Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, daughter of the late Governor Ann Richards, and a “heroine of the resistance” (Vogue), Cecile Richards has spent a lifetime fighting for social justice and women’s rights. After years of advocacy, resistance, and progressive leadership, she shares her story in her New York Times bestselling memoir, MAKE TROUBLE: Stand Up, Speak Out, and Find the Courage to Lead (Gallery; Trade Paperback; March 26, 2019; $16), featuring a *NEW AFTERWORD* in which Richards proposes a Women’s Declaration of Independence and calls for a new movement to transform our politics.
In MAKE TROUBLE, Richards presents a timely and important message: To make change, you have to make trouble. In her book, she illuminates the people and the lessons that have gotten her through good times and bad and the experiences that taught her how to stand up, speak out, and find the courage to lead. In the “powerful and infinitely readable” (Gloria Steinem) MAKE TROUBLE, Richards reflects on the people and lessons that have gotten her through good times and bad, and encourages the rest of us to take risks, make mistakes, and make trouble along the way.
Cecile Richards will be in conversation with Congresswoman Lauren Underwood, the youngest African American woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, on:
Wednesday, March 27
7:00 PM
Sixth & I
600 I Street NW, Washington, DC 20001
For more information, please visit https://www.sixthandi.org/event/cecile-richards-2.
Cellist Amanda Gookin takes a major step forward in her mission to make classical music an active force for political good with her Forward Music Project on March 29 at 9:00 p.m. inside Dupont Underground. Praised for “Gookin’s focus and ferocity—coupled with expert technical work” (The Strad), Forward Music Project is presented by National Sawdust Projects—the producing arm of National Sawdust. As part of DIRECT CURRENT’s initiative to take Kennedy Center artists and programming out into the world beyond the traditional concert hall, Forward Music Project reaches new Washington-area audiences at Dupont Underground, a reclaimed 75,000-square-foot art exhibition and performance space built inside the only underground station in D.C.’s old streetcar system.
Forward Music Project commissions seven original multimedia works for cello by some of today’s most forward-thinking composers: Leila Adu, Angélica Negrón,Amanda Feery, Allison Loggins-Hull, Nathalie Joachim, Jessica Meyer, andMorgan Krauss. Pushing the boundaries of traditional writing for cello, Gookin’s performance incorporates singing, chanting, staging effects, and projection art in collaboration with video and projections designer S. Katy Tucker (NSO Pops: West Side Story, the Ring Cycle). The stylistically contrasting compositions focus on the first-person perspectives of women, highlighting issues from the LGBTQ+ community and reproductive rights to harassment and human trafficking.
Ticket Information
Amanda Gookin’s Forward Music Project will be performed on Friday, March 29 at 9 p.m. at Dupont Underground. Tickets ($20) are available at the Kennedy Center Box Office, on the Kennedy Center website, and via phone through Instant Charge, (202) 467-4700; toll-free at (800) 444-1324. For all other ticket-related customer service inquires, call the Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540
Washington Bach Consort will continue to offer their original Downtown Cantata Series at the Church of the Epiphany on the first Tuesday of each month during their season.
Monday, April 1, 12:10pm
Washington Bach Consort will continue to offer their original Downtown Cantata Series at the Church of the Epiphany on the first Tuesday of each month during their season.
On April 5, the award-winning Hay-Adams, located steps from the White House at 800 16th Street, NW, 20006, will host its next Author Series luncheon honoring David W. Blight to discuss his latest work, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, which published October 16, 2018. The Hay-Adams’ Author Series, where literary crowds honor literary masters, is an on-going event, which hosts outstanding writers in a historic setting, directly overlooking the White House at the Top of The Hay. One will enjoy exceptional food, drink and lively conversation. Tickets are priced at $90 per person (all inclusive), which includes a three-course, prix fixe menu with wine pairings: https://www.hayadams.com/
Additionally, Kramerbooks (http://kramers.com) will be on hand so guests will have the opportunity to purchase a copy of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, which Blight can sign and personalize after the luncheon. Tickets go on sale March 15 and will be available online at: http://www.hayadams.com/
WHO: David W. Blight is a teacher, scholar and public historian. He is Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including
American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era; and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory; and annotated editions of Douglass’s first two autobiographies. He has worked on Douglass much of his professional life, and been awarded the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize, among others.
His newest book, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, is the first major biography written in the last quarter century about the most important African American of the nineteenth century. An escaped slave,Douglass became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era. Blight brings new information about Douglass to light in the tome, particularly the last thirty years of his life, thanks to access he gained to a trove of papers and letters in a private collection that no other historian has used in any full-length biography of Douglass. It has been recognized as a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and TimeTop 10 Book of the Year.
David W. Blight was born in Flint, Michigan. After achieving his undergraduate degree, he taught in a public high school in his hometown for seven years. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1985 with a thesis titled “Keeping Faith in Jubilee: Frederick Douglass and the Meaning of the Civil War”. Blight has been a consultant to many documentary films, including, “Death and the Civil War,” (2012), the 1998 PBS series, “Africans in America,” and “The Reconstruction Era” (2004) among others. He is also a frequent book reviewer for the New York Times, Washington Post Book World, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, Slate.com and other newspapers, and has written many articles on abolitionism, American historical memory, and African American intellectual and cultural history.
WHEN: The luncheon will be held at the Top of The Hay on Friday, April 5, 2019, from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. (doors open at 11:30 a.m.).
WHERE: The Hay-Adams is located at 800 16th Street NW, Washington DC, 20006, across Lafayette Square from the White House. The historic Hay-Adams offers guests Washington’s most prestigious address with views overlooking the White House, Lafayette Square and St. John’s Church, the “Church of the Presidents.” Consistently recognized as one of the world’s best hotels by Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Fodor’s Travel and U.S. News & World Report, the hotel is just minutes from the Smithsonian Museums, the Washington Monument, the Capitol Building, the Mall, as well as convenient to Metro stations and the convention center. For reservations or more information call (202) 638-6600 or visit their website at www.hayadams.com.
The Choral Arts Society of Washington’s Chamber Singers and Youth Choir, together with the New Orchestra of Washington (NOW) and the Aeolus Quartet, will immerse their audience with soundscapes and projections in a subterranean musical experience for Into the Light. Presented on Friday, April 5th and Saturday, April 6th at 8:00pm at Dupont Underground, this unique concert will make use of the shimmering acoustics of the space. The program will present Steve Reich’s Different Trains, a choral and double string quartet arrangement of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and a new piece by Choral Arts’ Artistic Director Scott Tucker inspired by the acoustics of the venue, amongst others.
The performance will use the entirety of the Dupont Underground, a former belowground streetcar station which has been transformed into a public artspace. The setting will be particularly apt for the presentation of Reich’s Different Trains, a three-movement piece composed for string quartet (Aeolus Quartet, NOW’s Quartet-in-Residence) and sound effects, inspired by Reich’s train travel while living as a young American Jew during the time of the Holocaust.
For this production, the performers will begin on one end of the underground space and gradually move toward the other, emphasizing the transition from darkness into light. Simultaneously, lighting effects and projections by Production Designer JD Madsen will reflect on the musical content. Further immersing the audience, movable barriers will be used to guide the audience through the performance space.
In addition to Reich’s Different Trains, the concert will present works by Hildegard von Bingen, Gregorio Allegri, Samuel Barber, Ben Parry, R. Murray Schafer, Sarah Hopkins, and Knut Nystedt. Scott Tucker’s latest composition, The Moon and Her Maidens is inspired by the acoustics of the Dupont Underground and composed to pair with R. Murray Schafer’s Epitaph for Moonlight .
“I have been looking for opportunities to present choral music in a more interactive and immersive way,” says Choral Arts Artistic Director, Scott Tucker. “We visited Dupont Underground soon after it opened. The acoustics of the space, and the theme of light and darkness are what inspired the musical program. The collaboration with Jay Brock (Production Director) and JD Madsen (Production Designer) have helped us create a full-sensory experience that will allow the audience to engage with the music with more intensity than they would find in a traditional concert.”
“We are thrilled to bring together so many organizations and artists we have long admired for this unique collaboration,” says Tad Czyzewski, Choral Arts Executive Director, of the collaboration with NOW and the Aeolus Quartet.
More information and tickets ($20) can be found online at https://choralarts.org/events/
The Choral Arts Society of Washington’s Chamber Singers and Youth Choir, together with the New Orchestra of Washington (NOW) and the Aeolus Quartet, will immerse their audience with soundscapes and projections in a subterranean musical experience for Into the Light. Presented on Friday, April 5th and Saturday, April 6th at 8:00pm at Dupont Underground, this unique concert will make use of the shimmering acoustics of the space. The program will present Steve Reich’s Different Trains, a choral and double string quartet arrangement of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and a new piece by Choral Arts’ Artistic Director Scott Tucker inspired by the acoustics of the venue, amongst others.
The performance will use the entirety of the Dupont Underground, a former belowground streetcar station which has been transformed into a public artspace. The setting will be particularly apt for the presentation of Reich’s Different Trains, a three-movement piece composed for string quartet (Aeolus Quartet, NOW’s Quartet-in-Residence) and sound effects, inspired by Reich’s train travel while living as a young American Jew during the time of the Holocaust.
For this production, the performers will begin on one end of the underground space and gradually move toward the other, emphasizing the transition from darkness into light. Simultaneously, lighting effects and projections by Production Designer JD Madsen will reflect on the musical content. Further immersing the audience, movable barriers will be used to guide the audience through the performance space.
In addition to Reich’s Different Trains, the concert will present works by Hildegard von Bingen, Gregorio Allegri, Samuel Barber, Ben Parry, R. Murray Schafer, Sarah Hopkins, and Knut Nystedt. Scott Tucker’s latest composition, The Moon and Her Maidens is inspired by the acoustics of the Dupont Underground and composed to pair with R. Murray Schafer’s Epitaph for Moonlight .
“I have been looking for opportunities to present choral music in a more interactive and immersive way,” says Choral Arts Artistic Director, Scott Tucker. “We visited Dupont Underground soon after it opened. The acoustics of the space, and the theme of light and darkness are what inspired the musical program. The collaboration with Jay Brock (Production Director) and JD Madsen (Production Designer) have helped us create a full-sensory experience that will allow the audience to engage with the music with more intensity than they would find in a traditional concert.”
“We are thrilled to bring together so many organizations and artists we have long admired for this unique collaboration,” says Tad Czyzewski, Choral Arts Executive Director, of the collaboration with NOW and the Aeolus Quartet.
More information and tickets ($20) can be found online at https://choralarts.org/events/
When Lisa Fischer last performed at Strathmore she brought the house down to a thunderous standing ovation. Fischer and her band return to Strathmore, this time for a fully orchestrated performance. Featured in the Oscar-winning documentary film 20 Feet from Stardom, Fischer stepped into the spotlight after a successful career as a back-up singer for the likes of the Rolling Stones and Sting. This special evening brings together Fischer and her band, Grand Baton, with musicians from the National Philharmonic to perform powerful renditions of pop favorites by Luther Vandross, Tina Turner, the Rolling Stones, and Sting.