If there is one word to describe Camille Saint-Saens’ Third Symphony, known as the Organ Symphony, is would be “big.” Some have said that it would fill the Grand Canyon with its sound. Truly, it is a reason why I tell friends that they haven’t experienced that work until they […]

Along with the recent Little City Restaurant Revolution, there’s been a bit of a Falls Church fried chicken revolution as well.

Don Carlo commits suicide at the end? Not on your life! The Washington National Opera’s otherwise brilliant production of Verdi’s “Don Carlo,” after three-plus hours of magnificent singing and acting on the singular theme of an heroic striving to bring freedom to the oppressed against the machinations of an evil […]

Landing a spot – and even more so, winning – American Idol is seen as once-in-a-lifetime launch pad for a music career. However, as previous Idol winners have shown us, being the last man (or woman) standing hardly foreshadows a steady music career afterwards. That’s why Lee DeWyze, Idol’s winner […]

Iyona Blake has become a powerhouse performer at Falls Church’s Creative Cauldron theatre, almost as legendary in her local showcase here as Billie Holiday was on her national platform as her tragically short but culturally transformative career as a jazz and blues singer that ran from 1933 to her untimely […]

Breaking into the music business is hard for even the most talented songstress or six-fingered guitar slinger, but to operate as your own business manager as well as the musical engine for your band takes a special kind of dedication. That’s where Justin Trawick, front man for Justin Trawick and […]

By Leonard Hughes  As you’re spending January shivering against these sub-freezing wind-chills and bracing yourselves for the next bomb cyclone, I strongly urge you to seek refuge in Falls Church with Tennessee Williams’s dysfunctional Pollitt family in Zemfira Stage’s sizzling production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” On a […]

Telling a joke — you know, like a really good joke — is hard enough as is. But to disarm a comedian of their favorite profane word or saucy premise is almost as bad as throwing them on stage without a mic. Unless you’re local product Jan McInnis that is, […]

With its use of wordplay and clever symbolism, “The Phantom Tollbooth” is a spiritual cousin of sorts to “Alice in Wonderland” though, disappointingly, a far less famous literary work Norton Juster, who wrote the book in 1961 while procrastinating from another book project, truly creates a wondrous world that sparks […]

By Ryan Worthman, Clarksburg High School Once upon a time in a far-off kingdom, there lay a small village at the edge of the woods. Into the Woods is a musical that brings together classic fairytales such as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and the Beanstalk, but not […]