Weekend in the Capital

It was a beautiful weekend in Washington DC for the Heritage Festival at National City Christian Church and George Mason University  My colleagues and I heard and worked with middle and high school choirs from New York, Nevada, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Jersey over Friday and Saturday.  While there I spent a few hours at the Freer and Sackler galleries of Asian art on the Mall and heard Murry Sidlin's extraordinary performance of the Defiant Requiem -- the film about Rafael Schaechter, who taught Jewish inmates the Verdi Requiem from his smuggled score and an upright piano.  They performed it sixteen times in Terezin, most notably for delegates from the Red Cross, who failed to see the irony in this and found nothing to condemn at the camp/ghetto Theresienstadt.  The event at the beautiful Strathmore music center was a live performance of the Requiem, interspersed with the film and narrators placed within the orchestra. The most touching moments were those that faded from full orchestra to an untuned upright piano accompanying the City Choir of Washington.  This unusual and powerful performance will forever bring an added layer of meaning to this already towering work.  While in DC, I had a great evening with longtime friend Joan Gregoryk (Founder and Artistic Director of the Children's Chorus of Washington) dining al fresco at Jaleo.  The waiter designed the Spanish tapas menu for us and the pairings were gorgeous. (Joan, serendipitously, sat in the seat in front of me at the Requiem two nights before...) Earlier in the day was pulled pork eggs benedicts at the PIG.  Meaty crab cakes and she crab soup the night before at The Wharf in charming Alexandria were memorable, as was the harbor-side performance of Mozart and Bach by Jamey Turner on his glass harp -- dozens of water-filled tuned glasses.  Jamie is an interesting, knowledgeable and eclectic man who has performed with symphony orchestras, recorded at the National Cathedral and performed multiple times on the Tonight Show -- on his musical saw!