October 2005 Archives

Saturday night, Jeff and I saw Betty Buckley in performance at the new Music Center at Strathmore, an amazing new venue in North Bethesda, Maryland that opened only this past February (information and photos). It's a stunningly gorgeous building--swaths of curves and walls of rectangles, all of glass--and concert hall--full of warm woods, amazingly comfortable seats, and echoes of the same organic curves and rectangles, with the semicircular boxes seemingly extruded from the sides of the auditorium like living pods in some futuristic bioengineered structure (or, more mundanely, like balconies on the outside of a cruise ship)--with breathtaking acoustics. Even sitting as we were two rows from the back in the Grand Tier it felt and sounded as though La Buckley were singing directly and only to us. She even got a little teary herself, gushing about the site and its acoustics.

And she gave a powerful performance to match the space. In a lengthy (solidly two hours) concert that nonetheless sped by like mere minutes, she and her small band--piano, bass and drums--covered a wide range, from familiar standards to belted Broadway anthems ("With One Look" from Sunset Boulevard and "Memory" from Cats, both of which she originally had performed on stage in London and/or New York) to a wonderful selection of songs from contemporary American singer-songwriters, including Leonard Cohen, Nanci Griffith, Sarah McLachlan, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Tom Waits and Ms. Buckley's own stated favorite, Mary-Chapin Carpenter.

I had turned to Jeff at one point and whispered "Hopefully she won't sing "Memory," to which he had replied that he was hoping she would. A song I normally consider overdone and overexposed, her incredible, heartfelt rendition of it as her encore for the evening nevertheless left me with chills running down my spine and tears running down my face and so grateful that she'd included it after all. The song from the performance that won her a Tony, it really was the perfect way to close the evening. At some level, she really is the embodiment of Grizabella, the Glamour Cat.

She also came across, from her descriptions of her life and childhood, as a truly warm, approachable person, and she stayed after the concert to sign CDs and greet her fans. We didn't wait in line to shake her hand, but we did stay long enough to watch her come out and take her seat at the table, and I was struck by her smiles and humility, which felt quite genuine. On her personal website, she often even refers to herself, charmingly, as "Betty Lynn."

After more than three years with only the occasional long weekend holiday, last week I took Thursday and Friday off which, combined with the Monday federal holiday for Columbus Day, gave me a full five days away from the office, my longest break since I began this job the summer of 2002.

I went nowhere, but spent my days reading and playing on the computer (oh, and on Saturday we baked a really delicious carrot cake, with crushed pineapple, raisins, coconut and hazelnuts in the mix). It was marvelous.

And Jeff and I finally made plans for our first long vacation together (we've been together to New York many times, and to Seattle and the Bay Area once each, but for no more than four days, including the weekend, at the most): we've taken advantage of a great American Airline Vacations/Thistle Hotels deal to book six nights in London this coming February. Yes, ok, so Thistle's hotels aren't the greatest (but then London's notorious for its poor hotels generally), and February's perhaps not the best time to visit the U.K. But the six nights and roundtrip airfare from Washington National to Heathrow (by way of JFK) set us back just over $700 each, inclusive of taxes and fees, and including some extras: afternoon tea at one of the hotels, a 30-minute Thames cruise, a ride on the London Eye, two-for-one lunch and dinner at the hotel, free admission to one of the local castles, and a few other perks. It was a deal we felt we couldn't pass up, as we'd been wanting to plan a trip to Europe or the U.K. either this winter or next spring, and each has renewed his passport this year (Jeff's had his a couple of months, and mine should arrive any day now).

I've been to London only once before, for three days, and Jeff not at all, so we're both very excited about having a full week there. And I'm especially eager to finally be able to take an entire week off from work.

Any sights off the beaten path we should see? Any day trips from London we should consider? Any special tips from your own travel in the U.K.? (For example, we're already planning to buy our local travel passes, for tube and bus, ahead of time, having looked into that on Saturday.)