My first thought after reading the title of the Academy Art Museum’s compact but highly pertinent exhibit of selections from its collection was about “The Dude.” That would be Jeff Bridges’ character in the Coen Brothers’ film “The Big Lebowski.” That’s because AAM has called its exhibit “Earth Abides,” which coincides with variants of The Dude’s favorite expression: He either abides or decidedly does not.

Although the dictionary definition of “abide” is to follow the rules, to obey, or, in the negative, to disobey. But for The Dude, it’s more like going with the flow or swimming upstream against it – often disastrously. That’s sort of how our planet abides: It can take whatever humans and the elements inflict on it, but disaster eventually catches up, usually to the perpetrators living on its surface.

Thomas Hart Benton’s study for “Prodigal Son”

A Thomas Hart Benton study of his “Prodigal Son” painting catches your eye across from the top of the stairs to the museum’s second-floor gallery. The New Testament parable of a wayward son welcomed as he returns home, takes on a Dust Bowl twist as poor farmland management and drought devastate the landscape. The lithograph portrays a son returning to a long-abandoned family home. He passes a bovine skeleton beside the dusty lane. To the left, Grant Wood’s “March,” another fine example of Regionalism art of this period, keeps topographical company with Benton’s print, both circa 1939. In Wood’s sepia-toned scene, a winding road leads up a hill where a lonely tree abides, bending over in the stiff wind.

Further along the same wall, a grizzled middle-aged woman stands tall in abiding tolerance in George Schreiber’s “I Raise Turkeys and Chickens,” a 1953 lithograph. A scraggly stand of cornstalks – no turkey or chicken in sight – signifies the sparse yield of the earth beneath her feet.

Some of the art in “Earth Abides” speaks to the notion of who is boss. Ansel Adams’ “Upper Yosemite Falls – Spring” (1946) is one of many photos he took of the national park’s titular falls. Together with “Cedar Trees and Maple Leaves” (1974), they depict landscapes that will survive long after we’re gone. That is, except in the case of climate- or human-caused fires such as the infernos at one of Adams’ other favorite national parks, Sequoia in California, that threatened stands of ancient trees from which the park takes its name.  

Amid these mostly black-and-white artworks, Melissa Miller’s 1998 four-color lithograph, “Fossil,” stands out refreshingly. The title suggests that her predator-prey food chain is not what it seems, as horses do not hunt anything, much less fish, and fish have no means to eat birds. Miller’s imagery may signal an ecosystem gone awry, perhaps by pollution or climate change. None of which any carnivore or vegetarian can abide.

James Turrell’s enigmatic 1987 “Mapping Space (1)” turns research on an extinct volcano into a topographical, multi-media etching that maps in cake-like layers both aerial and surface views of the volcano with a white-circle aperture in the middle. Is it art, a geological record, or both?

On the opposite wall, Leonardo Drew’s 2012 collage of handmade papers bearing stenciled pigment represents a dead tree. The roots below that once sucked nutrients from the soil now release them, both below and through the dead or dying branches above. A rectangle rising amid the branches appears to recall the tree’s once-living bark. From death, life – a phenomenon we see sprouting after every forest fire. 

Kiki Smith’s 2018 etching “Healers” isn’t about human healing but rather that of bees. In recent years, there’s been an alarming die-off of bees, which humans absolutely cannot abide by. Maybe we could live in a world without flowers but not without plant blossoms that metamorphose into fruits and vegetables after pollination. Smith presents a bouquet of uncut wildflowers against a cloud-like background as if served up as an airborne feast for busy bees on a pollinating mission. 

Collagist Robert Rauschenberg’s 1982 sojourn in China inspired one of his most ambitious projects. Working with the University of South Florida’s Graphicstudio, he produced a 100-feet-by-30-inch color photographic mural printed on a single linear sheet entitled “Chinese Summerhall,” cutting and collaging small portions of his photos to assemble the final image. Another 28 photos that did not make the cut for his mural were printed in two portfolios, one of which, his moody study for “Chinese SummerHall (Man and Tree),” captures a figure, his back to the camera, in a prayerful pose – or perhaps he’s just reading – with a deciduous tree towering above the bench he’s seated on. The tree abides. What else can it do?

***

Winners in the 22nd Annual Members’ Exhibition were announced in nine cash-award categories at the opening reception Friday evening, Nov. 18. 

Jinchul Kim juried the show, now on display through Dec. 7 in the Academy Art Museum’s two main galleries. A South Korea-born artist and professor at Salisbury University, Kim has been commissioned to paint the official portrait of the First Lady of Maryland, Yumi Hogan, also a South Korean native. Kim, who has exhibited his art internationally, is a recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council Distinguished Artist Award and Salisbury University’s Distinguished Faculty Award. 

Best-in-Show winner by Michael Iandolo, “The Madness of Plein Air Easton”

The winners he selected in a blind viewing of the art (no names attached) are:

Best in Show in Honor of Lee Lawrie: Michael Iandolo, The Madness of Plein Air Easton, 2022, oil on board.
Nancy South Reybold Award for Contemporary Art: Christopher Harrington, Blue Triangle, 2022, resin
M. Susan Stewart Award for Best Collage: Sheryl Southwick, My Collapsing House, 2022, collage
Trippe Gallery Award for Best Work on Paper: Barrie Barnett, Michele, 2022, pastel
Jane Shannahan Hill Offutt Memorial Award for Painting: Linda Perry, Aqualung, 2022, mixed media on canvas
Academy Clay Award: Kathy Bodey, Forgotten, 2022, clay
Best Landscape Award (sponsored by the St. Michael’s Art League): Nancy Tankersley, Lovely Intruder, 2022, oil
Arielle Marks Award for Best Print (sponsored by Amy Haines and Richard Marks): Judith Wolgast, Assateague Marsh, 2022, etching and aquatint
Excellence in Photography (sponsored by Tidewater Camera Club): Sahm Doherty-Sefton, Eastern Shore, 2022, inkjet print

Besides the prize money, many of the artworks in the show are for sale by both winners and non-winners. 

“The Members’ Exhibition is an annual tradition at the museum that dates back to our founding in 1958,” said director Sarah Jesse. “We are fortunate to have many talented artists living in the area and for the museum’s adult class program, in many cases, to have played a role in helping hone their skills. The exhibition is a testament to our wonderfully creative community and the museum’s exceptional teaching artists.”

“Earth Abides: Selections from the Collection”
Through Feb. 28, Academy Art Museum, 106 South St. Easton

2022 Members’ Exhibition
Through Dec. 7, academyartmuseum.org

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

The hot new music series, “Gabriela Montero at Prager,” hit its highest note so far, literally, at the resplendently restored former sanctuary known as the Ebenezer Theater Saturday night, thanks largely to guest artists soprano Larisa Martinez and her super-star husband, violinist Joshua Bell.

Pianist Montero, who headlined the September 17 series opener with just her two hands, played a supporting role on this night, skillfully accompanying the couple on nearly all the program’s ten primarily short pieces. The Pragers in the title of the series are, of course, Joanne and Paul Prager and the Prager Family Center for the Arts. Montero is the artist-in-residence of the center, of which the Ebenezer Theater is its crown jewel.

Saturday’s concert opened with a 10-minute Bell and Martinez duet, one of the three longer pieces on the program. From Mendelssohn’s concert aria for soprano and orchestra, or in this case, violin, they performed “Ah, ritorna eta dell-oro.” (return to a valley of gold). To unobtrusive piano backing, violin and vocals trade places intermittently in a call-and-response duel before introducing an assertive change of pace as Bell propels his bow with the thrust of a fencing foil to Martinez’s dramatically ascending intensity. 

Bell left the stage for the next piece, described by his wife as Schubert’s “love letter to music.” With a lilting voice and light piano touch, Martinez and Montero delivered a brief and soothingly sweet respite before diving into the “Je suis” encore from Massenet’s “Manon.” Moving her sheet-music stand aside, Martinez sang in character, ranging from flirtatious girl to sultry woman, curling up and down the scale in rehearsed improvisation even as she laughed on key. Next, French composer Delibes’ “Les filles des Cadix” (The girls of Cadiz) opens with a pounding piano riff that launches a song suggesting Bizet to a flamenco beat with Martinez’s smoky soprano rising to toweringly high notes. 

Her husband returned with remarks complimenting the Ebenezer venue and the appreciative audience, as well as the Pragers, for the salon-style atmosphere far more intimate than Bell’s usual vast concert hall settings. He then drew laughs while recounting the pandemic hibernation as a “year-long honeymoon at home” for the newlyweds who married in 2019. Bell had enough time on his hands to arrange Chopin’s best-known, much-loved nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2, to his violin interpretation. At Ebenezer, his playing rose to heightened romantic tension with a silvery smooth flow to the melody repeated with ever-more decorous techniques, culminating in quavering vibrato trills and a big-finish violin-and-piano coda. 

Martinez followed with a prayerful lullaby for children by Spanish composer Montsalvatge of the Catalan region and its capital, Barcelona. Continuing her Spanish-language tour, she sang a medley of traditional Latin folk tunes and short pieces by Ovalle (Brazil), Gimenez (Spain), concluding with Figueroa of her native Puerto Rico.

For the rousing finale – Bernstein’s “West Side Story” Suite – Bell returned to the stage for an instrumental prelude with Montero, which morphed into the familiar “Maria” melody. As if responding to the invocation of her concert character’s name, Martinez rejoined them to deliver in dulcet tones the best-known songs suitable for soprano from the 1957 Broadway musical, beginning with “Tonight,” pausing for violin solo interludes. Next, she was feeling pretty as Bell’s strings sounded delighted while she figuratively looked into a mirror. But the smile on her face faded as the suite segued into “There’s a Place for Us,” even as we all know there is none for them. Once the impending doom is realized, Martinez emits a tragic soprano scream drenched in operatic anger and loss, punctuating the suite’s violent denouement to a standing ovation. 

Full disclosure: My relationship with this former house of worship still evokes in me a sense of nostalgic sentiment whenever I walk up to what has been converted into a splendid and inviting concert chamber. I attended Sunday school downstairs and services in the upstairs sanctuary until 1962, when Ebenezer Methodist merged with two other Easton congregations to form St. Mark’s United Methodist Church. I was in ninth grade, and although that was a half-century ago, and I was too young to appreciate many of the sermons or hymns fully, I don’t recall anything quite as inspired as the performance I experienced Saturday night.

                                                                                     ***
If you haven’t bought tickets to the sold-out Saturday night concert or the Sunday matinee, you can catch Joshua Bell performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Meyerhoff Hall in Baltimore April 21 and 23 or the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda April 22. bsomusic.org  

Gabriela Montero at Prager Concert Series
Canadian pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin, December 10
Irish tenor Anthony Kearns, December 17
The 2023 season opens with Cuban clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, on June 10
monteroprager.com/concerts

It became apparent from before the start that the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s choice of an “Eight Seasons” format for its November concerts was popular. This on an evening when it felt as though we have but two seasons now: summer and winter separated by teasingly brief intervals of spring and autumn.

Beforehand, a long line of music appreciators moved patiently toward and into the acoustically pleasing sanctuary of the Easton Church of God for the performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” and Astor Piazzolla’s “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.” But before a note was struck, MSO board president Jeffrey Parker scotched any rumors that might ensue regarding the conductor-less concert they were about to witness – not unusual for a chamber orchestra. “I assure you, Michael Repper is still with us,” he said of the music director who made an auspicious debut at the September season opener at Chesapeake College’s Todd Performing Arts Center and will return to the podium for holiday concerts next month. The 15 strings-only musicians were led by example and cues from the evening’s guest soloist, Russian-born violinist Igor Yuzefovich of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and, after moving to the United States and earning advanced degrees at Peabody Conservatory, played with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Without a syllable of introduction, Yuzefovich launched the program with the beloved Spring concerto of Vivaldi’s 18th-century “Four Seasons.” Those whose only exposure to this masterpiece are a few chords amplifying myriad scenes in movies, TV miniseries, or commercials might say to themselves, “Oh, I know that one” – even if they think maybe Vivaldi is a sports-car brand. Of course, this audience was more attuned than that. But the sonnets were written, perhaps by Vivaldi himself, to accompany or clarify what became known as “program music” are included in the concert program: “Springtime is upon us” Da-Da DA Duh-Duh DA . . .

Vivaldi’s “Seasons” concerto is divided into three fast-slow-fast movements. The slow pianissimo segment features a viola and violin call-and-response with harpsichordist Bozena Jedrzejczak Brown providing soft textures suggesting a nap in a newly flowering meadow. The third movement celebrates the season with a festive dance pastorale.

Leaping two centuries forward, Piazzolla’s Argentinian Summer introduces the tango-meets-modern-jazz portion of the program. Here the tempo emulates torrid heat with searing violins led by Yuzefovich and concertmaster Kimberly McCollum, foreshadowing thunderous cloudbursts accented by the lower strings’ lightning strikes.

Vivaldi’s Summer follows a similar path with far different arrangements in the soft breezes of ensemble strings dotted with chirping violins suggesting songbirds until the second and third movements prestos roar with the growling and plucking staccato of violas, cello, and bass.

Buenos Aires Autumn arrives with pizzicato stomping to a tango dance beat accompanied by cellist Katie McCarthy’s sonorous solo sitting in for Piazzolla’s instrument of choice, the accordion-like bandoneon. Violins take over in solo and ensemble configurations to flutter like falling leaves in a tree-swaying zephyr.

After intermission, Autumn resumes with Vivaldi’s lilting harvest revelry segueing into a post-celebratory slumber. The awakening allegro opens with a march-like theme of hunters on the prowl signaling a fearsome rustle of strings pointing to prey fleeing for their lives. Spoiler alert: On a downbeat note, it seems that not all survive.

Winter comes to Buenos Aires with the guest soloist evoking somber anticipation of long, dark nights, alleviated by a flickering acceleration that heats up to the crackling fire of all strings on hand. Vivaldi’s winter counters with shiveringly tremulous violins and fierce winds howled by violist Yuri Tomenko, bassist Chris Chlumsky, cellist McCarthy and lower-string accomplices.

The concert concludes where it commenced: In spring, fittingly so because Spring in the Southern Hemisphere is Autumn here, north of the Equator. McCollum introduces the season with a restless theme picked up by Yuvefovich and the entire string ensemble in a Bach-inspired counterpoint leading to a torrid ending punctuated by a harpsichord tingle of chill in the air.

A standing ovation without a word spoken, from first note to last – a post-election blessing.

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra

Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” and Piazzolla’s “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires”
Repeat concerts: Epworth United Methodist Church, Rehoboth Beach, 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12, and Community Church, Ocean Pines, 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 13; midatlanticsymphony.org

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

As in much of his work, Geoff Delanoy makes both an artistic statement in his photography and a visual commentary on threats to so much of what we have too long taken for granted regarding the sustainability of quality of life on our planet. It’s not an optimistic viewpoint, as suggested by the title of his current exhibit at the Adkins Arboretum Visitors Center in Ridgely – “Ghost Forest.”

In the context of “Canary in the Mine” warnings of impending disaster, Delanoy’s cautionary tale in pictures might be called “Loblollies in the Marsh.”Delanoy, a professor who lives in Baltimore and chairs the Art Department of Notre Dame of Maryland University, became fascinated with the climate change vulnerability of low-lying coastal terrain while engaged in a decade-and-more photographic project called “Fugitive Landscapes.” Over just that stretch of time – milliseconds in geologic Earth time – Delanoy noticed even day-to-day changes in tides and landscapes at Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California, ultimately resulting in “Trees,” his black-and-white photography book. 

That experience led him to explore similar, if not more immediately alarming, effects on coastal climes closer to home. He studied climate changes in the Chesapeake Bay, where previously habitable islands are being inundated and erased by high tides. “Ghost forests were a very visible manifestation of changes in the environment with sea-level changes.”

The “Ghost Forest” exhibit at Adkins, comprising about 20 black-and-white photographs, makes a much larger statement regarding the number of images and its stark-yet-muted tones. 

Delanoy tried color photography when beginning this project but changed his mind. He explains his artistic decision: “I found the cool earth tones of the shore’s landscape too peaceful and visually pleasing to convey the urgency of the climate crisis. The images have a more immediate impact in monochrome.”

No doubt climate-change deniers would excoriate Delanoy’s decision as leftist media manipulation. They ignore the fact that it’s pushing 80 degrees just before Election Day and Veterans Day and that the confused forsythia in my backyard is in bloom again. And that my wife suggested we turn on the air conditioning in November. 

The black-and-white imagery in “Ghost Forest,” is quite persuasive, if repetitive. One of the most striking photographs is a stretch of paved road interrupted by a still reservoir of water reflecting cumulus clouds and, no doubt, blue skies above, which foreshadows a distant stand of pines. The peaceful scene of standing water where it should only be rushing past during rare stormy events documents what we’re in for,

The images are untitled, and the locations are not identified. This one appeared to be shot at the Blackwater National Refuge. But the road could well have been on Hoopers Island, where you can drive in at low tide but may be unable to leave at high tide. So much of marshy, low-lying Dorchester County is predicted to be just another part of the Chesapeake Bay within a generation. 

Most of the other shots depict stands of dead pines, some of them loblollies, and oaks, that were essentially drowned and poisoned by the invasion of salt water. They stand in lines of dead wooden soldiers shorn of limbs. In one image, they lean or fall over across from an open tributary with an island of surviving-for-now pines. One shot captures a lonely tree, standing alone amid the marsh grass, bent over, as if prayerfully, by years of prevailing winds.

You can meet the artist Saturday, Nov. 12, at a reception at the Adkins center, a fitting location for this subject matter as it is surrounded by the arboretum grounds and the Tuckahoe State Park.

We give Delanoy the last word: “Trees bear witness to the landscape and communicate on a visceral level. Hopefully, the photographs strike a balance between the inherent beauty found in nature but also motivate us to change course with the great losses that we face because of climate change.”

‘Ghost Forest’

Adkins Arboretum Visitors Center, 12610 Eveland Rd., Ridgely, through Dec. 23. Reception with artist Geoff Delanoy, 2-4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12. adkinsarboretum.org

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

It was an evening of firsts: the first concert of the 25th anniversary season of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, the first performance conducted by Michael Repper as the MSO’s new music director, and the first major cultural event at Chesapeake College’s Todd Performing Arts Center since COVID shut it down two years ago.

But the priority Thursday night on the Wye Mills campus was music. As led by Repper in his debut, the performance was at once rousing and soothing. Most rousing was the opening piece, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, also known as “Emperor,” featuring guest soloist Michael McHale. The first movement, 20 minutes in length, begins with a piano solo without an orchestral introduction, other than three short sonorous chords. That approach was unheard of at the time, representing another first on the evening’s program. Also unusual, although not a first, is the structure of the second and third movements, played without a pause between them.

From the revolutionary concerto’s opening notes, McHale riveted our attention with his assertive, indeed “heroic” attack on the keyboard, symbolic of the Napoleonic Wars that were a constant real-time inspiration for Beethoven, or it might have been in protest, as he composed “Emperor.” This unofficial title may or may not refer to Napoleon, of whom Beethoven was no fan. 

The movement settles into pastoral passages with a teardrop interplay with the orchestra’s large string section, including 13 violins, led by concertmaster Kimberly McCollum and second violinist Celaya Kirchner. Later, a march-like call and response pit the pianist and orchestra, challenging each other right up to the dramatic finish. 

The second movement suggests a more conversational interchange, a nocturne with muted strings and wind instruments, particularly oboe and flute, led by Dana Newcomb and Mindy Heinsohn. The third movement follows immediately with a lone bassoon siren (Terry Ewell) announcing a change of tempo and temperament that carries over to the final movements, which foretell or celebrate victory in a solo piano rondo with bass-and-cello underpinnings led by Chris Chlumsky and Jacques-Pierre Malan. The finale closes with timpani punctuation delivered by Barry Dove.

After intermission, the audience in the center seats got a better look at the conducting mannerisms of the new music director, who was largely hidden by the piano in the Beethoven opener. To applause, Repper introduced Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major as a “sunny and joyous piece that’s all about water and the river Rhine.” With the fury of Hurricane Ian flooding all over the news, “Rhenish” offered a soothing, if momentary, respite for those of us out of harm’s way. It is the symphony Repper himself chose for his MSO debut. 

The first movement, Lebhaft (for lively), lives up to its billing with a sonata in a heroic stance for full orchestra. It’s followed by a scherzo theme based on a waltz-like German folk dance that conveys a delightful awakening on the Rhine anchored by the lower strings. The nicht schnell (not fast) third movement creates a moment of calm as a dreamlike current gently rocks the boat. Known as the “Cathedral movement,” the fourth is said to have been inspired by Robert and Clara Schumann’s visit to the cathedral in Cologne overlooking the Rhine. The French horn and trombone sections, captained by Karin Berkeley and Jeffrey Gaylord, have waited this long to sound their instruments in a brass chorale signifying a noble house of worship. Returning to earlier themes, the fifth movement, with the voyage’s destination in sight, rises to a spirited hoorah heralded by horns, percussion, and strings, high and low—a time to rejoice for all.

Repper was at his most animated in this finale, bending toward each section, in turn, to implore the musicians to feel and reflect the symphony’s emotional momentum. He and they succeeded on this most rewarding and promising night of firsts.
                                                                            ***
While the full orchestra doesn’t return in concert until Nov. 10-13, with “Four Seasons” from the perspectives of the northern (Vivaldi) and southern (Piazzolla) hemispheres, you can catch five of the orchestra’s musicians in concert Wednesday, Oct. 5 at Washington College in Chestertown. The Mid-Atlantic Symphony Quintet performs the Piano Quintet in A minor, Opus 30, by Louise Farrenc, and Piano Quintet A major, D. 667 “Trout” by Franz Schubert. The five musicians are violinist Kimberly McCollum, violist Yuri Tomenko, cellist Diana Golden, bassist Chris Chlumsky and pianist Woobin Park. The concert is at 7:30 p.m. washcoll.edu/concert

The MSO Ensemble Series resumes with woodwind quintet concerts on October 28 and 30, a holiday brass quintet on December 17 and 18, a string quartet and piano concert, plus a jazz orchestra next February and May, respectively, all in Rehoboth Beach and Easton. midatlanticsymphony.org 

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Opening Weekend
Saturday, Oct. 1, 7:30 p.m., Cape Henlopen High School, Lewes, Del.
Sunday, Oct. 2, 3 p.m., Performing Arts Center, Ocean City.
midatlanticsymphony.org

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

If you thought beach season was over, think again. Cape May, on the southern tip of the Jersey Shore, claiming the title of “America’s First Seaside Resort,” offers way more than the typical beach attractions – sand, surf, and arcade rides. And while it says on the calendar that Columbus Day is Oct. 10, that three-day holiday is celebrated as Victorian Weekend in Cape May. 

With many of its bed-and-breakfasts and condo rentals dating back to Antebellum times, Cape May is a Victorian architecture treasure land that entertained presidents, ranging from James Buchanan, widely regarded – perhaps until recently – as the worst president in U.S. history. He squired Southern belles with sparkling wine at a White House party as Civil War broke out. Buchanan, a bachelor president, also partied at Cape May’s Congress Hall, where you can still book a room and enjoy a meal, indoors or out, at the Blue Pig Cafe. Book-ending Buchanan, President Ulysses S. Grant, who helped Abraham Lincoln win the war and save the Union, also stayed at Congress Hall.

Take one of the available Victorian Weekend Trolley tours and explore the area’s treasures. Choose from Mansions by the Sea, Ghosts of Cape May, the Underground Railroad, and Cape May’s Forgotten Sports History. Afterward, you can go shopping, have lunch al fresco along the Washington Street pedestrian mall, or drop by the crafts fair at the Emlen Physick Estate. Here, you can also reserve a brunch or dinner table at Vintage, a climate-controlled tent bistro amid the estate’s flower gardens. (It’s BYOB for wine or other adult beverages.) A tour of the 1879 Physick mansion museum, one of Cape May’s finest examples of Victorian architecture, is recommended. And if you’re theatrically inclined, stick around for Phantoms of the Physick Estate: Spellbound Sisters, a haunted-house melodrama.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in “Send in the Clowns”

If you stay for the week, Cape May Stage offers performances of Send in the Clowns for its back-to-back Sherlock Holmes Weekends starting Oct. 14, in which clues are presented Friday and Saturday evenings for a mystery that is solved by scouring the streets of Cape May. There’s a Sunday night reveal with prizes for the winning sleuths. Meanwhile, enjoy dinner at neighboring 410 Bank Street or Elaine’s Cape May.

And, oh yes. The boardwalk, beach, and the Atlantic Ocean are open 24/7. Cape May-Lewes Ferry is about an hour and a half drive from Easton to the Delaware Shore in Lewes.

Victorian Weekend, Oct. 7-10, capemac.org/experience/special-events/victorian-weekend; 
Sherlock Holmes Weekends, Oct. 14-16, Oct. 21-23; capemac.org/experience/special-events/sherlock-holmes-weekend
                                                                 ***
The Chesapeake Film Festival, which has been mostly virtual the last couple of COVID years, returns to in-person screenings Sept. 30-Oct. 2 at the Avalon and Ebenezer theaters in downtown Easton. (Masks optional.) Then it continues with free at-home streaming Oct. 3-9. The live festival opens late Friday afternoon at the Eastern Shore Conservation Center courtyard with a reception honoring filmmakers and donors. Tickets, $125, include admission to the films, starting with a series of environmental documentaries and shorts Friday night at the Avalon. On Oct. 1, day 2 of the festival focuses on “Women of Impact.” Leading off with The Glorias, a narrative feature about the life and work of Gloria Steinem, it features Julianne Moore, Timothy Hutton, and Better Midler. Next is Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, regarded as the first female feature film director. “Women of Impact” resumes with a Sunday, Oct. 2, matinee at the Ebenezer with a William Wyler classic, Roman Holiday, starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. Part II of the double-feature is Directed by William Wyler, produced by his daughter, Catherine Wyler, who will be on hand afterward for a Q&A. Admission is $15 to $25 for in-person screenings. Free at-home streaming begins at 9 a.m. Oct. 3 and ends at midnight Oct. 9.

chesapeakefilmfestival.com
                                                              ***

Gabriela Montero in the Prager concert series

Also at the Ebenezer: The Prager Family Center for the Arts launched the new international concert series led by Grammy-winning pianist and composer Gabriela Montero on its Sept. 17 opening night. Next up in the series, on Oct. 29, is pianist Yuja Wang of China, winner of both Gramophone’s Young Artist of the Year and Musical America’s Artist of the Year awards. Montero returns to the Ebenezer stage on Nov. 19 with Puerto Rican soprano Larisa Martinez, and the star attraction announced so far in the series – Oscar and Emmy-winning violinist Joshua Bell – with a reprise performance the next day. Canadian pianist and multi-Grammy nominee Marc-Andre Hamelin will be in concert on Dec. 10. Montero returns in a Dec. 17 “Irish Christmas” program with Anthony Kearns, who has performed with the Irish Tenors. After a winter hiatus, the series resumes next summer with two more concerts anchored by Gabriela Montero, starting June 3 with Cuban saxophonist Paquito d’Rivera. Twenty free tickets for each concert are set aside for “underserved communities.”

monteroprager.com/concerts
                                                                 ***
The Classic Theatre of Maryland (formerly the Annapolis Shakespeare Company) goes back to its roots, as it does at least once a season, by presenting the Bard comedy Twelfth Night, Oct. 7-30 at its theater/cabaret at 1804 West St. (We believe 1804 refers to a street address, not a date of origination for the company.) Here, Classic Theatre reimagines Shakespeare’s romantic, separated-twins/mistaken-identity comedy as a golden age Hollywood tribute. Upcoming cabaret shows feature vocalists Ruby Hayes (Oct. 17) and Heather Maxwell (Nov. 14). They’ll be followed by dual theatrical favorites for the season: White Christmas (Nov. 25-Dec. 24) and A Christmas Carol (Dec. 2-24). While they’re at it, Classic Theatre throws in a Dec. 5 cabaret show starring Broadway’s Ian Knauer (Dames at Sea, Anastasia). 

classictheatremaryland.org
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Sabra Richards and her daughter Lynn Richards collaborate on an unusual, if not unique, sculptural exhibit at the Dorchester Arts Center in Cambridge. Kiln-formed fusible glass is Sabra’s principal medium. She chooses glass of myriad colors and creates still more hues by layering various components to be fired along with strands of cane pulled into the malleable glass framed by welded steel to mount wall constructions. Lynn, a third-generation artist in her mother’s artistic mold, incorporates found streetscape elements in her glass and steel sculptures. Together, they are “Richards & Richards” and their show is “Glass, Light, and Steel.” Also at the Dorchester center is “Natural Evidence” by Caroline County environmental artist and writer Mary McCoy who works mainly with such found materials as grapevines, oyster shells, and butterfly wings along with the written word. Both shows open on Sept. 30 and run through Oct. 29.

dorchesterarts.org/exhibits

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

Michael Repper makes his debut on Sept. 29 as just the third music director in Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra (MSO) history, succeeding Julien Benichou, who reigned with his baton for 17 years following the MSO’s founding maestro, Don Buxton.

Music Director Michael Repper

Considering his appointment was not announced until mid-June – around the time Benichou’s MSO contract was up, and he became artistic director of the Washington Opera Society – Repper considers himself fortunate to have a piece he chose on his premiere concert program. “Julien did the lion’s share,” Repper said of the orchestra’s upcoming 25th anniversary season programming. “I’m very excited about the soloists he lined up.” That includes guest piano soloist Michael McHale, who will open the concert at Chesapeake College with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor).” But the second half features Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 in E flat major (“Rhenish”), selected by Repper. “Next season will be all mine,” he says.

The 2022-23 season for Repper and the MSO continues, as usual, with two more concerts of the same program in southern Delaware and Ocean City area beach communities. The next set of shows are in November with a “Four Seasons” program of Vivaldi and Piazzolla, followed in early December by “Holiday Joy” favorites and the annual New Year’s Eve gig at Easton’s Christ Church. After a January-February break, the orchestra’s Elizabeth Loker Competition takes center stage. It will bring the winner of its young musicians’ prize, along with Brahms’ Tragic Overture and Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1, which was also the first symphony by an African-American woman performed by a major orchestra – the Chicago Symphony – in 1933. Repper and the MSO wrap up their first season together late next April with a piece by Louise Forrenc, an 18th Century French composer chosen by Benichou, a native of France, who also selected Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”) for the finale.

While Benichou left big shoes to fill at the conductor’s podium, Repper, 31, brings a broad and deep resume for a music director his age – having already conducted orchestras on four continents. Aside from Delmarva’s professional ensemble, Repper directs the Northern Neck Orchestra of Kilmarnock, just across the Chesapeake from Virginia’s Eastern Shore, the Ashland Symphony Orchestra in Ohio, and Peru’s Central Ensembles of Sinfonia in that nation’s Lima capital. Additionally, in a position he’s held since age 22, he is also the music director of the New York Youth Symphony at Carnegie Hall. That he will be leaving the youth symphony after one more season is “a bittersweet occasion,” Repper says, citing the “amazingly talented kids I’ve met and helped nurture there.”

Speaking of mentoring, Repper counts Marin Alsop among the most influential musical figures in his life, starting at age 13. Describing what could well be an example of paying it forward, Alsop was mentored by Leonard Bernstein late in his life. “What she has done since,” says Repper, “ranks with historic proportions.” As a result, Repper, a native of southern California, moved to Baltimore. “I wanted to be closer,” he said of the people he studied under at the prestigious Peabody Conservatory, including Alsop and Swiss conductor Gustav Meier. It was there he also met Benichou during Repper’s time as a conducting fellow and guest conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, of which Alsop served as the first woman music director of a major American classical orchestra. It is also where Repper met many of the musicians he will now lead at MSO.

In the last year, the MSO has presented another significant professional opportunity for Repper. Not all of his many projects involved fully professional musicians. He taught students. He led orchestras comprised of adult freelance pros, volunteers, and talented youngsters. The MSO, led by board president Jeffrey Parker, consulted with the union that now represents the orchestra, Musicians’ Association of Metropolitan Baltimore, Local 40-543, American Federation of Musicians, among many other sources, in selecting their new maestro.

“We are delighted to welcome Michael to the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra,” Parker said at the time he announced Repper’s appointment. “And we’re confident he will continue to build its reputation as an exceptional regional orchestra as he inspires and engages both our audiences and the communities he serves.”

To that end, Repper says one of his priorities, even above seeking recording opportunities for the orchestra, “is to make our concerts such a fun experience that our Delmarva fans come back again and again as we attract a new fanbase.”

Besides conducting, don’t be surprised if Repper takes a turn at the piano one evening. “I’ve played since I was four, and while I’m not sustaining myself as a concert pianist, I make sure I’m always playing, or I’ll forget,” he says with a laugh, adding that he “sometimes still plays a concerto with the orchestra.” In rehearsal, we guess. But you never know.

On increasingly rare occasions when he’s not on the road, Repper lives in Charlottesville to be with his girlfriend, who is studying law at the University of Virginia.

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Season Openers:
Thursday, Sept. 29, 7: 30 p.m., Chesapeake College, Wye Mills
Saturday, Oct., 1 7:30 p.m., Cape Henlopen High School, Lewes, Del.
Sunday Oct. 2, 3 p.m., Performing Arts Center, Ocean City.

midatlanticsymphony.org

“Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;
Like doth quit like, and MEASURE still for MEASURE.”

– Capitalized emphasis indicated by William Shakespeare

Tragedy and comedy are what the all-volunteer Shore Shakespeare company was about until personal tragedy – and a worldwide pandemic – shut it down for a year in 2020. The pandemic, of course, shut down almost every company staging live performances, from super-selling Broadway shows such as Hamilton to touring troupes like Boston-based Brown Box Theatre that brought Shakespeare in the park to towns all over the Delmarva Peninsula. After 11 years, Brown Box, established in 2010, folded. Shore Shakespeare, established in 2013, overcame both COVID and, more devastating to its survival, the death of its co-founder Christian Rogers.

Last summer, 2021, Shore Shakespeare rose from its twin setbacks to stage as a tribute to Rogers “A Little Touch of Shakespeare: On the Theme of Love,” It featured scenes from tragedies – Othello, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and The Merchant of Venice; as well as comedies – Much Ado About Nothing, Taming of the Shrew, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Beginning Labor Day weekend, Shore Shakespeare returns after three years with its first full production of a Bard play – Measure for Measure, starting at Adkins Arboretum near Ridgely, then playing the following two weekends at Oxford Community Center, and ending at Chestertown’s Wilmer Park.

Among the leading players is Avra Sullivan, cast in two roles not usually paired in Shakespeare’s so-called “problem play.” Sullivan gives credit to her director, Greg Minahan. (“It’s regarded as a problem play because it’s a problem for the director,” Minahan says, “whether to play it more as comedy or tragedy.”) “It was Greg’s idea,” Sullivan says of Minahan, who also directs himself in the lead as the Duke of Vienna and a disguised friar spying on the deputy standing in for him. Sullivan plays Mariana, betrothed (but for her lack of a dowry) to Angelo, the duke’s pompous deputy played by Will Robinson, as well as Escalus, Angelo’s attaché. “It works,” Sullivan says of her dual roles, adding that “to make them different adds to the challenge.” Playing Lady Macbeth, she says, was her favorite role with Shore Shakespeare. “It was kind of on my bucket list.”

An early Measure for Measure scene set in a brothel depicts the moral morass Vienna has fallen into. Angelo, determined to eradicate this wickedness, intends to make an example of Claudio, who has gotten his fiancée pregnant before their wedding date. The penalty Angelo imposes is beheading. “In his mind, he didn’t do anything wrong,” says Paul Briggs, who plays opposite Avalon Robuck as Juliet, Claudio’s intended. In much of the play, she clutches a baby doll in the “role” of their bastard child. Avalon’s mother, Heather, plays Claudio’s novitiate sister Isabella, who pleads with Angelo to spare her brother. The duke’s appointee offers to let Claudio live only if lovely Isabella surrenders her virginity to him. Angelo is spurned at first, but later a tryst is arranged with Mariana conspiringly disguised as Isabella. (Shakespeare characters, famously, are easily fooled, even by intimate partners.)

Meanwhile, the duke, undercover as a friar, sees what overreaching moral authority Angelo is up to. “I see him principally as a hypocrite,” says Robinson of the jerk he plays. “He’s legalistically minded but also power hungry. He thinks the duke has given him free rein.”

Heather Robuck interprets Isabella as a novitiate virgin with a guarded worldview. “She very much wants a strictly structured life so as not to be tempted. She’s smart and virtuous, but there’s a little sass in there when in defense of her brother.”

Minahan sees the play and the evolving judgment of his character as a contest between “mercy and justice. But he finds that there is a third choice – consequence for choices – which does not include beheading for fornication.

Hence, the title Measure for Measure and its explication in the final scene rehearsed on a lawn in Denton and a set that will move from site to site in September on the mid-Shore. By then, the cast will be fully costumed and rehearsed – no more asking for lines and just delivering them.

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

Shore Shakespeare presents Measure for Measure
2 p.m. Sept. 3 and 4, Adkins Arboretum, 12610 Eveland Rd., Ridgely (free with $5-$15 arboretum admission)
6 p.m. Sept. 10, 3 p.m. Sept. 11, Oxford Community Center, 200 Oxford Rd. (free)
6 p.m. Sept. 17, 3 p.m. Sept. 18, Wilmer Park, 118 N. Cross St., Chestertown (free)

All performances are outdoors; bring lawn chairs or blankets; shoreshakespeare.org