This Sunday afternoon, Grammy Award-winning Catalyst Quartet takes the stage to share their “Cinematic Refuge” program with us. This is our last event of 2025 and it takes place fittingly at the beginning of the Thanksgiving Week holiday. I’m so pleased that we’ll have the opportunity to be together in person to experience this phenomenal group, and to enjoy and be thankful for the music, the art, and this fantastic community! To get you in mood for the event, take a listen to this short promotional video by the ensemble, featuring works by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Philip Glass, Bach, and Piazzolla.

There are still tickets available through our website for this event on November 23rd at The Ebenezer Theater at Prager Family Center for the Arts. Doors open at 1:15pm to allow for socializing and comfortable seating time (seating is general admission).

LEARN MORE & PURCHASE TICKETS HERE. 

This “Cinematic Refuge” program that Catalyst has prepared for us will be a wonderful finale event for our 2025. If you haven’t yet read up on the program, it features composers who straddle(d) writing music for the screen and concert hall. There is almost no better example than Erich Wolfgang Korngold, one of the most influential composers in Hollywood history who is also known for crafting exceptional works for the concert hall. His love and experience in writing for film notably influenced his “serious” compositions, and I thought it would be fun to share just a taste of Sunday’s program without giving too much away. Below, you can hear a great performance of the second movement (“Intermezzo”) of Korngold’s String Quartet No. 2 by the Australian String Quartet.

To learn more about the Quartet, the program, and to purchase tickets, please take a look at our event page on our website.

It’s been a tremendous 40th Anniversary Year to share with you all, and on behalf of all of us at Chesapeake Music, thank you again for your support and for joining us for these incredible performances.

Chesapeake Music will present the Catalyst Quartet in concert at The Ebenezer Theater in Easton, Maryland on November 23 at 2:00 pm. The Quartet members – Karla Donehew Perez and Abi Fayette, violins, Paul Laraia, viola, and Karlos Rodriguez, cello – have crafted an extraordinary program – “Cinematic Refuge” – of works by classical music composers who are also well-known for their scores for the stage and screen. As violist Paul Laraia explained: “Each of us in the Quartet felt drawn to these works because they show how composers known for cinema translated that same intensity and color into chamber music. It’s a chance for audiences to experience the intimacy of a string quartet with the sweep and imagination of the silver screen.”

The Catalyst Quartet’s program will open with two short and immediately appealing works: John Adams’ 2007 Fellow Traveler and Max Richter’s 2004 On the Nature of Daylight. Fellow Traveler was written to celebrate the director and librettist Peter Sellar’s fiftieth birthday. The title of this highly frenetic composition alludes to Sellar’s and Adams’ collaboration on their 2005 opera, Doctor Atomic. The subject of that opera, J. Robert Oppenheimer – known as the “father of the atomic bomb” – was suspected by the FBI of being a “fellow traveler” – code words for a communist sympathizer. Bits of music from another Adams-Sellars opera collaboration, Nixon in China, pop up in Fellow Traveler as well.

Max Richter’s highly emotional and poignant On the Nature of Daylight comes from his 2004 album The Blue Notebooks, a political protest piece against the humanitarian crisis of the Iraq War. Employing minimalism and counterpoint, the music builds from the lower to the higher pitches, which Richter explained as creating “a sense of luminosity and brightness but made from the darkest possible materials.” The work gradually decreases in dynamics and energy before closing on a minor chord that leaves an unresolved and somber feeling.

The heart of the Catalyst Quartet’s program begins with Philip Glass’ 1985 String Quartet No. 3 (also known as the Mishima String Quartet). This piece reuses music Glass composed for the film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, a movie that explored the life and death by suicide of a Japanese novelist. For his String Quartet No. 3, Glass repurposed the music scored for Yukio Mishima’s childhood “chapter.” The piece is loosely organized into six movements that in the film accompany non-sequential flashbacks of events in Mishima’s early life. The work is also typical of Glass’ use of a minimalist composition technique. Harmonized rhythmic motifs are repeated over long stretches – varied only by loud/soft or harsh/soothing dynamic differences – that often create a hypnotic, meditative effect. Interestingly, the work has not a hint of Japanese musical style, but there is something wistful and mournful, even childlike at times in the six movements, as is appropriate to the childhood flashbacks that they originally accompanied in the film.

Following the Glass is Bernard Hermann’s haunting and melodically appealing 1965 Echoes for String Quartet. Hermann is perhaps best remembered for his scores for several of Alfred Hitchcock’s films (Psycho most notably comes to mind). However, Hermann and Hitchcock had a serious falling out when Hitchcock rejected Hermann’s score for the film Tom Curtain. This almost certainly led Hermann to return to concert hall compositions, and Echoes followed shortly. However, this melancholic work, which seems to brood and conjure dark images, might easily itself have served as a film score. Indeed, Hermann described the work as “a series of nostalgic emotional remembrances,” and the music critic Neil Sinyard has attempted to catalog these “remembrances” in the Echoes score: “A sad waltz echoes the ‘Memory Waltz’ from Snows of Kilimanjaro; a habanera rhythm fleetingly recalls the music for James Stewart’s obsessed spying on Kim Novak in the art gallery scene in Vertigo; a macabre scherzo is like those ‘rides in hell’ at which Herrmann excelled in numerous films, just as the Allegro momentarily has something of the violence of Psycho.”

The Catalyst Quartet’s program concludes with Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s 1933 String Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 26.  Korngold had trained in Austria as a classical composer, but the troubles leading up to World War II brought him to Hollywood where between 1934 and 1947 he would compose to great acclaim the scores to some 16 films. Korngold created his second string quartet the year before he emigrated to America, and yet in this energetic and lyrical work, Korngold fashioned a succession of diverse moods as if he were orchestrating scenes in a movie. The opening Allegro is vividly romantic with dense harmonies and is followed by a charming and light-hearted Intermezzo with amusing twists and turns. The third movement Larghetto is decidedly more melancholic and sorrowful, albeit still beautifully lyrical with sumptuous melodies. The Waltz Finale is a full-blown Viennese waltz reminiscent of Johann Strauss Jr.’s Emperor Waltz. This string quartet clearly reveals not only Korngold’s melodic and harmonic inventiveness, but also his propensity for cinematic flair, a talent that would bring him great fame in his Hollywood years.

Chesapeake Music offers a limited number of free tickets for students, educators, and Talbot County First Responders, as well as a “buy-one-get-one” option for first-time patrons of Chesapeake Music. General admission tickets are $50. Visit ChesapeakeMusic.org for tickets and more information.

Based in Easton, Maryland, and celebrating its 40th Anniversary Year, Chesapeake Music is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that brings renowned musicians to delight, engage, and surprise today’s audiences, and educate, inspire, and develop tomorrow’s. Learn more at ChesapeakeMusic.org.

Randall Goosby and Zhu Wang performing at The Ebenezer Theater. Photo credit Cal Jackson.

On Saturday, September 27th, Chesapeake Music presents its Concert Season Opener, boasting a star-studded NYC-based cast that includes the young phenom violinist Randall Goosby with the acclaimed Renaissance String Quartet, the multi-award-winning & Rising-Star pianist Zhu Wang, and veteran All-Star Catherine Cho. This concert has been in the works for nearly two years and strives to achieve more than deliver a sensational evening of chamber music performance.

The foundation of the evening is the Renaissance Quartet, comprising violinists Randall Goosby and Jeremiah Blacklow, violist Jameel Martin, and cellist Daniel Hass. Taken from the group’s own website, the quartet “feels a responsibility to command a diverse repertoire of classic, underrepresented, and new works, so they can contribute to the reclamation, redefinition, and continuation of a musical tradition that belongs to all of us. They represent and articulate an inclusive vision of the future of classical music, which sees a culture of music wherein all lives and histories are welcomed and celebrated.”

True to form, the Renaissance Quartet kicks off their visit to Easton with a pair of outreach engagements in the community through Chesapeake Music’s YouthReach Program, supported through an “NEA Replacement Grant” awarded by the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation. On Thursday, September 25th, the group will deliver a dynamic session at an after school program at Building African American Minds, led by Goosby and Martin. The duo have collaborated beyond the scope of chamber music in the past, most famously for a cross-disciplinary recital program of poetry and music, entitled “Intersections: Black Music and Words.” On Friday, September 26th, the quartet will visit Mace’s Lane Middle School in Cambridge.

“It is so inspiring to see a young group of musicians wholly dedicated to serving the greater community through music, especially in such a meaningful, mission-driven fashion as the Renaissance Quartet,” says David Faleris, Chesapeake Music’s Executive Director.

The Renaissance Quartet aims to create experiences that are meaningful and welcoming to all audiences, and achieves this in large part through its diverse programming. The September 27th concert program offers a fascinating journey through three distinct eras and emotional landscapes of chamber music. It begins with pioneer Florence Price’s String Quartet in G Major, a work that blends the late-Romantic tradition with the rich tapestry of African American folk melodies. The program shifts to the profound and deeply introspective world of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s String Quartet in G Minor, a masterpiece of sustained melancholy and emotional tension that is famously resolved through a sudden shift to joy. The evening culminates in the immense power and dramatic scope of Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F Minor, a work of heroic struggle and unyielding intensity that pushes the boundaries of chamber music to a symphonic scale.

The 7:30 p.m. concert at The Ebenezer Theater promises to be a thoughtful and engaging offering, sure to please an audience that will range from students to seniors and first-time concert goers to long–time supporters.

Chesapeake Music offers a limited number of free tickets for students, educators, and Talbot County First Responders, as well as a “buy-one-get-one” option for first-time patrons of Chesapeake Music. General admission tickets are $50. Visit ChesapeakeMusic.org for tickets and more information.

Based in Easton, Maryland, and celebrating its 40th Anniversary Year, Chesapeake Music is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that brings renowned musicians to delight, engage, and surprise today’s audiences, and educate, inspire, and develop tomorrow’s. Learn more at ChesapeakeMusic.org.

The iconic Juilliard String Quartet will headline the second week of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival. Photo courtesy of Juilliard String Quartet and Colbert Artists Management.

Reflection and Celebration is the theme of this year’s Chamber Music Festival – six concerts performed by world-class musicians at the Ebenezer Theater in historic Easton, Maryland. Back for this celebration and as a reflection of the Festival’s past four decades are musicians long-associated with the Festival – Catherine Cho, current Artistic Director, Robert McDonald, Peggy Pearson, Daniel and Todd Phillips, Tara Helen O’Connor, Carmit Zori, and especially two of its founding members, J. Lawrie Bloom and Artistic Director, Marcy Rosen. These players will perform some of their and the audience’s favorite repertoire, combining forces in partnerships well-established over the years. As always, the Festival will also showcase a distinguished guest string quartet as well as superb younger musicians who are well on their way to becoming outstanding performers on the world’s stages. And, as always, there will be entertaining surprises along the way.

Week Two of the Festival will feature the iconic Juilliard String Quartet – Areta Zhulla, Ronald Copes, Molly Carr, and Astrid Schween. They will perform Bedřich Smetana’s highly autobiographical and moving String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor “From My Life” (June 12). They will also perform Beethoven’s monumental String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major, complete with its original last movement, the Grosse Fuge.  Preceding the Beethoven, they play Jörg Widmann’s String Quartet No. 8 “Study on Beethoven III,” where the second movement is a set of variations based on the fourth movement of the Beethoven string quartet (both on June 13).

Newcomers to the Festival are 28-year-old violist Zhanbo Zheng and 28-year-old pianists Albert Cano Smit and Wynona Wang. All three are major first-prize winners in their fields and acclaimed soloists with major orchestras worldwide. All three will join forces with the Festival’s veteran musicians in varied repertoire, including works by Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Dvořák, and Fauré. Of special note, Smit will partner with Chesapeake Music favorite, cellist Sterling Elliott, playing American composer Amy Beach’s sublime Dreaming for Violoncello & Piano (June 6), and Wang will join flutist Tara Helen O’Connor for Mel Bonis’ beautiful and spirited Sonata in C-sharp Minor for Flute and Piano (June 14). Smit will also perform solo, playing two charming works by Cécile Chaminade: Étude de concert, “Automne” and Pièce humoristique, “Autrefois” (June 7).

The Festival will offer a generous mix of standard repertoire favorites and lesser-known gems. Favorites include Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A Major (June 8) and his Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, (June 13); Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 5 in A Major (June 7); Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major (June 6); Dvořák’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major (June 7); Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor (June 8), and his String Quintet No. 1 in A Major (June 12). Among the exciting lesser-known works are Luigi Boccherini’s Quintet in D Minor in an arrangement by oboist Peggy Pearson (June 6); Robert Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen (“Fairy Tales”): Four Pieces for Clarinet, Viola and Piano (June 6); Louise Farrenc’s Trio in E Minor for Flute, Cello and Piano (June 12); Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night”) (June 14), and Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in G Minor (June 14).

For more information on Chesapeake Music’s 40^th Chamber Music Festival and to purchase tickets, visit ChesapeakeMusic.org.

Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival Schedule

June 6–14, 2025

June 6 – 7:30 p.m.
Opening Extravaganza!

June 7 – 7:30 p.m.
Hope and Drama

June 8 – 5:00 p.m.
Masters at Work

June 12 – 7:30 p.m.
From My Life

June 13 – 7:30 p.m.
Quartets Old and New

June 14 – 7:30 p.m.
Festival Finale

2 Free and Open Rehearsals: June 4 and June 11 at 10:00 a.m.

Based in Easton, Maryland, and celebrating its 40th Anniversary Year, Chesapeake Music is a nonprofit organization that brings renowned musicians to delight, engage, and surprise today’s audiences, and educate, inspire, and develop tomorrow’s. Learn more at ChesapeakeMusic.org.

Predictions are in. The combined talents of saxophonist Salvador Flores and pianist Andrew Kosinski will make Chesapeake Music’s March 22 Interlude Concert a truly memorable event. These extraordinary musicians will play an eclectic mix of classical, jazz, Latin, and fusion music, including two of their own original compositions and a world premiere by Alex Tedrow.

Salvador Flores, a saxophonist, educator, and composer, has performed at the Kennedy Center, the White House, and the New World Center. Flores earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Michigan under the tutelage of Dr. Timothy McAllister and Dr. Andrew Bishop. While at Michigan, he received the Albert A. Stanley Medal, the highest honor awarded by the School of Music, Theatre & Dance. Flores is currently a U.S. Army Band member and an endorsed Yamaha Performing Artist. His debut album with the working title Mosaic is scheduled to drop in early 2026.

Andrew Kosinski, who hails from New Jersey, became a pupil of Steinway artist Vladislav Kovalsky and has studied and performed with many renowned pianists, including Min Kwon, David Brooks, and Tibor Szasz. An accomplished composer, Kosinski’s works have been commissioned, performed, and recorded across Europe, Asia, and the United States. His short film score “If” won the Golden Award for Best Music Composer at the Tokyo Film Awards. Kosinski earned a bachelor’s degree in music from Rutgers University and a master’s degree in music from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. He currently serves as a staff arranger for the U.S. Army Band in Washington, DC.

Some highlights from the upcoming Flores and Kosinski program include a tango, the well-loved standards Misty and Gershwin’s Summertime from Porgy and Bess, an original work by Kosinski called Where You Are, and a world premiere composed by Alex Tedrow called Andisol. The idea for Tedrow’s Andisol came from the experience shared by Flores and Tedrow while watching a volcano erupt as they sat for hours on a mountaintop in Iceland.

No doubt about it. The music played by Flores and Kasinski will energize you and lift your spirits. Flores suggests you come with open ears and minds and enjoy a truly unique musical afternoon.

Tickets for the March 22 Interlude Concert held at the Ebenezer Theater in Easton are $50. Chesapeake Music also offers a limited number of free tickets for students, music educators, and the Talbot County Department of Emergency Services, as well as a “buy-one-get-one” option for those who are new to Chesapeake Music and want to bring a friend. Visit ChesapeakeMusic.org for tickets and more information.

Based in Easton, Maryland, and celebrating its 40th Anniversary Year, Chesapeake Music is a nonprofit organization that brings renowned musicians to delight, engage, and surprise today’s audiences, and educate, inspire, and develop tomorrow’s. To learn more about Chesapeake Music, visit their website at https://chesapeakemusic.org/

Chesapeake Music is pleased to announce it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for a Challenge America award of $10,000 in support of its youth outreach programming in 2025.

“We are thrilled and grateful to receive another round of funding from NEA to continue this important work we began this past year,” said Mariana Lesher, Chesapeake Music’s board president.

In 2024, Chesapeake Music used its first NEA award to bring a group of specialist artist-teachers to Talbot County, carrying out two residencies that touched all five public elementary schools as well as an after-school program at Building African American Minds. These visits were interactive and collaborative in nature, sparking curiosity and engagement in music and the arts with young learners. The work slated to be carried out in 2025 will be a continuation of these efforts, focusing on Talbot County Public Schools and local community organizations.

David Faleris, Chesapeake Music’s Executive Director notes, “Receiving this support from the NEA two years in a row is a validation of the careful consideration and hard work that goes into our educational programming efforts. Engaging young learners is essential for developing future generations of not just artists and art lovers, but also creative thinkers and compassionate human beings.”

The NEA will award 272 Challenge America awards nationwide, totaling $2,720,000 as part of the recent announcement of fiscal year 2025 grants. “The NEA is proud to continue our nearly 60 years of supporting the efforts of organizations and artists that help to shape our country’s vibrant arts sector and communities of all types across our nation,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “It is inspiring to see the wide range of creative projects taking place.”

To learn more about other projects included in the NEA’s grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.

Based in Easton, Maryland, and celebrating its 40th Anniversary Year, Chesapeake Music is a nonprofit organization that brings renowned musicians to delight, engage, and surprise today’s audiences, and educate, inspire, and develop tomorrow’s. To learn more about Chesapeake Music, visit their website at https://chesapeakemusic.org/

Music lovers can look forward to Chesapeake Music’s upcoming Interlude Concert featuring the multi-award-winning Isidore String Quartet at the Ebenezer Theater on October 5. Members of the quartet are violinists Adrian Steele and Phoenix Avalon, violist Devin Moore, and cellist, Joshua McClendon.

I spoke with Phoenix Avalon who began playing violin when he was three years old, has studied under acclaimed violinists Itzhak Perlman and Li Lin, and has won numerous competitions, most recently receiving first place at the Louis Sophr International Violin Competition.

How long has the Isidore Quartet been together?

We’ve been together since 2019. Our teachers at Juilliard recognized that there was something special happening when we played together – a specific kind of magic that just felt right. They encouraged us to make our quartet official. Now we have spent so much time playing together that we can almost intuitively sense each other’s movements.

Why did you select this specific program for the concert in Easton?

It’s an interesting program that an audience can relate to. The program exemplifies the foundation of the Quartet. Mozart’s String Quartet No.19 in C major, known as the “Dissonance” Quartet, at the time was super revolutionary—super weird. The opening is groundbreaking and launches a certain trajectory of sound. It helped pave the way for the possibilities of what a quartet can be. Bartok was the first to bring forward his own unique sense of Hungarian folk. In the Bartok String Quartet No. 2, he explores what you can do with rhythm and texture and bridges a gap between very folksy rhythms and very romantic overplay. It is quite sad but there is also some hope in it. The Ravel String Quartet in F major defines the French sound for a string quartet. He uses different sound waves, different colors, and different rhythms. It’s something that didn’t exist in any other quartet.

Are these three quartets forerunners to other symphonies or concertos?

It is not a clear linear line, but you can definitely see inspiration. You can see that composers who came after them were inspired by these quartets. Remember that the quartet is the medium where composers delve the deepest into their own souls. It’s so intimate. It’s so complicated.  But it can also be so simple. You can see what is in the composer’s heart.

What do you want your audience to consider when they listen to your quartet?

We are really trying to tell a story. There is no need to have a deep expertise in various chords. We want to present it in a way that makes our audience think about something, and our goal as performers is to convey some kind of emotion.

You started playing the violin when you were three. How has your playing evolved?

It becomes part of you as a person. It’s a natural thing. It’s a way of exploring yourself, your own personality, your own issues, and your strengths.  It’s almost a meditative process.

Has the quartet been to Easton before?

We haven’t been to Easton before. A very close mentor of mine is Catherine Cho, Artistic Director of Chesapeake Music. I am thrilled to see her in Easton. I hope our audience will have as much fun as we hope to have in Easton.

Tickets for the Isidore Quartet performance on October 5, at Easton’s Ebenezer Theater are $50. Chesapeake Music also offers free tickets for students and music educators, as well as a “buy-one-get-one” option for those who are new to Chesapeake Music and want to bring a friend. To purchase tickets, visit ChesapeakeMusic.org, and to learn more about the quartet, visit isidorestringquartet.com.

by Maria Grant