Birthday Weekend: Wynton Marsalis in Concert

To celebrate my birthday, Donna recently took me to an overnight getaway in Washington, D.C. to see a concert at the Kennedy Center and get together with a friend of hers from high school.

We stayed at the Georgetown Inn, where we have stayed frequently over the years for similar getaways. In 2018, we stayed there for a grand wedding of the daughter of relatives of Donna. During that trip, a week after Donna suffered a broken shoulder from a fall, we also took in an Eagles concert at Nationals Park. Most recently, we stayed there a couple years ago to attend a National Symphony concert featuring Beethoven’s Seventh symphony.

This time, the concert was the incomparable Wynton Marsalis and his Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, a 16-piece ensemble.

We were able to check in to the hotel early. We got settled in our room and decided to grab an early lunch somewhere. It was Sunday and we didn’t think through the ramifications of the popularity of Sunday brunch in D.C. After some failed attempts to get a table at restaurants along Wisconsin Avenue we managed to get seats at a bar in an over-crowded, understaffed place. The service understandably wasn’t great – the two bartenders were slammed and could have benefited from roller skates -- but the food was fine and the bloody Marys were very good.

Note: It’s the same restaurant where we and other wedding-goers convened the morning after back in 2018, suffering from the effects of the overindulgences of the previous night. A highlight of that morning was the announcement by the father of the bride that among the items that had been left at the wedding reception, and which he was trying to re-unite with their owners, was a Spanx undergarment. Oddly, despite his repeated appeals nobody claimed it as theirs.

After lunch, we strolled around Georgetown, where I spent a fair amount of my teenage years, and along the walkway by the Potomac River. Then we returned to the room and relaxed before changing for dinner and the show.

We dined at the Kennedy Center’s Roof Terrace restaurant, which was recently remodeled. The beautiful dining room features floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the river, which serves as the flightpath for jets coming low into Reagan National airport, lots of mirrors, handsome deeply upholstered booths and buffets, and modern, attractive lighting. The service was crisp and attentive and the food was outstanding. We had time for a shared dessert and a conversation with the couple next to us who we learned were from Anchorage, Alaska before going downstairs. We were in our seats five minutes before the 7 pm show.

The band filed onto the stage – four trumpets, three trombones, five saxophones and a bass sax, piano, double bass, and drums. Marsalis took his place in the middle of the back row. He gave a short introduction to what we about to hear, and the music started.

During the concert each bandmember got a solo, and they were all incredible. After about the third solo, Marsalis took a turn. And Holy God is he a phenomenon. A couple of his colleagues were shaking their heads as if to say, “how does he do that?” Good question. He made music like I had never heard out of a trumpet. What a virtuoso. I wish I were equipped to better explain what makes him so special, but you’ll have to hear for yourself. At the end of the 90-minute concert, which featured fast-paced jazz from the 1930s and ‘40s, a blues song with a remarkable sax riff, and an original piece written by another bandmember, most of the band left the stage, with Marsalis, pianist Dan Nimmer, bassist Carlos Henriquez, and drummer Obed Calvaire remaining to play an incredible two-minute encore. Here’s a link to the encore that I strongly urge you to check out.

After the show, we Ubered back and stopped in Martin’s Tavern, across the street from the hotel. It’s one of my favorite bars and a true tavern – old, wooden booths along the walls of the main room, a few tables in the middle, a beautiful long bar along the left side and a private room, called the Dugout, past the bar. There’s lots of history there. Every president from Harry S Truman to George W. Bush was served there. John Kennedy had breakfast on Sundays in a corner booth when he was a congressman, and he proposed to Jackie in what is now called the Proposal Booth. Other booths are named for presidents who were regulars – Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and others. In 1954, five Supreme Court justices informally deliberated in Booth 3 the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case that overturned school segregation. And so on. You can learn more about history at Martin’s here.

Donna and I won’t have a booth named after us, but we’ve sat in many of them over the years. After the concert, we sat at one, got an order of fries and drinks, and felt like we were in college again. It was a great, great night.

The next day we slept in – a novelty for us – and hung out in the room before meeting Donna’s friend Marisol and her husband Jorge at Martin’s. Donna and Marisol met in high school in New Jersey. Marisol was a boarder from Venezuela. She would visit Donna’s parents’ house on holidays or weekends (one of Donna’s brothers had a major crush on her), and one summer Donna visited Marisol at her parents’ house in Maracaibo. They have stayed in touch over the years, and they had met in D.C. before when Marisol came to visit her daughter in Northern Virginia.

This time the friends brought their husbands and the four of us had a wonderful time, the women catching up, the men sharing their interests. We talked children, grandchildren, parents, work (pre-retirement), politics, and more. Marisol and Jorge’s son is a leader in an opposition party to authoritarian socialist president Nicholás Maduro, and they are very tied into politics here and at home. They were appreciative that Donna had arranged for us to be seated at the Proposal Booth.

After a fascinating and congenial lunch, we went our separate ways: Marisol and Jorge to walk and explore, Donna and I to return home to the suburbs. Happy birthday to me!