Arts & Entertainment
Cerebral jazz
Patricia Barber brings her smart, able combo to D.C. this weekend


Patricia Barber wondered early on if coming out would affect her career. She says in the jazz clubs of her native Chicago, it was a non-issue. (Photo by Jimmy Katz)
Patricia Barber Trio
Blues Alley
1073 Wisconsin Ave., N.W.
Friday 8 and 10 p.m.
Saturday 8 and 10 p.m.
Sunday 8 and 10 p.m.
$27.50
patriciabarber.com
bluesalley.com
Jazz iconoclast Patricia Barber has a six-show run at Blues Alley slated for this weekend. She’s touring behind her newest album “Smash” (Concord), which was released in January. We spoke with the 57-year-old Chicago resident (and native) by phone last week from her summer home in Michigan. Her comments have been slightly edited for length.
WASHINGTON BLADE: The iPad seems to be increasingly replacing printed scores and lead sheets and I know you use one when you perform. Have you ever had it freeze up or die on you when you’re playing?
PATRICIA BARBER: No, it never has. I always carry a back-up flash drive with all my sheet music on it so at any hotel I could print out anything I needed, but I’ve never had any problem. It saves me a lot of weight. I don’t have to carry all those charts around.
BLADE: Jazz is, of course, more improvisatory than pop. To what degree do you think through your vocal inflections or piano variations before you go on stage versus what happens in the moment?
BARBER: I’ve never given any thought to that. It’s just part of improv. I never give any thought to trying to make it sound like the record. That’s for pop musicians to do. I just have a good sense of harmony and good technique. I practice a lot.
BLADE: Do you spend a lot of time in Michigan?
BARBER: Well, a lot in the summer. I stopped touring in the summer quite a few years ago. It’s just too hot and crowded. I have a big organic garden here. So we feed people, swim in the lake. It’s just wonderful. (Partner) Martha (Feldman) is an academic so she has summers off.
BLADE: Do you hate to leave for your upcoming dates?
BARBER: I get nostalgic but not right now. I’m feeling pretty good. Things have slowed down so it’s not the usual sense of dread I usually feel this time of year.
BLADE: Do you tour with your own piano?
BARBER: No. Most jazz musicians don’t unless it’s some kind of electronic.
BLADE: How do you ensure the quality is going to be where you need it to be?
BARBER: It’s all in the contracts. It’s all very finicky, that it has to be a certain quality type and tuning.
BLADE: How many of the players who travel with you played on “Smash”?
BARBER: Two out of the four. We’re sort of mixing it up. It doesn’t mean they weren’t good.
BLADE: Obviously you love music but I also sense some ambivalence about your musical career in other interviews you’ve given. Is that fair to say? You seem to have a love-hate relationship with the whole thing.
BARBER: My recording career, no. That’s fun and easy. Touring is very difficult so yeah, I think you hit it right on the head. Well, let me re-phrase that. Certainly not this sweet little tour to D.C. or a 10-day tour to Europe. But I’m pretty much done with the grueling 12-hour spans getting to a city.
BLADE: Now that “Smash” has been out for a while and had time to gestate, how do you feel about it? Is it hard to assess how well something worked when you’re still close to it? Has it been hard to find a way for it to live in a live setting?
BARBER: I still love it. I don’t know that my feelings have changed at all. I’m still finding ways to transpose, as you put it, to the stage. With jazz, you can’t stick to one performance so I’m purposefully trying not to sound like the recording. It’s interesting what you can do with a quartet vs. a trio. It’s slightly different each time. But I’m still in love with it.
BLADE: Is “Devil’s Food” a political statement?
BARBER: It’s my first gay song … It’s definitely coming from the DOMA political situation. That whole court case was coming up and my feelings about it. It isn’t obviously gay until you’re listening to it. It’s fun to watch people’s faces because it turns into a disco song. Jazz is usually very serious but this is just gay fun.
BLADE: Do you feel the press has focused too much on your sexual orientation throughout your career?
BARBER: Yes. It’s the first thing on Wikipedia. I’m a lesbian jazz musician. To me, that’s not a category but OK. I’m hoping as we’ve all grown older that being gay continues becoming just part of the normal fabric of everything and people will focus on the music more but you have to remember years ago, we weren’t anywhere close to where we are now on that.
BLADE: You were out pretty early on though. Were you just pretty much organically out or was it a conscious decision at some point to be out?
BARBER: I had a whole issue with that. I was working at a pretty famous club in Chicago that was very popular. We had lines around the block and I worked there six nights a week with a trio. And yeah, at the beginning — this was many, many years ago — I wondered if they would have hired me if I’d been out. It was such a hetero scene there so I definitely worried about it but then I came out to my boss and … he thought it was sexy and kind of cool in a sort of perverted way. But it hasn’t ended up affecting my audience at all. They’ve always been mixed — straight, gay, black, white, young, old.
BLADE: You’re playing six shows in D.C. Is it designed to be something people can see over a few nights or is it pretty much the same show?
BARBER: I don’t expect that people would see it twice. That would be unusual. It will pretty much be the same set.
BLADE: Do jazz fans bring expectations with them the way people expect pop acts to always do certain hits?
BARBER: I think they want to hear stuff from “Smash” and they sometimes have old favorites they want to hear. Sometimes they send me notes. If it’s easy to do, sure, I’ll do it. I have a huge repertoire by now. I’m happy to try it if I can or if I just want to sit and play “Autumn Leaves” for an hour and a half, I’ll do that.
Theater
Celebrate Valentine’s Day with one of these three plays
‘Waitress,’ ‘Love Birds,’ ‘Fuenteovejuna’ offer differing takes on love

For theatergoers seeking to mark Valentine’s Day with live music, love, and friendship, the DMV offers some new spins on traditional themes.
Poised to make its regional debut at Olney Theatre Center, Sara Bareilles’s hit musical “Waitress” (Feb.13-March 30) may not seem like a usual love story, but it’s a love story nonetheless.
“It’s about learning to love and value yourself,” says MALINDA who plays Jenna, the show’s titular server/baker with aspirations to bake prize-winning pies and change her life. “It’s also about sisterhood. From the start, the women involved in the show decided to be there for each other onstage and off, and it shows. For anyone with girl group love in their lives, this is an especially good show to see.
“Jenna doesn’t get a lot of satisfaction out of her primary partnership. Along with self-love she explores the antithesis of that — partner violence. Our director [Marcia Milgrom Dodge] took the lesson of community support and community love to heart.”
Prior to coming out as bisexual in 2022, MALINDA considered herself more of a “quiet queer.” However, the inspiration derived from Irish music (“music of the oppressed”), which she’s famed for singing on TikTok, compelled her to go public.
She didn’t always believe her queerness to be special: “For me,” MALINDA says, “it was like saying my eyes are hazel. There wasn’t much to celebrate. But then I realized there were missing voices in my community. Felt like the right thing to do, and it’s been one of the great blessings of my life.”
Six years ago, after her Helen Hayes Award-winning turn in “Once,” MALINDA took a break from musical theater. She needed time to age into dream parts, and one of those roles was Jenna. She recalls, “Going back to theater was prominently featured on my vision board, so when Marcia asked me to commit to ‘Waitress,’ I happily agreed.”
For her, Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to reach out and tell friends, family, and, of course, romantic partners, just how much you love them.
And she adds “that’s exactly how I plan to celebrate.”
D.C.’s delightful Holly Twyford is spending Valentine’s Day working at the Folger on Capitol Hill. She’ll be on stage, her wife will be in the audience, and depending on the length of the program, they’ll go out to dinner afterward.
For four performances, the multi-Helen Hayes award-winning actor is serving as narrator for “The Love Birds” (Feb. 14-16), a new Folger Consort work that blends medieval music with a world-premiere composition by acclaimed composer Juri Seo and readings from Geoffrey Chaucer’s “A Parlement of Foules” by Twyford.
Standing behind a podium, she’ll read Chaucer’s words (translated from Middle English and backed by projected slides in the original language), alternating with music played on old and new instruments.
“The new music is kind of dissonant with the sounds of birdcalls and nature sounds, painting a picture of what’s going on in Chaucer’s poem that’s beautiful and funny. Chaucer describes the male eagles pleading for the hand of the female eagle. Chaucer seems almost unwittingly feminist when he has the female eagle ask her eagle suitors to give her a year to think about it.”
GALA Hispanic Theatre in Columbia Heights presents “Fuenteovejuna” (through March 2), a timely production staged by out director José Luis Arelleno. Penned in 1613, this work from the Spanish Golden Age ranks among playwright Lope de Vega’s most performed plays.
It’s about tyranny and love, Arellano explains. Within Lope de Vega’s timely tale of brutish power lies an intense love story. In fact, at the top of the show, four characters, two males and two females play a game. What is love? One of the players asserts that love doesn’t exist, while the others disagree. It’s a charming way to kick off the play.
The celebrated director isn’t one to telegraph messages, preferring audiences think for themselves. That said, he does, of course, make strong directorial choices: “If I have to choose between love or war, it’s more important to talk about love. For me, it’s a revolution.”
And apropos of a Valentine’s Day date, GALA’s production of “Fuenteovejuna” (performed in Spanish with English surtitles) is imbued with live music and verse, an important part of any romantic experience, adds David Peralto, the production’s poetry and verse consultant as well as Arellano’s longtime partner.
The busy Spain-based couple will celebrate Valentine’s Day in Seville and couldn’t be happier. Arellano describes Seville as the most romantic city in the world.

The LGBTQ youth services organization SMYAL held the “SMYAL for the New Year” fundraiser at Shakers on Thursday, Jan. 30.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)



















a&e features
Valentine’s gifts for the queers you love
Fragrances, X-rated sweet treats, candles, and more

Put a little love in your heart. That’s what Jackie DeShannon encouraged with her 1969 hit song of the same name, and it’s never been more appropriate than in the context of our current state of affairs. Mute the vitriol this Valentine’s Day and concentrate on what really matters – those you love and who love you back.
Gucci Guilty Love Edition

Sniffies? You’ll put the site on hold after a whiff of Gucci Guilty Love Edition on the nape of his neck – featuring captivating notes of juniper oil, orange flower absolute and aphrodisiatic Ambrofix – which one review claims to “make your brain sparkle like a fine Champagne.” Cheers to that. $25-$133, FragranceNet.com
Hunky Burning Love Pillow

Sweet dreams are on the docket when you rest your head on the Hunky Burning Love faux-suede square pillow printed with illustrations of shirtless himbos pining for your affection. An exercise in fantasy more than reality, but it beats sitting alone at a bar getting no attention at all. $30, ThePillowTopShop.com
Love Deck
What’s in the cards for your love life in 2025? Fuck around and find out with astrologist Lisa Stardust’s 70-card Love Deck, a tarot set of short spells, meditations and rituals designed to conjure enough love, passion, clarity and confidence to make Potion No. 9 jealous. $13, Amazon.com
‘Making the Case for Equality’
We’ll continue to fight the good fight over the next four years and beyond – perhaps harder than ever – and Lambda Legal’s “Making the Case for Equality,” a detailed half-century history of our hard-won judicial victories, is a solid reminder of how far we’ve come in the war for LGBTQ+ rights. $45, Amazon.com
Lola Blankets

Schedule an at-home streaming marathon of this year’s Best Picture noms before the big night – there’s a lot to love in 2024’s Oscar picks – and the coziest way to settle in is all snuggled up in the squishiest Lola blankets, reminiscent of the adorable ripples of the cutest Shar Pei. Pick up a couple for the cuddle puddle. $109-$299, LolaBlankets.com
Asa Akira x Cake Life Cookies

Cue the collaboration you didn’t see coming: Adult film star Asa Akira teams up with award-winning trans-owned bakery Cake Life Bake Shop for its sweet-and-spicy Conversation Heart Sugar Cookies, featuring Akira’s XXX-tra special curated box decorated with NFSW phrases like “Cowgirl,” “Cream Pie,” and the ever-subtle “Anal” – that are sure to leave mouths agog at your Gaylentine’s get-together. $19-$21, CakeLifeBakeShop.square.site
Mind Games Candles

Since the late 1990s, the Backstreet Boys have implored us to quit playin’ games with our lovers’ hearts, which is probably why we play mind games instead – and now they come in luxury scents like Jasmine Milk, Tobacco Tonka Bean and Cherry Sandalwood, so you can enjoy mood lighting with your gaslighting. $135, MindGamesFragrance.com
Delysia Chocolates

Inspired by Greek Goddess-of-Love Aphrodite, Delysia Chocolatier’s 16-piece, limited-edition truffle collection includes four each of symbolic Passion (almond-honey-fig), Adoration (raspberry-rose petal-hibiscus), Unity (pomegranate-strawberry), and Love (spiced wine-berry) bite-size chocolates rich enough for savoring and abundant enough for sharing. $60, Delysia.com
DIY Whiskey Hot Sauce

Variety is the spice of life in Thoughtfully Gourmet’s Whiskey-Infused DIY Hot Sauce Kit that combines your favorite cereal spirit with high-quality global ingredients, like Mexican hot peppers, to create sophisticated flavor experiences of varying Scoville heat levels, handsomely housed in fancy decanters. Recipe book, spices and seasonings included; alcohol and antacids are not. $20, Amazon.com
Mikey Rox is an award-winning journalist and LGBTQ lifestyle expert whose work has been published in more than 100 outlets around the world. Connect with Mikey on Instagram @mikeyroxtravels.
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