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Sister act

Martha Wainwright on family, music and new show with brother Rufus

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It could be the royal family of folk-pop, artsy-confessional music.

The Wainwright musical dynasty began with their troubled father, folk singer-songwriter and actor Loudon Wainwright III and their mother, the late Canadian folksinger Kate McGarrigle.

In this generation it has flowered into cult stardom both with gay singer and opera composer Rufus Wainwright and his younger singer-songwriter sister Martha, who are together in concert this Saturday Aug. 7 at The Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda.

Of the Wainwright clan, the Guardian newspaper of London recently observed that, “Loudon, Kate, Martha and Rufus are the bards of kith and kin, the troubadours of the consanguine,” a fancy way of saying they write about family and use song to communicate with the ones they love — or in Martha’s case at least feel greatly troubled about, as in her notorious song that she admits was written to her father: the quite literally titled “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole.”

But she has also sung a duet, in his 1995 album “Grown Man,” with her father Loudon. Titled “Father/Daughter Dialogue,” in it she lays bare in song her deeply felt family grievance as she sings to him, “Dearest Daddy with your songs/ Do you hope to right your wrongs?/ You can’t undo what’s been done/ To all your daughters and your son.”

In an exclusive interview with the Blade, as she was driving to Boston with her aunt Teddy to her concert appearance there Tuesday night with Rufus, Martha said that some of her songs in the Strathmore concert on Saturday will be from her first songs that were “more about my family,” as in her 2005 self-titled debut album “Martha Wainwright.”

But in addition to “some old hits from my first album,” her set will also include a mix of her more recent songs, such as those from her second album, “I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too,” which are less about her family, she says, and “more so about others.” She was married in 2007 to her producer Brad Albetta.

“I have the tendency to write about people I know and love,” she admits, “and family is in that group still.”

Rufus, meanwhile, is also a troubadour of troubled family life. His troubles include the pain of their parents’ divorce when he was three and also his mother’s recent death from cancer, as well as his own personal odyssey coming out as gay while a teenager. In 1999, he told Rolling Stone that his father recognized his same-sex attraction early and has also admitted that his “mother and father could not even handle me being gay,” and it was basically off limits for discussion.

At 14, Rufus was sexually assaulted in London’s Hyde Park after picking up a man in a bar. In an interview years later, he described the event that left him fearing that he would become HIV-positive after the brutal rape in which the assailant also tried to strangle him to death.

“I thought it was going to be a romantic walk in the park, but he raped me,” and he says he survived through quick wits only by pretending to be an epileptic and faking a seizure.

He says he remained celibate for seven years after the rape but then turned promiscuous. Later, in the early 2000s, he became addicted to crystal meth and even temporarily lost his vision. The addiction reached a crescendo in 2002 during a week he has described as “the most surreal of my life,” including time spent partying with President George W. Bush’s daughter Barbara and a “debauched” evening with singer Marianne Faithfull. He has said he experienced recurring hallucinations of his father throughout.

From hitting bottom then, Rufus has said he decided he would either go into rehab or instead go to live with his father because “I knew I needed an asshole to yell at me, and I felt he fit the bill.” These and other tales of trial and tribulation are recounted in Kirk Lake’s 2009 unofficial biography, “There Will Be Rainbows: A Biography of Rufus Wainwright and the Story of Loudon Wainwright and Kate McGarrigle.”

Born in 1973, his parents divorced in 1976 and Rufus lived with his mother Kate in Montreal, Canada for most of his precocious youth. He began playing piano at age six and at 13 started touring with “The McGarrigle Sisters” — Kate and her sister Anna. At age 14, he performed his song “I’m a Runnin'” in a film. He then attended high school at the Millbrook School in New York, which would later inspire his song “Millbrook.”

After briefly studying piano at universities in Montreal, he began to perform at weekly shows at Cafe Sarajevo there and soon was on the Montreal club circuit and cutting demo tapes. He showed such talent and so impressed his father that he sent the tapes to legendary songwriter and producer Van Dyke Parks, who passed them on to DreamWorks, the record label co-owned by David Geffen, which signed Rufus and released his first studio album, the eponymous “Rufus Wainwright” in 1998.

The singer had moved to New York City in 1996 but relocated later that year to Los Angeles where he spent most of two years in the studio working on that first album in sessions costing a reported $700,000. Rolling Stone called it one of the best albums of 1998 and named Rufus “Best New Artist” of the year. He was also nominated for four awards by the Gay and Lesbian American Music Awards and again won for “Best New Artist,” as well winning the GLAAD Media Award for outstanding music album. Commercial success for the album was, however, limited.

Rufus toured with Sean Lennon, son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, in 1998 and began his own first headline tour later that year. He lived in New York City’s shabby but chic Chelsea Hotel for six months during which he wrote most of his second album “Poses,” which was also released to critical acclaim, winning another GLAAD Media Award, but again finding limited sales. From 2001 to 2004, he toured with Tori Amos and Sting, meanwhile releasing more albums and in 2005 a DVD titled “All I Want,” featuring a biographical documentary and music videos, and that same year he contributed a solo song to Burt Bacharach’s “At This Time.”

In 2006 in two sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York City, he performed an entire Judy Garland set of songs based on her album she recorded there in 1961. He later repeated this concert at the Hollywood Bowl, the Paris Olympia, and at London’s Palladium, and live CD and DVD recordings of these concerts — “Rufus Does Judy” — were released in 2007. Also that year, Geffen Records released Wainwright’s fifth studio album, “Release the Stars,” produced by the singer and featuring among others his mother and sister.

His more recent interests have also turned to opera – and his first opera, originally commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, “Prima Donna,” the libretto written in French, is about “a day in the life of an opera singer,” anxiously preparing for her comeback, who falls in love with a journalist.

In 2010, he released his sixth studio album, “All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu,” mainly featuring his piano and vocals with nine original songs rather than the lush instrumentation and arrangements of his other work. This new CD, for which he is now on tour, includes the closing aria from his debut opera, “Les feux d’artifice t’appellent” (or the games of fancy call to me).

The CD also features three of William Shakespeare’s sonnets set to music, including Sonnet 43 giving the album its title, “All days are night to see till I see thee….”

The “thee” is possibly a reference to his boyfriend and partner of five years, German arts administrator Jorn Weisbrodt, about whom the singer declared in a recent London Telegraph interview that, “I wasn’t a huge gay marriage fan before I met Jorn because I love the whole old-school promiscuous Oscar Wilde freak show of what ‘being gay’ once was. But since meeting Jorn all that has changed.”

Also included in the album is a striking opening track, “Who Are You New York?” with its rolling arpeggios that recount an “obsessive search for an unnamed object of desire,” the haunting obsession of erotic fantasy, a song originally written for a film project, but rejected by its producers to Wainwright’s evident relief. His powerful third track, the song “Martha,” meanwhile, consists of conversational lyrics.

“Martha, it’s your brother calling/ Time to go up north and see mother/Things are harder for her now/ And neither of us is really that much older than each other any more./ Martha, it’s your brother calling/ Have you any chance to see father/Wondering how he’s doing/And there’s not much time/ For us really to be that angry at each other anymore.”

Family. The ties that bind, the ties that can also choke. Family, the seedbed of the Wainwright musical canon. Come hear brother and sister give their musical voices to this pain and this passion.

Rufus Wainwright
w/ Martha Wainwright
Aug. 7, 7:30 p.m.
Music Center at Strathmore
Bethesda, Md.
$46, 202-397-SEAT
ticketmaster.com

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Music & Concerts

Red, White, and Beyoncé: Queen Bey takes Cowboy Carter to D.C. for the Fourth of July

The legendary music icon performed on July 4 and 7 to a nearly sold-out Northwest Stadium.

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Beyoncé performs on July 7. (Washington Blade photo by Joe Reberkenny)

Just in time for Independence Day, Beyoncé lit up Landover’s Commanders Field (formerly FedEx Field) with fireworks and fiery patriotism, bringing her deeply moving and genre-defying “Cowboy Carter” tour to the Washington, D.C. area.

The tour, which takes the global icon across nine cities in support of her chart-topping and Grammy-winning country album Cowboy Carter,” landed in Prince George’s County, Maryland, over the Fourth of July weekend. From the moment Beyoncé stepped on stage, it was clear this was more than just a concert — it was a reclamation.

Drawing from classic Americana, sharp political commentary, and a reimagined vision of country music, the show served as a powerful reminder of how Black Americans — especially Black women — have long been overlooked in spaces they helped create. “Cowboy Carter” released in March 2024, is the second act in Beyoncé’s genre-traversing trilogy. With it, she became the first Black woman to win a Grammy for Best Country Album and also took home the coveted Album of the Year.

The record examines the Black American experience through the lens of country music, grappling with the tension between the mythology of the American Dream and the lived realities of those historically excluded from it. That theme comes alive in the show’s opening number, “American Requiem,” where Beyoncé sings:

“Said I wouldn’t saddle up, but
If that ain’t country, tell me, what is?
Plant my bare feet on solid ground for years
They don’t, don’t know how hard I had to fight for this
When I sing my song…”

Throughout the performance, Beyoncé incorporated arresting visuals: Black cowboys on horseback, vintage American iconography, and Fox News clips criticizing her genre shift — all woven together with voiceovers from country legends like Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. The result was a multimedia masterclass in storytelling and subversion.

The “Cowboy Carter” tour has been a social media sensation for weeks, with fans scrambling for tickets, curating elaborate “cowboy couture” outfits, and tailgating under the summer sun. At Commanders Field, thousands waited in long lines for exclusive merch and even longer ones to enter the stadium — a pilgrimage that, for many, felt more like attending church than a concert.

One group out in full force for the concert was Black queer men — some rocking “denim on denim on denim on denim,” while others opted for more polished Cowboy Couture looks. The celebration of Black identity within Americana was ever-present, making the concert feel like the world’s biggest gay country-western club.

A standout moment of the night was the appearance of Beyoncé’s 13-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy Carter. Commanding the stage with poise and power, she matched the intensity and choreography of her mother and the professional dancers — a remarkable feat for someone her age and a clear sign that the Carter legacy continues to shine.

It’s been nearly two decades since Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child parted ways, and since then, she’s more than lived up to her title as the voice of a generation. With Cowboy Carter,” she’s not just making music — she’s rewriting history and reclaiming the space Black artists have always deserved in the country canon.

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Music & Concerts

Berkshire Choral to commemorate Matthew Shepard’s life

Concert held at Washington National Cathedral

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Craig Hella Johnson’s fusion oratorio ‘Considering Matthew Shepard’ will be performed at the Washington National Cathedral. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Berkshire Choral International will present a concert performance of composer Craig Hella Johnson’s fusion oratorio “Considering Matthew Shepard” on Friday, July 11, 2025 at 7:30 p.m. at the Washington National Cathedral. 

The program will be guest conducted by Dr. Jeffrey Benson, a native of the DMV who currently serves as Director of Choral Activities at San José State University. The concert is a partial benefit for the Matthew Shepard Foundation. Notably, Matthew’s remains are interred at the National Cathedral and his parents, Dennis and Judy, will give opening remarks at the performance.

Tickets are $20 – $65, and 50% of ticket proceeds will be donated to the Matthew Shepard Foundation. Tickets are only available online at berkshirechoral.org

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Music & Concerts

Indigo Girls coming to Capital One Hall

Stars take center stage alongside Fairfax Symphony

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The Indigo Girls are back in the area next week. (Photo courtesy of Vanguard Records)

Capital One Center will host “The Indigo Girls with the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra” on Thursday, June 19 and Friday, June 20 at 8 p.m. at Capital One Hall. 

The Grammy Award-winning folk and pop stars will take center stage alongside the Fairfax Symphony, conducted by Jason Seber. The concerts feature orchestrations of iconic hits such as “Power of Two,” “Get Out The Map,” “Least Complicated,” “Ghost,” “Kid Fears,” “Galileo,” “Closer to Fine,” and many more.

Tickets are available on Ticketmaster or in person at Capital One Hall the nights of the concerts. 

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