Performance

Gary Tischler • February 5, 2015

Just earlier that day, Holocaust survivor Manny Mandel had recited the Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer often said by way of mourning at the U.S. Holocaust Museum where candles were lit and music played and dignitaries spoke in observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day also happened to be the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi death camp where millions of the over six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust died.

And Mandel was there at the Embassy of Hungary that evening to once again recited the Kaddish as part of a special evening at the embassy, which included a deeply diverse, and often emotionally wrenching concert presented by the Embassy Series. The concert featured baritone Jerome Barry (the Embassy Series founder and director), the gifted and young cello player Jacques-Pierre Malan, and pianist George Peachey, who provided a steady and solid underpinning for much of the program.

Mandel and Barry noted that the Kaddish, in this instance, was not about death, but about life and the living, and about the how the incomprehensible number of lives lost were lived.

Auschwitz was the place where approximately half-a-million Hungarian Jews perished in a steady stream of shipments and deportations from Hungary in the Nazis’ last act of horror toward the close of World War II, never stopping in their pursuit of the Final Solution. This occurred in spite of often heroic efforts by many Hungarians to stop, delay or prevent the tragedy.

It was an auspicious evening at the Embassy of Hungary—this was the last official evening for Hungarian ambassador to the United States, His Excellency György Szapáry, who is returning to Hungary on Saturday, Jan. 25.

If the Kaddish is about life, not death, then the concert and its contents—like a mural, a book, a packet of all the lost things the victims carried, including the substance of their lives—became something of a perfect illustration of life, not death.

The concert included musical poems, dances, children’s songs and Hassidic Prayer Chants, three selections from a rabbi’s commentaries on the Talmud, musical memories of childhood, in the manner of E. E. Cummings and the true spirit of young hearts flying, songs from the Holocaust, vivid evocations of life in the ghettos and camps of Poland and Vilna in Lithuania and the so-called Partisanerlid (Partisans’ Song), which members of the resistance sang like a loud but private badge.

Words, in these selections of music, mattered—they conjured weather, nights and days, the ashes in the air, the danger of daily existence, the grind of death and loss, and the spring-insistence on the continuance of life amid the systematic onslaught of destruction.

The concert, or rather the recreation all of the individual lives lost with words and music, was a remarkable achievement of the playing, the singing and the creation of music as a reverent, respectful illustration of content.

Barry, a teacher, singer, cantor, linguist and Vietnam veteran rose to the occasion by treating the material—those songs, those recitations, those poems—with a natural delivery without an inkling of emotive style. The singing was not about calling down the sky or even bearing overbearing witness. It was more an expression of universal kinship. It came from identity, training, experience and empathy that flowed naturally to and from him.

The youthful and gifted cellist Malan brought the strength and depth of the instrument to bear, especially in the playing, with Peachey, of Gabriel Fauré’s “Elegie,” which was described by one writer as the composer’s rare “expression of pathos.”

The concert—dedicated to the victims of terrorism in Paris and the Holocaust—was not an occasion that was principally an opportunity to critique. It seemed to many a kind of work of delicate musical carpentry, built piece by piece from not only the music, and the words, but from the details of lives lived and lost forever. It came from hard nights, pieces of bread rarely received, long journeys to doom, but also still the familial and familiar stuff of daily life, where God is, in spite of all, a strong presence, visible in the invisible, in a pair of shoes, in a stick made to be a toy, in the kind of mark, Pompeii-like, made by the living where they stood, prayed, ate, shivered and comforted each other in community.

Consider the works by Hungarian poet Hannah Szenes, who was killed by the Nazis in 1944: her work “Eli, Eli;” “My God, My God/May these things never end;” “The sand and the sea/The rustle of the water/The lightning in the sky/Man’s prayer.”

The concert veered and trembled through three piano dances, songs from the Holocaust including the familiar Ani ma’amin, believed to have been composed by Reb Azriel David, a Moditzser Hassid when he was in a cattle car on the way to Treblinka. ?

The musical details piled up, like remembrances left at shrine, but living memories, not dead flowers, and the marvel that people in the midst of all this still thought to look up at the sky.

Many of the musical offerings were sung in Yiddish, with an ironic underpinning, in which you notice how familiar it sounds, how close to German en toto, in consonants and vowels they are and you wonder again how we came to this in that time, and how it echoes to this time, a time of technological wonders, and new horrors.
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Gary Tischler •

“The Widow Lincoln,” a world premiere of the new play by Stephen Sill at Ford’s Theater, presents to the audience Mary Todd Lincoln in a lone room, surrounded by giant stacks of baggage and luggage, by ghosts, and memories in the aftermath of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, time abruptly stopped, the future unknown.

The new play is part of “Ford’s 150: Remembering the Lincoln Assassination,” a series of events marking the 150 years since Abraham Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theatre in 1865.

“The Widow Lincoln” is a difficult play about a difficult person. The Kentucky-born Mary Todd Lincoln was reviled in the South where she was considered a traitor, not trusted in the North because of her Southern background and criticized in the press and among the city’s social gossips for her spending large sums on outfitting the White House and herself. She was considered an outsider, a Lady Macbeth figure by some. She was, it would appear, ill-prepared for the cloudy role and standing of first lady, but she embraced it dramatically in a way not seen since Dolly Madison. She had few friends, with the exception of the passion of her life, whom she still refers to as Mr. Lincoln or “father.” She was also close to the Elizabeth Kackley, her dressmaker and a former slave.

Mrs. Lincoln was even less prepared for the role of national widow—it was as if a chasm had opened beneath her feet, with the past out of reach, the present tumultuous and the future unknowable.

New York actress Mary Bacon portrays a Mary who is bewildered, keen and heavy with grief, angry, at turns charming and blustering, the White Houses bully. Her grief is enormous, all the more so because it is chaotic and full of a gigantic confusion.

Bacon doesn’t pretty up Mary. She avoids pulling at any sort of strings, heart or otherwise. She doesn’t sentimentalize. Bacon’s widow is a monument to grief’s pain and confusion and its willfullness, too. She speaks to the audience—to us—often, always in the tone of a question, as if we could lead her out of the wilderness.

Mary Todd Lincoln spent 40 days in a locked room in the aftermath of the assassination, attended by Keckley, a servant girl and a guard, who, it turns out, has a secret. She wears black, but does not attend her husband’s funeral—she gets news of the progression of the body and coffin as it travels, mournfully, watched by hundreds of thousands of people in Harrisburg, New York , Albany, Philadelphia, Chicago and Springfield, where Lincoln’s body still rests outside town.

An unseen commentator provides a kind of narrative from newspaper reports—how “negroes were not allowed to attend the proceedings in New York” and how thousands turned out in heavy rains along the way.

Mary is watched over by shadows, ghosts of families who have lost people in the war, ghosts of slaves. Laura Keene, the actress and star of “Our American Cousin” commiserates with Mary and paints a portrait of the hard life of an actress. There is a séance, there is a strange conversation with the guard and there is an appearance by Queen Victoria, who gives Mary advice about grief.

There is, in short, a kind of life on stage, where Mary, all the while sometimes raging against Andrew Johnson, against the Washington tribe which criticized her, avoids leaving the room until she must.

She is, it’s plain to see, avoiding a future as the widow, one that history tells us was painful, difficult, life as a lonely woman often fending off bouts of melancholy and near-madness.

Bacon is the standout here. She is ably abetted by Sarah Marshall as Queen Victoria, Caroline Clay, who gives Keckley a vibrant, down-to-earth energy and Kimberly Schraf as Laura Keene in full theatrical regalia.

This is one of those times in the theater—this theater—where you pay attention to your surroundings. You see audience members at intermission taking selfies, with the empty presidential, flag-draped Lincoln box above the main floor. With this play, the setting becomes poignant, ghostly, and you think at times that you can hearing voices from another time.

Gary Tischler •

It’s always an odd feeling interviewing actors you’ve seen on Washington stages in many guises. Such was the case during a three-way phone conversation with Holly Twyford and Kate Eastwood Norris.

Norris and Twyford, peers and longtime friends who have often shared the stage, are starring in the Folger’s production of Friedrich Schiller’s “Mary Stuart.”

You feel as if you know them. You’ve seen them as a parade of fascinating women (and sometimes men and even a dog). Now, for the first time, both are playing royal queens.

Norris has the title role of Mary, Queen of Scots: the charismatic, passionate Stuart who has been imprisoned for 12 years, accused of plotting the assassination of Elizabeth I of England, her great political rival.

“They are both queens – powerful, strong women,” Twyford says. “Elizabeth has to decide whether or not to order her execution. It takes place in a very short time period. Mary has days left to live.”

These two women – Mary and Elizabeth, Elizabeth and Mary – are enemies, but they share the common ground of being female rulers in a world mostly ruled by men.

The problem for Elizabeth is that as long as Mary is alive, as long as people – Catholics in England and elsewhere, allies in France, her subjects in Scotland – look to her, she is a threat to Elizabeth’s reign.

In 1800, the play premiered as “Maria Stuart” in Weimar, Germany, where Schiller and fellow poet and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe gave birth to what became known as Weimar Classicism. Schiller, who also wrote “Don Carlos,” “The Wallenstein Trilogy” and “William Tell,” has been called the Shakespeare of Germany.

The play has not been done very often, though the two queens have been the subject of numerous novels, biographies and films. Actresses from Bette Davis to Helen Mirren have played Mary. A 1971 film, “Mary of Scotland,” starred Vanessa Redgrave as Mary and Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth.

The Folger production uses a translation by Peter Oswald, also the basis of a production at London’s Donmar Warehouse that moved to Broadway for a successful run in 2009.

“I wasn’t all that familiar with the play, so we both read it,” says Twyford. “The language is what drew me, and I think both of us. The clarity of it – I really dig it.” Norris concurs: “It doesn’t use archaic language. It has a contemporary feel to it, but remains natural and classical. It’s not David Mamet, by any means – we just don’t thee and thou a lot, for one thing.”

The play is famous for including a scene in which the two monarchs meet face-to-face, a lengthy, emotionally wrenching episode that never took place. But it could have, and maybe should have, the two point out.

“And, oh my god, it’s difficult. It’s really hard to do.” Norris says. “Sometimes, when I’m standing face-to-face with Holly and I see the look in her eyes, the anger, it’s kind of scary, I’ve got to admit.”

“I can’t imagine doing this with anyone else,” Twyford says.

The two women have a long personal and professional history, which makes things easier.

“Let’s see, there’s ‘Taming of the Shrew,’ ‘As You Like It,’” Twyford says, rattling off a number of plays in which they’ve appeared together. “Shakespeare, there’s seven right there.” Twyford played a dog in “Two Gentlemen of Verona” and, famously, they both appeared as Hamlet in the Joe Banno-directed production of “Hamlet” at the Folger, which featured four different Princes of Denmark.

On the phone, you get a sense of the easy talk of friendships, of fun and laughs. But occasionally, just days until opening night, you get a hint of regal, royal edge in their voices.

They are after all – besides Kate and Holly – Mary and Elizabeth, and by play’s end, you probably won’t forget that. And likely, neither will they.

“Mary Stuart” opened at the Folger Elizabethan Theatre on Jan. 27 and will run through March 8.

Gary Tischler • January 29, 2015

Among many of the strands weaving, dancing, spiraling through Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” like a dream are endings: the end of Prospero’s magic, the end of the story. The lines and speeches are some of Shakespeare’s most beautiful and vexing, and, for an actor most challenging.

For Welsh actor Geraint Wyn Davies, they’re certainly a challenge, but also an opportunity. “You really have to listen to the lines, always, see what Prospero’s actually doing her,” Davies said. “In such a central part as this—Prospero is magician, manipulator, betrayed brother by his brother, a kind of king of this realm—they’re a temptation to do too much with it. It has to be clear.”

Watching (and listening) to Davies, you suddenly get a sense of the complexity of Prospero, and certainly the echo of the playwright, because “The Tempest” is one of Shakespeare’s last, and making play’s is also a perpetual act of making magic.

Having caused a storm to wreak havoc on his brother who betrayed him, having enslaved Caliban, having used the sprite spirit Ariel with a promise to free him, having staged an impressively magical show for his daughter and her new found love, have sought and achieved a kind of revenge, Prospero loosens the strands of control, almost sadly, quietly, a little bit at time, with potion-like poetics. Davies does this almost casually, elegantly, with the force of thoughtful, quiet feeling and a clarity that in the final end, is wrenching, objuring rough magic, with the same effect as wielding its wand.

It’s a surprise, coming from Davies, who’s been known to dominate a stage with bravado, and who looks in person just like the sort of man who would want to do that, being Welsh and all and a naturally sort of outgoing fellow

“Ah, the Welsh thing,” Davies said. “I think being Welsh is simply about being creative, the imagination, a love, a passion for words, words. And a pint or two doesn’t hurt.”

The model for the gifted, self destructive artist is Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet—“do not go gentle into that good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light”—whom Davies portrayed on stage. “That was a wonderful part, but a difficult challenge. To live within his skin as he struggled was exhausting.”

Davies does not play small, ordinarily. Washington audiences know him well for three outstanding performances at the Washington Shakespeare Company. “My favorite is, of course, Cyrano as in “Cyrano de Bergerac,” because that’s where I met my wife.” That would be the actress Claire Lautier, who played Roxanne, the object of Cyrano’s hopeless affections, competing with the dashing Christian. “Roxanne is actually a difficult part for any actress,” Davies said. “She doesn’t see Cyrano’s real qualities until it’s almost too late.”

Davies played Cyrano with dash and flash, almost like a 16th-century French super hero, whose special talents could be summed up with as having: boundless courage, world-class work with a rapier and a man who could use poetry and rhyme like a cannonade of insults.

Davies won a Helen Hayes award for best actor in a resident play for “Cyrano.”

He also played the devious but very audience-friendly “Richard III” and Don Armado in “Love Labour’s Lost,” an emotive aristocrat who, in Davies’ performance, embodied the phrase “high dudgeon.”

Davies is a star at the Stratford Festival, where he appeared in “Measure for Measure” and “Mary Stuart” in 2013. He is the son of a preacher.

“I love performing in Washington,” he said. “I love being here. I was sworn in as a citizen (by Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) here.”

“With Prospero you have to be careful,” he said. “He’s a man who ultimate chooses—reluctantly perhaps—to give up control, and not to take revenge, to free Ariel, to give up. It’s an end to things and a summation of his life, too.”

And so, on Sunday, January 18, Davies too, inside of Prospero, speaking out, clearly will come to an end of something, and he will say so thusly:

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors. /As I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air.”

And he will say—“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” He will drown Prospero’s book and bring the play to and for this time around.

Robert Devaney •

Georgetown University’s 13th annual Let Freedom Ring Celebration Jan. 19 at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts honored the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and — with Natalie Cole as the shining star — brought the full house to its feet, singing “Oh Happy Day.”

At the event, Georgetown presented the John Thompson, Jr., Legacy of a Dream Award to George Jones, chief executive officer of Bread for the City, which assists residents with food, clothing, medical care and legal and social services.

Music director Nolan Williams, Jr., led the Let Freedom Ring Choir, made up mostly Georgetown University students, in introducing his original piece for this Martin Luther King, Jr., Day: “I’ve Got a Right (to Vote).” The song included quotations from actors as historical figures, such as Frederick Douglas, President Lyndon Johnson and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Greeting the guests in the concert hall, the Kennedy Center’s new president Deborah Rutter noted how Washington, D.C., President John Kennedy and King come today on MLK Day with this “living memorial to a fallen president” that hosts the tribute each year. She also said she had just met Georgetown University President John DeGioia for the first time.

In his salute to awardee George Jones of Break for the City, DeGioia looked up to retired basketball coach John Thompson, Jr., and Jones in their box seats and spoke of his friendship with Thompson and Jones’s “spirit of love” that was “fueled by King.”
With that, Cole took the stage — with red roses on the piano — and never let go. Her songs included “Mr. Melody,” “Inseparable,” “What a Difference a Day Makes,” the still moving “Unforgettable” (with video clips of her and her father Nat King Cole) and “Miss You Like Crazy,” a tribute to “those we lost and the legacy of King.” Finishing up, Cole said, “Everyone knows this one,” and belted out “Everlasting Love.”

As an encore, it was hard to top Cole’s and the celebration’s version of “Oh Happy Day.” Suddenly, dancers dressed in white rushed back and forth along the aisles to the startled delight of everyone. “When Jesus washed . . . my sins away, yeah . . . He taught me how to watch . . . fight and pray, fight and pray . . . and living rejoicing every, everyday.” Yeah, pretty hard to top that this day. I think I saw Martin smiling. [gallery ids="101972,135617,135614,135610,135601,135606" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

The recent arrival of new leaders at (the) Washington Performing Arts and the Kennedy Center in the persons of Jennie Bilfield and Deborah F. Rutter saw the prospect of new initiatives and cooperations. Sure enough, that’s what we’ve seen in the new year—in addition to the elimination of the “the” from WPA.

Early this month, both the Kennedy Center and WPA announced the formation of “Shift: A Festival of American Orchestras,” a three-year festival of North American orchestras beginning in the spring of 2017. The project aims to reimagine the innovative “Spring for Music” festival which ended its four-year run in New York in 2014.

In addition, this week the Kennedy Center announced a five-year, $5-million gift from Capital One to fund “Comedy at the Kennedy Center,” which will feature one-night appearances by stellar star comedians like Jay Leno, Kathy Griffin and Whoopi Goldberg.

“Shift” has been awarded an $900,000 grant for the collaboration, with $700,000 earmarked for matching funds for new gifts. The festival proposes to focus on performances, community events, symposia and workshops, along with community outreach components for participating orchestras.

That spirit of collaboration was heralded and promised by both Rutter and Bilfield when they took on their duties as president of the Kennedy Center and president and CEO of WPA, respectively.

“We are pleased to collaborate with Washington Performing Arts and celebrate the vibrancy and potency of orchestras in a festival setting,” Rutter said. “The title of the festival, ‘Shift,’ recognizes the dynamic, evolving work and role of orchestras in the 21st century and underscores our mission to play a role in shifting pre-conceived notions about orchestras,” Bilfield said. “The Kennedy Center and Washington Performing Arts share an abiding belief that the nation’s capital is the ideal place to showcase and honor high-impact, imaginative work—on and off the stage— our orchestras are developing for and with their audiences. How exciting for D.C. to showcase this creativity and leadership in spaces around the city”

The original “Spring for Music” program in New York was a festival held at Carnegie Hall from 2011 to 2014. It featured more than 25 orchestras performing more than 25 concerts.

“Comedy at the Kennedy Center,” which includes the annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, features a new Signature Comedy Series, beginning with Leno on April 8. Kathy Griffin will appear at the Kennedy Center June 20, and Goldberg will perform July 17.

“We are grateful for the generosity of Capital One in partnering with us to bring more laughter to the Greater Washington community as well as national audiences,” Rutter said. “We look forward to continuing to raise the profile and stature of comedy at the Kennedy Center and beyond.”

Gary Tischler •

If you know about and love the loosely bordered Great American Songbook, you probably know about her.

If you like women who are smart, witty, and talk your ears off in a good way, you should know her.

If you miss the lost art of scat singing, you’ve heard her.

If you’ve ever watched “The Nanny” originally or in reruns, and can’t get that theme song out of your head, you know a tiny sliver of her work.

If you like jazz, even if you call it blues, if you remember running across an old Nina Simone song on a jukebox that’s never there any more, or remember Ella Fitzgerald racing like a piano player on a keyboard through a Cole Porter tune, you need to know about her.

We’re talking about Ann Hampton Callaway — chestnut hair, Chicago dynamo, versatility-plus, singer, songwriter, living the hectic life of both a performing singer and a recording star, traveling this way and that way, from San Diego to Moscow to Spain to D.C., not to mention her heart-felt home in New York.

Callaway, who did indeed write the theme song of “The Nanny,” will be at the Warner Theater May 15, in a great jazz double bill with legendary jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis.
It’s a good time to find out about her if you haven’t.

We talked to Callaway on the phone recently while she was riding in a car driven by her sister Liz, herself a Broadway star and singer in San Diego, where they were doing a concert.

“It’s hectic being on the road, the different kinds of venues, the traveling,” says Callaway, whose latest album “At Last” includes the Etta James classic as its title track. “But I’ve settled too. New York is where I live, where my life is.”

But she’s also a Chicago lady, a singer from the town of blues. For the best introduction to Callaway, check out her album “Blues in the Night.” “It’s about the blues, not necessarily blues songs,” she said. That’s why it’s hard to categorize her, to label her as a kind of singer although she’s richly known for her interpretation of the Great American Songbook, those songs that come from Porter by way of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gershwin and so forth. She’s also in the world of cabaret, jazz and pop.

“I don’t like labels,” she says. “I know I’m a jazz singer, but I have no problem singing pop. “She gets a kick out of the Nanny theme thing. “We were in Berlin during a concert,” she says. “I called out to see if anybody knew the Nanny song. And you wouldn’t believe it. Everybody did, they hollered in unison.”

The singers you remember, of course, are the originals. Never mind for a moment her monumental output of songwriting — some 250 or so. Callaway seems to know, having made her way from Chicago, to college wanting initially to be an actress and discovering her true self and packing up for New York, that no two good, let alone great, singers are alike. And she appreciates the long list of originals.

She wrote as fine an appreciation of one singer by another this year in a jazz magazine, a tribute to Blossom Dearie, the whispery-voiced break-your-heart jazz singer who passed away this year. “There was nobody like her, nobody at all,” she said.

The bet is that there’s nobody like Callaway either. Just check out her scat-fueled numbers on “Blues in the Night,” the lively, anthem-like, breezy “I’m-Too-White-To-Sing-the-Blues Blues”, or “It’s All Right With Me.”
She’s a Tony Award winner, songwriter and been-around-a-while force of musical nature. Check her out.

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Zinoman’s Successor
David Muse, the young gifted director who has also been associate director of Washington’s Shakespeare Theater Company since 2005, has been chosen to succeed founder Joy Zinoman at the Studio Theatre beginning with the 2010-2011 season. He’ll direct the season opener, Annie Baker’s off-Broadway hit “Circle Mirror Transformation.”

Zinoman, who is directing David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” at the Studio with Ed Gero, said that “David’s story is the classic American story of a smart, talented kid from a small town who finds his passion, pursues it with dedication and intensity and manages to win friends and admirers by virtue of his charm, sensitivity and intelligence.”

Muse called his new job “the dream of a lifetime.” He’s no stranger to the Studio either, having started his directing career here in 2005, and directing a successful production of Neil LaBute’s “Reasons to Be Pretty” here most recently, as well as David Harrower’s “Blackbird,” which won the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Production in 2008. At Shakespeare Theatre, he directed the recent highly acclaimed production of “Henry V.”

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The International 2010 VSA Festival
Very Special Arts, the international organization on arts and disability, will host the 2010 International VSA Festival, featuring more than 600 artists, performers and educators from all over the world June 6 through 12.

The festival will feature theater, literary readings, film screenings, sculptures and paintings, all by eminent and emerging artists with disabilities, as well as educators who will shares innovative instruction strategies.

Venues will include the Kennedy Center, the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, the Atlas Performing Arts Center , Busboys and Poets, DC Improv, GWU’s Lisner Auditorium, Union Station, Smithsonian’s International Gallery and Discovery Theater, The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Harman Hall and Lansburgh Theatre, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the H Street Playhouse.

For more details and information, go to www.vsartsfestival.org.

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Ashley Does Shaw
Noted actress Elizabeth Ashley returns to the Shakespeare Theatre Company to star in the company’s final play of the season, George Bernard Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” beginning June 8.

Ashley, who performed to acclaim in “August: Osage County” on Broadway, is joined by Amanda Quaid, Ted Van Griethuysen and David Sabin, under the direction of Keith Baxter.

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Knuffle Bunny
“Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical,” is now at the Kennedy Center’s Family Theater, with Tony Award nominee Stephanie D’Abruzzo and music by composer Michael Silversher. The production is based on the prize winning children’s book “Knuffle Bunny,” adapted by author Mo Williams.

“Knuffle Bunny” is about a toddler named Trixie who misplaces her beloved stuffed bunny, and goes on a journey to find him.

The musical runs through May 23.

Peter Murray • January 28, 2015

With Ellis Ludwig-Leone at the helm, San Fermin melds classical music with rock ’n’ roll to create lush, manic and irresistible chamber pop soundscapes. The Brooklyn-based band came together around Ludwig-Leone’s vision, constructed during a nine-week retreat in Banff, Canada, where the Yale graduate developed the concept and aesthetic of the band’s music.

“I hadn’t really written songs before. I had done composition stuff, but I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be,” Ludwig-Leone reflects. “I had this idea that you needed to be totally secluded and in your own mindspace to do what you wanted to do.”

When he came back to New York with a composition for a debut album in hand, Ludwig-Leone got to work pulling together a band to record the effort. Childhood friend Allen Tate was the obvious choice for the album’s male voice, but the female voice, just as essential in Ludwig-Leone’s composition, was more difficult to nail down.

Ludwig-Leone’s recruited guitarist Tyler McDiarmid knew Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe of budding indie pop band Lucius, so Ludwig-Leone approached them. “I actually cold-called them,” Ludwig-Leone says, and the duo agreed to be a part of the project. (Their contribution shines brightest on the soaring, ecstatic “Sonsick.”)

Ultimately, 22 musicians – from trombonists to drummers to upright bassists – lent their talents to San Fermin’s debut, which arrived in September 2013 on Downtown Records.

Touring required that the band be whittled down to eight members, and the Lucius girls were out of the equation due to their band’s schedule. Rae Cassidy stepped in on female vocals, but ended up quitting the band to pursue a solo career in April 2014. Ludwig-Leone says there is bound to be “changeover” in a band with so many members. But he also notes, “We think of it now as a real band in the sense that everyone is invested and involved.”

The band’s onstage chemistry, honed over two years of nonstop touring, is proof. Ludwig-Leone talks of the band’s eight members finding “their moment” during their rowdy live shows, which direct the audience toward what’s happening onstage.

As for behind-the-scenes, Ludwig-Leone says he’s “really happy” with how the group interacts. He paints a clearer picture, saying, “I run the rehearsal and talk with people about the parts if I have comments. John [Brandon] and Tyler tour-manage, so they’re in charge of that stuff. Everyone finds a place where they’re in charge. On the music part, it’s super cool because now that all the musicians know the aesthetic of the band, they can add things that are almost always great.”

Ludwig-Leone returned to seclusion to write San Fermin’s sophomore record, “Jackrabbit.” This time, he stayed in New Hampshire, and only for three weeks. But when he got back to New York, he realized – with the help of the band, his manager and his mentor, composer Nico Muhly – his new work was missing something, “an upbeat heart of the record.”

Around the time of his return, Charlene Kaye joined San Fermin’s roster on female vocals. Ludwig-Leone went to work on the last three or four songs on the record (which he says are his favorites) with her in mind, saying that it’s important for a song to “fit” the person singing it.

The album’s title track “is totally high energy,” Ludwig-Leone says, which is no surprise given that the song was recorded with the eight-member live band. With Kaye’s ethereal vocals at the forefront, the song is a proper sequel to the band’s biggest hit to date, “Sonsick.” The rest of the second album, though, continues the dialogue and questioning that Ludwig-Leone started in the first, but with “three-dimensional characters.” He explains, “There aren’t any answers, it just keeps spinning out of control.”

San Fermin plays the Barns at Wolf Trap on Jan. 30. “Jackrabbit” arrives in stores April 21.

Gary Tischler • January 26, 2015

The Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative continues to bear fruit and create a climate for new operas.

The 2014-2015 WNO season continues with another offering with the world premiere of the one-hour opera, “Penny,” by composer Douglas Pew and librettist Dara Weinberg Friday and Saturday, Jan. 23 to 24 in the Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center.

Developed from an original story by Weinberg, “Penny” tells the story of a woman with autism who discovers that she has a gift for music. Conflict ensues within her family, as the woman tries to become more and more independent.

“Penny” coincides with the presence of the world-premiere production of “Mockingbird,” a play that also deals with autism, in the Kennedy Center Family Theatre through February 1. The play, commissioned by the Kennedy Center and the Very Special Arts program, is about an 11-year-old girl on the autism spectrum, who loses her closest friend, her brother, and learns to adjust to new help and a new world, with the discovery of her talent as an artist.

“Mockingbird” is based on the National Book Award-winning novel by Kathryn Erskine and is directed by Tracy Callahn.

Pew and Weinberg, the composer and librettist of “Penny,” are alumni of the WNO’s American Opera Initiative. Their first collaboration, “A Game of Hearts,” was part of the first season of the initiative.

Michael Heaton, director of the American Opera Initiative, said, “I am proud that our program is achieving its mission—to continue to foster new American talent and to provide a forum for contemporary American stories and music.”

The cast of “Penny” features a number of current members of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, including mezzo-soprano Deborah Nansteel, soprano Kerriann Otano, bass Wei Wu and tenor Patrick O’Halloran.
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