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The Pop Ups, “Outside Voices.” Many of these songs sound like what your parents
may have listened to in the ’80s: big, echoing music with an electronic piano. But these cool musicians from New York don’t limit their sound. Sway like you’re on the beach in Jamaica to the reggae beat on “Balloon,” slow it down with the soothing and simple “I’m Tired” or dance it up to the funky bass line and popping horn section on “Pasta.” This album will not leave you hanging! KellerWilliams, “Kids.” Williams just might be a big kid trapped in an adult body. With
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laugh-out-loud lyrics and tunes that gallop along, Williams’s finger-picking guitar and slightly Southern-accented vocals make the album sound a lot like a type of music called bluegrass. Call it whatever you want. We’ll call it good. Frances England, “Mind of My Own.” Good singer-songwriters make you believe they’re
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your friends. England may be your new BFF. With lovely tunes and a lovelier voice, England sings about a balloon, a ladybug and a teddy bear that the narrator has become too old for. The music is all about you! It’s sure to make you feel happy and important. Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, “Underground Playground.” This is hip-hop or “kid hop,” as
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rapper 23 Skidoo calls it. This music is all about strong rhythm and positive rhymes for kids. The album also showcases some girl voices that add melody to the rapping. “Gotta Be Me” is a great anthem to keep in mind as you walk through school and life. Joanie Leeds and the Nightlights, “I’ma Rock Star.” Electric guitars and Leeds’s
5 belting vocals make this rock-and-roll. You won’t 3
be able to resist the urge to sing along pretending your hairbrush is a microphone. Most of the tunes provide you with a great way to free your inner rock star. Elizabeth Mitchell, “Sunny Day.” The most mellow of our picks, Mitchell’s voice might
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lull you to sleep. The album showcases a banjo, a fiddle and many kids singing. The simple songs sound as if they were recorded in a farmer’s kitchen on a perfect, sunny day.
7 6 DEB LINDSEY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Recess Monkey, “The Final Funktier.” These guys put the “fun” in funky. (Just try to keep
your feet from moving!) With a spaceship theme, these songs rock out with layers of sounds, from guitar and keyboards to vocal harmonies and weird electronic sounds. Their lyrics take you to a marshmallow farm and a bubble factory.
—Moira E. McLaughlin 4 7 2 FRAZZ
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2010 JEF MALLETT
TODAY:Partly sunny and cold
HIGH LOW 36 22
ILLUSTRATION BY MADDIE FEE, 9, BURKE
The earliest music was probably performed on harps and flutes in ancient Egypt more than 6,000 years ago. They sing, you sing, let’s all sing!
Goodmusic for kids requires all the same ingredients of goodmusic for adults: talentedmusicians, a beat that gets youmoving, clever lyrics and a catchymelody. This year’s kidsmusic picks have it all. Some albums aremellow, some are rock, somewillmake you laugh, somewillmake you think; butwhatever yourmusical tastes, these tunes are all sure to get your feet tapping into 2011.Oh, and an added bonus? They’ll probably get your parents’ feet tapping, too. Turn up the volume!
1 5 2006 PHOTO FROM NASA VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Scientists say galaxies hold an unbelievable number of stars.
Star count grows by billions and billions Have you ever looked up at the
night sky and wondered how many stars there are? 300 sextillion. That’s 3 followed by 23 zeros.
(Go ahead, write it out; don’t forget the commas!) The finding was published in
the science journal Nature and is about three times larger than earlier estimates. Scientists believe there are
more red dwarf stars — the most common — than they had thought. The earlier estimate was based on the number of stars in the spiral-shaped MilkyWay. But scientists say that many galaxies are elliptical, and elliptical galax- ies have more stars. So how big is 300 sextillion?
There are about 50 trillion cells in the human body, and there are about 6 billion people. Which comes out to about 300 sextillion. So the number of stars in the universe is about the same as the number of human cells on Earth.
TODAY’SNEWS
BACKSTAGE YOUR CHANCE TO PLAY CASTING DIRECTOR
Vote for a winner in the SunsetBoulevard“Are You Ready for Your Close-Up?” photo contest
We asked contestants to submit a photo of themselves as their favorite 50s-era movie character. Judges narrowed the field down to five finalists and now it’s your turn to pick a winner.
» CHECK OUT THE GLAMOROUS FINALISTS AND CAST YOUR VOTE AT
WASHINGTONPOST.COM/POSTFUN Voting ends December 17
The winner, as selected by readers, will receive a pair of tickets to Signature Theatre’s production of Sunset Boulevard, and enjoy dinner at the Carlyle Grand with the show’s star, Florence Lacey, and director Eric Schaeffer.
A ‘Key’ moment after ‘Madoff’ dust-up BY JANE HORWITZ The most tangible sign that
Theater J and playwright Deb Margolin are mending fences is “Three Seconds in the Key.” Theater J will present a staged
reading of Margolin’s very per- sonal 2001 play Monday at the Lincoln Theatre (www.
lovethelincoln.com). The event is part of “Backstage at theLincoln,” a play reading series by the Lin- coln, Theater J and the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Hu- manities. “All signs arepointing towarda
successful collaboration,” says Theater J’s Ari Roth. The tension between Theater J
and the playwright, who is an associate professor of theater at Yale, occurred lastMay when she pulled her play “Imagining Ma- doff” at Theater J rather than rewrite it under what she said were impossible circumstances. In “ImaginingMadoff,”Margo-
lin used a fictionalized version of Holocaust survivor, author and human rights activistElieWiesel. She created a dialogue between Wiesel and convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, using Wiesel’s persona as a kind of moral ideal in contrast toMadoff. Wiesel objected, threatening
legal action. Roth told Wiesel’s representatives that he would have Margolin revise the play using an entirely new character. She began the process, but ulti- mately decided to take her play elsewhere. “The difficulty we had went
Directed by Eric Schaeffer ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER’S SUNSET BOULEVARD
SIGNATURE THEATRE • DECEMBER 7, 2010 – FEBRUARY 13, 2011 Purchase tickets at
ticketmaster.com or 703-573-SEAT.
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Contest is open only to legal residents of the District of Columbia, Maryland, or Virginia. Void where prohibited by law. One (1) winner will receive dinner with “Sunset Boulevard” star Florence Lacey and director Eric Schaeffer at the Carlyle Grand, a pair of tickets to see “Sunset Boulevard” at Signature Theatre on a date of your choice (TBD based on Lacey and Schaeffer’s schedules). Average Retail Value: $350.00. At the time of entry, each person must be 18 years of age or older. Contest is sponsored by WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post, Signature Theatre and the Carlyle Grand. Employees, officers, directors and representatives of Sponsor and each of the prize providers of the Contest, and each of their respective affiliates, parent companies, and subsidiaries, and immediate family members (spouse and parents, siblings and children and each of their spouses) and those with whom they are domiciled are not eligible. To vote, log onto
www.washingtonpost.com/postfun. Voting begins at midnight on Friday, December 3, 2010 and ends 11:59 PM ET on Friday, December 17, 2010 at 11:59 p.m. Subsequent entries by a person will be disqualified. Entries that are late, incomplete, unreadable, inaccurate, false, unintelligible or otherwise not in compliance with these Official Rules will be disqualified. Sponsor is not responsible for lost, late, destroyed or misdirected entries. The Winner will be the Finalist that receives the highest number of votes cast by the public via online voting. To be eligible to vote for a favorite Finalist, a voter must be 18 or older and a legal resident of District of Columbia, Maryland, or Virginia. To be eligible, a vote must identify only one (1) Finalist photo. Limit one (1) vote per person. Limit one (1) vote per e-mail address. For complete rules, please log onto
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viral,” the playwright says. She changed the Wiesel character into a fictional man named Solo- mon Galkin with a moral profile much like Wiesel’s. The new ver- sion of “Imagining Madoff” was done last July by Stageworks/ Hudson inHudson, N.Y. “I have great hopes for the
future of that play and I hope to be able to bring it to you there,” Margolin says. “Ari has been very warm and very encouraging about the possibility of produc- ing the show at Theater J. Cer- tainly, after everything that we went through, it would be a full circle.” “Three Seconds in the Key”
A659 3x10.5
predates “Imagining Madoff” and emerged from Margolin’s real-life struggle with Hodgkin’s disease and how she maintained
ROB SHANNON
LIFE AFTERTHEATER J:MarkMargolis and Robin Leslie Brown in DebMargolin’s “ImaginingMadoff” at Stageworks/Hudson.
the bond with her then-8-year- old son by joining himin his love of the New York Knicks. “My son got me involved
watching basketball,” Margolin says. “I did it because itwas away I could spend time with him. I was very exhausted. He wanted me to play basketball with him . . . so we borrowed the bodies of these men on television. In the presence of my illness and his youth, these were the bodies we could share. I felt like these men were helping me raise my son,” saysMargolin, now healthy. In other Theater J news, its
managing director since 2003, Patricia Jenson, is moving on to become director of development at the Washington Ballet on Jan. 3. Roth credits Jenson with help- ing the theater raise its profile and grow its audience. “I had a really great experience
here,” Jenson says of her time at Theater J. “I have grown somuch personally [and] professionally, but it was time forme to look for new challenges.”
‘Merry, Happy . . .What?’ Actress Helen Pafumi (most
recently Cecily Pigeon in “The Odd Couple” at Theater J) is also the artistic director of the Hub Theatre in Fairfax County. Frus- trated in her efforts to find a holiday show that was unusual and didn’t talk down to any age group, she wrote her own. The result is “Merry,Happy . . .
What?,” an hour-long show that theHubwill presentDec. 15-23 at the John Swayze Theatre at the NewSchool ofNorthern Virginia.
“I wanted a non-holiday show,
something that dealt with how everybody celebrates differently,” Pafumi says. Her starting point was the way her children and their friends exhibit a mystical love of snow days. Pafumi wrote a show about
grade-school friends, one of whomcelebrates amade-up holi- day called the Feast of Lumi. She says it’s an old Finnish and Esto- nian word for snow and possibly for snow queen in ancient folk tales. She took the word and made up her ownmyth. Her play, Pafumi says, ismeant
to celebrate kids with diverse backgrounds “coming together around one thing . . . and the one thing they agree on is they love snow days.” Pafumi’s 11-year-old son Eli
wrote incidental music for the show and composed the song “Winter Lullaby,” with lyrics by his mom. His tune, Eli says, is “kind of like if you were around snow, like the feeling of snow . . . and youwere to put it intomusic. . . . It’s soft and it’s light, as if snow is falling.”
Follow spot RickFoucheux (OscarMadison
in Theater J’s just-closed “The Odd Couple”) is one of 10 Ameri- can regional theater actors cho- sen to be a Lunt-Fontanne Fellow next July at Ten Chimneys, the Wisconsin estate of the legendary 20th-century theatrical couple Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.
style@washpost.com
Horwitz is a freelance writer.
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