheritance from his uncle who wants to, guess what, marry the young lady herself. Moliere made do with less and more, as did Shakespeare.
Michael Kahn, Washington Shakespeare Company’s Artistic Director for the past 25 years, will direct a cast that will include long-time D.C. favorites Floyd King and Nancy Robinette (Sept. 6 through Oct. 23 at the Lansburgh).

TED, DAVID AND ALLAN AT THE STUDIO THEATER

That would be actor Ted van Griethuysen, just hitting his stride, Studio Theater Artist Director David Muse, hitting his stride in his second year at Studio, and Playwright Alan Bennett, always in stride, whose “The History Boys” received a standout production here several years ago.

Muse is coming off a hugely successful production of “Venus in Fur” for Studio, and seems perfectly suited for Bennett’s brainiac, culture-buff comedy “The Habit of Art,” which includes as characters the British composer Benjamin Britten and poet-as-legend W.H. Auden (opens Sept. 7).

HOWARD SHALWITZ INVITES YOU TO THE WOOLLY APOCOLYPSE

That’s Howard Shalwitz talking about the 2011-2012 season, Woolly’s 32rd on planet Washington. “Join us as we mine our collective visions of apocalypse—and all the drama, jokes, and dreams they inspire.” First episode is “A Bright New Boise” by Samuel D. Hunter, directed by John Vreeke, where someone is summoning the rapture, right in the middle of a parking lot of a mega craft store in Boise, Idaho.

Gotta be there for that (Oct. 10 through Nov. 6).

HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE

Caryl Churchill of “Top Girls” fame kicks off the new season for Forum Theatre, now company in residence at the Round House Theatre’s Silver Spring location. Michael Dove directs Churchill’s “Mad Forest” while Rose McConnell, Alexander Strain, Heather Haney and Dana Levanovsky star (Sept. 22 through Oct. 15).

More at the Shakespeare Theatre Company: the musical “Fela!” returns to the United States, telling its tale of the legendary Nigerian musician Fela Kuti. It’s directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, kicking off a national tour at Sidney Harman Hall (Sept. 13 through Oct. 9).

“Ay Carmela!,” a U.S. premiere of a play by Spanish playwright Jose Sanchis Sinisterra, will kick off the Gala Hispanic Theatre’s season. It’s a play about the adventures—comic and romantic and dark all at once—about a pair of vaudevillians who find themselves in the midst of the bloody Spanish Civil War (Sept. 15 through Oct. 9).

The National Theater of China will present a production of “Two Dogs’ Opinions on Life,” an improvisational comedy that will be part of the Kennedy Center’s celebration of “China, the Art of a Nation” in September and October. “Two Dogs” will be performed at the Terrace Theater (Sept. 20 and 21 at 7:30 p.m. ). A second theater company, the Beijing People’s Art Theatre will perform “Top Restaurant” about the history of a Peking Roast Duck restaurant over half a century (Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 at 7:30 p.m., October 2 at 1:30 p.m.).
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John Blee: The Poetry of Color


If color is a language, then John Blee can be considered a lyric poet.
The Washington painter, whose solo exhibition will be seen at The Ralls Collection in October, produces abstracts lit with the sheen of a summer sunset.

Vivid oranges and yellows play against sky blues that shade into purples, punctuated by pinks that range from the palest of roses to vibrant corals. In less skillful hands, the effect could be garish. Instead, Blee’s colors, no matter how surprising their combinations, sing with an assured harmony.

“You paint out of the whole experience of your life,” says Blee, and an important part of that life was spent growing up in India and Pakistan, where his father was a State Department officer. “Indian color is off the scale—it’s not subdued,” he says, and his paintings reflect its sun-drenched intensity. Blee also points to the richly hued Indian Basohli miniature paintings of the 17th and 18th centuries as inspiration for his colors. His artwork—and life—is also informed by another influence nurtured during those years, the spirituality of India.

Blee counts among his mentors painter Helen Frankenthaler, whose work helped shape the Color Field movement of the 1940s and 50s. “I remember when I met [her], when I was still an art student. I found her color amazing. Colorists are very rare. I asked her how she chose colors and she replied it was like a poet choosing a word for a poem. I feel the same.”

Jane Roberts, whose Paris gallery hosted exhibitions of Blee’s work in 2008 and in June of this year, singles out his “supreme sense of color and light, like late Bonnard, whom he particularly loves. His paintings seem to glow from inside and have a joyous life of their own, unlike many abstract paintings which are merely formal exercises. A French collector, a busy lawyer, who bought a painting in 2008 told me that she has John’s painting opposite her desk and it literally calms her down after difficult meetings!”

Blee’s exhibition will focus on his latest works, paintings he groups into his “Orchard Suite,” whose genesis originated two years ago after seeing an exhibit of late Bonnards at the Metropolitan Museum of art. “There was one with a checked tablecloth in the bottom of the canvas with a still life on it,” Blee says. “It suggested to me the space of a landscape—the checks were like small farms seen from a mountain—and the fruit spilled over them the fruits of the land. From that picture I made ‘Eastern Orchard,’ the first of what I think of as my continuing suite”

“But,” he adds, “Klee in the series of ‘Magic Square’ pictures [of the 1920s and 30s] always has played inside of me. Those works are like the purest sounds in music and they deeply engage me. I first started looking at Klee seriously when I was 14 or 15 in Delhi and bought a book of his work, my first thick art book. I still look at it.” The rhythmically deployed, rectangular forms that appear in much of Blee’s work often echo Klee.

Gallery director Marsha Ralls finds other parallels in the “Orchard Suite” paintings: “These particular works of John’s really are a continuation of the Washington Color School. The color really glows.”

The series also has literary roots, a 1920s collection of French-language poems by writer Rainer Maria Rilke, grouped under the title The Orchard. “The word ‘orchard’ has a sense of the seasons to me, of ripening and flowering,” says Blee. “It encompasses fruition, growth, decay, and transformation.”

That John Blee’s paintings are underscored by both visual and literary sources—as well as philosophical ones—isn’t surprising. Spend time talking to him and he’ll weave a rich thread of references that range from Baudelaire to poet Hilda Morley to Hindu mythology to Braque. It’s this sense of connection and synthesis that fuels Blee’s creativity.

“I believe very strongly that all the arts, though focused differently, have the same source. We speak in words, and where words are the most like painting is in poetry. It is not just or solely the images of poetry, it is the power of language itself. For me music and dance and theater are all the same as poetry and painting.”

Blee says that “in the New York School of painting, which I descend from, as with the [pre-World War I] School of Paris, poets have allied themselves with painters and vice versa. I read Frank O’Hara’s criticism in art magazines when I was a kid in Delhi. All my own critical work is based on those pieces, the verbal part anyway. O’Hara had a real love of painting that I share. His poetry is very much alive and accessible in the moment, coming right from life and spilling out.”

“Rilke, though, was a far greater influence,” he says. “I read him first as a late teen, and really only began to ‘get’ him after a year or two. But his vast poetic landscape and a desire to go beyond all and put it together in a larger vision has always been part of my own search in my painting.”

“For me, the poet of my own life is Hilda Morley whom I met at the artists’ colony Yaddo in 1973 and knew until her death in 1998. She knew all the New York painters and composers and had been married to composer Stefan Wolpe. She was the real thing. Her poetry mirrored the New York School of painting. One needs living examples to understand this complicated thing called ‘life,’ and being an ‘artist’ is not something that is easy. Hilda knew instinctually how to carry on and to be.”

John Blee seems to have taken the lesson of “how to carry on and to be” to heart. He’s one of the city’s most notable painters, selected by critic and writer F. Lennox Campello among those included in his new book, 100 Artists of Washington, D.C. The top-floor studio of his house (whose color-splashed floor is a painting in itself) is filled with works in progress. He’s found a rewarding avenue in the courses he teaches at U.D.C and the Art League of Alexandria. And there’s always that next painting on the horizon, another opportunity, as Blee says, “to put the impossible in front of you, to aim as high as you can.”

__________

John Blee’s work can be seen in “20 Years, 20 Artists at The Ralls Collection” through Sept. 24. Dates for his October exhibition are to be announced. (The Ralls Collection, 1516 31st St., NW, RallsCollection.com)
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Fall Arts Preview: Gallery Guide


With every fall season, gallery walls come vibrantly to life like the foliage of the Shenandoah. The arts, like the trees, are inspiring and beautiful; sometimes joyous, often times heartbreaking. They stir something deep within us. Why would we labor to make a painting in an era of convenience and efficiency? Why would we visit the National Gallery when Avatar is on Netflix? Why do we yearn for the leaves to change in October, even though we’ve seen it captured in an endless stream of photographs? Because nothing satisfies our craving for life like the sensory immersion of art. Just as we pick up produce at the farmer’s market instead of buying it wrapped in cellophane, sometimes we just crave something real.

Here is a list of some of the District’s most anticipated gallery offerings this season. Go experience it for yourself. Go stand in front of a painting on a crisp autumn evening with a glass of free wine in one hand and a hunk of stinky cheese in the other. I dare you not to feel alive.

(e)merge Art Fair
Kicking off the fall arts season, the (e)merge art fair Sept. 22 to 25 is a weekend-long event that brings together artists, galleries, curators and collectors to discover and experience a world of emerging artistic talent. Hosted at the Capitol Skyline Hotel by the Navy Yard and Waterfront Metros, the fair brings together a consortium of galleries and nonprofit art venues with special events and educational programming featuring prominent curators, critics and artists, while providing free exhibition space to a large pool of emerging artistic talent. Guided tours of the fair will be available. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit EmergeArtFair.com.

Artisphere
In the Terrace Gallery of the Artisphere, the exhibition “Date/Fields,” running Sept. 23 to Nov. 27, brings together five renowned international artists, all working with the contemporary flow and transfer of data, to transform the gallery into a portal of sensory information: sites of signal, noise, presence and absence. Curated by acclaimed electronic sound artist Richard Chartier. Gallery reception: Friday, Sept. 23, 7 to 10 p.m. Artisphere.com.

Addison/Ripley Fine Art
From Sept. 10 through Oct. 15, Addison/Ripley will exhibit the landscapes and nature paintings of Mary Page Evans. Evans’s purity and reduction of form and color, at once a seeming tribute to her mentor Gene Davis – a renowned Washington colorist whose work is currently on view at the National Gallery – also reveals a lifelong battle between representation and abstraction, reminiscent of Monet or Cézanne. Opening reception: Friday, Sept. 16, 6 to 8 p.m. AddisonRipleyFineArt.com.

Cross Mackenzie Gallery
Having relocated from Georgetown’s Canal Square to Dupont Circle, Cross Mackenzie Gallery will be reopening to the public this fall with the work of ceramic artist Michael Fujita, whose work is inspired by fleeting observations of the world around him. Regular monthly openings are also scheduled throughout the duration of the season. Welcome back, Cross Mackenzie! CrossMackenzie.com.

Heiner Contemporary
Heiner Contemporary will showcase the work of New York artist David Kramer Sept. 9 through Oct. 22. Deeply affected by the pop art and advertising aesthetics surrounding his upbringing in the 1970s, his work injects the faux glamour of that era onto a scratchy canvas filled with terse observations and acrid dictums, constructing a disillusioned, often hilarious satire on the American dream. Opening party and artist performance: Saturday, Sept. 24, 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. HeinerContemporary.com.

Hamiltonian Gallery
A joint exhibition of artists Nora Howell and David Page will be on view at the Hamiltonian Gallery, Sept. 17 through Oct. 29. Howell explores issues surrounding race and identity through photography and food; a functioning coffee bar will be installed in the gallery. Page’s work consists of three large-scale, mechanical sculptures in mixed media including steel, wood and leather. Opening Reception: Saturday, Sept. 17, 7 to 9 p.m. Artist Talk: Wednesday, Oct. 12, 7 p.m. HamiltonianGallery.com.

Hemphill Fine Arts
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, who have worked collaboratively since 1988, are among today’s most renowned contemporary Russian artists. They have been shown in more than 170 museums in more than 40 countries, including the MoMA, The Whitney and the Hirshhorn. Hemphill Fine Arts’ exhibition, KABAKOV showing Sept. 10 through Oct. 29 continues the artists’ ongoing examination of societal transitions between construction and decline through illustrative, sometimes childlike symbols. Opening reception: Saturday, Sept. 10, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Marsha Mateyka Gallery
2011 has been an industrious year for Sam Gilliam, one of Washington’s most acclaimed and revered artists: a central installation and curatorial venture at the Phillips Collection, a collaborative exhibit with the Kreeger Museum, and a commissioned mural at the Takoma Metro Station, to name a few. To round off the year, the Marsha Mateyka Gallery will open their fall season with an exhibition of Gilliam’s paintings, Sept. 17 through Oct. 29. This is a remarkable opportunity to see a more intimate side of Gilliam’s usually large-scale work. Reception for the artist: Saturday, Sept. 17, 4 to 6 p.m. MarshaMateykaGallery.com.

Parish Gallery
An exhibition of abstract painter Kenneth Victor Young, a member of the Washington Color School of the 1960s, will open at the Parish Gallery with a reception on Friday, Sept. 16, 6 to 8 p.m. Then, Oct. 21 through Nov. 15, the gallery will host the work of printmaker Percy Martin, longtime art teacher in the Washington area, whose series of lush and complex prints details the lives and rituals of the Bushmen, a mythological people born of the artist’s imagination. Opening Reception: Friday, Oct. 21, 6 to 8 p.m. ParishGallery.com.

Project 4
“In Quest of the Sun,” an exhibition of new work by D.C. artist Ellington Robinson, will be on view at Project 4, Sept. 9 through Oct. 15. Robinson’s new work explores the ways by which we reach our physical and socioeconomic locations. Opening reception: Sept. 9, 7 to 9 p.m. From Oct. 22 through Nov. 26, the gallery will host a show of artist Agnes Bolt, who has long explored the relationship between artist and collector, living and interacting virtually with many D.C. art collectors. The show will feature photography, video and collected objects from Bolt’s experiences. Project4Gallery.com.

The Ralls Collection
As featured in the last issue of The Georgetowner, the highlight of The Ralls Collection’s fall season will be an exhibition of revered local painter John Blee this October. For more information, visit Georgetowner.com or RallsCollection.com.

Susan Calloway Fine Arts
“ArtCode,” a show of artist Edurne Esponda Sept. 30 through Oct. 29, displays the artist’s colorful, playful and thought provoking oeuvre. Born in Oaxaca, Mexico, Esponda has traveled the world as both an artist and fashion designer. As a painter, she looks to illustrate the fashion world in her paintings, often referencing clothing sizes and barcodes. Her color palette evokes the atmosphere of her childhood home in Oaxaca. Opening reception: Friday, Sept. 30. CallowayArt.com.

Washington Project for the Arts
OPTIONS 2011, the 14th installment of WPA’s biennial exhibition of works by emerging and unrepresented local artists, will open Sept. 15 and run through Oct. 29. Highlighting the breadth and diversity of the area’s contemporary art scene, the exhibition will include work by 14 artists selected by curator Stefanie Fedor, executive director of the Arlington Arts Center. Opening reception: Sept. 15, 6 to 8 p.m. WPADC.com.

Maurine Littleton Gallery
This November, the Maurine Littleton Gallery will be featuring new glass sculptures by British artist Colin Reid. Reid is regarded as a pioneer in the field of kilncast glass, with works in more than 45 museum collections worldwide. Reid was recently awarded the prestigious Peoples Prize at the 2010 British Glass Biennale and is an Associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. The gallery will also be displaying the work of metal sculptor Albert Paley. Exhibition dates TBA. LittletonGallery.com.

Zenith Gallery
Marjorie Goldberg, long established as one of the premier gallerists in the Washington area, will host a show of Zenith Gallery artists recently profiled in the new book, “100 Artists of the Mid-Atlantic,” by Ashley Rooney. The exhibition, at Chevy Chase Pavilion, Sept. 21 through Oct. 29, features an array of work in various media by renowned regional artists, including F. Lennox Campello and Julie Girardini. Meet the Author and Artists: Wednesday, Sept. 21, 6 to 9 p.m. ZenithGallery.com.

Call To Artists: Art Bank
The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH) is seeking to purchase artwork of all mediums and dimensions to be included in the Art Bank Collection. The Collection is looking to acquire diverse and dynamic forms of contemporary art from working artists in the D.C. area, but preference will be given to District residents. To submit online, visit DCarts.Slidroom.com. For more information contact Zoma Wallace, Curator of Art Collections of DCCAH at Zoma.Wallace@dc.gov or 202.724.5613. Deadline for submissions is Friday, Sept. 30.
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LUNGevity’s Musical Celebration of Hope Gala


Having lost her mother Pat to late diagnosed lung cancer, Andrea Stern Ferris was determined to find a cure for the nation’s number-one cancer killer. She now serves as president and chairman of LUNGevity Foundation, the largest national lung cancer research non-profit, which celebrated the opening of its D.C. office at a spectacular Sept. 16 gala at the Mellon Auditorium chaired by Grace Bender. The Stern family totally underwrote the event. Former Rep. Mike Oxley (R-Ohio), a non-smoker and lung cancer survivor, received LUNGevity’s first Face of Hope Award for his advocacy of better research and treatments. Design Cuisine served an elegant repast as auctioneer Lynne Zink and generous bidders enabled the foundation to reach its $1 million goal. [gallery ids="99239,103994,104025,104021,103999,104017,104013,104004,104009" nav="thumbs"]

Thailand Salutes the Spanish Steps


On Sept. 11, there was a respite in a day of remembrance as Thai Ambassador and Ms. Nuchjaree Klongsungsorn welcomed supporters of the Spanish Steps Project to a relaxing afternoon in their residence, Codman House, at the foot of the Kalorama landmark now requiring restoration. Spanish Steps Project board president David Bender made introductory remarks on proposed plans. He hailed the board’s vice president Jean Tippett as the “grandmother of the Spanish Steps.” The ambassador and his wife charmed their guests with classical Thai dance, a fabulous Thai buffet accompanied by special wines and Thai Chang beer with the bonus of a cooking demonstration which the ambassador narrated with chef Jitapa Haoharn. Historian Paul Williams traced the history of the residence commissioned by Miss Martha Codman in 1906, which the Government of Thailand purchased in 1995 and restored to its former splendor. There was also a raffle with many happy winners garnering a Smithsonian publication, “Treasures of Two Nations: Thai Royal Gifts to the United States of America.” [gallery ids="100297,107548,107522,107544,107540,107527,107536,107532" nav="thumbs"]

Sister to Sister Showcases Heart-Healthy Lunches at the World Bank


Sister Foundation co-hosted an international heart-healthy luncheon at the World Bank with the Embassy of Hungary and the Royal Danish Embassy on Sept. 13. Founded by Irene Pollin in 1999, Sister to Sister has pioneered in enlightening women to the risks of heart disease and its link with obesity. Throughout the week, executive chefs from the embassies of Bulgaria, Denmark, Hungary, Sweden and Thailand offered healthful preparations of their national specialties to promote heart-healthy nutrition in the workplace. Luncheon speakers included Dr. Esther Brimmer of the Department of State, Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian of Harvard and JoAnne Foody of Brigham and Women’s Hospital. [gallery ids="100298,107537,107549,107542,107546" nav="thumbs"]

International Eye Foundation Celebrates Its Big Five-O


The International Eye Foundation celebrated its golden anniversary Sept. 18 at an Ambassadors Wine Tasting, hosted by Dr. and Mrs. Steven B. Hopping. A highlight of the event was the presentation of the 2011 Promotion of Peace and Vision Award to the King family to honor the memory of Dr. John Harry King, Jr., and his belief in “the promotion of peace through the prevention of blindness.” The IEF is in the vanguard of preventing blindness and restoring sight in the developing world. [gallery ids="100299,107547,107563,107559,107552,107555" nav="thumbs"]

D.C. Lobbying Presence in Hollywood During Emmy Awards Weekend


While the words, “The Amazing Race,” “Modern Family,” “Mad Men,” “The Good Wife” and “The Kennedys,” read like chapter headings in a book about our nation’s capital, they are, in fact, names of TV shows or movies that earned Primetime Emmy Awards Sept. 18 in a place called Hollywood.

With occasional appearances before Congress, at the Kennedy Center or in a downtown restaurant, denizens of Georgetown, Foggy Bottom and Capitol Hill are acquainted with a few of these actors, actresses, directors and producers but know little of the inner-workings of their powerful TV and film industry, those dream factories, in a state called California.

Luckily, D.C. had some knowledgeable representation out there during Emmy Awards weekend. Businesswoman Elizabeth Webster is newly employed as director of business outreach at the District’s Committee for Small and Local Business Development which oversees the Commission on Motion Pictures and Television Development, chaired by At-large Councilman Vincent Orange. So, Webster reached out to Los Angeles, attending pre- and after-parties and the awards show during a trip that she planned and paid for before her District government job began. She is also well known as secretary of the Georgetown Business Association.

“My favorite part of the Emmy Awards show was Michael Bolton’s performance and the beautiful, colorful staging throughout the show,” said Webster, who, like many, wore a red dress to the show. “I thought Melissa McCarthy was very down to earth. I could relate to her comments in her speech about her parents’ endless support of her career.”

Clearly in her element, Webster, a former actress and model, spoke of meeting friends and former colleagues at the Governor’s Ball, HBO’s after-party, the NBC party at Spago’s in Beverly Hills and the Vanity Fair pre-party in West Hollywood. She said she was also glad to see longtime and family friend, actor Vincent De Paul, a former Marylander who lives in L.A. and whose sister lives in Georgetown.

En route back, Webster said she is preparing for public hearings before the District Council on Nov. 9, 10 a.m., with “studio executives and experts in the entertainment industry to testify about what incentives and requirements D.C. needs to implement to be more movie- and production-friendly.” Orange and his TV-film team have set a goal of getting two permanent TV series to be produced regularly out of DC. as well as increasing film production. (Mayor Vincent Gray and Orange last met with film executives in L.A. on July 21.)

Aside from rushing to fly home from sunny Southern California so soon, Webster was asked, any other vexations? “Betty White should have won in her category.”
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Till Fellner: Past, Present and Future of Classical Music


There are certain images that come to mind when you think of classical music, and pianist Till Fellner, a rising star in the world of classical music performers, embodies quite a few of those if you’ve ever seen him perform.

The last time Washington saw Fellner, who is being presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society at the Kennedy Center Oct. 1, he played at the Austrian Embassy as part of Jerome Barry’s Embassy Series Season, which was also the concluding program in Fellner’s ambitious project to perform the complete 32-part cycle of Beethoven sonatas.

Played on a Sunday afternoon before a sold-out but intimate audience, the Embassy Series program was a coming together of artist, music and audience, and a rather romantic display of the culture of classical music. It came with all the practiced history and rituals one would hope for, from the hollering of “Bravo!” to the flying of tailcoats.

An occasion like this has its roots in the 18th and 19th centuries, when music was played in front of kings and members of the courts. It was played by candlelight and under chandeliers, in churches and the drawing rooms of aristocracy. The audiences are no longer quite so elite or powerful, but certain manners, mannerisms and behavioral traditions still persist. Just like the tradition remains that important cast members take curtain calls in between acts at an opera, so there are certain expectations at a concert or recital. After all, the music of the classical Forefathers—in this case Beethoven—is being played.

Fellner is Viennese and European to the core, but he is also a citizen of the world by dint of the global explosion of interest and competition in classical music. He understands and appreciates the seriousness of what he does. “The music is all that matters,” he said in a brief international telephone conversation, where he was taking in the evening tide in the old city of Vienna. “You are in service to the music, it’s the most important thing there is. And on such occasions, there are certain ways of doing things. There’s a respect that is due to the music, from myself playing it to the best of my abilities and understanding, and from the audience in terms of listening.”

You don’t get grand gestures from Fellner, no thumping on the keys with over emphasized drama, no hair or headshaking that one might get from musicians who play the keys to elicit applause. Fellner, although tall and almost boyishly handsome at age 38, will not try to seduce an audience with body language. Rather, he tries to ford the defenses of the heart with perfect performances and worship the music with his playing.

The airy embassy spaces, sunlit and bright, were an ideal setting. Fellner walked up to the shiny black piano with a quick and friendly nod, resplendent in tuxedo and tails, sat at the piano—arranging the tails just so—and began to play to the kind of communal silence that sometimes catches you off guard.

“I believe,” he said, in precise and fluent English, “that there are certain traditions to be followed, and that it is a part of the music, the occasion. There’s a certain formality and I like that, but it doesn’t interfere with feelings and emotions.”

Fellner carries with him the life of a concert pianist, and with it a mountain of ever-growing challenges. He lives in a world that seems to be at a contradictory phase—there are more and more classical musicians being trained all over the world, especially in Asia, while at the same time interest in classical music, while not in any sort of dramatic decline, still seems pointed to a closed world made up of the affording class.

But bridges are being built in the music industry, often with real artists on the forefront, who fuse their talents with giants from the world of pop music. But Fellner isn’t one of them—at least not yet. “I like some popular music,” he said. “Some of the artists are very good. But on the whole, I’m not that interested in rock music and things like that, nor do I have any desire to play it. There are plenty of challenges in playing the music that already exists—every pianist, violinist and so on takes on projects that are difficult and challenging. And the Sonatas was one of mine.”

Still, Fellner understands that the classical repertoire—Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Brahms and Wagner, to name a few—needs to be replenished and added to, and he’s not stuck in the past in that sense.
“There’s actually a lot of new composers and new classical music being written, and I also like playing the works of the 20th century composers. There is a different sort of challenge in the new.”

Fellner’s program at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater on Oct. 1 is a kind of indicator of direction: the richness of the past and the potential for the future. There are Haydn, Schumann, and Liszt, and there is also 19-year-old classical music sensation Kit Armstrong.

“Kit is a prodigy. As a performer, as a composer, he’s just amazing,” Fellner said. “I’m playing ‘Half of One, Six Dozens of the Other,’ which he wrote for me in 2010.”

Fellner has been praised all over world and received raves like this from the London Observer: “Fellner confirmed his standing among the foremost keyboard virtuosi of the day; exact, limpid and feather-fingered, he exquisitely conveyed the sense of yearning haunting the andante and cruised effortlessly through the teasing syncopations of the closing allegro of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 18.”
He will treat Armstrong’s music like he treats a Beethoven sonata, as if in the interpretive position of high priest.

Till Fellner will be performing at the Kennedy Center on Oct. 1, presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society. For more information visit Kennedy-Center.org