It may come as a shock, but Dionne Warwick balks at the idea of playing massive venues.
“I’ve basically refused to perform in arenas and coliseums,” says the 76-year-old legend. “Those things are for basketball and hockey and soccer. And I am a singer.” She prefers intimate rooms where she can connect with her audience, rooms like Bethesda Blues & Jazz, where she’ll appear next week to help the venue celebrate its 4th Anniversary.
Over the course of two nights, she’ll be performing from a seemingly inexhaustible supply of hits, in particular those from her extraordinary collaboration with composer Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hal David, songs that have become so iconic, it’s hard to imagine anyone else singing them, including “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” Warwick’s success extended beyond her Bacharach collaborations and songs like the soaring, Barry Manilow-produced “I’ll Never Love This Way Again” and the Bee Gees-penned “Heartbreaker.” Among her most cherished achievements was performing alongside Elton John, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder on “That’s What Friends Are For.” The song shot to #1 on the R&B, Adult Contemporary and Billboard Hot 100 charts and raised nearly $3 million for the American Foundation for AIDS Research.
Warwick felt a deep obligation to be a part of the project. “We were losing so many people [to AIDS], in my industry particularly,” she says, adding, “My grandfather, who was a minister, taught me at a very tender age that we’re all put on this earth to be of service to each other, and that we all need healthy people around us. And if there’s anything we can do to ensure that…it’s part of what we’re supposed to do.”
Inevitably, as with almost any conversation these days, talk turns to Donald Trump. Warwick gets audibly riled up when speaking of the new President with a penchant for childish Tweets.
“We can’t sit around and twiddle our thumbs, you know?
We need to take the initiative to be the actual citizens of these United States of America and demand the things that we know we’re entitled to and how they ought to be done,” she insists. “He has no choice but to listen. He’s not our boss. We’re his boss. He’s got to listen to us.”
Dionne Warwick appears Tuesday, Feb. 28 and Wednesday, March 1 at Bethesda Blues & Jazz, 7719 Wisconsin Ave., in Bethesda. Doors at 6 p.m., show at 8 p.m. Tickets are $115 to $150. Call 240-330-4500 or visit bethesdabluesjazz.com.
Maybe not exactly like Thirty, a feature loosely assembled from episodes of the eponymous VOD series created by Dontá Morrison and co-written with director Anthony Bawn. But films that likewise feature a gay Black couple as the center of the story, or of a circle of friends, come few and far between.
Undeniably the stories are out there, as is the audience, yet, as one Thirty character laments of the media landscape, "white boys get all the airtime."
Thirty lends its air time to the epic trials and tribulations of longtime couple Khalil (Bobby Musique Cooks), a Hollywood stylist, and Tyrin (Brandon Moten), an ad agency owner, and their young and restless friends, most of whom are Black and queer.
Bethesda is well known for its fashionable and picturesque downtown, specifically the high-end retail stores and restaurants in Bethesda Row and the cobblestone-lined, pedestrian-only Bethesda Lane.
Seven blocks to the north, however, stands Tout de Sweet, located in a small, nondescript strip of shops. The French bakery's neighborhood, Woodmont Triangle, is an eclectic hodgepodge with its own rewarding dining and shopping options, and one that has also become known, since 2022, as the home of Marriott International.
"It's owned and operated by a classically trained chef originally from France," says Bethesda Urban Partnership's Stephanie Coppula of the 13-year-old spot. "It's this little gem of a French bakery in Bethesda that I'm not sure everybody knows about."
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