Plan Ahead: The Duke Ellington Jazz Festival

It will be a hot time in old D.C. from June 5 to June 15 when the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival brings headliners from New Orleans for the fifth anniversary of the marathon music fest named after Washington’s native son. (Ellington grew up on Ward Place, at 22nd and M Streets.)

Most events throughout the city are free; some charge a fee. The Phillips Collection starts things off with a piano jazz concert on the eve of the festival, June 4, and holds free Jazz n’ Families Fun Days on the 6th and 7th. Other events include “Jazz in the ‘Hoods” programs at more than 30 neighborhood clubs, free concerts on the Mall, and a performance at the National Gallery of Art’s sculpture garden. On June 10, the French embassy features the legendary clarinetist and saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, the festival’s artistic director, joined by Dr. Michael White and his Original Liberty Jazz Band. The Kennedy Center programs, featuring free Millennium Stage events, will conclude with a Concert Hall benefit performance on June 15 honoring pianist and composer Ellis Marsalis, the patriarch of the Marsalis family. The concert includes members of his family, Harry Connick, Jr., and others.

Charles Fishman, the festival’s founder/producer, is a composer who was Dizzy Gillespie’s manager for many years. He has produced international music events, and as a native Washingtonian and jazz fan, he felt the nation’s capital deserved a festival honoring America’s only original art form―so he started one.

He has lined up an impressive list of chairmen: New Orleans-born Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr., of Patton Boggs, LLP; Walter Isaacson, the president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, who was also born in New Orleans; Sheila C. Johnson, CEO of Salamander Hospitality and the president of the Washington Mystics; Marc H. Morial, the former mayor of New Orleans, now the head of the National Urban League; and political consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin, who currently live in New Orleans. Steven Stolman is the new president of the festival’s fundraising Ovation Society.

Today considered an important musician as well as a prime jazzman, Edward Kennedy Ellington, who died in 1974, was nicknamed Duke as a boy for his dapper style. Always elegant, he never changed his manner, whether he was at the Cotton Club in Harlem or at Carnegie Hall. A composer, pianist, and bandleader, he appeared in movies and wrote film music. His score for “Paris Blues,” starring Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman, is considered a classic.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the French Legion of Honor. In 1965, he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. When he didn’t receive it, he said, aged 67, “Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.” On his centennial in 1999, the Pulitzer Prize Board finally recognized him with a special citation as one of the most influential figures in American music.

And one more honor: Four months ago the U.S. Mint launched a new quarter, dedicated to the District of Columbia and graced by an image of the city’s own Duke next to a grand piano.

Spotlight On: Edward Liang

For this issue, I am pleased to introduce guest contributor Cyd Miller Everett, treasurer of the Women’s Committee of the Washington Ballet. She is on the left in the photo, with the choreographer Edward Liang and the author and journalist Gail Scott. She writes about Liang’s “Wunderland,” the concluding program of the Washington Ballet’s season:

The work by the former New York City Ballet soloist was stunningly sensuous and compelling, and the audience loved it.

Dedication to the ballet has been Liang’s life. He took his first ballet lessons at age five, after his family arrived in the United States from Taiwan. At the New York City Ballet, he became the principal soloist. He has since made the transition from this envied role to choreography and is now creating ballet instead of dancing it. He has seen his efforts rewarded at all stages, garnering numerous honors.

We at the Washington Ballet hope that during the upcoming season we will be presenting more of his avant-garde excitement, done within the classic confines of the ballet form.

Liang illustrates an important aim of the Washington Ballet: to showcase new choreographers without neglecting classic works. This journey to find the right combination and balance of programs is both exciting and enriching. Under Artistic Director Septime Webre, an innovative choreographer himself, the ensemble continues to amaze and delight the ballet world while winning a new generation of fans.

At the Table: Korean Delicacies

We don’t usually think of food as being “beautiful” or “adorable,” but the recent gala dinner “Experience the Art of Korean Cuisine” at the Willard Hotel was a showstopper. Oohs and aahs echoed around the room as each dish was produced, each a work of art, with harmonious, balanced colors and forms. The food on the intriguing, flower-bedecked plates and bowls was delicious, too. The chefs, food, flowers, special dishes, and place settings were all flown in from South Korea.

The hosts who welcomed us were Han Duk-soo, the ambassador of the Republic of Korea, and Yim Sung-joon, president of the Korea Foundation.

The sumptuous Willard was the perfect setting, and although the Willard itself sets a splendid table, for this dinner the Korean chefs took over. The hors d’oeuvres buffet offered an outstanding variety of blossom-shaped food and pencil-slim, meat-wrapped vegetables. A favorite: small white globes impaled on a spray of tiny green blades (looking much like very thin spikes of rosemary), the whole tied with a minute red bow. The globes, to be nibbled off the herb, were redolent pine nuts; these little bouquets were adorable.

Young pianist Cho Sung-jin performed for the appreciative audience. Dubbed “Korea’s Chopin,” he won the 6th Moscow International Frederick Chopin Competition for Young Pianists when he was only 14.

In his address, General Colin Powell spoke warmly of American-Korean friendship and paid a heartfelt tribute to Korean food, saying that he wrote of his admiration for it in his autobiography. Rep. Charles Rangel of New York also spoke of Korean-American relations and of the Korea Foundation, which South Korea established in 1991 to enhance the country’s image around the world.

That night, the South Koreans certainly did just that.

Spotlight On: Helen Thomas

Relentless journalist and presidential gadfly Helen Thomas has covered every president beginning with John F. Kennedy. For years, as dean of the Washington press corps, she was seated in the front row, was called on for the first question at presidential press conferences, and made famous the phrase “Thank you, Mr. President” at the conference’s end.

In tribute to her news career of almost sixty years, and her four books chronicling the White House, Christine Warnke of Hogan & Hartson and publicist Janet Donovan gave a dinner in her honor at Teatro Goldoni. (Photo: Helen Thomas, right, with me; courtesy of Janet Donovan.)

One of the guests, professor and presidential historian Martha Joynt Kumar, attended many of those press conferences too. (Helen credits two of Kumar’s papers for pointing her in the right direction for her books, saying they helped her attain a historical perspective of the presidency.) Otherwise, with a few exceptions, most of the twenty women invited were young, upwardly mobile members of the media, all of whom probably aspire to Helen’s pinnacle. This was a chance for them to listen, learn, and even query, as turns to pose a question went round the dinner table.

Their questions ranged from the serious to the cheeky:

Q: “What would she now like to ask George W. Bush that he avoided answering during his presidency?”

A: “The invasion of Iraq, Mr. President, why?”

Q: “What president would you most like to have slept with?”

A: “None of them!”

Asked about her favorite journalist, she gave a quick answer: her late husband, Doug Cornell, of the Associated Press, for his news sense, his writing skills, and his ability to dictate flawless copy. (Former rivals, he AP, she UPI, they had been dating discreetly, out of sight of the newsroom, but both Helen and Doug were scooped at Doug’s White House retirement party when First Lady Pat Nixon unexpectedly announced their secret wedding plans from the podium.)

Her favorite journalist now? Answer: Sam Donaldson. On hearing this, Sam’s wife, TV correspondent Jan Smith Donaldson, seated next to her, started victoriously pumping the air with her fists. Sam once inscribed a book to Helen: “All the bad habits I have in covering presidents, you taught me. And I am grateful.”

In her latest book, Watchdogs of Democracy?, Helen faults the press for failing the public by being reluctant to carry out its watchdog role, so important in a democracy: questioning the government and probing for the truth.

During the George W. Bush era, Helen was demoted to the back row and seldom called on. (“I ask too many questions,” she explains.) At Barack Obama’s first press conference, however, the new president invited her to ask the first question, and she was again seated in the front row.

Back up where she belongs.

Capital Diary: Summer Rayne Oakes’ Ecostyle

Strikingly beautiful, Summer Rayne Oakes is a model, shoe designer, successful businesswoman, and activist, whose main concerns are socioenvironmental issues, sustainability, and international fair trade practices.

She came to town recently when Juleanna Glover hosted a party for the Washington launch of Summer’s book Style, Naturally: The Savvy Shopping Guide to Sustainable Fashion and Beauty. That’s a big title, but it is a 350-page book with more than 500 illustrations, tightly packed with information on sources for styles, new sustainable fabrics, and beauty products that are easy on the environment and terrific.

Summer began modeling while at Cornell, graduating from the university with a bachelor of science in natural resources as well as entomology. A Morris K. Udall Scholar and a fellow of the National Wildlife Federation, she worked as a research assistant at the Cornell Waste Management Institute, writing papers on such unglamorous themes as organic chemicals in sewage sludge.

In 2007, Vanity Fair named her a “Global Citizen.” The magazine got that right: Today, you can find her checking rain forest regeneration in the central highlands of the Dominican Republic or trekking through Mozambique for sustainability studies. She is a spokesperson for the Discovery Networks’ “Planet Green,” and has appeared on CNN, MTV, BusinessWeek TV, to name a few programs. And a curriculum she developed, EcoFashion 101, brings environmental awareness to schools.