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February 4, 2025

Talbot Spy

Nonpartisan Education-based News for Talbot County Community

1A Arts Lead

MSO International Concerto Competition and more by Steve Parks

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The trio of finalists in the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s annual Elizabeth Loker International Concerto Competition have been chosen to play in concert with the full orchestra to be judged for first, second and third places. The concert will be held at Chesapeake College’s Todd Hall for the Performing Arts on the Wye Mills campus at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 23.
“I am deeply excited to work with these extraordinary young musicians,” said Michael Repper, music director of the MSO who will be conducting them along with the orchestra for the finalist concert. “The energy and talent they bring to the stage will be a powerful reminder of the next generation of classical musicians.”The finalists competing for top honors are bassoonist Christopher Chung of New York City, who will perform Villa-Lobos’ Ciranda das Sete Notas; pianist Jonah Kwek of Singapore, performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23, and Britton-Rene Alyssa Collins, also of New York, playing Concerto for Marimba, her instrument, by Sergei Golovko.

Although there are cash prizes in the competition, the real top prize goes to each of the finalists, no matter their order of finish: Each one gets to play as a soloist accompanied by a full and fully professional symphony orchestra. Many of the applicants, from 27 states and at least nine countries, have never experienced that opportunity before. In most competitions, the finalists compete accompanied only by a pianist. But the cash prizes are worth competing for as well: $5,000 for first place, $2,500 for second, $1,000 for third and $500 for audience-choice favorite.

Christopher Chung and Jonah Kwek

As for the contestants, Christopher Chung is a Juilliard School student who has performed with such distinguished ensembles as the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra. As a bassoonist, he is known for his collaboration with Sonarsix, a woodwind quintet, and contributions to the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices, which promotes performances by composers whose careers and lives were cut short by Hitler’s Nazi regime

Jonah Kwek is a graduate of Singapore’s Yong Siew Toh Conservatory now studying for a master of music at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Already he has become a frequent soloist or contributing pianist on worldwide gigs. He also won the MNTA (Music Teachers National Association) Stecher and Horowitz Award for two-piano competition with a keyboard partner.

Britton-Rene Alyssa Collins

Britton-Rene Alyssa Collins, a percussion virtuoso on marimba – similar to a xylophone – earned a prestigious Princeton University Hodder Fellowship and has performed at Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall among other top global venues. She says part of her mission as a musician is to promote percussion as a means of celebrating black culture and identity.

The MSO competition is named for the former Washington Post executive who helped bring the newspaper into the digital age. In retirement, Elizabeth Loker moved to Royal Oak and became a symphony board member and supporter before her death of cancer at 67 in 2015.

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You don’t have to wait until March to hear some of the Mid-Atlantic Sumphony’s finest musicians. As part of its Ensemble Series of chamber concerts, Kimberly McCollum, violinist and concertmaster of the MSO, leads a string quartet that includes first or second-chair musicians  including violinist Celaya Kirchner, violist Yuri Tomenko and cellist Katie McCarthy. Together they will play Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 3 in F major and Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 6 in F minor at 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8 at Epworth United Methodist Church in Reboboth Beach and at 4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9 at the Academy Art Museum in Easton.
Mid-Atlantic Symphony Concerts
Ensemble Series String Quartet, 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8, Epworth United Methodist Church, Rehoboth Beach; 4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9, Academy Art Museum, Easton.
Elizabeth Loker International Concerto Competition, 3 p.m. Sunday, March 23, Todd Hall for Performing Arts, Wye Mills. midatlanticsymphony,orgSteve Parks is a retired New York arts critic and editor now living in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Cars as movie co-stars and museum artworks by Steve Parks

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And just when you thought drive-ins were a thing of the past – particularly in the dead of winter –  Easton’s Academy Art Museum launches a monthly Drive-In Film Series in conjunction with its current “Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection” exhibition running through April 13.
Cars play significant roles in each of the movies in the four-part series starting with the 1924 French silent picture “L’Ihumaine,” directed by Marcel L’Herbier, which predate even a few of the classic Grand Prix race cars and sleek roadsters parked for showroom viewing in the museum’s two main galleries. The 1922 Rolland-Pilain Two-Litre Grand Prix racer acts as a motorized French Formalist prop in the film that kicks off the series on Tuesday, Jan. 21.
French Formalism was the dominant response to Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art until the 1960s. The Formalist movement focused on the structure and visual aspects of a work rather than its content, including in this case, performance, too. The subtitle of the original release of “L’Inhumaine” was histoire feerique, which translates as “story of enchantment.” In its time, the film was a controversial avant-garde collaboration of leading practitioners in experimental decorative arts, architecture, engineering and music. Opening night in Paris reportedly drew an audience of such icons as Pablo Picasso, Erik Satie, May Ray, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and the Prince of Monaco. Some adored it. Many more hated it. But the film received better receptions when re-released in 1968 and shown again in 1975 at the 50th anniversary of the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in Paris and in 1987 at the Cannes Film Festival. Finally, a 2015 restoration featured a new musical accompaniment score by Aidje Tafial. The original score by Darius Milhaud was lost over time.
The Roaring ’20s Grand Prix racers on display at the museum during the run of this film series were designed by Italian mechanical artists Ettore Bugatti and his son Jean. Like the French Rolland-Pilain race-car, they are also hand-cranked from the front, dating them as authentic automobile antiques.
The cinematic journey of the series traces the evolution of the automobile from early Grand Prix classic cars to the harrowing high-speed chases of “The French Connection.” Other films in the series include the first film-noir movie directed by a woman, “The Hitch-Hiker,” released in 1953. Ida Lupino, herself a star in several film-noir narratives featuring her either as villain or victim, directed this true-story tale based on a 1950 killing spree by Billy Cook who held two friends hostage during his murderous driving trip to Mexico. Co-starring Edmond O’Brien, William Talman and Frank Lovejoy, it was selected in 1998 for preservation by the U.S. National Film Registry as “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant.”
“The French Connection,” the highest profile feature in the series, won the 1971 Oscar for Best Picture and the Best Actor prize for Gene Hackman, it tells the semi-fictional tale of New York Police Department detectives led by Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Hackman) in hot pursuit of French heroin smuggler Alain Charnier. It conspicuously intensifies high-speed chases framed beneath tight above-ground commuter train tracks. No margin for steering error.
The final film in the series introduces another four-wheel co-star known as the “Bluesmobile,” a battered former police car. Blues singer and petty crook Joliet (John Belushi) is released from prison and picked up by his brother Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) who demonstrates his driving skills by running the light on a raised drawbridge and leaping the gap. Their supposedly altruistic mission is to save a Catholic orphanage from being shut down by paying their $5,000 property tax bill. Aretha Franklin, it should be noted, soars even higher than the airborne Bluesmobile.
Film passes for the “Drive-In and Unraveling Narratives” series are available for $25 for museum members and $35 for non-members. A pass includes access to all four films with free popcorn at beer or non-alcoholic beverages for members and $5 for non-members.
Drive-In Monthly Film Series
Jan. 21: “L’Inhumaine” (1924)
Feb. 18: “The Hitch-Hiker” (1953)
March 18: “The French Connection” (1971)
April 8: “The Blues Brothers” (1980)
Admission to the series: $25 for museum members or $5 for individual films, $35 non-members, $10 per film. The movies, all on Tuesday nights, start at 7 in the Academy of Art auditorium, 106 South St., Easton; academyartmuseum.org
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Presidential pasts and an impending future by Steve Parks

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Former president and now president-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated again – this time to a non-consecutive second term. (The first since Grover Cleveland, elected in 1885 and 1893.) Although I was disappointed, to say the least, about his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in November, it is clear that Trump was elected fair and square by millions of Americans I disagree with regarding his fitness for office.
Despite my severe doubts based on his first-term presidency – two impeachments resulting in party-line acquittals and four felony charges: two blocked by judicial stall tactics, another by a prosecutor’s personal indiscretion, plus one conviction with no penalties allowed – I had no choice but to respect the results and give the winner the benefit of aforementioned doubts. I say “no choice” because without evidence of anything but a straight-up electoral Trump victory meant to me – as it should to any American who believes in democracy – that he is our once and now-again president. Others I respect on the losing side upheld that rightful interpretation of constitutional law. Harris conceded the next morning. And she fulfilled her constitutional duty as vice president and president of the Senate to confirm the electoral count on Jan. 6. Remember that date, anyone? Hakeem Jeffries, minority leader of the House of Representatives, gaveled his announcement of the final count to the applause of mostly the winning side. Nothing wrong with that. But compare this entirely peaceful transfer of power to that of the MAGA mob, egged on by Trump, on the same date four years ago.
Still, Trump is about to be our next president. And he was among a rich and rare assemblage of colleagues on another historic day just last week. Trump and three other former presidents, plus President Joe Biden, sat together as a far more exclusive club than the “Saturday Night Live” five-timer host club. But it was the centenarian of the hour, 39th President Jimmy Carter, whose funeral stood as a still-living memorial to the great man in the flag-draped casket – a fallible human of unassailable character, decency, integrity and the belief I have now and always did that Jimmy Carter never lied to us. All the eulogies were authentically moving and real. No embellishment necessary. One of my favorites was the bipartisan tribute read by Gerald Ford’s son Steven because these former presidential election rivals and best friends for the rest of their lives, agreed to write each other’s eulogies. Carter outlasted Ford by 18 years.
I can apply none of those accolades to the man about to take his second oath of office I doubt he will keep for a minute. I say that because I’m certain he will never take the step that could redeem himself and his idolaters: Tell the truth about the 2020 election. Are we to just pretend that he’s not the one who tried to “steal” an election? – campaigning before and after the votes were counted that it was “rigged.” It’s an impossible feat considering all the states, counties, and municipalities, not to mention the thousands of precincts you’d have to line up to pull off a stolen national election. And never mind there is zero evidence of such a widespread possibility in 2020. If Donald could bring himself to announce, or at least imply, at his inauguration in front of the president who once defeated him that, yes, Biden won that election, just as he – Trump – won this one, he could obliterate the fact-free obsession that has divided America for more than five years. Confession is good for the soul and would be for the country he now leads. Again. But Trump will never do that.
Too bad for all of us on either side of his contagious lie. You won in 2024, Mr. Trump. Mr. President. And no one seriously challenges that. Why would you contribute to keeping the country divided against itself as you did when you lacked the simple courtesy of attending Biden’s inauguration? Sore loser, for sure. Why would you now be a sore winner as well? Just to get even? Surely, you can’t expect to run again. Make the best of this term for yourself, your legacy, and for all the rest of us.
Jimmy could be watching you, Donald. But you don’t seem to care. You think Carter was a loser. But so were you in 2020. Be a man and admit it. Put an end to all the personal strife you brought upon yourself as a result. And all of us fellow Americans, too. Then get on with being the best president you can be for a more united USA.
Make America Grateful Again – grateful to be who we are when we’re all working together.
Steve Parks is a retired journalist now living in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Spy Art Review: Start your engines at AAM by Steve Parks

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Now and for the next few months, Easton’s Academy Art Museum’s main galleries are transformed into automobile showrooms – except these vehicles are historically artistic expressions of engineering on wheels that you could never afford even if any of the few such cars left in existence were for sale.
But while Concours d’Elegance – vintage auto shows of great prestige – are the highlight of the “Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection” exhibition, curated by Ken Gross and running through April 16, cars are but one medium of fine art produced between the two 20th-century world wars by Italian family patriarch Carlo Bugatti and his sons Rembrandt and Ettore Bugatti and grandson Jean.
Although he never traveled beyond Europe, Carlo drew on Asian, African and Islamic cultural influences in creating fin-de-siecle furniture designs of which two examples – one from the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, the other from Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts – are displayed in the hallway separating the auto “showrooms.” One is an armchair, possibly of Turkish inspiration, that like most of his works – including a hallway bench and an armchair, neither of which you’re allowed to sit on – combine exotic materials: ebonized wood inlaid with copper, brass, ivory and mother of pearl accented with leathery and painted flourishes.
His eldest son, Rembrandt, followed with an explicit art discipline rather than highly refined craftsmanship. In his short life ending in suicide at age 31, he devoted his talents to bronze sculptures of animal figures, none of which, presumably, posed for him. “Three Cow Grazing,” “Asian Elephant Begging” (perhaps for water?) and “Sacred Hamadryas Baboon” on all fours, are arrayed opposite the furniture pieces and a black-and-white photo gallery of the Bugatti family of artists.
Separated from the other sculptures is Rembrandt’s “Leaping Kangaroo,” displayed in the gallery featuring Ettore and Jean Bugatti’s Grand Prix race cars, Roaring ’20s forerunners to what we now call Formula 1 racers. A blue-grey Bugatti Type 45 Grand Prix with exhaust piping running from front to rear reveals its vintage with a front-end crank to start its explosive engine. A silver Bugatti Type 37A Grand Prix antique masterpiece with its red leather two-seat interior and spare tire strapped to the long front end that encompasses a powerful for-its-time engine. You can see a model of that engine outside its handsomely designed housing. It stands right next to the “Leaping Kangaroo.” And for sound effects you can press a couple of buttons to hear the roar of each Bugatti Grand Prix racer.
But for sheer engineering artistry, it’s hard, perhaps impossible, to beat the elegantly sleek designs of the Bugatti roadsters of the 1930s. These cars and the others in this exhibit are from the collection of Judge John C. North of Easton, and have never before been exhibited in a museum setting.  Lee Glazer, AAM’s Senior Curator, curated the exhibition, and Ken Gross is the guest Curator
You can see that the Bugatti Type 57 Atalante coupe on display at Academy Art shows was previously owned in that the driver and passenger seats are a bit cracked, while the classic exterior lines are so captivatingly authentic that they rise above minor seat imperfections. The companion virtuoso vehicle, the Bugatti 57SC Atlantic sports model, gleams in showroom fresh splendor, with its pristine interior and peek-a-boo peek into its awesome engineering artistry. Surely, the Bugattis – Etorre and his son Jean – knew how to make beautiful cars way back then. But imagine trying to insure one. Not to mention mileage. Way better to experience these Bugattis as museum artifacts. Admission is free.
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To accommodate this never-seen-before exhibition at AAM, the annual museum members show has moved to the next-door Waterfowl Building.

The first object you encounter on arrival is Loretta Loman’s “Organic Farm” glazed stoneware ceramic that, to me, deserved an award. But Loman compensated as hers was one of the first  artworks sold. Just to the right of her piece is Anne Sharp’s Best in Show oil portrait “Eunice” of a woman in a red turban. Best painting went to James Plumb for his nearby still-life, “Three Garlics and Water” oil on canvas.

Anne Sharp’s Best in Show “Eunice”

Other winners include Stephen Walker’s Best Eastern Shore Scene primitive-style oil, “Smoke Break”; Best Landscape, actually a seascape by James Sharf, for his “Normandy Coast Gale” oil; Liam Swadler’s Sporting Award for his “Dock Dog” digital photo of a pooch fresh from a Waterfowl Festival water dive; Best in Ceramics for Karen Bailor’s “World View,” an odd-shaped mouth to a vase; Judy Wolgast’s Best Print winner for her “Snowscape” aquatint reflection of trees on an icy surface; Bridget Sullivan’s Best in Mixed Media for her “Ancestral” allegory; the Trippe Gallery Work on Paper Award to Barrie Barnett’s “Sheep in Winter,” in need of a shearing; Excellence in Photography award to George Sass’ soft-focus “Rolling Tide”; Best in Wood to Terance John for his enigmatic “Memories #19”; Best in Fiber to Susan Fay Schauer of Zebra Gallery for her “Ajidamoonh,” squirrel with a paisley tail; and Best Contemporary Art for “Serengeti,” a collage-and-acrylic abstract by Susan Thomas.
All the framed images are within the 12-by-12-inch limits or variable computations therein. Considering the ample space inside the Waterfowl Building, those limits seem, well, limiting as compared to available space in the museum galleries. Better coordination next year, should the members’ show return to the Waterfowl Building, evacuated after the annual mid-November festival, could work better for all concerned.
‘Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection’
Through April 16, 2025, Academy Art Museum, 6 South St., Easton.
Also, Annual Members Exhibition, through Dec. 29, Waterfowl Building, 40 S. Harrison St., Easton. (Both shows are closed on Mondays.)
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Spy Concert Review: MSO’s Joy to the Season by Steve Parks

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A “Holiday Joy” concert by the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, led by maestro Michael Repper, is a lot more than Jolly St. Nick, “Joy to the World” and carols galore. This season, you’ll also hear arias about character assassins and deadly ones, too – both in French – plus an English poetry reading with symphonic sound effects.

We all know what to expect in a holiday-season concert. But Repper, despite his ironic Santa hat, seems determined to give us more. So he brought along an accomplice or two – besides, of course, his usual orchestra cohorts. The show opens as you might expect with a medley of the usual upbeat Christmas-time suspects – from “Winter Wonderland” to “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” But you know something is up with that piano at center stage facing the orchestra and no pianist in the program. That role, here and there, is filled by Repper himself, declining to sing as if it might be a crime against humanity.

No, he leaves that role exclusively to guest soloist and up-and-coming opera tenor Jonathan Pierce Rhodes.

The evening’s holiday fare is split more or less evenly between orchestral favorites of the season and classic carols – both sacred and secular. These are sung by Rhodes. Mostly. (The audience is under “mandatory” obligation to sing along at the end.)

A recent graduate of Washington National Opera’s Cafritz Young Artist Program, Rhodes is one of the most recognized new tenor voices in opera, having made his leading-role debut in “Fellow Travelers” by Gregory Spears with San Francisco’s Opera Parallele. He’s also performed with such prestigious companies as Lyric Opera Chicago in Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson’s “Blue,” and for three summers at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, New York, where he played the title role in Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide.”

At MSO’s opening night of “Holiday Joy,” Rhodes delivered an ironically resounding “Silent Night” with a range seemingly from near-soprano to baritone tenor. Switching to opera, he sang Verdi’s most famous aria from “Rigoletto” with such expressive ownership as if it was written just for him nearly a century and a half ago. His connection to Verdi’s greatest hits felt just as apparent in Alfredo’s Aria from “La Traviata.” Yet, somehow, he dug deeper personally into “Deep River,” an African song popularized in 1916 by Henry Burleigh. Rhodes exuded still deeper meaning into how a spiritual can move him and his audience.

Reappearing a few numbers after intermission, Rhodes sang a decidedly un-Bing Crosby “White Christmas.” (Despite the famous title, this song and one other came closest to a Hanukkah reference in that it was written by Irving Berlin, a Jewish refugee. “In the Bleak Midwinter” by Gustav Holst was more hopeful than it sounds, while “O Holy Night,” including verses rarely sung in caroling, reflected an intensity of belief. But my personal holiday favorite, “The Christmas Song,” written by another Jew, Mel Torme, struck me as a stylistic salute to the great Nat King Cole. No one ever sang it better. But Rhodes comes very close. My only quibble with Rhodes’ performance outside the three unamplified arias, is that he sang the rest with a microphone, which put unnecessary distance between him and the audience, however slight that may be. He’s the last person in the room who needs a microphone, so powerful is his natural singing voice.

Thus, my award for best use of a microphone must go to John Sisson for his dramatic reading of “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” to the incidental accompaniment of the orchestra, much in the way such music reflects the emotional energy of a motion picture.
Among other highlights of the orchestral side of the evening was another music-in-movies reference for anyone who remembers the somewhat bawdy film “10.” “The Little Bolero Boy” takes off on “The Little Drummer Boy” and Ravel’s “Bolero” that became a sexual theme in “10.” The unrelenting throb of his orchestral composition builds to a climactic finish as each section of the orchestra gets in on the act. But it’s the repetitive beat of the snare drum, played over and over by Dane Krich, plus a clarinet solo portion by Dennis Strawley, that keep “Little Bolero Boy” marching forward.

A trio of musicians who are not usually lead players throughout any orchestral piece are featured with brassy gusto early on in the concert by trumpeters Josh Carr, Ross McCool and Steven Bailey. They perform starring roles in Leroy Anderson’s irresistibly cheerful “Bugler’s Holiday.”

Surely, it was a “Holiday Joy” for those three as well as for the rest of us enjoying or playing in this seasonal symphonic celebration at Chesapeake College.

‘HOLIDAY JOY’ CONCERTS

Opening night:Thursday, Dec. 5, Todd Hall Performing Arts Center, Chesapeake College. For more “Holiday Joy,” see one of these reprise performances: 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7 at Cape Henlopen High in Lewes, Delaware, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8 at Ocean City Performing Arts Center. Or check out the MSO Holiday Brass Quintet concerts Dec. 20 in Ocean Pines, Dec. 21 in Rehoboth Beach, or Dec. 22 in Easton. midatlanticsymphony.org

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

The growing art scene in Easton by Steve Parks

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Jennifer McBrien’s embroidered”Subversive Thread” fabrics at the Academy Art Museum

The visual art scene in downtown Easton – also known as the Arts District – is now more so than ever before. From three fine-art galleries barely more than a year ago, Easton will soon have seven within strolling distance from Talbot County Courthouse, Academy Art Museum, Tidewater Inn, and Avalon Theatre.

On Friday afternoon, I took in one of the current exhibits at the Academy Art Museum and a show at the new Zach Gallery in the Prager Family Center for the Arts – also home to the Ebenezer Theatre and Chesapeake Music. Then I checked out the inaugural show at Talbot Resident Artists Gallery that opened just this month across the street from the Avalon, two shows featuring new artists at the dual Zebra and Spiralis galleries around the corner, plus a walk-through of the long-established Troika and Trippe galleries on Harrison and Studio B on Goldsborough. All in about an hour and a half. The range of artworks I encountered on my whirlwind tour was astonishing.

Although there are many, many, many times seven art galleries in Manhattan, given just a 90 minutes to tour a few I might not see such a plethora of styles and techniques – from simple charcoal-on-paper portraits to fabric-and-thread concoctions incorporating everything from photography to dollar bills and paintings made of molded clay – claymation stills. All this and the usual assortment of land- and seascapes capturing the natural beauty of the Chesapeake region.

I began my matinee tour at the Academy Art Museum where the next big show, “Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection” was about to be installed in the two main galleries for the Dec. 5 preview. The two smaller galleries down the hall from the main entrance host a most unusual show meant to expand the horizons of craft art, the subject of the popular annual weekend-long craft show and sale in October. “The Subversive Thread” will expand your imagination of what fabric art entails far beyond quilts and machine-stitched creations that have long been the purview of homemakers who do not necessarily consider themselves artists. In this thread show, four artists stretched the concept of fabric art to new and, at times, extravagant dimensions.

Han Cao repurposes what look to be family photo album images – a few in color, others black and white – in a “Self-Reflection” series, including “Wedding Day,” a 2021 photo with the happy couple looking at a mirror that reflects an embroidered window into an altered state of being.

Jennifer McBrien riffs on domestic art with her series of vintage lace napkins embroidered with images of endangered bird species. But more impressive is her 2024 laundry line of freehand embroidery on tea-dyed organza hanging like sheer curtains – all with nude female images from “Ruff Warrior Woman” to “Golden Warbler Woman.”

Stacey Lee Webber has cash on her mind with 2022 “Two Dollar Fire” and similar pieces with actual dollar bills interspersed with a hand-stitched cotton-thread motif. Michael-Birch Pierce anchors the quartet of fabric artists with his mixed-media on velvet pieces in circular and rectangular frames, including floating soft-focus “Ghosts.”

From there, I walked to Washington Street, past the Talbot Historical Society, to Zach Gallery in the Zachariah half of the Prager Arts Center shared with Ebenezer. The current exhibit, running through the end of November, features works by Paton Miller and Scott Bluedorn. Miller, a painter based in the posh Hamptons on Long Island’s East End, dominated the space with his large oils that emulate his 20 years of painting in Fairfield Porter’s Southampton studio. Most notable to me, raised as an Easton-area farmboy, is “Farmer.” A black man seated with a wheelbarrow behind him appears to be looking directly at the viewer – to me in this case – creating a personal connection.

Bluedorn, also from the Hamptons and whose work I have mentioned in Parrish Art Museum reviews during my Newsday career, spans painting, drawing and printmaking – all represented at the Zach. His “Ode to . . .” series of birds-and-fish watercolors with visible wavelengths emanating from their aura typifies his natural-world oeuvre.

The newest gallery in Easton opened with works by a trio of artists who are not represented by other galleries in town. The Talbot Resident Artist Gallery, just across Dover Street from the Avalon, is their chance to show and sell their art. Three artists inaugurated the new space through the end of November. Scott Sullivan’s charcoal-on-paper portraits display his drawing skills with, among several other images, an immediately recognizable likeness of Pete Lesher of the Talbot County Council and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. Other portraits include a clarinetist that I mistook for the late Benny Goodman. (Sullivan said others have made the same misidentification.) Also showing at TRA is Joan Cramer, whose watercolors range from colorful abstract to representational, and Marianne Kost, whose oils include a highly recognizable Harrison Street scene as well as architectural paintings.

The TRA Gallery will soon have a new neighbor. Just around the corner on Harrison Street, the Zebra and Spiralis galleries are breaking up after a year of living together in the same space. It’s not a divorce but more like an amicable separation that benefits both galleries. Depending on how long it takes for the ink on the paperwork to dry, Spiralis will move two doors up on Dover Street from TRA in the shop formerly occupied by Swan Antiques. For now, they continue to share space that will become Zebra’s gallery alone.

Currently, one of the new artists you might want to check out is Joseph Barbaccia, a Delaware painter who deploys polymer-based clay as his medium instead of, say, canvas or various types of paper. His self-portrait looks a bit like a series of tiny beads that are painted over, giving the image a textured depth not readily achievable on flat surfaces.

If you’re looking for art to buy, Ingrid Matuszewski’s “It’s a Shore Thing,” is off the market. The abstract of, presumably, a stretch of Oxford waterfront, just sold for $4,200. But it’s still up on the gallery wall for now. Among the Spiralis artists of note is James Stephen Terrell, whose patterned-abstract “Think” may have you scratching your head with curiosity.

The old-guard galleries, of course, still have plenty to offer. The Troika Gallery on Harrison celebrates its 27 years in business with a retrospective of works by surviving artists for an anniversary group show of “new masterpieces” through the end of the year, with a First Friday reception Dec. 6.

The Trippe Gallery is observing “Another Side of Jill Basham,” one of its most prolific, not to mention popular artists, through November and beyond. The paintings include urban scenes and abstracts that are atypical of the Trappe artist’s familiar land- and seascapes of the Eastern Shore.Around the corner on Goldsborough, Studio B Gallery paintings by owner Betty Huang go further afield and abroad to capture the “Splendor of Provence,’ where she painted lush French scenes last summer. Awesome, or charme in Francais.

Easton Arts District

All addresses in Easton:
Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., academyartmuseum.org
Avalon Theatre, 40 E. Dover St., avalonfoundation.org
Ebenezer Theatre, 17 S. Washington St., chesapeakemusic.org
Zach Gallery, 17 S. Washington St., zachgalleryeaston.com
Zebra Gallery, 5 N. Harrison St., thezebragallery.com
Spiralis Gallery (new venue pending), 35 E. Dover St., spiralisgallery.com
Talbot Resident Artists Gallery, 41 E. Dover St., talbotarts.org
Troika Gallery, 9 S. Harrison St., troikagallery.com
Trippe Gallery, 23 N. Harrison St., thetrippegallery.com
Studio B Gallery, 78 Goldsborough St., studiobartgallery.com
Talbot Historical Society, 25 & 30 S. Washington St., talbothistory.org
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Spy Concert Review: MSO Performs Beethoven’s 5th by Steve Parks

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Michael Repper conducting the MSO.

If there are any four notes in all the classical music canon that almost everyone recognizes – even those who wouldn’t know Mozart from Muddy Waters – it would be the bah-bah-bah-BOHM of Beethoven’s Fifth. But how many aficionados would recognize the first few bars of his “rookie” symphony No. 1 as Beethoven’s?

When it premiered in 1804, the Fifth was called the “Fate Symphony,” which accounts for the title of the November concert series of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, “Fireworks of Fate,” continuing through Sunday’s matinee at Chesapeake College’s Todd Performing Arts Center. The four notes, it is said, denote “fate knocking at the door.” Should you answer?
Accompanying the pair of Beethoven symphonies on the program are two appetizers by 19th-Century French composer Louise Farrenc, both concert overtures, which means these six- or seven-minute pieces were never intended as part of a larger work, such as an opera.
Her Overture No. 1 pays homage to Haydn, Beethoven’s most important mentor. The gravity of the solemn opening adagio is quickly overtaken by a restless allegro that becomes more relaxed as it grows into a bold thematic statement and an authoritative finish. Farrenc’s Overture No. 2 takes a similar form but in a different frame of mind. Possibly traumatic opening notes give way to a celebration with a richly melodic and cheerful vibrance. Together these pieces leave you wishing Farrenc had added another movement or two for each. Sadly, symphonies were not in fashion with the French in her time and, in any case, women composers anywhere in the world struggled to be recognized.
Unlike Mozart, a child prodigy, Beethoven did not complete his first symphony until 1800 at age 29. Mozart died nine years earlier at age 35 with 41 symphonies to his everlasting credit.
In keeping with symphonic tradition, set largely by Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven’s First is composed in sonata form. But he throws in a bit of a trick by toying in the opening notes with the C Major key that dominates the piece. He then throws in an innovation with woodwinds playing a prominent role intertwined with the string instruments in introducing a second theme. Taking the lead for the MSO woodwind section are Mindy Heinsohn (flute), Dana Newcomb (oboe), Dennis Strawley (clarinet) and Terry Ewell (bassoon).
The second movement opens with what amounts to a fugue that gradually morphs into a darker mood with the rhythmic throb of timpani beats by Barry Dove. While the third movement is called a minuet, it comes off as more of a scherzo teaser that suggests bolder dancefloor strides. The final movement of Beethoven’s First toys with a trio of mellower notes before it gains momentum toward a confident landing that encompasses previous themes as well as Beethoven’s soon-to-be signature orchestral beats.
If you think that Beethoven’s Fifth is the meat-and-potatoes of classical music by long-dead European composers, ho-hum, think again. It’s at the very least the steak frites or filet mignon with truffles of the classical catalog’s all-time menu. And it’s not played as often as you might think considering its thematic presence in everything from movies to video games. So here’s your chance to hear it played live in full by a fine professional regional orchestra spurred on by a Grammy-winning music director, Michael Repper.
Here’s what I thought of the opening night performance in Rehoboth Beach Friday night, Nov. 8.
The opening four notes heard round the world and through the centuries are echoed in clarion calls from the back-row brass section led by Daniel Coffman (trombone), Luis Engelke (trumpet) and Michael Hall (horn). The orchestra played with a cohesive and deliberate temperament of an ensemble performing as one, led on strings by concertmaster Kimberly McCollum, Dana Bevard (second violin), Yuri Tomenko (viola), Katie McCarthy (cello) and Chris Chlumsky (bass).
New themes are introduced in the next two movements with a more reflective cadence followed by a lighter scherzo that culminates in a fond recollection of the Fifth’s opening flourish.
The fourth and final movement tests the musicians’ stamina with extended pianissimo riffs for strings while reeds and horns herald the breathless close to the Fifth’s fabled fate as one of, if not the greatest, symphony in classical music history. GOAT they call it in ironic athletic terms. (Greatest of All Time). And there is athleticism, even while seated, to do performance honor to Beethoven’s greatest hit. The MSO is fit for the occasion.
Mid-Atlantic Symphony’s “Fireworks of Fate” Series

Premiering Nov. 8 in Rehoboth Beach with Michael Repper conducting, followed by a 3 p.m. performance on Saturday, Nov. 9 at the Ocean City Performing Arts Center. The finale is at 3 on Sunday, Nov. 10 at the Todd Performing Arts Center, Chesapeake College in Wye Mills. midatlanticsymphony.org

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Spy Theater Review: Ghosts haunt the Avalon by Steve Parks

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Not to take anything away from the cast and creators of “Stage Fright,” now playing twice daily through Sunday at the Avalon Theatre, but the true star of this production is the Avalon itself, which observed its first hundred years in 2022.
Described as an “immersive theater experience,” the show is a largely fictional Halloween glimpse into the building’s history, beginning with a fire that destroyed the Avalon Hotel. Rebuilt in 1922, what was then called The New Theatre became known as “The showplace of the Eastern Shore,” renamed the Avalon Theatre in 1934.
The “Stage Fright” musical, written by Casey Rauch, who also plays the lead villain, and directed by Cecile Storm, who portrays his accomplice with a visceral demeanor, is no standard Halloween entertainment. It’s not recommended for anyone under age 16.  Musical direction by Ray Nissen accompanies frequent film montages as well as live action on and off-stage. Actors lead the way for the audience to explore every public space of the Avalon Foundation building.
What was formerly known as Banning’s Tavern has been transformed into what you might call a mad physician’s brain laboratory with alcohol serving mostly, it seems, as a preservative for neural tissue no longer occupying a skull. Main-stage scenes fill in the Avalon back story. Lou Baker is about to be released from 30 years in a psychiatric institution at age 95. Murder and ghostly reappearances have haunted the Avalon ever since the “apparent suicide” of Marguerite Gardot shortly after she gave up her child Charlotte to a church to further her career as a showgirl and Beauthy Shop Quartet headliner managed by her lover, Lou Baker. Having not seen Charlotte since she was a baby, Baker implores her to read Marguerite’s diary.
There is an intermission in there somewhere, but I saw “Stage Fright” on its final dress rehearsal, when my wife and I were the only audience. Presumably, drinks, refreshments and light fare were available once the show opened officially on Wednesday evening. We settled into our front-row seats in the lovely Stoltz Listening Room where the stage was lined with VHS videos from the failed business model of Blockbuster, which never anticipated the inevitability of streaming services. A film screened over the stage before us added more to the back story of Bob – Lou’s Girl Friday and former bare-knuckles boxer who doubles as bouncer while cleaning up her boss’s messes. Including murder? We’re left with a cryptic message: “All you do is watch.”
A trip to the third floor, not often open to mere Avalon ticket-holders, is a revelation. A grand space for a relatively small room dominated by an 18-foot leaded-glass ceiling dome and a chance to step outside on a narrow deck to take in the best view of downtown Easton that was once available to patrons of a restaurant called The Chambers. It’s now mostly reserved for Avalon Foundation board meetings and special (expensive) events.
So here’s your chance to tour the architectural beauty of the Avalon as you’ve probably never seen it. That was enough to distract me from the video at hand, except for the haunting message at the end: “All you do is watch.” As if we’re accessories to crimes we know nothing about. Not yet.
Taking the elevator down to the ground floor, our actor-guides led us out onto Harrison Street and the alleyway between the Avalon and Troika Gallery to return to the main stage. No spoiler alerts here. But I’m guessing you’ve figured out this is no musical comedy.
But a bit more evaluation of the performances is in order. Casey Rauch as Lou Baker is sufficiently addled and edgy to make us think he’s capable of all that has tormented him for decades. Katie Cox as his daughter, Charlotte, who is a stranger to him, seems to have avoided the mental trauma of her parents. She’s almost inspired by reading passages from her mom’s diary, as if she was talking directly to her, as the staging by Cecile Storm suggests. As Marguerite, Jenny Madino projects a spectral presence, appropriate for someone who’s been dead by suicide or murder for what? – almost a century?  Her Beauty Shop Quartet survivors – if anyone is not already a ghost by this time – Maddie Megahan (Vivian), Jeri Alexander (Minnie), and Grace Vorosmarti (Shirley) are just wildly vulnerable enough to be susceptible to crazy Lou.
While the film and video montages added here and there to the ghost story at hand, a few seemed entirely superfluous. Among the most revealing to any character were the excerpts from MTV back when the cable network made its splash as presenter of highly professional music videos – some of which made or resurrected the careers of feature film directors. It was, I suppose, the pinnacle of Lou Baker’s checkered career, that he wins an MTV best video-of-the-year award. OK, so there’s my spoiler. Aside from that, my best advice to you is to wear comfortable shoes and Halloween costumes that won’t get in the way of your getting around all the space that the Avalon offers in its centennial-plus glory.
‘STAGE FRIGHT’
6:30 and 9:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 24 through Sunday, Oct. 27, Avalon Theatre, Dover at Harrison streets, Easton; avalonfoundation.org
Steve Parks is a retired New York theater critic now living in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Spy Review: Isidore String Quartet Interlude by Steve Parks

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Isidore String Quartet, from left, Adrian Steele, Devin Moore, Phoenix Avalon and Joshua McClendon

The Isidore String Quartet, riding high after back-to-back years as winner of Canada’s prestigious Banff International String Quartet Competition (2022) and an Avery Fisher Career Grant (2023) put their credentials to inspired effect in their Chesapeake Music Interlude concert Saturday night.
Never mind that the program listed a trio of pieces by dead European composers. The concert was adventurous enough with Bartok’s atonally immersive riff that critics derided as “barbaric” when his second string quartet debuted during World War I. But Ravel’s ground-breaking early career masterpiece and Mozart’s quartet that anticipated by at least two centuries the modern string quartet model made the program almost entirely contemporary in temperament and musical maturity.
The four New York-based Isidore musicians are graduates of the Juilliard School campus at Lincoln Center. They take their name from two sources – legendary Juilliard Quartet violinist Isidore Cohen but also their shared taste for vodka ascribed to a Greek monk named Isidore.
The concert opened with the last of six Mozart quartets championed by his mentor, Haydn – 24 years his senior. At the time – the 1780s – nearly all string quartets were basically first-violin solo pieces with a supporting cast of viola, cello and second violin. So shocking was Mozart’s String Quartet No. 6, nicknamed his “Dissonance” quartet, that his publisher assumed the score was a copying error. Haydn countered on behalf of his genius protege: “If Mozart wrote it, he must have meant it.”
The piece opens with, instead of a solo turn by Isidore violinist Phoenix Avalon, a ponderous motif that suggests a wandering in the dark of a bad dream, which shifts abruptly to a cheerful awakening that brilliantly involves all four string players in a musical conversation alternatively featuring violinists Avalon and Adrian Steele, violist Devin Moore and cellist Joshua McClendon.
The conversation resumes in the second movement andante with cellist McClendon providing the heartbeat thoughline. The third movement minuet is anything but the standard ballroom dance vibe. There’s a turbulent undercurrent with counterpoint interruptions in the flow with a return to the melancholy of the opening bars of the first movement. The allegro finale suggests a cheerful resolution to the preceding turmoil with almost giddy turns of musical phasing by  Avalon and Steele with fluttering syncopation by violist Moore and grounded by cellist McClendon for a skilled landing.
Bartok’s String Quartet No. 2, completed in 1917 in the middle of the Great War, now known as World War I, almost demands a bleak musical format. The piece opens with a peaceful if restless opening, as if awakening in the middle of the night but unable to fall back asleep, watching the inside of your eyelids a soon-to-be realized horror. The second movement borrows on both Bartok’s native Hungarian folkloric themes with Arabic overtones from his North African studies to create a desperate intensity led by violist Moore and cellist McClendon which dissolves into a brooding finale dramatically marked by a swelling requiem theme punctuated by moments of reverential near-silence.
After intermission, the first violin chair role switched to Adrian Steele who led a romantic opening, which morphed into urgent and then wistful phrasing that may suggest love lost. Quivering regrets are reflected in the pizzicato and plucking of string percussion in a brief second movement followed by a slow, melodic revisit of earlier themes. The finale encompasses all the shifting moods of the whole with moments of agitation, joy and reflection in between. In each expression, the Isidore quartet delivered the goods as they did in each of the first two remarkably relevant string quartets written two centuries ago.
Of note: This was the first major concert event under the helm of Chesapeake Music’s new executive director David Faleris following founder Don Buxton’s retirement. So far, so good.
Chesapeake Music Interlude Concert
Isidore String Quartet, Saturday night, Oct. 5, at Ebenezer Theatre, Easton.
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Spy Review: Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Season-Opener, by Steve Parks

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You could say that the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra trumpeted the opening of the fall arts season at the acoustically pleasing Easton Church of God Thursday night, except that it was mostly strings that heralded the “Violin Virtuoso” concert series, which continues with performances this weekend in Lewes, Delaware and Ocean Pines, Maryland.

The 27th season of the Delmarva Peninsula’s only fully professional symphony orchestra, led by Grammy-winning music director Michael Repper, got off to an exhilarating start with a program that, on the surface, might appear to be a medley of dead European composers’ greatest hits. Johannes Brahms, a heavyweight in his class of composers, wrote his only two classical overtures in 1880 – the fittingly brooding Tragic Overture and, as a bookend in temperament, the celebratory Academic Festival Overture, perhaps the most popular piece of his career as a successor to Romantic-period forebears, Beethoven and Bach.

Violin soloist Grace Park

If there was to be comedy tomorrow, reversing the order in the song from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” it was, indeed, tragedy tonight. Still, the overture’s opening allegro suggests robust assertiveness rather than gloomy foreboding The middle Moderato movement settles unexpectedly into a peaceful, march-like interlude. In the concluding third movement, Brahms intertwines rapidly evolving counterpoints between tumult and moody reflection, of which each fully engaged section of the orchestra keeps up with the furious race to the finish.

The next long-dead European composer on the program, was essentially making her concert debut. Alice Mary Smith was the first British woman to compose symphonies – two to her credit – in the latter half of the 19th century. Back then it would have been as likely that a woman composer could get a symphony published, much less performed, than it might be today for a woman to play tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, regardless of Taylor Swift’s enamor for that position on the field.
Smith had two things going for her: A family of some means that helped get her into London’s Royal Academy to study music and a talent that put her in the same league with male contemporaries. Though she was not very widely recognized in her lifetime, she is by no means a fluke. Modern recordings of her two symphonies, including No. 2 in A Minor, accessible now on YouTube, prove that she should have been taken seriously and only recently – 140 years after her  death in 1884 – has been appreciated.

Repper is one who noticed her work. And as a champion of underperformed composers, mostly women and/or African-Americans, he conducts performances of these long-lost or disregarded symphonies and concertos.

Smith’s Symphony No. 2 opens with a bold Allegro as if to stand her symphonic ground against her almost exclusively male fellow composers. The second movement Andante introduces lyrical contrasts to tensions of the first, providing a tenderly reflective mood that sets the stage for the third movement’s rhythmic syncopation while adding a danceable theme to Smith’s symphonic palette. The Allegro finale reintroduces themes from each of the previous movements, building to a climactic and confident close.

Following intermission, soloist Grace Park, winner of the prestigious Naumburg International Violin Competition, set the pace for the orchestra as assuredly as music director Repper. It was not so much her virtuosity as the inventive piece itself, created by Felix Mendelssohn, still another long dead composer. He succumbed at age 47 to overwork and the heartbreak of his beloved sister Fanny’s passing. Mendelssohn’s groundbreaking Violin Concerto changed how such concertos were composed and presented for the next century and a half.

Orchestras customarily set the tone of the opening theme of a concerto while the soloist bided his or her time. But from the start of his “Violin Concerto” the attention is riveted on the soloist, thanks to Mendelssohn’s innovations. Another change he introduced was that the three movements of his concerto are played almost as one – with little or no pause in between.

The effect is to make the soloist the star attraction almost throughout the piece. It works best, of course, if the violinist can garner that attention in a spell-binding way. Grace Park did so with near breathless aplomb, fulfilling her solo role with dexterity and authority. The orchestra also fulfilled its supporting role. The bassoon marks the transition between the first movement with a sustained B note, led by Terry Ewell, followed by a rise to C in moving on to the tenderly melodic second movement. Meanwhile, the string section, featuring concertmaster Kimberly McCollum and her associate William Wang, gives the soloist a bit of a break. Finally, there’s the briefest pause while Park plays the last whisper of a phrase before diving in with a sprinter’s burst of speed, punctuated with pizzicato gymnastics as woodwinds led by Rachael Yokers on flute and Cheryl Sanborn on clarinet join in to complete a triumphant finish.

After a couple of standing-ovation bows, Park returned to center-stage for a solo encore. “What do you play after that?” she asked. “Maybe some Bach.” As fine as Park performed the Bach encore, it was child’s play for someone of such great skill and presence.

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Violin Virtuoso’
Thursday night at Easton Church of God. Two more performances at 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, Cape Henlopen High School, Lewes, Delaware, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29, Community Church, Ocean Pines. midatlanticsymphony.org

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.
A footnote: The MSO ratified a new three-year collective bargaining agreement with the musicians represented by the Musicians’ Association of Metropolitan Baltimore late last month. So Delmarva’s only professional symphony orchestra is good to go for at least another three years.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.