Al's Venue Guide 1/16/04

Cultural pleasures don't announce themselves as readily here in Washington as they do in New York or San Francisco, but, as perhaps this column has demonstrated over the years, there is still plenty to do and take in here. Having lived here a decade now, it still surprises me how many people don't know where to go if they want to hear jazz or don't know about the great free concert series at the Library of Congress.

Today's posting is meant to remedy that, a guide for places to take yourself or out of town friends when you want to hear some music. I'm not going to cover pop venues, because those places (Black Cat, 9:30 club, Birchmere) have advertising budgets that our friends in the classical and jazz realms don't enjoy. There are some great venues, though, and many, many free shows out there.

But I hope you will find my list useful. Remember, even if you haven't signed up to get Al's Jazz Times through Yahoo groups, you can look at back issues on the Web page - they're sorted by date, so if you want to refer back to this one, click on January 2004 and here you'll be.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Als_Jazz_Times/

I would be remiss if I didn't mention for the umpteenth time that half-price tickets are available through Ticketplace. Most of the tickets are for theater but they sometimes have tickets for music (including some National Symphony shows), ballet and lectures. Most of the tickets are for that night, but they do have advanced tickets to some performances. Open Tuesday through Saturday at the Old Post Office Pavilion, with tickets for some shows available through their Web site. You can have the listings emailed to you daily, which gives you a good sense, particularly with plays, of what shows are likely to have discount tickets available when you want to go. The tickets are actually a little more than half-price after service charges but still a great bargain.
http://www.cultural-alliance.org/tickets/today.html

The best sources for what is going on - and I know this sounds old-fashioned in the age of downloadable movie listings, etc. - are City Paper and the Weekend section of the Friday Washington Post. Read the small print - you'll find lots of free concerts in churches and such like that. I also have found it easier and more reliable to keep up with the listings for the likes of Blues Alley and Half Moon BBQ this way than through their Web sites.

Pianist Louis Scherr runs a site for local musicians and fans called dcjazz.com. Click on the Jazzscene button for links to about three dozen club sites in the area (Scherr is the Webmaster for Blues Alley and Twins and a few others). Or click on "Artist's Suites" to be taken for pages for 40 or 50 musicians who update their calendars according to their whim. Scherr also gives you listings of who's in town where by day (on the Jazzscene page) and sends out a monthly email with highlighted shows.

I should also note that washingtonpost.com has its own entertainment staff, offering opinions on bars and museum shows, monthly roundups of the most promising upcoming shows in classical and jazz and weekly picks for pop. They have dozens of music listings up for every week. Click on the word "Entertainment" from the home page.

The Kennedy Center is, of course, the home for touring Broadway shows, the Washington Opera in the restored Opera House, the National Symphony and much more. The Center offers free hour-long shows every night at 6 pm on its Millennium Stage that are Webcast (http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=milStage). Take a chance. For our purposes, it's worth noting that the Center is home to many fine chamber music series and the reliable Vocal Arts Society (to hear those up and coming sopranos and bassos). The Kennedy Center has become an important jazz venue with shows in agreeable surroundings, its smallish Terrace Theater and the intimate KC Jazz Club. The Jazz Club holds 160 souls at 40 small cocktail tables - you can drink but don't have to. It's like being at a club with great sound and sightlines but no minimum and no smoke. The downside: Almost every jazz performer at the Kennedy Center is made to do two shows nightly with separate admissions for each. This means you'll spend $25 or more for just over an hour's worth of music, which may not quite satisfy. Try to go to the later show for better chance of more music and fully warmed up players.
www.kennedy-center.org

The Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Maryland looks from the outside like it's in the midst of imploding but inside it's a conglomeration of well-fitted arts halls. They have separate recital rooms, theaters, dance halls, etc. The concert hall is a little big and high-ceilinged and not the best-sounding room, but the other theaters are all terrific. The Kay and the Gildenhorn are the types of rooms that you wish the Kennedy Center had. We've heard top jazz acts there including Carol Sloane and Joe Lovano and you can catch the Baltimore Symphony there or Andre Watts giving a master class. Trumpeter and film composer Terence Blanchard is performing a concert on February 8 and the next day holding public discussions and working with student performers - a typical artist-in-residence mix of events there. Maryland has a strong music program for both classical and jazz but check the listings for a singer or dance troupe you've heard of. Take Metro to College Park and catch a campus shuttle or drive and pay $3 to park in a lot directly across from the Smith Center.
http://www.claricesmithcenter.umd.edu/

Wolftrap certainly has a big marketing budget and doesn't need my help but both of its venues are good places to hear music. During the winter months, the Barns is an agreeably small hall with good sound and sightlines and regular dance concerts. It's fun to dance to a Cajun band in a big clean old barn. The outdoor venue is an excellent place for lovely and rain-free summer evenings, featuring mostly old favorites who come back every year. You won't hear too much jazz at the annual jazz and blues festival at the end of June, though.
www.wolftrap.org

If you have a friend or a visitor who wants to hear jazz, clearly your first choice has to be Twins. Twins has its detractors on this list and certainly isn't the spiffiest room in town. You go up the stairs (it's at U near 14th Street NW) and enter a long rectangular box. Sometimes there are solid performers down from New York, such as David "Fathead" Newman or Eric Alexander. Other times, it's going to be someone you have never heard of who may not quite get it done for you. But they always have musicians who really play jazz and love the music and most of the people there are interested in hearing the real deal and not talking over it. It's bigger name acts on Fridays and Saturdays and various jam sessions and locals other days. They've just started booking music into the homier old location out on Colorado a couple of blocks east of 16th Street NW on Fridays and Saturdays only
www.twinsjazz.com

The premiere jazz club in Washington is Blues Alley. You forget what a great place it is, a small club where people mostly shut up and listen. If you love a performer, it's a great chance to experience the show up close. But you have to love the person because a night at Blues Alley can seriously set you back. The cover charges range from about $17 on up but what really gets you are the ancillary costs - the minimum, the "Blues Alley music appreciation society" fee, etc. You can't go there without spending $45 a person. That's for sets that generally last just about an hour. You may or may not be able to stay for a second set without paying a second cover charge, but you'll have to make the minimum all over again. A great place to hear favorites but otherwise it's a lot of tourists on expense accounts.
www.bluesalley.com

Just a block or so west from Twins, U-topia has musicians every night of the week in regular gigs. Nicki Gonzalez is a talented young singer who does jazz and Brazilian music on Tuesdays. Veteran singer Pam Bricker is there Wednesdays and Sundays. Brazilian jazz with Wayne Wilentz on Thursdays. Etc. They've just put out a two-CD set of music recorded at the club which sounded pretty good when I heard it (but I don't own a copy). The emphasis is more on drinks and food at Utopia and unless you're sitting at the bar you'll have a hard time hearing or seeing the musicians crammed up front. Good on an off-night (go hear Nicki) or good after dinner for a little music behind your drinking. I don't find a Web site but they run a weekly ad in City Paper.

Right next to that ad this week is an ad for Columbia Station, on 18th Street in Adams Morgan. I have had bad luck there but Peter Edelman, who is there Mondays, is a reliable veteran of the local scene. I have found the atmosphere sort of frat bar-ish with bad bands but I haven't checked it out for a while - pop your head in if you're passing by and in the mood.

That's generally a good rule of thumb along 18th Street, especially before the weekend date nights kick in. There are a lot of places that have music sporadically. Madams Organ has its Wednesday bluegrass night and then blues and rock and so forth other nights. There's that bar with African musicians up past Cities - the name escapes me right now. Felix sometimes has good swing musicians - Wednesdays is generally the best night for that type of music. On Mondays they have a light, talented trio called Satin Doll, which plays all over town on other nights (Wednesdays at Timpano on Rockville Pike, Thursdays at Laportas in Alexandria, etc.).

Eighth Street SE has become a funny place, a wide avenue with incredibly bright streetlights that make it all look like a stage set. There's a terrific little room to hear music there now called Ellington's on Eighth, near Pennsylvania. Another room with local performers with regular gigs. You'll want to sit up close, in the comfy chairs by the piano, because you certainly can't see anything from the back of the room. Good desserts, pleasant place to have a drink and hear someone play piano.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=entertainment/profile&id=1027506

Another good place to hear quiet sounds with drink in hand: Pianist Louis Scherr is back in the Garden Terrace of the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown on Wednesday nights after an unwanted hiatus. You'll have to check whether the Sunday jazz brunch is still on.
http://www.fourseasons.com/washington/index.html

And another: Call 202-296-7700 before heading to Kinkead's at 2000 Pennsylvania on a Friday or Saturday to check that Hilton Felton is playing. He's a terrific pianist, playing mainstream jazz in clever sets, usually with a bass player. You can hear him at the small bar and get expensive drinks, oysters and impressive desserts.

The Corcoran Gallery of Art has scaled back its free jazz series. It's no longer every Wednesday at 12:30, but you can count on hearing good local pianists, guitarists or small groups on the first and third Wednesdays of each month. The hourlong shows are in the Hammer Auditorium, which is also an ideal place to hear chamber music. Gospel brunches in the museum every Sunday.
www.corcoran.org

Every Friday for the past five years, quartets and quintets and other arrangements of good local musicians have played in the early evening (6 to 9) at Westminster Presbyterian, not too far from the waterfront on I Street SW. Admission is only $5, so what's not to like?
http://www.westminsterdc.org/jazz_night.htm#Jazz%20Night%20Schedule

Another museum for jazz: The Smithsonian hosts free jazz shows every Friday night from about 5:30 to 9 at the Natural History Museum. There's buffet food and drinks and a lot of talking in a fairly echoey space. Sit near the bandstand and by the end of the evening you'll find all your neighbors are focused on the music - usually small groups with local guys like Chuck Redd and Tommy Cecil but often with names known to jazz fans such as Howard Alden and Gene Bertoncini. They have Latin jazz fairly regularly.
http://www.mnh.si.edu/imax/

Remember that the Smithsonian Associates, in addition to all their foreign tours and author lectures, occasionally host music, including jazz, Dixieland and Latin jazz, usually in the subterranean Baird Auditorium. Go to http://www.residentassociates.org/rap/start.htm and click on "One-Time Only Events."

It's been a while since we've heard the Smithsonian's big band, the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. They've been doing something more interesting lately, which is hosting small groups of locals paired with some specialist in playing tributes to acts such as J.J. Johnson and Artie Shaw. You have to keep your eyes open for these free shows, which take place in the auditorium just off the Constitution entrance to the American History Museum on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons. They usually have some in April, which the Smithsonian promotes as Jazz Appreciation Month. These shows are usually advertised in the Weekend section or you can monitor the Web site.
http://www.smithsonianjazz.org/

The guy who runs Half Moon BBQ used to run the lamented Tornado Alley and Twist and Shout. This place gets similar types of acts - roots rock, rockabilly, blues, zydeco. You go up the back stairs from the diner area out front into a small room with a hard floor. It can get hot in there in the summer, but it's a really fun, casual place to have beers and dance two feet in front of the band on the small stage.
http://www.halfmoonbbq.com/c/bbq/schedule.html

There are a bunch of restaurants and bars that have jazz occasionally or on certain nights. Bassist Victor Dvoskin holds court, usually with a guitarist in tow, at Hotel Tabard Inn, near Dupont Circle, on Sunday nights. There's an intimate place to hear some quiet music, with that fireplace and all those old sofas.
http://www.tabardinn.com/jazz.htm

Chi-Cha Lounge on U Street NW hosts Patrick De Santos, the local singer with the best voice, on Wednesdays. He performs with pianist Dan Reynolds and generally sings bossa nova for this gig but certainly knows the standards. They have various performers playing Latin, French or other softened café music every night except Fridays and Saturdays, when the bar fills itself. (Both the post.com and City Paper list De Santos singing French on Sundays, but he told me he lost that gig and picked one up in NYC.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=entertainment/profile&id=796817

The Colonel's sister bar, Island Jim's, hosts Cajun, swing, blues and rock bands. Wednesday is the big night, especially in summer when the patio is open. On Fridays they often have some guy with a guitar doing Jimmy Buffet songs. It's a great place to hang out and enjoy the faux-tropical setting. Their Web listings aren't reliable but they post their bands for the whole summer in the bar, so someone can figure it out if you call.

Mr. Henry's in Adams Morgan may be no more than a construction site but the bar on the Hill is still around. It's claim to jazz fame is the Friday night performances of trumpeter Kevin Cordt, who leads a quartet up there, on the second floor. There aren't many gay jazz musicians...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=entertainment/profile&id=806001

Bohemian Caverns is kind of a sad story. This was an old club that was renovated three or four years ago - a lot of money to restore its odd, fake cave atmosphere. There are stalagtites and uncomfortable chairs - padded trees stumps with no back. They got some really great people in for a couple of months but didn't know how to market themselves. They still kick around with locals and cigar nights and all kinds of stuff.
http://www.bohemiancaverns.com/calendar/public.cfm

The New Vegas Lounge has reopened as, I suppose appropriately, Viva New Vegas Lounge. This small club used to have a sort of picturesquely seedy interior - very Otis Day and the Knights with the white kids dancing to old black bands. It's been fully renovated and I'll be curious to check it out, since its neighborhood (P Street between 14 and 15th) is ground central for yuppification right now.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=entertainment/profile&id=796074&typeId=5

Just down 14th Street, I know some yuppies who get annoyed by the sounds coming out of HR-57, a kind of homemade operation where you can hear local small jazz groups, jam sessions and sometimes (but not lately) big bands. Bring your own liquor.
http://www.hr57.org/pages/680590/index.htm

Starland Café, up on MacArthur, now hosts Brooks Tegler's Sunday evening jam session (which used to be at the Inn at Glen Echo). You can hear lots of good locals - Robert Redd, members of the J Street Jumpers - but it's hit and miss who shows up. Familiar local soul-blues-pop acts such as Whop Frazier and Mary Ann Redmond play Fridays and Saturdays.
http://www.starlandcafe.com/entertainment.htm

Another generally strong jam session can be found Thursday nights at the Oxford Tavern, better known as the Zoo Bar, up in Woodley Park. Flatfoot Sam hosts and gets some talented folks. It can be quite good and that's certainly an appropriate smokey, dirty and cramped place to hear the blues. Music other nights as well, usually just Friday and Saturday.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=entertainment/profile&id=796073

There's a big Thai restaurant jazz scene in these parts now. I was a big fan of the Sunday afternoon guitar/swing jam sessions featuring Tom Principato at Bangkok Blues out in Falls Church while it lasted. The food is quite decent and you get a good close look at the performers, mostly local, who play every night but Tuesday (when they show classic jazz videos.
http://www.bangkokblues.com/music.htm

Melrose at 24th and M is the only place in town, as far as I know, where you can go for old-fashioned dining and dancing. They get in a small band on Friday and Saturday nights that plays those old World War II-era favorites. The food is quite respectable for a hotel restaurant (although not cheap) but you can just order drinks, including an impressive selection of wine. 202-955-3899

The Potomoc River Jazz Society produces traditional jazz shows at places like the Rockville Elks Club and Blob's Park. If you like Dixieland or traditional jazz, their listings of such music from McLean to Baltimore is handy to consult:
http://www.prjc.org/thatjazz.html

I've never managed to hear of a Charlin Jazz Society event until after it was over, but maybe you'll have better luck or will take the trouble to contact them. They are dedicated more to swing and bop and the mainstream of jazz at the midpart of the 20th century.
http://dcmdva-arts.org/sourceth/newpage2.htm

I've never made it out to the Montpelier Cultural Arts Center in Laurel but I'm always thinking about it when I see strong local players like Dick Morgan, Ron Holloway and Buck Hill listed there.
http://www.pgparks.com/places/artsfac/mcac.html#performances

Jazz is an urban art, but don't forget the jazz scene out in Alexandria. Laporta's restaurant, on Duke Street a couple of blocks south of the King Street Metro, hosts regular swing and standards groups and has some good dinner specials (decent Italian) during the earlier part of the week. The Post says the music is Thursdays through Saturdays but I think they slip in some other nights, too.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=entertainment/profile&id=799760

On King Street itself, near the river, you'll find the 219 Basin Street Lounge at the top floor of the sprawling restaurant also named for the street address. The music space is beyond the long bar, the musicians standing just in front of the window, beside non-working fireplaces and other touches that give the place an air of faded Victorianism. It's a pleasant place to sit and have a drink and listen up close to regular musicians such as John Cocuzzi and Henning Hoenhe who will play the standards for you.
http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide-1241478-219_basin_street_lounge_district_of_columbia-i

I have heard some good local jazz and swing performances at Clarendon Ballroom, which of course has a large dance floor. But the schedule seems dominated more by, you know, music people like - that loud and percussive stuff...
http://www.clarendonballroom.com/calendar.htm

Since it's coming up, I should mention the East Coast Jazz Festival held over the weekend around Valentine's Day every year up in Rockville. Lots of the best local players and touring acts from all over, plus plenty of kids.
http://www.fmjseastcoastjazz.com/festival.htm

The best music deal in the city is the concert series at the Library of Congress. There are plenty of free concerts in DC, but no such series that offers the amazingly high quality of chamber music, jazz, Latin music, gospel and cabaret. Just this season, they've offered Dave Brubeck, Menahem Pressler and fine concerts by the Chilingirian and Kodaly string quartets. (The Juilliard String Quartet has been in residence for years.) The Coolidge Auditorium is a bit snug on the legroom but you can see and hear well and you're never more than about 20 rows from the stage. Most people don't know about these concerts - I've been surprised by music-loving friends here who have never been - but those in the know don't fool around. Tickets become available on Wednesdays a few weeks before the show and are snatched up quickly. I got the last Brubeck seat in the house about 35 minutes after they became available. Look at the calendar, figure out what you want to go to, and make a note of when tickets for that performance will go on sale. Getting them through Ticketmaster will cost you about $3.50 per ticket.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/perform/concert/
http://www.ticketmaster.com/venue/172086/

If you work downtown, you have no excuse not to hear a free concert some Tuesday at lunch at the Church of the Epiphany on G between 13th and 14th. The premiere attraction is the Washington Bach Consort, one of the best local classical ensembles, which does a cantata and organ work the first Tuesday of every month from October to May. Other classical acts and occasional jazz groups come in on other Tuesdays. The sanctuary is bigger than you would expect from the outside - the church looks cramped among the office buildings - but seats fill up so try to get there by 12 for the 12:10 performances.
http://www.epiphanydc.org/music.html

The Fessenden Ensemble, another interesting classical group, has found a primary performance home at St. Columba's on Albemarle up in Tenleytown. The group includes members of the National Symphony and people of that caliber. What makes it unusual is that there are 13 regular members, plus guests. In other words, instead of always playing string quartets and piano quintets they can mix and match and play a wide variety of music - when was the last time you heard Brahms' songs for harp, French horns and women's chorus? The Fessendens this season have done thematic programs (French composers, Americans, etc.). St. Columba's runs other music programs as well. A fairly small and plain-looking sanctuary with good sound.
http://www.columba.org/Community/Music/music.html

The acoustics at the National Cathedral can swallow up some groups but it's worth hearing a great chorus there and they have an impressive organ series, if you like that sort of thing.
http://www.cathedral.org/cathedral/programs/calendar.shtml

The National Gallery of Art offers free concerts Sunday evenings in the West Garden Court. Although a pretty spot to read a book in during a museum visit, it's probably the worst room for hearing music in town. You have to get there early to get a seat, the one you get will probably be behind the giant planter and the acoustics are horribly reverberant. You don't want to hear a solo pianist there if you can help it. But the National Gallery Orchestra is a pretty good group of musicians who work in all sorts of orchestras, they don't sound too bad in there and orchestras aren't all that visually stimulating after a while anyway. They get some good people - Ruth Laredo and Mark O'Connor are coming up. The series shuts down for the summer but remember during the warmer months you can hear free jazz Friday evenings at the fountain/ice rink in the Gallery Sculpture Garden.
http://www.nga.gov/programs/music.htm

Just up the street, the Hirshhorn often has some odd and obscure movies - you'll definitely be hip no matter what you see there - and music in keeping. The 20th Century Consort plays there, for instance.
http://hirshhorn.si.edu/programs/events.asp

Continuing our tour of the National Mall, remember that the Freer Gallery has both concerts and films in its oddly unsloped auditorium. The concerts tend to feature classical chamber players or people playing characteristic music from some Asian land or other. The films follow the latter bent. They have an annual festival of movies from Hong Kong, or you can catch a flick from Bollywood. This is a good place for checking out that Iranian cinema that the smart critics are always telling us is so hot.
http://www.asia.si.edu/events/films.asp
http://www.asia.si.edu/events/performances.asp

Let's sneak a little to the south and see if anything is happening in an even flatter-floored auditorium, the one at Voice of America. They have programming sporadically. I've heard Gore Vidal lecture there (by which I mean he read out loud an article he had coming out in Vanity Fair) and they occasionally will have someone ethnic-sounding like Danilo Perez to beam out to the world. VOA is also where some group based in LA comes to tape live performances of plays for radio broadcast - watch Laura Linney stand on stage talking into a microphone in "Barefoot in the Park" or see "The Heidi Chronicles" reduced to its words, with no staging. These things work well and you can sometimes get half-price tickets at - remember? - Ticketplace.
www.voa.gov

Back on the museum front, don't forget the Sunday afternoon concert series at the Phillips. Curated by Mark Carrington, they have generally excellent chamber players and soloists. The concerts are free or I should say are included in the cost of admission to the museum. They are held in that handsome wood-lined room in the old Duncan Phillips house part of the museum. Unless you're up front or on an aisle you won't be able to see but it's a tiny room so you'll hear fine. If it's full, don't bother trying to listen from the outside - they set up speakers but unless things have changed the sound is terrible and you're staring at a wall. You can hear jazz pianists or groups in the same room as part of the Thursday "Artful Evenings" events, but only as background music as part of the bar scene.
http://www.phillipscollection.org/html/news.html

The Smithsonian's American History Museum has a hall of instruments - historical instruments you can sometimes hear played in a small performance room nearby. The Axelrod Quartet has been playing a Beethoven cycle. The Emerson Quartet has been in residence for years.
http://www.residentassociates.org/rap/idx-perf.asp

When you're thinking world music, you're probably not thinking Inter-American Development Bank. But the bank does in fact host free concerts that run for an hour starting at 5:30 at 13th and New York. They have classical music sometimes but more often people playing tangos, bossa nova or something more exotic from some IADB member country. The concerts are in a blah conference room but it's worth seeing the big atrium lobby, complete with waterfall. You can get on an email list of events.
http://www.iadb.org/NEWS/DISPLAY/events.cfm?Language=English

Another place to hear musicians and watch films from Africa, Latin America and the rest of the non-U.S./European world is National Geographic, on 17th south of Dupont Circle. They have a very clean lined theater that's a good venue for their offerings. They have theaters in other cities as well. Here in DC, you can attend live broadcasts of the Diane Rehm show on Fridays, if you're a person of leisure. Tickets for National Geographic concerts and film presentations are often available at a discount at Ticketplace.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lectures/index.html

Dumbarton Church in Georgetown has concerts about once a month that feature pretty solid musicians and cost about $28. Local drummer and vibist Chuck Redd will lead a group on January 24 in tribute to Lionel Hampton and Milt Jackson. In April, the Amadeus Trio, who did a superb concert in the same room of Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky about three years ago, return for more. Not a bad place for a chamber concert.
www.dumbartonconcerts.org

The Holocaust Museum has run a powerful series of chamber music concerts directed by Steven Konigberg, a cellist with the National Symphony, featuring works inspired by the Holocaust or written by people who went through the camps. I don't see any concerts coming up, will have to check...
http://www.ushmm.org/events/jsp/default.jsp?CalendarDisplay=PublicPrograms&ScreenWidth=1024&ScreenHeight=768

The Embassy Series features usually younger musicians at concerts in - duh - embassies and ambassadors' residences. These are usually solo or duo performances and, although they aren't free, are usually top quality and probably less than you'll pay to hear the same performer the next time through at the Kennedy Center. You can see the lovely interior of the Singapore Embassy, the spare design of the Dutch, the blocky, gloomy German. Feel free to skip programs that feature series director Jerome Barry himself singing.
http://www.embassyseries.com/events.htm

They'll let you past the gate into the French Embassy in Foxhall for a show at La Maison Francaise. It's a good theater and they show films, hold concerts of jazz and Frenchified music and were the former home of the Vocal Arts Society.
http://www.la-maison-francaise.org/en_calendrier2.htm

There are other international groups that promote the culture of mother countries. Over the years, I've attended events sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute that included Jonathan Galassi reading his translations of Eugenio Montale's poetry in a little conference room; a duo of violin and cello-playing brothers at the Levine School; and a multimedia music and video show where the video was busted at a little black box theater on 14th Street. See what other events are coming up - Italian language tours of the National Gallery, more hunky Italian string players at:
http://www.italcultusa.org/old_index.html

I mentioned up above that the University of Maryland has a fine music program. You can hear the kids play at the Clarice Smith Center, but one thing worth watching out for is the annual "battle of the bands" in April, when the slick Maryland kids are shown up by the funkier sounds of the Howard University band and then the triumphant kick-ass soul and superior soloists of the UDC ensemble. This is always held at UDC, this year on April 26. Here are the listings for the UDC group, led by Calvin Jones:
http://www.lrdudc.wrlc.org/events.html

They used to have a Friday afternoon jam session at George Washington, wherein the faculty would humiliate the students. Don't know if that's still going on, but here is that music department's performance schedule:
http://www.gwu.edu/~music/calendar/index.html

It's great to hear talented kids play. You can hear student recitals and occasional chamber music pros at the Levine School of Music in Van Ness, which has a crummy low-ceilinged room that acts as its performance space. The kids play around town as well.
http://www.levineschool.org/events.htm

The Lincoln Theater, at 13th and U, is the best venue in Washington. At least, if you're not sitting in the back of the balcony. And, true, there aren't enough bathrooms. But it has beautiful open views of the stage, clean sound and that gold leaf ceiling. Too bad it's underused. I've heard Joan Armatrading there and a bunch of jazz shows including a terrific Wynton Marsalis sextet tribute to Duke Ellington. The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra used to play there and last year's Jackie Wilson show was a riot. Mostly, though, it's underutilized. Why use a beautiful room like this for school and civic events when you've got a whole city filled with ugly auditoriums? Make a point of going there if someone you like is playing.
http://www.thelincolntheatre.org/events.html

Lisner Auditorium is a big room without much leg room. Part of the George Washington campus at 21st and H, you can hear some touring acts there of various kinds - I've heard a couple of different Cuban acts there, comic essayist David Sedaris, jazz god Sonny Rollins, aging waif Rickie Lee Jones and many others.
http://www.gwu.edu/~lisner/performances.htm

The State Theater in Falls Church was once a movie house but for the past few years has been a big room for music for adults with a beat - blues acts, old rock stars and that sort of thing. The balcony still has theater seating but downstairs it's cocktail tables and sometimes a dance floor. It's not too big and can be fun if it's the right band.
http://www.thestatetheatre.com/

Strathmore Hall is a throwback, some rich guy's summer place that now looks like it fell from some 19th century sky down onto Rockville Pike and its miles of chain stores. Next year it will be home to a 2000-seat concert hall, featuring the Baltimore Symphony and other biggies. For now, though, it's got a Phillips style wood-paneled room where you can hear small jazz and chamber groups. Lately, they've been featuring a "timeline" concert series in which living musicians pay tribute to the dead of Washington's past, from Duke Ellington to John Fahey and all sorts of other folks. Always bad but inoffensive art on the walls and gifts of a similar caliber available in the shop.
http://www.strathmore.org/

I don't get out often to the Center for the Arts at George Mason University but there's plenty of stuff going on out there if you like opera, dance, jazz and more. It's a big room, sort of with the ambience of a stadium seating movie theater.
http://www.gmu.edu/cfa/calendar/

Haven't yet been to the Schlesinger Arts Center in Alexandria, home to the Alexandria and Arlington orchestras. Used to hear them play in high school auditoriums... Lots of military band and choral groups perform there.
http://www.nvcc.edu/alexandria/schlesingercenter/calendar_date.html

CenterStage at the Reston Community Center is a nice, small auditorium for touring acts - some jazz, some theatrical singers, dance performers, some comedians. They get some decent acts, you'll be surprised. The only one I drove out there for special was Faith Prince.
http://www.restonweb.com/rcc/cssched03.htm

The Reston Town Center gets some respectable people also for its summer concert series, Saturday nights in the great outdoors (among the stores). Good ice cream shop. There are free summer concerts outside in the plaza at Arlington Courthouse. And jazz Friday nights outside jordans (soon to be renamed "gibbs") in the Ronald Reagan plaza. And...