Arts & Society

Mary Bird • November 6, 2012

On Aug. 29 fans of artist Tina Palmer were fortunate not only to view her newest art at Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, with a more than generous 30% of sales donated to the Washington Humane Society, but also to sample some of the best gallery food ever provided by Purple Onion Catering, an all “people food” event including the chocolate doggie bones. Tony Cord recognized all those who contributed to this special event honoring an artist whose work was selected for the model condo at Trump World Tower in Manhattan. [gallery ids="102476,120549,120541,120554" nav="thumbs"]

Jeff Malet •

Bessie Phillips receives the Marion Bryce Award for Volunteer Service from Michael Kahn, the Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, at the Sidney Harman Hall in Washington on Aug. 23.

Gary Tischler •

The great American soprano Sondra Radvanovsky admits she likes a challenge.

She’s taking one on now as she prepares to help open the Washington National Opera’s 2012-2013 season in the title role of Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena,” a role described by critics as variously punishing and daunting.

“That’s a part I’ve always wanted to do, partly because it is a real challenge, but also because I like the character, the drama that’s at work,” Radvanovsky said in a phone interview last week. “And it is a mountain, let me tell you.”

At three hours plus, the classic bell canto opera is a long night out. “I’m on stage almost all of the time, and that can be really exhausting,” Radvanovsky said. “So, you have to be able to keep yourself fresh, you have to pace yourself, and you can’t let down.”

“Anna Bolena” takes itself up with the latter part of the troubled Queen of England’s life, when she is in disgrace, headed for the block, rejected and dropped by King Henry VIII as he consorts with another woman, Jane Seymour.

“It helps that audiences will be familiar with the characters, because there’s so much history there,” Radvanovsky said. She was an avid follower of the Showtime television series, “The Tudors,” and has done her research.

“It’s a true dramatic part,” she said. “I care very much about the acting, performance part of a role, as well as the music and singing. Maria Callas is my idol in that department. It’s not always just about technique, about the perfect notes, but about singing and acting a part.”

“Anna Bolena” is famous for a first-act duet which is unusual in that it’s a scene between the two rivals, Anna and Henry’s new bride-to-be. Plus, as there was in Donizetti’s “Lucia Di Lammermoor,” there is a mad scene.

Radvanovsky works almost all of the time and travels overseas for roles, taking her from Italy to Austria and Germany, not to mention in American opera houses all over the country. “I know that it sounds romantic to some people, all this jetting around and eating bon bons in hotel rooms,” she said. “It’s not like that. Truth is, it can wear you out.”

Some of the pressure of that kind of life is eased by the presence of her husband Duncan Lear, who is also her business manager and who travels with her. “Oh, my God, I could not do any of this without him,” Radvanovsky said. “But you know, you miss being at home, sleeping in bed, seeing our friends and neighbors, just being at home.” She is a Chicago native, who grew up in the Midwest, although she and her husband reside in Toronto.

For a worldwide opera star, especially at the Metropolitan Opera, who is known for being one of the outstanding interpreter of Verdi’s heroines, especially Leonora in “Il Trovatore,” Radvanovsky seems to have an affinity for Donizetti’s work. She has performed his so-called three queens—“Anna Bolena,” “Maria Stuarda” and Queen Elizabeth in “Roberto Deveareux,” not to mention “Tosca” to great effect. Donizetti and bell canto opera preceded Verdi and Wagner, but for Radvanosky, there’s not that much difference. “It’s a challenge for the voice, and I like to take on that kind of challenge, you can aim higher, always,” she said. “And the music is purely beautiful, you’ll see, it’s a joy to sing and to act the parts.”

Placido Domingo, the former WNO director and a huge opera star in his own right, was an early fan of her work. “We are great friends, he was a mentor in many ways,” Radvanovsky said. You can catch a YouTube clip of the two in concert, singing various arias and other compositions, including a turn at “Some Enchanted Evening” by Domingo.

She has heard the word diva on occasion about herself. “I take it for what it is, in a good way,” she says. “To me, it’s about the work and doing it right. I don’t see myself as a grand personality or anything like that. But I play and perform them, which is wonderful to be able to do.”

Mary Bird •

Art insiders and supporters “crossed the bridge” on Sept. 15 in specified “after dark chic” attire for the seventh anniversary celebration of THEARC. Following a sun dappled reception, guests enjoyed a program that included young dancers from the Arts and Technology Academy in Rock My Soul choreographed by Alvin Ailey, The Washington Ballet’s Brooklyn Mack dazzling in Le Corsaire and SE Washington native Denise Graves’ bewitching renditions of Summertime and Habañera. Mayor Vincent Gray presented Gina Adams of FedEx Corporation with the Building Bridges Across the River award for her ongoing commitment to the community. [gallery ids="100989,131906,131921,131898,131928,131889,131935,131881,131941,131914" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

Gala Chairs Sharon Bradley, Jamie Dorros and Rhonda Wilkins continued the work of Grace Bender, who chaired last year’s first LUNGevity Gala. The event took place on Sept. 15 at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium where guests were greeted by mariachis. Events by André Wells was responsible for the exquisite floral displays and overall elegance. LUNGevity Foundation is the nation’s largest lung cancer-focused nonprofit led by Andrea Stern Ferris, who lost her mother Pat Stern to the disease. California Congresswoman Lois Capps was honored with the Face of Hope Award for her tireless efforts to raise awareness and change health policy. [gallery ids="102480,120448,120443,120436,120424,120417,120409,120393,120401,120431" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

“Invisible Man,” Oren Jacoby’s adaptation of Ralph Ellison’s iconic and National Book Award-winning novel of a nameless black man’s experience in and of America, is a wonder to behold.

In the novel’s incarnation as a play, now at the Studio Theatre, directed by Christopher McElroen, co-founder of the Classical Theatre of Harlem, in a co-production with the Huntington Theatre Company, you find yourself thinking and feeling on any number of levels—and wondering about the rest of the audience.

Gifted young actor Teagle F. Bougere says, “I am an invisible man,” intoning the opening words of the novel which remains a classic of American and African-American literature. It is a stylistic landmark, a powerful experience in reading. And, with some critical caveats, it’s an equally powerful but also very different, theatrical experience.

Bougere plays a young black man in the 1920s or early 1930s, not yet graduated from a so-called Negro college, who comes to live in Harlem in search of work and identity. “Invisible Man” as a novel is high-style, almost surreal and certainly poetic. It’s not really a naturalistic work; it’s episodic, a novel of experience. The experience, the biblical and harsh lessons that come from it, is the essence of what it was, and sometimes still is, to be black in America. In the invisible man’s world, grandfathers are freed slaves, the poor live in squalor, and education, as preached by the gospel of Booker T. Washington, is a vehicle for advancement, if not equality.

What’s remarkable about the play is adaptor Oren Jacoby has managed to create a play functioning with the words of the novel. Given the high intensity, rolling, often eloquent and thundering, poetic and even abstract nature of Ellison’s writing style, that’s no small feat. There’s little that seems naturalistic about the way the characters—with all the actors, except Bougere, playing several parts—speak. A certain formality, a poetic distance characterizes how characters—black and white—speak, there’s precious little slang or colloquialism here. It’s always, by way of example, “perhaps” not “maybe.”

By the time the young man makes his way to New York, he’s already lost a few illusions—he receives a college scholarship from the white aristos in his southern community, but not before having been forced to be part of a smoker in which blindfolded black men strike out at each other for the entertainment of the white swells. After he accidentally introduced a kind, wealthy trustee to the more sordid examples of black poverty, he’s expelled from school by the wheeling and dealing school president and sent to New York with a bogus letter of introduction.

In Harlem, he gets a job at a paint factory which specializes in a whiter-than-white paint. “You mean white is right, right?” he asks a co-painter. He’s injured in a factory explosion after a fight with his foreman. He’s helped by a kind woman who puts him up in her modest home. Then, after witnessing an eviction of a black family by an Irish cop, he spontaneously discovers a gift for oratory, stirring up a crowd, talking about “the dispossessed.” That feat attracts the attention of a leftist group of organizers called the brotherhood, strongly resembling the active Communist Party of the time, which many Americans, including Ellison and his fellow novelist Richard “Black Boy” Wright found, for a brief time, attractive.

But the experience ends in disaster—for his friends, for the black community of Harlem and for whatever visibility the man might have thought he still had.

The production is haunting, even beautiful. Bougere is passionate—at turns distant and feverish—as the nameless, invisible man. The staging is stunning. When we meet him the hero lives in a small basement apartment, illuminated by hundreds of light bulbs, making it seem like a consecrated carnival booth. The set by Troy Hourie is remarkable: it doesn’t just shine with lights but is a constantly moving back drop of historical black and white imagery.

The rest of the cast—the intense, lean Brian D. Coats, who plays the grandfather and other parts, the sly coquettish Julia Watt as an enticing white woman, Edward James Hyland as both the well-meaning trustee and a short-tempered Irish cop, and Johnny Lee Davenport in his turn as the idealistic Tod Clifton—leave indelible impressions.

The play—as a drama, not a novel—comes in a way to a halt, and we’re left with the thought, as he insists, that “who knows, on a lower frequency, I speak for you.”

You’re also left with some other thoughts—what this play and that novel mean today in the age of a black president, how it might resonate, say, in the Chicago teacher’s strike; what it has to tell us in this borderline, hateful campaign, what it and its resonating language might sound to young black kids. Given the audience, a full house, was generously 90 percent white, you hope Ellison does indeed speak to and for all of us. Because in this city and in this America, there is a growing divide, and there are still invisible people.
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Gary Tischler •

The performing arts—all of them-are all about music, movements and moments that add up to magic.
In our second fall prevue, we offer selective looks at the offerings on our varied stages, and venues in the realm of opera, dance, music of all sorts, as well as a rich series of spoken word events, discussions, talks, readings in prose and poetry.

Sondra Radvanovsky, the great American soprano, talks about her title role in Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena”, which opens the Washington Opera season, followed by Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”.

Washington Ballet Artistic Director Septime Webre talks about the company’s season opener, just in time for Halloween, of “Dracula”. We’ll look at the annual Dance Velocity events, and upcoming offerings from the Washington Peforming Arts Society, and we’ll have a sampling of Washington’s musical offerings, from the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, to the Embassy Series, to the star-studded concert celebrating America’s legendary folk and people’s music man Woody Guthrie. We’ll talk about the various voices on stage, including David Sedaris and Fran Lebowitz and Frank Rich and Billy Collins at the Music Center at Strathmore, and U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Threthewey at the Library of Congress, giving her inaugural reading.

The picture, we think, ends up being a mosaic of the richness of Washington’s cultural offerings in the performance arts, and in the visual arts.

Click here for the following article on performance: Radvanovsky Takes on the Star-crossed ‘Anna Bolena’

Click here for the following article on performance: A Diva and a Don Start Things Off in a Rich Washington Opera Season

Click here for the following article on performance:Dance, Dance, Dance

Click here for the following article on performance: Music, Music, Music and More Music

Click here for the following article on performance: Readings and Conversations, from Strathmore to Folger
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Mary Bird •

The Washington Area Concierge Association (WACA) held its 20th Annual Charity Gala “Sunglasses at Night” at the Hamilton on Aug. 26. Black and white sunglasses courtesy of the National Aquarium awaited guests. The evening featured a silent auction with plenty of hotel and restaurant temptations. Radio personality Tommy McFly emceed and introduced Arlington native Amy Wilcox and her Nashville band. WACA is donating the evening’s proceeds to The John B. Campbell Hospitality Scholarship, Les Clefs d’Or and Les Clefs d’Or Foundation and The Capital Area Food Bank. [gallery ids="100957,130738,130731,130703,130726,130720,130712" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Well, we’ll be doing the songs I’ve done over the years, from the beginning until now. We’ll mix it up a little, but they’ll be songs people know, “ Emmylou Harris said in a phone interview about her upcoming August 15 concert at Wolf Trap in a matched set with singer-song writer John Prine, another enduring voice.

The songs—could be the matchless “Boulder to Birmingham,” “To Know Him Is to Love Him” or songs from her last and perhaps most intimate album, “Hard Bargains,” for which Harris wrote almost all of the songs. Could be something like “Pancho and Lefty” or the achingly familiar “One of These Days.” Lots to choose from in a 40-year-career.

Her voice over the phone is matter-of-fact elusive, due to a weak connection, but the accumulated stuff is pretty clear—it’s hard to imagine Emmylou Harris being anything else than the singer she is, or at least that’s the way she sees it. “I’m not sure I could have done anything else,” she says. “This is what I do, who I am. It’s complicated, sometimes, but I’ve been doing this all my life and will be doing it all my life.”

When you hear her sing—in a concert at venues as different as the Music Center at Strathmore or Wolf Trap— the presence and voice is clear as undiluted spring water, flowing. You can hear her life in the songs, the changes, the losses, the adding on of different kinds of music so that whatever she does, there’s always surprises, or things that have never gone away.

“I try to keep things simple when I write,” she says, and it sounds both true and a little too modest. Singing her own songs, or that of others, you hear the spirit of something grainy, pure dirt and wood American, a little cowboy, a lot of unrefined, raw country, the purity of folk with touches of rock and rockabilly, bluegrass and—when she’s of a mind—corner-piano, Broadway, break-your-heart brassy ballads. You can catch the looks, changing, over the years from her album covers, the pitch-black long hair, now turned white, the cheekbones. Now at 65, thrice-married with grandchildren, she looks as magnetic as ever. She looks like a good witch, in some ways. The voice is a little changed, according to her.

“Well, I don’t think I can quite hold the high as long as I used to,” she says. “You lose some things, gain some things. It’s what it is. You adjust, you find new ways, new music, and sometimes you can be more direct.” It’s something you could honestly disagree with her about—life has added some rich, tremulous and heart-probing stuff to her voice, upon listening.

“You know, you always reflect, think of who you were and what’s happened, it informs what you do,” she says. “I can look back when I started out, I was a product of the ‘60s, you know, folk singers and rock, and that stuff. You’d hear country music and sort of treat it with contempt. We didn’t get it, you know.”

With her parents living in the Washington suburbs, Harris famously sang at the Childe Harold in Dupont Circle, now defunct and re-arranged into a different place. “It was a different time,” she said. “I lived a few blocks from the place.”

Her attitude, and quite a few other things, changed when she met Gram Parsons in D.C. He was the legendary and charismatic leader of the Flying Burrito Brothers who was starting a solo act and looking for a girl singer, and that would be Emmylou Harris. The Parsons-Harris relationship is the stuff of musical legend in some ways—people talk about not in the rumor sort of way, but in the sense that Parsons—as close friend, mentor and inspiration helped her emerge with all her gifts firing. “He had a huge impact on me, he inspired me, he educated me about country music, its roots and what it could be, in its basic unadorned ways.”

Parsons died of an accidental drug overdose in 1973, and the shock of that, the hole in her heart, you suspect, is still there. “Sure, he’s with me, he changed my life, and it was a hard, hard loss,” Harris says. He’s in the early “Boulder to Birmingham” and in the song she wrote for “Hard Bargains,” “The Road” as in : “I can still remember every song you played/long ago when we were younger and we rocked the night away.”
“Hard Bargains” also features a song called “Big Black Dog,” which is an outcrop of another passion of hers: the love of dogs, rescuing dogs, being with dogs. Harris runs Bonaparte’s Retreat, a non-profit rescue operation which she runs out of her home Nashville. The “Big Black Dog” in question and music is one Bella, a mix “of just about every breed you can a think of,” who travels with her when she tours in her bus.”

“I can’t believe I never did that before,” she says about traveling with a dog. “It is, I don’t know, such a gift, the companionship of a dog. It’s soothing, full of love.”

She seems to have a gift for easy and long friendships, a natural affinity for musical collaboration. Look her up, and you’ll find almost everybody that’s ever picked up a guitar and banjo, pounded on drums or sung songs for a living in Nashville listed in the “worked with” category.

Harris—while her life has surely been dramatic—isn’t the type of person that get’s talked or whispered, or yacked about a lot about as a star, or god-forgive-them, super-star. She’s the kind of singer-songwriter-performer you remember just a little after the last note is gone as well as years later.

John Prine and Emmylou Harris, Aug. 15, Wolf Trap, Filene Center, Vienna, Va. — www.WolfTrap.org.