Vic Socotra

26 October 2009

Birchmere

(David Garrett in a promo photo for his American Tour)

I normally hunker down close to home on Sunday evenings. It is safe at Big Pink, and mostly quiet. For a variety of reasons associated with a spontaneous donation to Public Broadcasting, I found myself doing one of those things I have been meaning to get around to for years.

That saves you from some querulous commentary about the two bombings in downtown Baghdad this morning, or the helicopter crashes in Afghanistan. There are people I care about still mixed up in both places, but just keep them in your thoughts and prayers and maybe this will work out all right.

I have the nagging conviction that I ought to be there and doing something constructive about it. It is like the ghost-sensations that amputees report about missing limbs. Memory is pervasive and response is ingrained, I suppose.

A New Yorker I talked to earlier in the day- improbably at the heart of the Brandy Station battlefield where 18,000 mounted young men collided long ago- and he said that it was like visiting the Empire State Building. It was something you would only do if out-of-towners wanted to see it.

The fabled Birchmere is the place I wound up, the intimate progressive music club located in the raffishly fashionable Del Ray district of Alexandria, just a mile or three down Glebe Road from Big Pink.

The Birchmere is a moderately famous as a go-to venue in DC for progressive bluegrass, country, folk, and jazz artists. The saying is that you can show up there unknown and leave a star, since the audience is knowledgeable and influential.

Except me, of course.

The Birchmere is one of those places where you have to know how to attend. It is in a converted warehouse with an eccentric parking lot. It is not just showing up, that would make it too easy. There used to be a line to get tables, first-come-first serve, but that was the word I heard long ago. Now there seems to be something closer to the DMV, and letters and numbers based on when you showed up.

The show was at eight, and it appeared some folks had been there since mid-afternoon.

Since there are about 500 seats, it bridges the gape between small and large, and the talent on stage is exactly the same.

They make the payroll on booze and food, and the ticket prices are really the loss-leader. For a place with a sort of musical public-service mission, they are as tight with a buck as Donk’s, the regional theater down on Virginia’s Northern Neck.

I talked to Darlene, the waitress. She said she made $2.13 an hour, which is about the same thing as donating your time to music. I ensured that my tip was 20%- she has to split it with the bartender out in the lobby, where you can still smoke.

You are expected to sit with whomever you wind up with, so it is a good thing people seemed mostly simpatico. The tables are close enough for real intimacy, and so you have the real fanatics, the line-up is as eclectic as the poster-sized signed promo photos of the artists out front.

The people who have appeared here down through the years is longer than I have time to type this morning- but it ranged from old rockers like Poco and Pure Prairie League, hard-core bluegrass like Earl Scruggs and Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, pop icons like the Dixie Chicks and balladeers like Bonnie Raitt and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

The Dave Matthews Band recorded songs here- the intensity increases with the interplay with the audience.

I have to confess that I had no idea who the artist was that the National Public Radio people had deemed worthy of the promo.

I got a double vodka with a splash from Darlene, and asked my tablemates what they knew about this David Garret fellow.

They seemed appalled by my ignorance, but I am comfortable with that.

“He is a virtuoso violinist with a strong classical music career that is bridging the worlds of tradition and pop,” said the young man with the moderate Afro. “He is the toast of Germany.”

Some vaguely Euro-trash looking fellows came out on stage and assumed positions around a stool in the middle, next to the mike. A disembodied voice announced that the Birchmere was proud to present David Garret, fresh from the Continent, and the band started to saw away energetically.

I looked around for any virtuosos, but couldn’t find one, until the strains of a rhapsody that could only have come from a Stradivarius played by an angel began to swell.

David strolled in from the back, like a restaurant violinist, and the crowd went nuts.

Actually, so did I. He told his story in between songs. He is 27 and was dressed in formal grunge. Vest and untucked shirt. Jeans slung low on slim hips; the band of his designer underwear peeked out above his belt. A stingy-brim black hat covered his blonde pony-tailed head. When he removed the hat to mop his forehead, he had the clear blue eyes of North Germany, and the words he spoke were that curious unaccented continental English that is the product of an American mother and a German father.

He has the rock-star good looks that landed him a bunch of endorsements- global brand ambassador for Banana Republic, Audi and Montblanc pens.

I found out later that he was a home-schooled child prodigy. At age eight, he was being booked to play as a soloist in front of some of the world’s greatest orchestras, including the London Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Russian National Orchestra.

When he was twelve, he was performing alongside legend Yehudi Menuhin. When he turned thirteen, he was signed to the most prestigious classical music label in the world, Deutsche Grammophon.

He emerged from that hot-house upbringing with the onset of puberty, and at public school he was exposed to popular music, he had one of several epiphanies. He ran away to New York to get away from it all, and after the usual youthful temptations, was accepted at Juilliard where he was taught by the legendary violinist, Itzhak Perlman. He paid his artistic dues bussing tables for not much more than Darlene was making.

He had the luck of his face, too, and svelte figure. He was asked to model and eventually wound up in Vogue and on the catwalk for Armani. Then back to the Continent, and about to conquer the world, via the American tour.

His playlist for the Birchmere combined Mittle-European folk music, Mozart and Metallica. Given the Birchmere’s heritage, he slipped in “Dueling Banjos,” as a riff with his guitarist. He said, in an aside, that the European audiences didn’t know what to make of it. But we did.

He combined Michael Jackson and Mozart; he collided Queen with AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.” “He’s a Pirate” was taken from the score for the smash film franchise “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” got a treatment, and the last movement from Vivaldi’s “Summer.”

His fusion worked- I had never considered that Wolfgang Amadeus was so close to “Orange Blossom Special.” We were stomping shouting fools before he was done with us.

I bought the download of his album, which is what he performed last night.

The German press calls him “the fastest violinist in the world,” and when the band came back for their encore, they proved it. It may be the most intense rendition of Flight of the Bumbleee ever performed. A recorded version will be in the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest-ever performance of the tune, clocked at sixty-six seconds flat.

The guy was awesome. The first thing I did this morning, still groggy from being out too late on a school night, was buy the MP3. You might want to give him a listen: David Garret, virtuoso.

He is freaking awesome. It is almost enough to make me reconsider how I spend my Sunday evenings.

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