We reported last year that local arts venue Warehouse was forced to start closing down its 7th Street NW location due to skyrocketing property taxes. The bar and music venue closed last summer, but the rest of the space will continue to run through the Fringe Festival in July. In the meantime, they want to hear from you about how to improve their space when they finally move, and have set up a series of…

Be sure to make a note of Metro’s holiday schedule, which is available on WMATA’s web site. Metrorail and Metrobuses are operating on a normal weekday schedule today, but tomorrow, both trains and buses will be on a Sunday schedule, with trains running from 7 a.m. until midnight. On New Year’s Eve, trains and buses will be on a normal weekday schedule, but both will continue running until 2 a.m. — maybe not late enough…

As reportedly happened during the Kirov Opera’s visit to Washington last year, the best performance of the group’s residency this week at the Kennedy Center was saved for last. On Sunday afternoon, conductor Valery Gergiev led a concert performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s modern opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk that was an incendiary triumph. Combined with the three evenings of Shostakovich’s chamber music from the Emerson Quartet on my schedule this week, the Russian composer’s…

In news that is sure to have Washingtonians clutching their BlackBerrys just a little tighter, the Supreme Court is refusing to grant a rehearing to BlackBerry’s Research in Motion (RIM) Ltd. regarding an on-going patent-infringment case. Cutting through the legalese, these simply means that BlackBerry users might be facing dark days down the road. Canada-based RIM has been embroiled in a legal battle with NTP Inc., a McLean-based patent-holding company that has the licenses for…

This week it all really begins. On January 27, 1756 — 250 years ago this Friday — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born. Chances are that, even for those who do not listen regularly to classical music, you know Mozart’s name and could probably hum along with one or more of his pieces. He composed some of the most widely recognized classical music in history. It hardly even seems necessary to observe this bisesquicentennial anniversary, but…