BEFORE THE FAMILY TIME and fatty food we're all in for this holiday season, learn how to properly relax with tea. Great Falls Tea Garden hosts a seminar: "Japanese Green Teas vs. Chinese Green Teas." This introductory class will let you discover the variations of green stuff and, for $20, participants will score a take-home tea sampler.
» Cathy's Corner in Great Falls Village Centre, 766-C Walker Road, Great Falls; Nov. 25, 10-11 a.m.; 703-757-6209.
Written by Express contributor Stefanie Gans
MOST OF US city dwellers (and many suburbanites, too) don't have a lathe sitting around in the spare bedroom. So, Fairfax County Public Schools Adult and Community Education's (ACE) Pen Workshop is a very unconventional offering and an opportunity to learn something of a lost art. The three-hour class gives students a chance to start with a block of wood and leave with a writing instrument.
Continue Reading "Excellent Turnout: The Art of Pen-Making" »
YOU'D THINK THE FOLKS who make up the "adult alternative" audience would have some respect for artists who try new things. But in the case of Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby, the newlywed rockers didn't get much love when they married their repertoires together onstage.
"We find people will shout out for a song that they want to hear, and they'll be very much in the camp of one person or the other," says Rigby by phone from the couple's tour van. "And they'll be so resistant to the other person. So we have to stand our ground with those people."
As Rigby finishes her thought, a voice with a lazy South London drawl emerges in the background. It's the inimitable Eric chiming in. Er, what's he saying, Amy? "Eric is saying [the problem is] mostly the old gits who are stuck in their ways," she laughs.
Eric (whose surname is Goulden) is one of the original Stiff Records artists who cut humorous U.K. hits like "Whole Wide World" and "Take the K.A.S.H." in the punk era, then became a DIY artist. Rigby is a Pittsburgh-bred singer-songwriter whose brilliant 1996 debut, "Diary of a Mod Housewife," earned her critical raves and a large cult following.
Continue Reading "Mod Marriage: Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby" »
ON SATURDAY MORNINGS, vendors set up shop outside Great Wall supermarket in Falls Church. They serve sweet-smelling Chinese breakfast treats including flaky breads topped with sesame seeds; rice rolls stuffed with dried pork; savory sesame balls filled with green onions; and deep-fried doughnut breads — almost like giant churros without the cinnamon sugar.
Inside Great Wall, there's even more action.
Sunny Chang, a 24-year-old accountant living in Arlington, has become a Great Wall regular. (Full disclosure — we've known Sunny for 10 years.) A first-generation Taiwanese-American, she discovered the Asian market on a shopping trip with her mother.
"My mom goes every weekend," she said. "It's super, super cheap. She says it's better than Lotte, Super H-Mart and Kam Sam." Sunny's mother, Nancy Chang, who lives in Fairfax, says Great Wall specializes in traditional Chinese produce, poultry and live seafood.
Continue Reading "Exotica Adjacent: Great Wall Asian Market" »
TALK FOR A WHILE to Ontario singer-songwriter Hayden, and you realize his quiet act isn't really an act at all. The indie cult hero is just as low-key in conversation as he is in song. Several times during our interview, the hum of the international telephone line threatened to drown his voice out entirely.
His mellow vibe is probably one reason Hayden (aka Paul Hayden Dresser) is the type of musician beloved by listeners of National Public Radio's World Cafe (on which he appeared Sept. 10) and ignored by everyone else. Well, there's that and the fact that he operates according to his own rules, releasing records when the spirit moves him.
Since his 1995 four-track debut CD, he's released only four full CDs of music. Even his MySpace page refers to his cycle of recording and touring but also boasts of his taking "lots of time off." He released his newest CD, "In Field & Town," on his own Hardwood label in Canada. Don't expect him to hop aboard the record-company treadmill anytime soon.
Continue Reading "Stranger in Town: Ontario Singer-Songwriter Hayden" »
GROWING UP IN SERBIA, Ana Popovic had one interest: her dad's guitar. Unfortunately, she wasn't allowed to touch it.
"It was forbidden for me when I was a kid to play with it," explains Popovic by phone from her Amsterdam home. "That somehow built up a wish to be able to know how to use it."
When Daddy Popovic relented, young Ana showed amazing acumen on the instrument — such acumen that a decade or so later, she's become a respected underground guitar sensation. Since releasing her debut CD with her Serbian band, Hush, a decade ago, Popovic has put out a quartet of innovative albums that have pushed the boundaries of the blues music she loved as a kid.
Continue Reading "Shaking Up Tradition: Ana Popovic Brings New Hues to Blues" »
HEAR LIVE SCORES of classic films with the National Symphony Orchestra for two nights only as they add some NSO flare to compositions while the corresponding scene plays.
Friday's theme is anything Rodgers & Hammerstein with selections from "Oklahoma!," "The King and I" and many more. Saturday is all-Hitchcock, all the time with suspenseful clips from films like "To Catch a Thief" and "Dial M for Murder."
» Wolf Trap, 1551 Trap Road, Vienna; Fri.-Sat., 8:30 p.m., $20-$48; 877-965-3872.
Photo courtesy Warner Bros.
MCLEAN PROJECT FOR THE ARTS is presenting a talent show of epic proportions. Running through July 26, the group show "Once Again, Again: Rhythm and Repetition" displays a myriad of mixed media, including video, drawing, painting and installation art works.
Each piece in competition — juried by Annie Gawlak, director of Washington's G Fine Art gallery — is an object lesson in how practice, in iteration, makes perfect.
Pat Goslee's video installation, "Ride," represents the painter's first foray into digital illustration. She suggests depth of field through the careful application of dreamy audio that undulates in syncopation with the bright lights of a carnival ride onscreen.
Continue Reading "Thriving on Repetition: McLean Project for the Arts" »
"HAIRSPRAY," the story of a young girl who just wants to dance and winds up leading a fight for civil rights, is worth your time any day. But when it's free? What are you waiting for? Free movies play all this weekend at Van Dyck Park. Bring bug spray.
» Van Dyck Park, 3500 Old Lee Hwy., Fairfax; Sat., 8:30 p.m., free; 703-480-4917.
Photo courtesy New Line Cinema
GOOD MORNING, WASHINGTON. We're hip-deep in the time of year when most people are thinking about slimming down, but in Tysons Corner, the talk is all about bulking up: new high-rises, more roads and "enough parks, schools, police stations and firehouses to serve an entirely new place," The Post's Amy Gardner reports.
It's all part of a plan to turn Tysons Corner in appearance into what it's become by default: a city, but one that's more walkable and accessible than the confusing knot of access roads that exists now — the result of decades of suburban sprawl.
The task: remaking an area that's home to several major highways, 28 million square feet of offices and 40 million square feet of parking, as well as a destination for 120,000 workers and customers at two of the nation's most bustling shopping malls. Piece of cake, right?
Continue Reading "Urban Retrofitters: The Plan to Remake Tysons Corner" »
Addison Road