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Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute/Revolt for a Cause


I will find myself in a quandary next Tuesday as I attempt to cram two events into one evening.

The first event is Revolt for a Cause, which is being put on at the swanky 18th Street Lounge, which represents pretty much the pinnacle of hipster cool in a town as uncool as Washington, DC. The event is a fundraiser for Wayne Kramer’s prison rehabilitation non-profit, Jail Guitar Doors. If you are a fan of classic punk, then to answer your question, yes, it is named after the Clash song, Jail Guitar Doors (incidentally, written in honor of Wayne, who was serving some time in jail when the song came out in the late seventies). I have mentioned before that I am a fan of Wayne, so I certainly don’t want to miss an opportunity to hear him to do an acoustic set for a small gathering – particularly since I’m getting comped on account of the work I have done as a subcontractor for the group throwing the fundraiser, Revolution Messaging.

But I said there was a conflict.

The Folger Shakespeare Library, a little later that evening, is having an Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute, featuring the poet Lucia Perillo. I confess to knowing nothing about Perillo (I know a good deal about Dickinson – my mother loved her poetry and used to read them to me when I was a child). But before I saw them at the Folger, I knew nothing about Terrance Hayes or Rae Armantrout and had mixed feelings (at best) about Charles Wright. What I’m saying is, I trust their taste enough to take my chances.

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Alice Coote


We saw mezzo-soprano Alice Coote, accompanied on piano by Bradley Moore, perform a recital of English poems set to music by English and American composers (Elgar featured prominently among the composers and the Romantics among the poets). We sat in the front row, which is awesome at a Grateful Dead show, but can feel a little awkward at a classical music event – but it was the first time to see a singer perform up close. The experience was a reminder of how little I really know and understand about music, watching the contortions of her face and body as she sang.

Unfortunately, Ms. Coote was suffering from a cold and was a little off, but it was still gorgeous. Not entirely my cup ‘o tea, though – the music, from twentieth century composers, sometimes seemed too close to the popular songbook and I have never been a big fan of musicals (except for, for some reason, The Fantasticks).

When she sang a series of “poems” – actually diary excerpts – by Virginia Woolf, I saw a bit of what we had been missing earlier. In many of the other poems, even such emotive pieces like Byron’s So We’ll Go No More A-Roving, she seemed content to simply perform the recital. But when she arrived at the Woolf pieces, her performance changed. She seemed to be personally and deeply moved by the sentiments. A reminder of how much, for me, a good operatic performance is as much a product of the acting as the singing.

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Salome and Santa Teresa


I have tickets for the Washington National Opera‘s production of Salome with Deborah Voigt. It is also the day we remember Saint Theresa – Santa Teresa de Avila – the Spanish mystic.

Not entirely sure how these things are related. In fact, they are very nearly opposites. Salome is a… what? Dancer? Courtesan? Prostitute? Rather than mystical and spiritual, she is eminently a creature of the flesh. And Santa Teresa? Could we relate her ecstatic writings about spiritual unity with the Savior to Salome’s ecstatic “Dance of the Seven Veils” that overwhelmed Herod?

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Last Night’s Concert


We saw the Arcanto Quartet play at the Coolidge Auditorium in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. For those of you who live in or have visited Washington, DC – the Jefferson Building is the attractive looking one of the three main buildings of the Library of Congress (LOC for short).

I was painfully ignorant of the three works they played.

The first was the String Quartet in D minor, K. 421 by Mozart. Apparently, it is one of only two string quartets that Mozart wrote in a minor key. Despite the cliches about works in minor keys, it was not a particularly sad work. The second movement, the Andante, hardly sounded like Mozart at all to my untrained ears. The program said that much of this work was specifically written as a sort of homage to Haydn, so perhaps it was that influence coming through strongly.

The second piece was Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major. As you might expect from Ravel, it was unfailingly romantic. If I had any complaints, it might be that I detected what I thought were some sour notes from the second violin and viola. But since I don’t know this work at all, I can’t be certain.

The final piece was the String Quartet no. 5 by Bartok. As you might expect from him, it was occasionally lyrical, mixing Eastern European folk dances into the arrangement, but was more commonly a dangerous and traumatic piece (in the best of senses). The  fourth movement (out of five), the Andante, in particular, stood out for the me. At the movement’s completion, I turned to my companion and mouthed “wow” and saw that she was likewise stunned. I wish I could describe it. It ended with a sort of declining, high modernist sob from the first violin that drew out the history of the collapsed dreams of the Old World.

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No One Will Go to the Opera with Me


None of my friends and loved ones in the greater DC area want to see Salome with on Friday night.

It doesn’t matter that the production has been well reviewed, nor that Deborah Voigt (a soprano famous for her work in Strauss’ repertoire) would be singing.

And so I embark on another “what the heck happened to respect for the canon” discussion.

The last two young ladies to attend the opera with me are both, as it happens, going to Baltimore to see comedian Chelsea Handler. I brought up the question of the opera with a couple of friends last night and got some blank stares. Zero interest.

I have to believe that if more people gave opera – live opera, done properly – a chance, it would continue to grow. And maybe it is. Everything I’m complaining about is purely anecdotal. I do not hang around an “operatic” crowd. In truth, I work with a punk rock crowd. My better half works with folks on the pop culture side of things. I stand in a lonely middle. Or am I just romanticizing myself – making someone who is able to buy a subscription to the opera a classic, lonely, rugged and byronic outsider?