Million Dollar Quartet

The husband and I went out on a date Friday night - I think our third since Nugget was born.  We were given tickets to see Million Dollar Quartet at the Kennedy Center.

In December 1956, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins met at Sun Records in Memphis for what has to be the greatest jam session of all time.  Million Dollar Quartet tells the story of that night and features so many great songs - Blue Suede Shoes, Folsom Prison Blues, Great Balls of Fire and Sixteen Tons just for starters.  

If you get a chance to see this show, don't miss it.  It's on a national tour now and has a permanent home in Chicago and Las Vegas.

November and December

In November and December, we saw a lot of performances at the Kennedy Center, hosted some holiday dinners and had out of town company.

November 10th - We saw a concert with Lang Lang that was essentially a masters class for 100 local piano students between the ages of 8 and 18.  It was fascinating to watch him work with these students.  We had also had a first tier seat on the side so we could watch him play.

November 22nd - We hosted Thanksgiving dinner and all ate too much.

November 23rd - We saw Jekyll & Hyde, starring Constantine from American Idol in the lead.  This was a very enjoyable show.

November 27th - The Kennedy Center dedicated the new Rubenstein Organ with a free concert.  They showed a time lapse video of the installation of the pipe organ that was just amazing and the instrument is beautiful.

December 13th - Merry Tuba Christmas at the Kennedy Center.  This was the 39th anniversary of this holiday tradition founded by Harvey Phillips in which tuba, sousaphone, and euphonium players from around D.C. play traditional Christmas music.  It is always a packed event; the audience fills pretty much the entire Grand Foyer.

December 15th - The National Symphony Orchestra Holiday Pops concert, with New York Voices.  They made it snow inside the Concert Hall. 

December 22nd - Irving Berlin's White Christmas.  They changed some of the songs from the movie (my favorite holiday movie) and rearranged the story a little bit, but did get all the big numbers in there.  This time they made it snow in the Opera House.

December 23rd - The Annual Messiah Sing-a-Long.  My sister got here just in time for us to go to the Kennedy Center for the sing-a-long.  I've been trying to do this since I moved here and have never made it.  We had a blast!  They have soloists for the arias and restatives, and the audience sings the choruses.  The Kennedy Center has been doing the sing-a-long since 1971.

December 24th - We (Jim, Sara and I) went to the Newseum.  If you haven't been, this is one of the coolest paid entry museums in D.C. and totally worth the price.  Especially since the ticket lets you in on two consecutive days.  That evening, we hosted Jim's mom and sister for our traditional spaghetti dinner.

Happy New Year!

Way to completely ignore the last quarter of the year, Reeb.  We did stuff, I swear.  Let me 'splain...no, there is too much.  Let me sum up.

October:

In October, we spent the weekend in Baltimore for my birthday.  It was a wonderful trip.  Jim had a hydrangea delivered to our hotel room, we ate some really good food at Miss Shirley's Cafe and we visited the National Aquarium (huge, definitely takes most of the day.  We didn't see it all) and the Baltimore Zoo.

The next weekend, we drove out to the Shenandoah Valley/Skyline Drive.  Once we got out there, we got a wild hair and decided to go on to Luray Caverns.

Finally, at the end of the month, we saw a ballet production of Dracula at the Kennedy-Center.

Next post: November.

Follies

Last night, we had a date and went to see Follies at the Kennedy Center. This was the first of several shows that we have tickets for this summer.

Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Goldman. The musical is set during a reunion of the Weismann's Follies performers in their old, crumbling theater, which is set for demolition. The story focuses on two couples, Buddy and Sally Durant Plummer and Ben and Phyllis Rogers Stone, both of whom are bitterly unhappy in their marriages.

Many of the former show girls perform their old routines, sometimes accompanied by the ghosts of their former selves. The ghosts or memories of the past are frequently on stage and drift through the action, often mirroring the action in present day. The show ends with a dreamlike sequence in the style of the old Ziegfeld Follies, in which each of the four principle characters act out their own follies.

I was not very familiar with this show before going, but as a general rule, I love Sondheim's work and this show did not disappoint. The cast includes the always lovely Bernadette Peters as Sally, Jan Maxwell (Phyliis), Danny Burstein (Buddy), Ron Raines (Ben), Linda Lavin as Hattie and Elaine Paige (Carlotta). The show runs through June 19th.

Day 17 - An Art Piece

This painting is A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat. Seurat was an Impressionist painter and this is one of the best, if not the best, examples of pointillism. The entire painting is made up of little dots of color. If you get too close, it looks like the pixels in a low resolution digital print.

The painting is huge (almost 7' by 10') and took over two years to complete. It is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. I saw it there several years ago and purchased a tote bag in the gift shop there with the painting on it.

It is also the inspiration for Stephen Sondheim's musical Sunday in the Park with George. I like Sondheim's shows because the lyrics are always so intricate and oftentimes quite funny. This show features a song called "The Day Off," in which Georges sings what the dogs in the painting are thinking. This includes one of my favorite lines, "that's the puddle where the poodle did the piddle." If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. You can find it on Netflix; I just added it to Jim's queue.

Big Weekend

Once again, we over-booked our weekend, but we had a great time. Saturday morning we drove out to The Plains and did this corn maze. The weather was fantastic and it was great to spend the time outside. We were doing a good job, right up until we got to the last station. We couldn't find it for love or money and just wandered around in the same circle in the big chicken's wing for about 20 minutes until we figured out how to get out. All together, it took us an hour do to the maze.

From there, we went to the home of a high school friend of Jim's, whom he hadn't seen in a long time. We stayed and visited for about an hour and then headed off looking for wineries, since it would have been a shame to be out there and not go to at least one. We found The Winery at La Grange I did the whole tasting (about 16 wines) and Jim stopped after the whites. We bought two bottles, the pinot grigio and the cuvee.

Sunday night, we went to Ford's Theatre and saw a production of Sabrina Fair. I love the theater there. It's a small house and really every seat is good. We were in the third row, to the right and there was only one small bit where we had a bad sight line. The set made fantastic use of the stage, which has a very big thrust (the part that sticks out from the opening). There was no curtain for this show, either, which was interesting in terms of how the play opened and the "curtain" call. I was a little disappointed in the performance of the actor's playing Sabrina, who could have toned it down a bit, and Linus, who could have been more arrogant and aloof. I may have been spoiled by Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, but it was still a perfect lovely evening out.