News & Politics

Jeff Malet • January 3, 2013

In a special ceremony Dec. 17, Tony award-winning costume designer Susan Hilferty signed the deed of gift for an Elphaba costume and broom from the musical “WICKED,” based on the novel by Gregory Maguire, to the National Museum of American History’s popular culture collections. The costume is currently on display in the “American Stories” exhibition.
Winner of 35 major awards, including three Tonys and a Grammy, the musical “WICKED” has been seen by more than 35 million people, and there are seven production companies worldwide. For the special ceremony at the Smithsonian, visitors were treated to a live performance by Donna Vivino (Elphaba) and Tiffany Haas (Glinda), singing several production numbers. Receiving the gift of the costume were Marc Pachter, acting director of the National Museum of American History, and Dwight Blocker Bowers, curator of the National Museum of American History.

View our photos of the ceremony at the Smithsonian by clicking on the photo icons below. [gallery ids="101110,138715,138709,138703,138696,138690,138728,138682,138733,138674,138740,138668,138745,138722" nav="thumbs"]

Nico Dodd •

This winter, a new arts center will be opening in Georgetown, Anna Banana Arts and Crafts, founded by arts teacher Anne Freeman, who has taught art privately for three years.

Freeman brings 20 years of experience in the field as an educator and art dealer. She has also taught at the Art Resource Program at Chevy Chase Bethesda Community Children’s Center and at the Art Resource Unit at Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church Nursery School.

In those courses, students will learn about artists like Matisse, Picasso, Calder and Koons as well as how to work with different techniques and materials, such as pastels, paints, watercolors and paper pulp.

The one-room studio is filled with natural light. Courses are offered for children ages 2 to 8-years-old. The studio’s first winter session begins on Jan. 7 and will meet weekly for ten weeks.

Anna Banana Arts and Crafts is located at 3270 S St., NW. For more information and rates, visit www.annabananaartsandcrafts.com.

Georgetowner •

The 13th Hour

December 21 at 7:30 p.m.| $15.00 | Rnewman@ellingtonarts.org | Tel: 202.337.4825 | Event Website

The Duke Ellington School of the Arts senior class of 2013 presents – “The 13th Hour” — an exhilarating variety/fashion show featuring musical performers, poets, dancers and runway models. The show is a modern mix of New York Fashion week; Broadway and American Idol fused into one fantasical evening.

Address

Duke Ellington Theatre, 3500 R St., NW

THE SEAN FLEMING BAND

December 21 at 9 p.m. | CRISTINAH@MAPPLLC.COM | Tel: 202.2441882 | Event Website

Come eat, drink, dance and indulge yourselves to the fun and upbeat tunes of the very popular Sean Fleming Band playing at the lengendary Dancing Crab Restaruant.

Book your table now as space is limited.

Address

4615 Wisconsin Ave., NW

Christmas in Fairfax

December 22nd, 2012 at 07:00 PM | Free | Event Website

In what has become one of the area’s most popular concerts, the City of Fairfax Band once again joins forces with the Fairfax Choral Society on a Musicological Journey through the Twelve Days of Christmas. Bring the kids and enjoy John Lyon’s humorous rendering of ” ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” and be sure to arrive early to visit with Santa.

Address

3501 Rebel Run; Fairfax, Va. 22030

Carols by Candlelight

December 23rd, 2012 at 06:00 PM | Free | tickets@cathedral.org | Tel: (202) 537-2228 | Event Website

Sunday, December 23, 6 pm

Monday, December 24, 6 pm

Favorite carols, beautiful Christmas music and lit candles help to tell again the ancient story of the birth of the Prince of Peace.

Address

3101 Wisconsin Ave. NW

Festival Holy Eucharist

December 24th, 2012 at 10:00 PM | Free | tickets@cathedral.org | Tel: 2025372228 | Event Website

Christmas Eve, Monday, December 24, 10 pm

Christmas Day, Tuesday, December 25, 11 am

The Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Bishop of Washington, will preach at the services on Christmas Eve and the Very Rev. Gary Hall, dean of the cathedral, will preach Christmas morning at 11 am.

Address

3101 Wisconsin Ave. NW

Jeff Malet •

Every holiday season, Alice Jean Shelley’s class at the Sculpture Garden Skating School performs its version of the “Nutcracker on Ice.” View our photos of the “Nutcracker,” by clicking on the photo icons below.

An ice skating professional with more than 27 years of experience, Alice Jean Shelley is the director of the Sculpture Garden Skating School at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden Ice Rink. We invited Shelley to talk about her program. “The children have a wonderful time outdoors learning from the U.S. Figure Skating Basic Skills Program to free skating levels using teaching tools and props such as candy canes, buckets, markers and even a boogie board, etc. This season we have a new class ‘Nanny & Me’ in which the nanny can bring and accompany their children while learning to skate with the children at no cost to them. The adult program is fabulous, too … from first-time beginners on the ice to adults who even spin and jump. If you would like to bring a group of 10 or more for a special occasion and have a half-hour lesson included, there is a special group rate of $17.50 per person which would include a half-hour lesson, admission and skate rental if needed. That way you would have someone on the ice for the birthday, holiday or special occasion party to facilitate the party, teach and even play a few ‘games’ on the ice with them.”

You are welcome to call Alice Shelley at 202-507-2396 for more information and also to arrange private lessons for adults and children, which are available seven days a week at anytime day and night when the ice rink is open.

The National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden Ice Rink is open mid-November through mid-March, weather permitting, where you can view magnificent works of sculpture while skating in the open air and enjoying music from the state-of-the-art sound system. Two hours on the ice costs $8 for adults and $7 for children, students and seniors. Skates are available for rental at a $3 charge.

View our photos of the students performing the “Nutcracker on Ice” by clicking on the photo icons below.
[gallery ids="101116,139290,139296,139304,139310,139317,139324,139331,139338,139345,139352,139360,139368,139374,139382,139282,139276,139270,139413,139199,139407,139207,139402,139213,139396,139220,139226,139234,139242,139249,139256,139263,139388" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Unlike the death being impersonated by both Frederich March and Brad Pitt in the movies “Death Takes a Holiday” and “Meet Joe Black,” death does not go on vacation, wondering why folks fear him.

His work is continuous and non-stop. In the results, we hear music, loss, grief and full lives. And in those stopped abruptly, shockingly, we hear and think of thousands of words, and note achievements and those left behind and the legacies of lives lived. Searching through the paper snowdrifts of the names of the dead in the historical record for 2012 (newspapers, Wikipedia, video vaults) is an endless task best not taken. It makes you yearn for the sound of voices you’ve never heard, faces you’ve never seen, stories not yet told except in some small spot on earth.

On one such search, we found Paddy Pecker Dunne, died in his 80th year Dec. 19, in Killimer, County Clare in Ireland, where he lived with his wife and four children. Before you smile at the noticeable whimsy in the name, you might also notice that he was generally acknowledged to be one of the finest banjo players in all of Ireland and was adept with the fiddle, the melodeon and guitar, not to mention the owner of a voice that stirred anger and broke hearts, it is said. Dunne played everywhere. He was often singing in the streets for causes and melodies, otherwise known as buskering, a term we heard once from a woman who’s now a noted jazz singer. He appeared with the Dubliners and was in a movie with Richard Harris called “Trojan Eddie.” He once met Woody Guthrie.

In the Belfast Telegraph obituary, a gentleman by the name of Kieran Hanrahan, artistic director of the Tradfestival, said that “The Pecker mastered the art and craft of many an instrument, the mandolin, the fiddle and the banjo… He was distinctively known for his most precious of gifts, his voice, and what that voice could deliver. It was the envy off some of the world’s renowned rock, pop, folk and traditional singers.”

Dunne lives on on the Internet—there are dozens of videos of him playing, singing—at home, surrounded by family, on the fiddle in a room where a couple is dancing, surrounded by a wall full of old photos and instruments, or on the street, his face prophet like, white beard of winter, sweeping voice, singing “Whiskey in the Jar.”

I didn’t know Mr. Dunne, but my running across him makes me miss him, illustrating the true fact that grief and loss and remaining memories are worldwide conditions, both universal and strangely particular.

December was a cruel month for many, and we all lost persons we did know. In our neighborhood in Adams Morgan, for instance, we lost Jacques Morgan, the one-of-a-kind, book-smitten, opinionated, sometimes querulous owner of the Idle Time Book Shop, which he ran with his wife Val Morgan. Morgan, according to friends, was the kind of proprietor who did not suffer fools or sports fans gladly, even and especially when encountered among the used books and periodicals and knick-knacks of the store, which is an Adams Morgan treasure.

Morgan, 62, died of colon cancer. The book store, as far as it is known, remains. It is the kind of store which reflects Morgan’s eclectic tastes, abundant in books hard to find, but even more surprising to discover—that includes Three Stooges fan magazines found in New Zealand. In a current atmosphere where bookstores (and real books) are on a perpetually alarmist endangered species list, it is also a kind of safes house for book lovers and mavens. “Maven” is, of course, not a word you would have called Morgan to his face.

We also lost Larry L. King—not to be confused with the former CNN talk show host—who was most famous for writing the book for “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” an enduring Broadway musical constantly revived, trailed fecklessly by the movie version, starring Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds.

“Whorehouse,” a word which really shouldn’t appear too often in a man’s obituary, but King probably wouldn’t have minded. It came from an article about a real such place in Texas, where patrons included politicians but was run out of business by local moralizers. It was probably King’s most rewarding work, but not his best—books about his good friend, the writer Willie Morris, were much better, as were plays like “The Night Hank Williams Died” and “The Golden Shadows Old West Museum.”

We met King, a thin, talkative, friendly guy with a beard, on the occasion of a production of “Golden Shadows” locally. He was naturally garrulous, a story-teller with a run of wistfulness in him, and tall tales about his drinking days, which by that time had ceased. I remember that I liked him a lot, instantly—I have no idea why Texans cast such an easy shadow but are, according to legend, hard to live with but also fun around a jukebox and a pool table.

King’s death came after Signature Theater once again took out the formidably likeable and appealing “Whorehouse” to much success. I remember seeing “Whorehouse” (there it goes again) in its road show re-incarnation, starring Ann Margaret at the National Theater. We ran into him at a cast party, surrounded by young cast members. He raised a glass—presumably non-alcoholic. I remember his warm voice now, telling stories.

Charles Durning, considered by many to be our best character actor on stage and in film passed away, too at the age of 89—he happened to be in the movie version of “Whorehouse.” Being a “character actor” is a role in which you are not the star, but you can feel free to steal the movie or the stage from the nominal star. It was a kind of theft Durning, portly, funny, who could turn a waddle into a menacing move on a dime, committed often. I saw Durning at Zenith—comporting on the stage with Julie Harris in “The Gin Game,” two great stars of the stage dancing around each other in the mine-layered territory of old age.

Here are more noteable passings.

Chuck Brown died in the spring, and his death completed a truth not always noticed throughout our whole city: that this man’s music, jaunty, driving, endlessly delirious and rhythmic was a Washington, D.C., treasure that could be shared by all of its citizen, and his passing was a real loss. Old-school D.C. politicians, such as Marion Barry and Mayor Vincent Gray, felt the loss keenly at his funeral. I remember when I saw—felt him—for the first time at an outdoor, free concert at Strathmore, go-go and funk on the stately lawns of greater Bethesda, the then 70-year-old playing like a truck driver high on the road.

Outer space got fuller with the permanent arrival of Sally Ride, America’s first female astronaut, and Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first human on the moon.

I miss Gore Vidal for the simple fact that he won’t write another book. I love his essays, his historical novels, “Burr,” “Lincoln” and “Washington, D.C.”—and his unrepentant, pugilist paganism and not always justified sense of superiority.

Speaking of books—all hail to the prophet of a future he anticipated and did not like when it came—Ray Bradbury of “Fahrenheit” fame also penned “The Martian Chronicles” and brawling tales of brawling Irishmen and small town wonders. He wrote the screenplay for John Huston’s “Moby Dick” and titled a book “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” A giant.

We lost Arlen Specter, the sometimes quixotic, often confrontational, but always, in his own way, true to the stature of his standing, which was being the senator from Pennsylvania, until the rise of the Tea Party—and then, Sen. Daniel Inouye, a true larger-than-life ennobler of his home state, Hawai’i, and his institution, the United States Senate.

Speaking of quixotic, another senator, George McGovern, best known for his devastating, muddled presidential loss to Richard Nixon, proved a prophet in many ways—about opening the Democratic party, about Watergate. Asked at a press conference on presidential politics about what it was like to get over losing a presidential race, McGovern replied, “I’ll let you know when it happens.”

The stars we lost and the curious spectacle of celebrity deaths all came together in the passing of flamingly incandescent—once—Whitney Houston who died under questionable conditions in a hotel room on the eve of the Grammy Awards, making the awards seem weird, and the loss even more difficult, she singing her note-holding anthem “I will Always Love You” seemingly everywhere on television on the net, in our memories.

Other pop music losses: Ravi Shankar—who, with the help of Beatle George Harrison, brought the sitar within sight and sound of the world; Donna Summer, the unchallenged queen of disco; “Daydream Believer” and Monkee star Davy Jones; rock-and-roll pied piper Dick Clark and his African-American counterpart on “Soul Train,” Don Cornelius.

We also mourn writer Paul Fussell and his histories of modern war; critic Robert Hughes, who entangled and finagled us into an appreciation of the big themes in art; Mike Wallace, who really was “60 Minutes.”

Last but certainly not least—and always—those we lost Dec. 14 in Newtown, Conn.:

Charlotte Bacon, 6

Daniel Barden, 7

Rachel Davino, 29

Olivia Engel, 6

Josephine Gay, 7

Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 6

Dawn Hochsprung, 47

Dylan Hockley, 6

Madeleine F. Hsu, 6

Catherine V. Hubbard, 6

Chase Kowalski ,7

Jesse Lewis, 6

James Mattioli, 6

Grace McDonnell, 7

Anne Marie Murphy, 52

Emilie Parker, 6

Jack Pinto, 6

Noah Pozner, 6

Caroline Previdi, 6

Jessica Rekos, 6

Aveille Richman, 6

Lauren Rousseau, 30

Mary Sherlach, 56

Victoria Soto, 27

Benjamin Wheeler, 6

Allison N. Wyatt, 6

Robert Devaney •

Like a Grinch before Christmas, the National Park Service has canceled its lease with Jack’s Boathouse, the popular canoe and kayak renting facility on the Potomac River next to Key Bridge.

According to a letter received by Paul Simkin, owner of Jack’s Canoes & Kayaks, LLC, from the National Park Service, his business has until the end of next month to vacate the property. Jack’s has been a boat rental location in the same spot on the river since 1945.

The letter, sent Dec. 18 and signed by NPS regional director Stephen Whitesell, stipulates: “This letter serves as notice to Jack’s . . . to terminate its occupancy of the leased premises. Please vacate the property on and before 11:59 p.m. on January 31, 2013, and remove all personal property from the premises. . . .”

The letter also reads: “As you are aware, the property upon which Jack’s Canoes & Kayaks, LLC, conducts business became a part of Rock Creek Park when the District of Columbia transferred jurisdiction over certain property along the Georgetown Waterfront to the National Park Service. This 1984 transfer included the October 1, 1973, month-to-month lease (as amended in 1982) for the property popularly known as Jack’s Boat House, located at 3500 K Street, N.W. . . . and said lease was assigned to the National Park Foundation.”

The Georgetowner contacted the NPS to ask why the boathouse lease was canceled, but its public affairs office has not yet responded to the newspaper.

As the latest owner of Jack’s Boat House, Paul Simkin commented on the NPS decision to cancel his business’s lease.

“The Jack’s Boathouse family is heartbroken that after 70 years on the same location, we are told in a form letter that we must be out by 30 days,” Simkin said. “Hearing this at Christmastime will be a huge blow to our 27 employees at Jack’s Boathouse who are losing their jobs which makes this even harder.”

“Last summer was the best summer we ever had in D.C. at the boathouse with our business booming and our customers happy,” he said. “We were brought into the National Park Service offices and assured a minimum of a three-year contract — and then to be told this now is just devastating.”

Simkin said that he has grown Jack’s seasonal customer base from 4,000 four years ago to 72,000 in 2012.

The Georgetowner will have an update to this news story next week — along with a review of possible boathouse projects on the Potomac and the proposal to move Jack’s Boathouse upstream.

Jeff Malet • December 21, 2012

Senator Daniel Inouye lies in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C. on Thursday, Dec. 20, 2012. There, his colleagues and members of the public would pay their respects to the Senate’s second-longest serving member. The Democrat from Hawaii was a Medal of Honor recipient for valor in World War II. He died Monday from respiratory ailments at age 88. Lying in state is an honor typically reserved for presidents, bestowed only 31 times since the 1800s. Draped in the American Flag, Inouye’s casket sat beneath the Capitol dome, atop the Lincoln catafalque, the platform built in 1865 to support Abraham Lincoln’s casket when that president’s body lay in state.

View our photos by clicking on the photo icons below. [gallery ids="101113,138900,138908,138915,138922,138928,138935,138942,138949,138956,138963,138969,138976,138984,138991,138892,138884,138878,139021,138806,139015,139010,138814,139005,138821,138828,138835,138842,138849,138856,138863,138870,138999" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Dave Brubeck was a giant in the world of jazz, a world noted for the presence of many giants and big personalities.

In that world, Brubeck was also a man apart, a true creative genius and original who didn’t live the troubled jazz lives of other jazz legends, Charlie Parker prominently among them. He was a pioneer like Parker was, a big world-like force like Louis Armstrong and a man nearly as influential in the range of American music that flowed from jazz as Duke Ellington.

Brubeck, who died just a day before his 92nd birthday last week, was the product of a Catholic marriage, was married to the same woman all his life, had six children, five of whom entered into what you could call the family business and was still creative, even touring, almost to the end of his days. This rock-solid man who looked somewhat like a mad professor and once wanted to be a veterinarian began a career as a jazz musician, group leader and composer after World War II, in which he had served honorably as well as performing for troops at the request of a commander.

Brubeck told people that his goal at the beginning was that he wanted to play polytonally and polyrhythmically — goals, the meaning of which might escape average boppers and listeners but which meant one word to Brubeck: freedom. It was complicated, but it opened up wide so that jazz contained the world.

One of the results of this quest was an album released by the Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1959 called “Time Out.” It included—along with a musical tribute to Ellington, whom Brubeck admired more than anyone else—a number called “Take Five,” composed by the group’s lyrical, steadying alto sax player Paul Desmond. As a piece of music, “Take Five” was tricky. It sounded like jazz, couldn’t be anything else, but it was witchy and irresistable you couldn’t get it out of your head. It was played in 5/4 time as opposed to the more common 4/4 jazz beat. Astonishingly, in ways that had never happened before, the album was a huge hit, and “Take Five” also rode up the charts as a single.

In time, the music of “Time Out” and especially “Take Five” came to symbolize the coming world of performance and recorded jazz. It was hip, and it was cool. It was a little cerebral, even though Brubek himself thrived on improvisation, Parker’s and Gillespie’s salty bread and butter of playing and flying—more than most. Imagine a jazz club—in San Francisco, especially—of the late 1950s and ’60s. The players would be cool, a quartet, a trio, bass players sleepily casual, the rounds and turns of solos and improvs, riffs on a theme, going round the players. There would be young people in those clubs, college kids, the boys with thin ties, the girls in a size-smaller skirt zipped up, in heels and blouse. They would be listening almost intently, as if deciphering a hidden message in the music.

It was kind of strange—this church-like place with cigarette smoke and cocktail atmosphere—compared to the looser, equally smoke-filled jams in Harlem where Bird flew and later Gillespie reigned with his peculiar horn tossing bebop like musical salad.

Brubeck—who garnered a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009—made the cover of Time Magazine in 1954, a first for a jazz player and the only one to do so besides Mr. World Ambassador Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. All this popularity and fame and honors grated on some people, jazz critics and purists among them who saw jazz as a largely African-American contribution to American culture.

Yet, according to a Washington Post article this week, Brubeck’s peers didn’t mind. Everyone knew there wasn’t a prejudiced bone in Brubeck’s mindset, having refused to tour in Southern states which would not allow bass player Eugene Wright, who was black, appear in any venues. The Post reported that that Willie “The Lion” Smith, a legendary African American jazz and blues pianist, was asked by a reporter in the Netherlands, with Brubeck close by, “Isn’t it true that no white man can play jazz?” According to the Post, Smith “gestured toward Mr. Brubeck and said to the reporter, ‘I’d like you to meet my son.’ ”

In any case, Brubeck was famously a champion of racial tolerance, and he was famous for being simply a decent man.

He composed all sorts of music— hundreds of compositions, classical, jazz on the themes of classical composers, even music used in a Charlie Brown show. “The Dave Brubeck Quartet” emerged into the limelight during the 1950s and included Brubeck on piano, Desmond on sax, Wright on bass and drummer Joe Morello.

Brubeck, Armstrong, Gillespie and Ellington all at one time or another became world ambassadors of sorts through their music, traveling all over the world to spread the gospel of jazz and America. Stories have it that during summit talks between Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan at a Brubeck concert in Moscow Gorbachev reportedly listened with foot-tapping affinity. Brubeck in some quarters was credited with helping to soften Gorbachev up for Americans and Reagan and making the summit a success in 1988.

It’s always interesting to note the reactions on the blogosphere to the death of famous persons. Those anonymous scribbles inevitably include some ragged, cruel and hurtful comments. None of that negativity was present for Brubeck — except for a complaint that the Huffington Post hadn’t featured his death on its front page.

Take that, and take five.

Jeff Malet •

A lighting ceremony took place for the National Hanukkah Menorah, the world’s largest, on the Ellipse, just across from the White House on the second night (first day) of the eight-day Jewish holiday. Candles were lit on Sunday Dec. 9, 2012 by special guest, acting Office of Management and Budget Director Jeffrey Zients. The United States Navy Band and “The Three Cantors” performed. The National Menorah Lighting dates to 1979 when Jimmy Carter was president. Hanukkah celebrates the Jewish Maccabees’ military victory over Greek-Syrian oppression more than 2,000 years ago. A candle is lit each night of the eight-day celebration, commemorating the miracle of one day’s supply of oil lasting a full eight days in the lamp following the re-dedication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. This annual event is sponsored by American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) [gallery ids="101093,137870,137876,137882,137889,137896,137902,137908,137915,137862,137856,137850,137943,137823,137938,137933,137830,137928,137836,137842,137922" nav="thumbs"]