More
Post Content

Grammy winners and other stars send in letters supporting The Birchmere’s new electric sign

New sign at The Birchmere (image via City of Alexandria)

Chris Issak, John Waters and Judy Collins are just a few of the dozens of famous artists who petitioned the Alexandria Planning Commission and City Council to approve The Birchmere‘s Special Use Permit request to keep up its flashy new 5-foot-by-2.5-foot digital sign along Mount Vernon Avenue in Arlandria.

The Planning Commission approved the request 7-0 on Tuesday, and it now goes to City Council. Planning Commission Chair Nathan Macek said that the letters with all of the supporting signatures would be “an excellent auction item.”

“Performing artists are now expecting the venues to keep up with the times,” wrote Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Judy Collins. “It is a necessary tool to promote the artists as well as the venue.”

Some requests were simple, like filmmaker John Waters, who wrote, “I am writing to support the Birchmere’s request to be allowed to keep their new LED sign.”

Chris Isaak wrote: “I wholeheartedly support the Birchmere Music Hall in their effort to retain their beautiful new sign. Please help them out… thank you!”

Gary Oelze, the owner of the music hall, erected the large electric sign last summer without city approval, prompting a request from the city manager’s office to go through an official process. Oelze, who was recently named a Living Legend of Alexandria, died last month.

“I think you know we do have a process in place for digital signs,” Macek said. “This is probably a case where they should have come in advance of putting the sign in.”

The Commission also approved a request to keep the sign lit until midnight, as well as the installation of a smaller sign at the entrance of the venue.

The following artists wrote letters in support of the new sign:

19 Comments

PHOTOS: The 2023 St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Old Town

Previous Image 1/37 Next Image

Old Town was packed on Saturday morning for Alexandria’s 40th annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

Thousands of visitors lined King Street to watch a procession of more than 2,000 participants, including Irish dancers, historic reenactors and the City of Alexandria Pipes and Drums. The festivities also included a car show and a dog show at Market Square outside City Hall.

This year’s Grand Marshal was Charlotte Hall, managing director of Old Town Business. The parade was sponsored by the Ballyshaners, a nonprofit dedicated to Irish heritage. Ballyshaners is Gaelic for “Old Towners.”

Enjoy the photos!

2 Comments

Alexandria City High School instructor performed with Coldplay on Saturday Night Live this weekend

ACHS instructor performed on stage with Coldplay on Saturday Night Live (image via Saturday Night Live/NBC)

Alexandria City High School students watching Saturday Night Live this weekend might have seen a familiar face in the musical numbers: the school’s Director of Choral Activities Theodore Thorpe III.

Thorpe was part of the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers in a choral ensemble with Coldplay, performing the songs The Astronaut, Human Heart, and Fix You in the show on Saturday, Feb. 4.

Thorpe said there were two days of rehearsal before the show: one with the members of the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers and then one with the group and Coldplay.

“There was a lot of work on multiple fronts,” Thorpe said. “Not just the chorus and the musical scores, but all of the folks working to make the performance happen, from set design to stage management and costuming. I like to call it: organized chaos.”

Thorpe has known Jason Max Ferdinand for over two decades but said this new choral group took off during the pandemic.

“This group really started out of the pandemic and it has just been taking off,” Thorpe said.

Thorpe said the Saturday Night Live performance came from the friendship between Ferdinand and musician Jacob Collier.

“[Ferdinand] got a call from [Collier] who said Chris Martin from Coldplay wanted this choir to perform with him,” Thorpe said. “They brought us to New York. The members of our ensemble are from all over, so we came together for this performance and really only had one day.”

Thorpe said he was backstage for much of the show because they had to do a quick change between songs.

“It felt great,” Thorpe said. “It was a great experience, from rehearsals all the way down.”

7 Comments

‘The Nutcracker’ and other live music favorites coming to Alexandria this weekend

Alexandria Symphony presents ‘The Nutcracker’ (courtesy photo)

The Alexandria Symphony Orchestra’s holiday program promises to bring an eclectic selection this weekend.

ASO will take the stage on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center, followed by a 3 p.m. performance at the George Washington National Masonic Memorial.

The program includes selections from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” Duke Ellington’s “The Nutcracker Suite” and Mariah Carey’s version of “All I Want for Christmas is You.”

“Our special guests include both BalletNova creating some Nutcracker magic on the lip of our stage on Saturday, and the fabulous non-binary soprano of Salvadoran heritage, Helena Colindres, a recent graduate of the Peabody Institute and a rising superstar,” said ASO Music Director James Ross.

Dancers with the BalletNOVA Center For Dance will perform pieces from The Nutcracker suit and soprano Helena Colindres will sing a Swedish carol, a selection from Handel’s Messiah and more.

“Helena can, does, and will sing anything! Beloved Lester Green will be our narrator for The Night Before Christmas in a new mashup with a theme from Harry Potter,” Ross said.

Tickets run $5 for kids 18 and under and up to $90 for adults.

5 Comments

After weekly concerts during the pandemic, here’s what’s next for the Secret Garden in Old Town

Garden portion of The Rectory set up as music venue during the pandemic in 2020. (via Classical Movements)

At the height of the pandemic, Classical Movements held weekly open-air concerts with world-renowned musicians in their “Secret Garden” in Old Town North.

Business is slowly returning to its hectic pace for Neeta Helms, the organization’s founder, as she and her staff organize trips around the world for some of the biggest classical musical acts in the business. The touring company has worked in 147 countries, and produces more than 50 annual musical tours, as well as hundreds of concerts.

“For us, this garden became the sign of spring and hope,” Helms said.

While the weekly concerts are no more, there are still monthly performances at the Secret Garden.

“It was never about the money,” Helms said of the Secret Garden concerts. “For 50 distanced people at $40 a person, that’s $2,000, while we have the concert master of the Philadelphia Orchestra, concert mistress of the National Symphony Orchestra, as well as the principal and second violin, the principal viola and principal clarinet play with us. If musicians of that caliber, who play in the greatest concert halls in the world and the Kennedy Center and are back playing every week to play in our garden, that should tell everybody something.”

Classical Movements, in June 2020, was one of the first venues in the region to open their doors for live performances. Between June and December 2020 alone, they hosted 40 socially distanced one-hour-long concerts, with a few noise complaints from neighbors.

“The first violinist in the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, before he played, said that he hadn’t played to a live audience for 15 months,” said Johan van Zyl, the company’s senior vice president. “As he was saying that, I was sitting on the side of the stage in the back and I could see his lip quivering. He was so emotional about the fact that he was playing to a live audience. That’s the moment for me where I thought we’re doing the right thing.”

The venue has also become a popular spot for weddings.

“What shocked us about Covid was that the music was singled out as one of the most dangerous things to do,” Helms said. “Choirs were identified right from the get-go, and performing music became this lethal activity. For us, we had 40-or-so tours all over the world that we had to cancel. We had to try to figure out how much money we could get back and give to our clients, which is a huge amount of money. Really what was at stake was millions of dollars.”

Helms said that the travel industry is at the whim and fancy of plagues, weather and international relations.

“We were affected by SARS and had to put tours on hold in China, or there was MERS, or there was a volcano erupting in Chile and we had to bus people 18 hours to get to a performance in Argentina,” she said. “On September 11, 2001, we had the New York Philharmonic itself flying back home from a residency in Braunschweig, Germany, and all flights were grounded until we could get everyone home four days later.”

Bucking trends musically is commonplace for Helms, whose first touring concert in Moscow’s Red Square in 1992, right after the fall of the Soviet Union, was attended by 100,000 people. The event was conducted by Russian defector Mstislav Rostropovich and featured the National Symphony Orchestra and the Choral Arts Society of Washington.

“For us in Red Square (in 1992), what was marvelous was being mobbed by people,” she said. “It was like touring with Elvis or the Beatles, because anyone in this Russia who met us gave us flowers and notes, and thanked us for the miracle of actually having music on Red Square, as opposed to demonstrations with tanks. By presenting music, it was a surprisingly revolutionary event, in hindsight.”

2 Comment

Crooked Beat Records moving to basement beneath Cheesetique in Del Ray

(Updated 4:20 p.m.) Del Ray will soon have its own underground record shop, as Crooked Beat Records expects to reopen in a basement on Mount Vernon Avenue in February.

Owner Bill Daly has been looking for a new location for his new and used record store for more than a year, and found it in the basement of the same building that houses Cheesetique at 2411 Mount Vernon Avenue. The building is also home to to the Del Ray School Of Music and Piece Out Del Ray.

“It’s a perfect location,” Daly told ALXnow. “To afford something, this was our only option. It’s getting too expensive to operate on the street level. Everywhere we looked the rents were triple what we’re paying now.”

Residential redevelopment is forcing the record shop to close by net summer, but Daly hopes to have the final touches on the lease and the interior renovation finalized by early 2023.

“It’s about 400 square feet bigger, and I think it’s going to be better,” Daly said.

Daly said that the new shop will be fully up and running for Record Store Day on April 15.

“That means that we’ve got to have the store set up by late February to early March,” he said.

Daly founded the store in 1997 in Raleigh, North Carolina, and moved it to Adams Morgan in Washington, D.C. in 2004. He moved the store to Alexandria in 2016.

2 Comments

80’s stars Chris Isaak and Rick Springfield close out Birchmere’s 2022 lineup

Chris Isaak (image via The Birchmere)

The “Wicked Game” and “Jesse’s Girl” stars from the 1980’s are headlining at the Birchmere as the Arlandria music venue winds down its 2022 calendar.

Toward the end of November, Chris Issak is bringing a Christmas Tour to the Birchmere. The $115 show is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 28, and features music from a Christmas album that came out earlier this month.

That Thursday, Rick Springfield is also coming to The Birchmere for a $115 show called “Stripped Down”, described by the venue’s website as an “intimate solo performance of music and storytelling.

Transgressive cult film director John Waters is also returning to The Birchmere for his annual Christmas show: A John Waters Christmas.

Other upcoming shows in November include:

And then, in December:

2 Comment

PHOTOS: Thousands marched in the Del Ray Halloween Parade

Previous Image 1/19 Next Image

It was crisp, clear on Sunday in Del Ray — perfect for the annual Del Ray Halloween Parade.

Thousands of kids and adults marched in costumes for the event, including members of the Alexandria City Council and the Alexandria City High School ‘Zombie Band’.

It’s Visit Del Ray’s 26th year hosting the fun event, which it started at Mount Vernon Avenue and E. Bellefonte Avenue and ended with live music and prizes at the Mount Vernon Recreation Center athletic fields.

https://twitter.com/AchsBand/status/1586920821737627649

3 Comments

Free concert in Alexandria features original tribute to Pearl Harbor hero

U.S. Navy Mess Attendant 2nd Class Doris Miller (image via National Archives)

A free concert later this month features a new composition from a local professor honoring the first Black recipient of the Navy Cross.

The Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) Alexandria Band is scheduled to hold a free concert on Thursday, Oct. 27 at 8 p.m. in The Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall (4915 East Campus Drive). The main feature of the new concert is a new work by composer and George Mason University instructor Mark Camphouse called “Valor and Remembrance.” The composition honors U.S. Navy Mess Attendant 2nd Class Doris Miller.

Miller was awarded the Navy Cross for heroism aboard the USS West Virginia during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Miller, who worked in the ship’s mess, manned an anti-aircraft gun on the top deck of the ship during the attack and — with a weapon he’s been trained on using only moments prior — shot down two Japanese airplanes attacking the ship.

“We are thrilled that composer Mark Camphouse will be joining us for the premiere of his newest work,” Lisa Eckstein, associate professor of music and band director, said in a release. “This is the final piece of his trilogy which celebrates the courageous contributions of African Americans. The other two compositions honor Civil Rights Heroine Rosa Parks and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

2 Comments

Blue Oyster Cult and Modern English headline late summer at The Birchmere

Blue Oyster Cult tour announcement (image via Blue Oyster Cult/Facebook)

Blue Oyster Cult, a rock band best known for Don’t Fear the Reaper and possibly an SNL parody, is making a return to The Birchmere (3701 Mt Vernon Avenue) next month.

The other major star in September is Modern English, a post-punk band formed in the 1980s.

And then in September:

The full calendar is available at The Birchmere’s website.

Image via Blue Oyster Cult/Facebook

0 Comments
View More Stories
×

Subscribe to our mailing list