Performance

Peter Murray • April 23, 2015

Years & Years are rising fast in the pop world, with a slew of hits and the BBC’s coveted “Sound of 2015” poll under their belts. (Previous “Sound of” winners include Sam Smith, Haim and Ellie Goulding.) The band’s newfound fame owes much to Olly Alexander, Years & Years’ charismatic if a little too youthful frontman, who belts and soars over bandmates Mikey Goldsworthy and Emre Turkmen’s synthpop productions with emotive force and intensely intimate lyrics. While the band was in Austin winning over American crowds at South By Southwest, we had the chance to have a frank conversation over the phone with Alexander about growing up, past relationships and being a gay musician.

Georgetowner: When did you start singing? Were you into it as a kid?

Olly Alexander: My mom says I was always singing as a toddler. Just talking and screaming with this horrible voice she said. Then, as a teenager I always wanted to be a singer.

GT: Did you ever do musical theatre or anything?

OA: I did but never had a big part in it. I was a bit shy and weird. You’re allowed to be weird in drama group in school, which is why I enjoyed it. And then out of college, I mainly just did music.

GT: The story goes that Mikey heard you singing in the shower when you’d both slept over at a mutual friend’s after a party and then asked you to join the band. Was that all set up by you to get into the band?

OA: [Laughs] Yeah, it was like my audition. If you’re looking to make it into a band and maybe someone in it stayed overnight, I’d recommend doing that.

GT: It seems like all your songs are about dysfunctional relationships. Is that coming from personal experience or is that just how you think pop music should be?

OA: That comes from experience, you know. I just have had a lot of dysfunctional relationships, Peter. I’ve really gone from one to another to another. I’ve been stuck in a cycle of being addicted to rejection in some fucked up way and always choosing someone who is going to reject me. But, I’m in a less dysfunctional relationship now. I’d say it’s relatively functional.

GT: In “Memo”, you sing and write from a gay perspective about romance and heartbreak between two men.

OA: I’m definitely writing from that perspective. There’s a choice when you write a song with how you talk about someone else. I watched Joni Mitchell do this interview where she said songwriting became easier when she started writing about “you and me.”

GT: I would think that writing and singing about some other experience that isn’t your own would be hard.

OA: Yeah, that would suck. I wouldn’t know how to do it.

GT: So are you going to pull a Sam Smith and have a big interview to come out, or will you just let people listen to your songs to figure it out?

OA: This has only been a thing recently. I’ve done a few interviews and been like “I’m gay and I’m singing about my boyfriends.” I guess for a lot of people you need to say something before they’re really accepting of it.

GT: Do you think you being gay might disappoint the female fans fawning over you?

OA: There are a lot of gay artists with a lot of young female fans who love them just as much after they’ve come out.

GT: You guys have swag. What influences your style?

OA: Emre doesn’t care about what he wears; we have to dress him. Mikey is into dapper clothing and printed button-up shirts and like Alexander McQueen and fashion label stuff. I dress like I’m a teenager in the 90s or like a 90s west coast hip-hop rapper or something. We are each our own individual Spice Girl.

GT: [Laughs] You’re like retro Sporty Spice and Mikey is like Posh?

OA: Yeah, exactly. Mikey is absolutely posh.

GT: So what’s Emre?

OA: I don’t know what he is. Emre is more like Scary [Spice].

GT: [Laughs] Well that’s all I got. I enjoyed talking with you. Good luck at South By!

OA: Thanks Peter. Bye!

Years & Years play U Street Music Hall on Sunday, March 29. Their debut album “Communion” comes out on June 22 on Polydor Records.

This post originally appeared in [The Downtowner](http://downtownerdc.com/a-frank-conversation-with-years-years-frontman-olly-alexander/).

Gary Tischler •

At the Helen Hayes Awards held at the venerable, history-drenched Lincoln Theatre on U Street April 7 with a party at the relatively nearby Howard Theater afterward, it was still the same old story, in the sense that the awards, named after the legendary stage actress, were meant to honor the outstanding achievements in the entire Washington theater community.

This process was always a little unwieldy and often, but not always, rewarded the more established members of the theater community.  This year, the folks in charge decided to level the playing field and broaden the reward field a little and a lot by coming up with two sets of awards—the Helens and the Hayes—with the Hayes awards designated for shows in which half of the performers and artists are members of the union Actor’s Equity, and the Helen awards going to shows which are not.

The result was a total of 47 categories to be decided in one evening, and   at least  five times that number of individuals nominated.  The Helen Hayes Awards, no matter where they were held, or who was nominated, always tended to be rich but lengthy evenings, what with special awards, musical numbers and sometimes longish speech.  The thought of the number of categories as doubled no doubt sent shivers through the spines of both the audience members, writers, nominees and other sundry folks, fantasizing an event that might run into midnight.

Surprise!   Folks needn’t have worried.  The show itself probably set a record for brevity, finishing around a quarter past nine at a clip that left everybody breathless and the bartenders out in the lobby busy.  Organizers enforced a strict 30-second time limit for acceptance speeches, which left us all with an often amusing spectacle of winners racing to the stage, women dropping or leaving high heels in the aisles or in the seats.  That left no time to thank everybody, or thoughtful if lengthy reflections on journeys from here to there and this moment, but left room for heart-felt emotions, many occasions of inventiveness, and no blame for leaving out thank yous. 

If the idea was to be more inclusive in spreading the wealth and joy, it worked—Theater Alliance, a small, but sterling, group working out of the Anacostia Playhouse, wound up with the most awards—seven—as a member of the Helen faction, for its wonderful revival of “Black Nativity,” which won outstanding musical (Helen) and the lesser known “The Wonderful World of Dissocia” which took best play (Helen).

The confusion and profusion of categories rarely abated—it was just too damn difficult to keep track of things—and that included the unlucky presenters who misplaced data every now and then. 

Certain things were still  decipherable—every year, it seems a theater has its moment of breakthrough—not just Alliance in the Helens but also Olney Theater, which burst through in the Hayes group with four awards for the highly original , edgy and one-of-a-kind straight play “Colossal,” which got playwright Andrew Hinderaker the Charles MacArthur Award for outstanding original play.  “Colossal,” which was about football but also movement and dance, was a critical smash and garnered three other awards.

Other more or less “big” winners were Signature’s “Sunday in the Park with George,”  which shared best musical (Hayes) honors with the Kennedy Center’s “Side Show,” which also won outstanding ensemble in a musical (Hayes). “George” got a best direction award for Jon Kalbfleisch, cementing his reputation as a major director via Signature.

Speaking of big wins and rising stars—Erin Weaver took two best supporting actress awards and was a part of the team that took the outstanding play or musical adaptation for “The Gift of Nothing” at the Kennedy Center.  She and her husband Aaron Posner wrote the adaptation.

The consistently original and gifted actress Kimberly Gilbert received the just rewards her character did not when she beat out Kathleen Turner (“Mother Courage” at Arena) for best actress in a play (Hayes) for her truly star turn as “Marie Antoinette” at Woolly Mammoth. 

“Little Dancer,” the ground-up and much praised Kennedy Center musical, had only one nomination but won it—a get for choreographer Susan Strohman.

And, as is sometimes the case with these awards, Studio Theatre, with no wins for the evening won the last award—best play (Hayes) for “Cock.”  Artistic director David Muse accepted the award with a funny, but perhaps predictable, observation.

So, what was different?  Well, change comes to everything as it must: no musical numbers, no long speeches, more and more rising artists, which is a good thing, loudly vocal and whistling and cheering and having a ball through the proceedings as more and more of their number ran up to the podium.  “Wow,” a Washington Post rep said, “I didn’t know actors were in such good shape.”

But it was also a sign that the theater community as a whole—divided into Helens and Hayes or not—was in good shape, in terms of diversity, in terms of interests, talent, and new works. The volume of noise and energy at the awards spoke, well, volumes to the health of the organizers, theatreWashington, of theater in Washington and of the Helen Hayes (or should we say, Helen-Hayes) Awards.    

For any and all details, winners, nominees and other information, visit the Theatre Washington website.

Gary Tischler •

Part of the job description for the S&R Foundation’s Artist-in-Residence is to be a multifaceted ambassador to the Washington cultural world, explaining, performing, presenting and representing the goals and results of the foundation.

Grounded in its purchases in Georgetown of Halcyon House and the Evermay estate, S&R “works with its partners to encourage social, scientific and artistic innovation, and to promote cultural and personal development.”

The young Canadian pianist Ryo Yanagitani is just about the best kind of ambassador any organization or institution could have. Affable, enthusiastic, articulate and brimming with enthusiasms and energy, Yanagitani is the foundation’s first resident artist, and he’s still here, teaching, playing, bringing his considerable gifts to the community at large.

“I thought at first it was supposed to be a one-year thing, which artist-in-residence stints often are,” he said. “Well, I’m now heading into my third residency, and it’s been an amazing experience.”

According to Kuno, the S&R Foundation’s Artist-in-Residence program “is meant to not only give selected emerging artists a home and place of inspiration, but also to provide a platform for collaboration among young musicians from around the world.”

Listening to Yanagitani, you get a sense of both his background and his heritage. He’s 36, looks at least a decade younger and combines an electric curiosity with a clean, friendly formality and charm. “I’m glad to be continuing the residency,” he said. “It gives me a chance to explore myself as an artist, a pianist, a professional and a human being,” he said.

His parents emigrated from Japan to Canada, specifically Vancouver, that far-west city that seems to a visitor a 21st-century, self-consciously livable city.

Yanagitini has a master of music degree from the Yale School of Music, where he studied under Boris Berman, and has completed the residency portion of his doctor of musical arts degree. He has recorded (an album of Chopin), he’s a member of the Music à la Mode new-music ensemble in New York and collaborates with cellist Jacques Lee Wood.

His collaborative and outreach work has included master classes for piano students at Duke Ellington School for the Arts.

Yanagitani is a key part of S&R Spring Overture Concert Series. On April 15, the concert series continues with S&R Washington Award grand-prize winner Tamaki Kawakubo, conductor and double bassist Nabil Shehata and the Evermay Chamber Orchestra presenting an evening of Tchaikovsky, Barrière and Vivaldi, including the classic “Four Seasons.”

Yanagitani will perform cabaret and musical-theater selections with mezzo-soprano Annie Rosen on April 24; works for flute and piano with flutist Lorna McGhee, who will play some of the Library of Congress’s rare instruments, on May 1; and works for violin and piano with violinist Sayaka Shoji on May 12. On May 16, he will close out the spring season with a solo recital of works by Rachmaninoff.

In addition, sister and brother Melissa Margulis, violin, and Jura Margulis, piano, will perform on April 21 and the Mark Meadows Jazz Quartet on May 8.

Since its inception, the series – staged in the intimate and graceful salon at Evermay –has become increasingly diverse and ambitious in its programming.

“Music is changing,” Yanagitani said. “It’s a complicated world, and you have to be aware of what you can do in making a career out of music, how to explore your gifts while making a living in performance. It’s a little like walking on eggshells.”

He loves being in Washington, and in Georgetown, although he lives with friends in Bethesda. “It’s such a diverse area, so many things going on, and I think there is an audience that’s out there that’s really appreciative. In the setting at Evermay, the connection to the music becomes both intimate and visceral. You can talk about the music a little. But you haves to spread your wings,” he said. “I’ve even explored a little tango music, and lately, I’ve discovered American musicals: ‘Wicked’ and ‘Miss Saigon,’ for instance.

“I happen to love the romantic and classic period of the 19th century,” Yanagitani will tell you. “But one of the things about making music your life is you have to, and should, broaden your interests. I’ve played piano since I was a child, practically, and to me, it’s always been an intimate, intense experience to play, to learn, to live that life.”

Gary Tischler • April 21, 2015

Who knew that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia could be such an entertaining curmudgeon?

Justice Scalia probably does—after all he’s been known to act out a little on the court and he’s a huge opera buff—especially of the Verdi and Puccini kind—where acting out is an art form.

And playwright John Strand seems to think so—in his new play “The Originalist,” now in the Kogod Cradle of Arena Stage, he gives us a voluble, combustible Scalia sparring loudly, with strands of mercy, with a vocal, emotional self-described liberal law clerk. Scalia dominates the stage when he’s on it, which is as it should be.

Actor Edward Gero surely knows that, and a lot more, as he embodies the most lightning-struck justice on the court, the ultra-conservative darling of the right, the son of Italian immigrants, the family man, brilliant, the charismatic, funny, unrepentant and self-described defender of the United States Constitution.

Gero—who in his full maturity has taken on characters as diverse as the volatile artist Mark Rothko and Ebenezer Scrooge—dives into the character of Antonin Scalia (with due diligence of research and sitting in on Supreme Court sessions) as if it was a particularly inviting churning ocean. His portrait is full-bodied, and he also has the good fortune to bear a strong resemblance to Scalia—both men are built a little low to the ground, they’re strong and stocky in appearance.

“The Originalist” is of course a set-up play, a kind of fiction that works on our assumptions and biases, the things we think we know about the man, or that we’ve read about him. It’s also a setup in terms of the dramatic situation—Scalia has hired as a clerk a young Harvard law grad who he knows to be a very liberal type, or “flaming” as she describes herself. She’s an attractive, bi-racial young woman named Cat, who means to make a lasting impression on Scalia, perhaps even persuade him to reason when it comes to his well-known conservative and sometimes outrageous views on everything from affirmative action, (emphatically against it) to the death penalty (emphatically for it).

Cat, played with appealing energy by Kerry Warren, takes Scalia on from the get go and their sparring exposes some contradictions in the man—and this is borne out in what we know. While he and justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg are on opposite sides on most of the heated cases that have come before the court, he acknowledges that he loves and respects her, that they’re good friends. This may be because of a shared passion for the opera.

Opera is the background music for this production—directed with perfect pitch and pace by Arena Artistic Director Molly Smith—arias resound like punctuations periodically. It’s interesting that Scalia so loves opera—he insists that he is only interested in the law and its original meaning, not emotions, a kind of Sergeant Friday approach to legal cases, as in just the facts while opera, especially the Italian variety—goes straight for the emotional jugular.

Cat and Scalia spar almost all of the time—yet, while the stakes, especially for Cat—are high, they seem laced with a certain amount of affectionate respect. Scalia shows sympathy when he learns her father is in a coma, and he (the champion of the right to bear arms) takes her to a gun range to teach how to shoot, which she takes to with alarming delight.

To Scalia, the Constitution is stone—to liberals like Cat it’s a living document, amendable, changeable, flexible to fit the march of time. That’s the crux of the matter here, and it comes up again when the court takers up the Defense of Marriage act, in which Cat tries to change Scalia’s tone to a more inclusive one in his sharp, defiant dissent.

All of this is both intelligent and entertaining, until Strand sets up a straw man, not in Scalia but in the person of a rival clerk named Brad, an arch conservative young tea party type who battles no holds barred, literally at one point, with Cat to curry Scalia’s favor. He’s such a devious, hateful, smug and arrogant type that, by comparison, Scalia becomes almost loveable. You long the blond, buff, smarmy Brad to get his, and he does.

This detracts from the real battle for an easy moment.

To really get the full impact, watch your fellow audience members and see how, or if they react. I went to a Saturday matinee far from the body politic and it appeared to made up of almost 100% baby boomers like me, who got all the digs, the point-counterpoint jabs, some, like Cat’s contention that Scalia was a monster and lacked a heart seemed to give even Scalia pause.

I’m sorry. I meant Gero’s character of Scalia. This is one of those contradictory occasions when we choose to embrace the man on stage, to believe in him, which is what good theatre does. The newspapers and talk shows are always less forgiving.

Gary Tischler • April 14, 2015

Over the years, I’ve probably seen five or six productions of “Man of La Mancha,” the ground-breaking musical take on Miguel Cervantes’ classic tale of an aging, would-be knight errant who’s dubbed himself Don Quixote, beginning with a 1970s touring production starring the late Jose Ferrer, which I saw in San Francisco.

After seeing and experiencing the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production, directed dynamically and unerringly by Alan Paul, I can say without reservation that I’ve never seen a better production than this one. Even while hewing fairly closely to the look and feel of other productions, Paul, a splendid group of designers and an outstanding cast have given the audience a production that looks and feels as fresh as it surely was in 1968 when the Lew Wasserman scripted play debuted on Broadway and won a Tony for best musical, with another Tony going to Richard Kiley in the lead.

The idea still seems exciting to me, even though I feared that it might be overly familiar—after all, everybody of a certain age must have hummed, or even tried to sing in a piano bar or the shower “The Impossible Dream.”

I needn’t have worried. The idea of a brightly—and slightly demented—retired solider and member of the landed gentry taking to horse and arms to take on evil and “beat the unbeatable foe” in a Spain beset by the Inquisition seems almost like an urgent mission today, in a world where every other person’s a cynic, and every third person is a victim of malady, oppression, terror and the stupidity of the governing classes.

“Man of La Mancha,” then and now, is a novelty among musicals, it stands almost in a class by itself, while carrying the trappings of American musical traditions, especially with a backpack full of insidiously unforgettable songs. It doesn’t resemble Rodgers and Hammerstein efforts—missing a certain sentimental elan– it doesn’t have the rock-pop boom of a “Hair”, a “Jesus Christ Superstar” or “Godspell,”,amid which it landed. And it doesn’t have the overpowering need to overwhelm the audience often characterized by the later efforts of Andrew Lloyd Weber and his ilk.

It has itself—a brilliant book by Wasserman, with music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion—and the idea that you can create a major Broadway musical hit by going back into theater’s bag of basic tricks and let three enthralling characters and their fates carry the show to enduring fame.

I would guess to new generations not in thrall to old stories, “La Mancha” carries something of an extra kick—it lets the audience imagine itself into the play. Nothing fancy here—in “La Mancha’, theater is still a matter of improvising, using what’s at hand, allowing actors and would-be-actors to play their parts through imagination. The show follows both the dictums of Hamlet’s pep talk to the players and Sir Laurence Olivier’s idea that all you really need to put on a play is a fake nose, a few props and talent.

All of those things are present in abundance here—including the long-lasting gifts of Miguel Cervantes himself who not only wrote the original book in the early 1600s, but also serves as a principal character in “Man of La Mancha.” He and a squire have landed in a grimy, dangerous prison awaiting an interview with the Inquisition, always a terrible ordeal. He’s also in the hands of his fellow prisoners, who wait to grab all of his belongings, which include costumes, a trunk and a manuscript. The prisoners put him on trial, for which he will stage a play about the life and times of a certain Don Quixote, starring Cervantes himself. If it’s thumbs down, he loses everything.

So “Man of La Mancha” begins with a time-tested (see “Hamlet”) theatrical ploy, a play within a play. In it, Quixote, accompanied by his squire Sancho, does battle with windmills he sees as three-armed giants, encounters a roadside tavern, which he sees as a castle to protect, is knighted by the innkeeper as “The Knight of the Woeful Countenance,” mistakes a barber’s tool for a golden helmet, battles a gang of vicious muleteers, and most important of all, meets Aldonza, a hardened scullery maid and sometime prostitute, who, in his eyes is the adored-from-afar great lady Dulcinea, whom he loved with all of his fevered spirituality.

Nothing good can come of this, but in the fractured world of Quixote, he is in the thick of the fight for everything good. Aldonza is drawn to him, bewildered by his kind treatment of her. Sancho follows him because “I like Him” and his niece and her fiancé are embarrassed by him to the point of disaster.

Although the musical has always been touching and moving, there is hardly an ounce of cheap, or slightly more costly sentimentality in it—the songs, to be sure are stirring, but the setting—prison and inn, are rough, unprettified. There is the inquisition, the gang of thieving, murderous muleteers. There is rape. There is death.

And yet, you walk out of it feeling better by far for having been there. A major credit goes to Paul, who is only 30 and has won a Helen Hayes Award for the dazzling, hilarious magic act called “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. His direction—energetic, paced in a way so that the two-hour-without intermission show seems to go swiftly and in fulfilling fashion but somehow makes you want more.

Everybody brings something different to the roles—I’ve seen Ferrer, Raul Julia and Broadway dynamo Brian Stokes Mitchell in the role of Quixote, but for my money, the Australian actor Anthony Warlow, a veteran of numerous musicals, tops them all. He has a great baritone voice and pulls out the musical emotions from the songs, which reminds us that “The Impossible Dream” and “Dulcinea” and the rousing opener “Man of La Mancha”, are true Broadway songs. He’s a terrific actor and an even better singer.

Newcomer Amber Iman plays and sings the part of Aldonza with such gritty force that she almost steals the show—she embodies the part—the low to the ground woman “born in a ditch” and the idealized Dulcinea as two aspects of a very human woman. And Nehal Joshi has a wonderful and heartfelt, deadpan sense of comedic timing as Sancho.

“La Mancha” feels edgy still—even in these times when going viral is a virtue. It may not be brand new, but it’s a lot newer than what passes for much of the latest new thing. [gallery ids="102033,134818,134821,134820" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler • April 13, 2015

As the smartly brief but epic musical “Freedom’s Song: Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War” moves to its inevitable end at Ford’s Theatre, a shot rings out, loud, sudden and startling – all the more surprising and emotionally powerful because it’s familiar, because we’ve been expecting it.

The sound comes from the hallowed presidential box. We know this because we know exactly where we are, if not in time, then certainly in history.

The moment is a punch, a kind of climax to the production at hand. It sparks a keen awareness of being here, in this theatre, and also that we are in the midst of the commemoration of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. He and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln were at Ford’s to watch a comedy, “Our American Cousin,” starring the noted actress Laura Keene.

That box to the side of the balcony is always there and always has been. In many ways, it’s the reason for the theatre’s existence, and nothing accentuates that fact more than an anniversary of the assassination.

The same day that “Freedom’s Song” opened, a press preview was held across the street at 514 10th St. NW, the theatre’s Center For Education and Leadership, for the exhibition “Silent Witnesses: Artifacts of the Lincoln Assassination.” The small space is filled with artifacts: the overcoat Lincoln was wearing, the oh-so-small derringer used to kill him, Mary Todd’s black velvet coat and fragments of her bloodied dress, letters, the president’s top hat and so on. It is an intimate space and show, but hugely resonant with the “Freedom’s Song” production.

Both events are part of “Ford’s 150: Remembering the Lincoln Assassination,” a season-long series of events that began with the play “The Widow Lincoln.” A highlight of the schedule is “The Lincoln Tribute,” a round-the-clock event on April 14-15, with talks, a one-act play, a panel discussion and living-history presentations on 10th Street about the two days surrounding the assassination, including Lincoln’s death at 7:22 a.m. at the Petersen House.

The proximity of the “Silent Witnesses” exhibition to the “Freedom’s Song” production creates a kind of reciprocal poignancy. Knowing what Lincoln carried in his pocket – two pairs of spectacles and a lens polisher, a watch fob, a pocket knife, a wallet containing a five-dollar Confederate note, a linen handkerchief and, apparently, newspaper clips that included articles critical of him – adds something to his words as spoken by members of the cast of “Freedom’s Song,” the human, earthy, prosaic stuff of a great man.

It is not the first time that the presence of the box – the loca sancta, if you will – becomes important at a Ford’s production. Recent plays about Lincoln, a previous offering of the musical “The Civil War,” which forms the basis for “Freedom’s Song,” “The Rivalry,” “The Widow Lincoln,” “The Stars Hung in Black” and so on, resonate in ways that they could not do anywhere else. These days, visitors take selfies with the box in the background before the plays begin.

“Freedom’s Song” is a series of songs as vignettes, bringing us through the Civil War as if we are riding in a musical carriage. The difference is that the words – speeches, musings, outtakes, stories – of Lincoln have been added, creating another kind of effect altogether. They are spoken by members of the cast, a group of young performers playing Union and Confederate soldiers, slaves, mothers, wives and the like as the war rolls over them in ever larger waves.

Lincoln speaks through the cast: the Gettysburg address entire, words of emancipation, a droll story of the kind Lincoln loved to tell, words on the end of the war and so on, punctuating the proceedings with his singular eloquence as we move through them.

What director Jeff Calhoun and designers Tobin Ost (sets), Wade Laboissonniere (costumes) and Michael Gilliam (lighting) have done is to create an ambiance of the Civil War. What composer Frank Wildhorn and writers Gregory Boyd and Jack Murphy have done is to overlay the narrative with a march of Americana music, songs that demand tears, emotional responses, soaring hearts and reminders of the past – and how it might have been lived and lived in.

The songs are the essence of historical pop, staged like living and lively frescoes. Slaves huddled under a table sing powerfully about “The Peculiar Institution” and its horrors, a wife sings beautifully about missing her young farmer husband, Confederates soar with “The Last Waltz of Dixie” and carouse around “The Old Gray Coat” and a fugitive slave powerfully lashes out in “Father, How Long?”

American pop music plays on emotions – it’s what makes the Great American Songbook great, after all. The cast performs it more than well, especially Carolyn Agan as the wife, Kevin McAllister as the Fugitive, Nova Payton as the Storyteller and Gregory Maheu as the Union Private, an appealing young soul who practically has a Dead Man Walking sign on his back.

The music doesn’t match the eloquence of Lincoln’s words; the words have the effect of elevating the songs to a higher level.
The shot, when it comes, carrying with it echoes from the exhibition, is a jolt. You can hear people stop breathing for a moment. That, too, is part of the music in “Freedom’s Song” – that small gun doing so much damage, bringing us here to this place.

“Freedom’s Song” runs through May 20 and “Silent Witnesses” through May 25. [gallery ids="118143,118137,118132" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Harry Schnipper, executive director and owner of Blues Alley, recalled the first time he went to “the nation’s oldest continuing jazz supper club.”

“I was 17, I was a kid. It was 1968 and guitarist Larry Coryell was playing,” he said during an interview at the National Press Club. “I’ve been going there ever since, in one way or another.”

“In a lot of ways, it hasn’t changed a bit.”

And in a lot of ways, it’s changed a lot.

This is Blues Alley’s 50th anniversary year, and, physically, it hasn’t changed much at all. The sign is the same, and in the namesake alley, just off Wisconsin Avenue down from M Street, you have to jump back if you’re occupying the same space as a delivery truck.

Outside, a window displays Down Beat magazine signs from 2012 and 2014, designating Blues Alley as a Great Jazz Venue. Inside, it’s almost an idling time machine. It’s Friday afternoon, and Senegalese guitarists Cheikh Ndoye and Baaba Maal and their group are setting up on the small bandstand, presided over by the classic Blues Alley logo, a tuxedoed player hunched over his trumpet.

There are amps and bongo drums and instruments all over the lit stage. Japanese pianist Manami Morita, who’ll be playing with the gang that night, is tuning things up on the piano. Manager Chris Ross, stepson of former owner John Bunyan, is overseeing things.

The bar is still smallish, not enough to host a rugby team, with the usual bottles of high-end blends and bourbons and what not. The posted sign says Capacity 124. Nearby are rows of black-and-white photos of performers who have appeared at Blues Alley, from stars like pianist Ramsey Lewis to relative newcomers like trumpeter Sean Jones.

The pictures are resonant of an international reputation. The storied history of Blues Alley as a place where big names got their start, and where bigger names came back time and again, have given the place a vibe that is indicative both of excellence and of the changing, swiftly expanding world of jazz.

The list of names is actually kind of astonishing: Lewis, Monty Alexander (still rolling hot), Mose Allison, Tony Bennett, the late jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd (who opened up his own place down the street for a time), Steve Jordan, Les McCann, Oscar Peterson, Charles Mingus, Peter Nero, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, George Shearing, the sublime vocalist Sarah Vaughan, Grover Washington, Jr., Nancy Wilson, Ron Holloway, Ahmad Jamal, Stanley Turrentine and Earl “Fatha” Hines.

And, of course, there was the great jazz ambassador with the big cheeks and the wholly original style: Dizzy Gillespie, the pioneering trumpet player who took bebop beyond Charlie Parker and brought it into the mainstream. Gillespie was closely associated with Blues Alley. He was honorary chairman of the Blues Alley Jazz Society, which – along with the Blues Alley Youth Orchestra, to which he lent his time and name – are thriving under Schnipper as audience- and artist-building non-profit enterprises.

Schnipper is an organized kind of guy. He knows what he wants to say, he has a plan, a schedule. But the more you talk with him, the more you see a guy who’s driven by a passion for jazz. There isn’t any question that Schnipper – who’s also an adept and busy businessman and real estate broker – is still smitten with jazz. He keeps his eye on every table and napkin in Blues Alley, and seems to remember every note from a quartet, a sax, a vocalist, that he’s ever heard there.

“The thing about this is that you really get to know all the players, the musicians, the performers. People have built their careers here.”

Notable among them is Wynton Marsalis, without question jazz’s reigning superstar. In December of 1986, when he was just 26 years old, he recorded “Wynton Marsalis Live at Blues Alley.” Other “Live” albums followed, including one by the haunting local vocalist Eva Cassidy, who died of cancer, age 33, in 1996.

A musician, clarinetist Tommy Gwaltney, opened Blues Alley in 1965, but it was Bunyan – a businessman who loved jazz unabashedly – who steered it to prominence, to the point that big-name musicians played there regularly.

This year is also the 30th anniversary of the Blues Alley Jazz Society. Schnipper, who came on board in the mid-1990s, likes to use the title of executive director, which is a job description, but in truth, he said, “I am the owner and have been so since 2005.”

With the two nonprofits, the Jazz Society and the Youth Orchestra, “we look to the future,” he said, “Jazz is different now.”

“We’re educating young musicians through the society and the orchestra. This, in turn, at some point, expands the audience, and expands the world of emerging artists.” Schnipper was named the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival’s Jazz Educator of the Year in February.

In many ways, the operation is a word-of-mouth happening that has persisted for five decades. While Georgetowners like the idea of Blues Alley and its international cred and rep, they don’t make up the bulk of the club’s audience. “Tourists, people from all over who have heard of the place“ are the majority, said Schnipper. “You can travel abroad in Europe and Asia and other places, and people know Blues Alley.”

Programming is changing, too. Blues Alley now sponsors a yearly Big Band Jam with a tribute theme, featuring top-notch players. This year’s jam – the eleventh – is a special tribute to the “Ella and Louis Legacy,” with Sean Jones as artist-in-residence. It will be held April 18-30 at venues including (besides Blues Alley) the Kennedy Center, Pershing Park and THEARC in Ward 8.

“Jazz itself is like this big umbrella, and it includes its roots, different kinds of music. Its singular core is improvisation, which is why it is such an appealing live performance event,” said Schnipper. “One of the things you’ll see just looking at the schedules and calendar is the variety – lots of emerging musicians and artists, but also established stars, and groups and artists from around the world. But we try to present the whole world of jazz.”

Check out Blues Alley’s rich, full-of-stories website and you’ll get a sense of that world.

He calls his wife, Madeline (they’ve been married 21 years), “the glue that holds the place together. She does everything here, and she knows everything.” An attractive, warm and straight-talking redhead, you can find her in the booth upstairs where the lights and sound get turned on, or all over the place.

Ross, the manager, pointed to the Green Room. “When Eartha Kitt sang here, she complained that there wasn’t a window in it. So we had an artist paint a window on the wall. That’s why this painting’s here.”

“In the end, this place, any real jazz place, is about atmosphere,” Schnipper said. “The music, the lights, the people. Listening.”

In Blues Alley, there’s a “quiet, please” rule while the musicians play. Out of respect, for sure. But also because you might miss something: a note that hangs out there like a curve ball, a riff that goes to a place musically unmapped, a song that takes you tripping.

And at times like those, you can hear the backbeat musical whisper of everyone who’s ever played there.

Dear Georgetowner,

I just remembered that when we met last Thursday you encouraged me to contact you on or before today. First, let me say that I am sorry that you two could not attend that evening’s performance. The shows were a game-changer and shall evermore change the way we present music at Blues Alley. Furthermore, I wish to remind you that my two favorite jazz artists are probably Duke Ellington and Quincy Jones for their instrumentational/compositional/orchestrational and inspirational abilities.

Finally, we chatted about some of the more identifiable personalities that have graced the Blues Alley stage over the past five decades. Stand-out artists would include the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Wynton Marsalis, Phyllis Hyman, Tony Bennett, Mary Lou Williams, Dave Brubeck, Sarah Vaughn and Billy Eckstine. Some of my own personal favorites include Dr. John, Miles Davis, David Sanborn, Boz Scaggs and Harry Connick, Jr. A compendium of all performers or performances should exist but regrettably does not. Thank you for honoring Blues Alley with our first feature article.
— Harry Schnipper [gallery ids="102022,134924,134916,134922,134925,134918,134920" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

This week, a spry 92-year-old guy showed up at the Kennedy Center to give a lecture.

Close to thousands stood up and cheered.

As the man said, “Even this he got to experience.”

The man was Norman Lear, who in a long and productive life, gave us Archie Bunker, Meathead, Edith and the Jeffersons and Sanford and Son, “Good Times” and even “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” and with those shows and those characters left an indelible mark on the hearts and mind of what you might call the regular folks of America.

Lear gave the 28th Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Policy March 23, as a sort of pep talk to Arts Advocacy Day the following day on Capitol Hill. And what a whoop-dee-doo night it was. Folks nearly filled up the Concert Hall at the Kennedy Center and got a time well spent, for free.  

Lear was  there to give a life-and-times tall-tale sounding talk on a day that saw Republican Ted Cruz, the darling of the right and of the religious right, which fittingly is an old bête noir of Norman Lear’s,  announce his presidential run. There also was the 107-member Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra and the Voices of Inspiration for musical inspiration.

Not only that but there was the uncommon man  of the moment: Common, actor, composer, hip hop star, children’s book author and Oscar and Golden Globe winner for original song (with John Legend) for “Glory” in the film “Selma.”

Common noted that it was Lear shows like “Good Times,” “The Jeffersons,” “All in the Family” and “Sanford and Son” that allowed him to see himself and his people portrayed as part of the American cultural tapestry in a way that he could relate.

Lear’s memoir, “Even This I Get to Experience,” figured strongly and often in his talk,which was a riff on his life, and meaning, with asides to the importance of the arts in American life, especially in theses troubling times in which the arts, paradoxically, seem to be at once available in abundance in its delivery by new technology, but in danger of being robbed of their importance and stifled by that same technology.

Lear  walked onto the stage—not a very long journey—and received thunderous applause.   Lear showed he still knew his way around a set up and a punch line: “See, if I were 88 or something like that, why I’d still get applause, sure, but now that I’m in my nineties I  cross a room and I get an ovation.”

He was more than just being here—he had some things on his mind, and dealt with them with banter, comedic fury, a little anger, dispensing wisdom after having received it.  

He talked about his father, who ended up in prison during the depression, and about being left in the care of so-called uncles.  “They weren’t real uncles, and it wasn’t such a good thing.   One of my relatives  placed his hands on my shoulders, looked deep into the tear-filled eyes of a nine-year-old and announced with a smarmy solemnity, ‘Remember Norman, you’re the man of the house now.’ ”

“That’s when my awareness of the foolishness of the human condition was born,” he said.

He remembered when he breathlessly told his mom that he had been inducted into the Television Academy of Arts and Science—alongside David Sarnoff, Bill Paley, Edward R. Murrow and Paddy Chayevsky.  “My mother’s reaction was typically unforgettable. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘If that’s what they want to do, who am I to say?’ ”

He’s a man who knows how to laugh at human foibles, including his own. “I blew my fortune investing in businesses, which I knew nothing about, to the point I might have had to sell my house.  I’d made plans to be cremated on my death, but my son-in-law talked me out of it. He said I want to take your grand-children to a gravestone that reads, ‘Even this I get to experience.’ ”

Lear took stock of the world, by reciting climate change, income equality, ISIS, and most damning for the arts, a dwindling lack of support not only from government, but from the populace. And yet,  he remains steadfast to the importance of art.

“Despite everything I see and feel, however, I don’t want to wake up the morning I am without hope,” Lear said. “We will save the world.” He called the arts one of the things that brings us together, which cause us to see and hear as one.  “We are then free to delight in or disparage according to our individual tastes, but in the embrace of art and beauty, still one.”

He decried a culture that was numbers driven, spiritually sterile, dominated not by exploration or art but by consumerism.

“Republicans never mention Eisenhower anymore,” Lear said. “He warned us about the military-industrial complex, to which he had wanted to add congressional.”

Lear was often accused of editorializing in his shows. To this accusation, he replied, “I realized I was a man in my fifties then. So, why shouldn’t I have a point of view?”

It was more than that—in a television world dominated by sitcoms from the 1950s like “Leave it To Beaver” or, worse, “The Beverly Hillbillies,” Lear’s “All in the Family” and all the rest stood out for their freshness, their authenticity about working class and middle class America and their empathy.  He imagined his way into the lives of others to the point that years later, someone like Common and hip hop artists praised him for seeing their lives.

That’s an unforgettable  achievement.  When he was honored by the hip-hop community for the impact of his shows, he got an answer to what he called the basic question: “What do a 92-year-old Jew and the world of hip hop have in common?”

A lot, as it turns out.

“It has taken  a lifetime to understand the importance of the audience as well as the performers,” Lear said. “It has taken me 92 years, eight months and a day to get there tonight to tell you that.  On the other hand, it has taken every minute, every split second of each of your lives to come to the Kennedy Center to spend this time with me tonight. “

“Add it up. I win. And even this I get to experience.”          

Gary Tischler • March 31, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

= Was chorus master of the Washington National Opera.

= Prepared the annual Handel Festival.

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

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

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

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

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