As the D.C. area faces a government shutdown, Lizz Wright returns to The Strathmore with a concert shaped by jazz, gospel, and a deep bond with the region.
To many of her fans, acclaimed vocalist Lizz Wright is a genre unto herself.
When she takes the stage Sunday to perform her unique blend of soul, jazz, gospel and folk at the Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda, Maryland, she’ll be stepping into an area she says has always met her with “warmth, soulfulness and deep knowing.”
Wright has performed in the D.C. region many times over the years since the release of “Salt,” her 2003 debut album, but the timing of her appearances in 2025 have coincided with major local political tremors.
After signaling plans to take over the Kennedy Center on social media days earlier, President Donald Trump was elected to serve as the chairman of the Kennedy Center on Feb. 12. The center’s president Deborah Rutter, a Biden appointee, was fired. Wright was scheduled to perform that night.
She remembers the evening vividly, not only because of the outrage and uncertainty swirling around the arts community, but because she became — in her words — an “unhired usher at a threshold,” offering grace and whatever comfort she could as staff worried about their futures.
“I was literally the last artist to slide under the gate before everything changed,” Wright said in an interview with WTOP. “I walked through the Kennedy museum and galleries with some of the staff who were worried that they wouldn’t be able to retain their jobs. We were in it together.”
For Wright, this was not an unusual occurrence.
“I do find myself at very interesting thresholds where things are ending and where they’re beginning,” she said. “It’s happened so many times in my life in different ways. I don’t know why it happens, and I’m just glad for that very odd assignment. I’m around when I’m needed, and I just trust the arrangement of that, and I just give what I have to give.”
That sense of “showing up at thresholds” has followed Wright throughout her career — in moments both public and deeply personal. One of the most striking came in 2016, when she learned that her April 2016 Minneapolis concert was the last live show attended by music icon Prince before he died.
“It’s not something you want to be known for, but it’s true,” she said. “When I heard Prince was coming, I thought, ‘The band’s gonna play all crazy … they’re gonna be so excited, (it’ll be) musical turbo and I won’t be able to breathe or get a word in edgewise.’ But then I was also like, ‘You’re the daughter of a minister and a gardener. Just feed him. He needs to sit at the table, too, and be nurtured. Do your job.’”
Now, the Strathmore performance comes at another uncertain time for the D.C. region as area residents navigate the effects of the government shutdown.
Wright believes her music is intended to nurture in moments like these.
For Wright, the connection with D.C. audiences runs deep.
“What I love about the audience(s) and the people of D.C. is that they understand they are the place that is the capital of so much history,” she said.
She describes local listeners as unusually attuned to the intersections of history, identity and art that her music explores; that jazz, gospel and folk all feed into one another.
“If genres were lenses, then I am in a place where a few of them overlap. A stream feeds a creek, (which) feeds a lake, (which) feeds a river,” Wright analogizes.
“They get it. There’s not as much explaining to do”
At the Strathmore, Wright said, she looks forward not only to the music, but also to reuniting with the venue’s staff, whom she calls “really beautiful people” she met when appearing there last May in a tribute show to her mentor and inspiration, Bernice Johnson Reagon.
“It’s an incredible hall,” she said. “You come there with your soul full of everything you’ve been carrying, and (as an artist) you pull out the best, because it’s a place to be heard deeply.”
The concert is expected to draw a capacity crowd, adding another chapter to Wright’s long-running relationship with D.C. audiences. For her, the night will be less about performance than about presence.
“I want people to actually feel joy and courage about being here right now,” she said. “I want people to remember enough, to feel enough, to release enough, to receive enough — and be grateful that they’re here right now.”
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Terik King
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