The return of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival to live concerts after a 2020 virtual series of prerecorded and livestream performances is reason enough to celebrate. But the impeccable elegance of the Chesapeake Music’s new home made the evening a visual and musical sensation starring, among others, cellist Marcy Rosen and violinist Catherine Cho, the festival’s co-artistic directors.

Downtown Easton now has a resplendently restored performing arts venue in a space formerly known as the Prager Auditorium. But that space has been renamed Ebenezer Theater and transformed by inspired taste and rich refinement. No doubt, the inspiration derives, in part, from the building’s original purpose as a house of worship. Built in 1856-57, Ebenezer Methodist Episcopal remained a church for more than a century until Ebenezer and two other Easton congregations merged to form St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in the early 1960s. Six new stained-glass windows reflect a faith in culture and the arts.

You enter the theater from an unprepossessing Washington Street entrance. Up one flight of olive-green carpeted stairs brings you into what was once a sanctuary, redesigned with features suggesting the church’s early period. Patterned carpeting complements the stained-glass colors; each window draped in gold fabric matching the stage curtain. Gold Victorian-style wallpaper flanks the stage, which itself frames a Gothic celestial arch. Overhead, nine sleekly modern chandeliers adorn an intricately embossed gold-leaf ceiling. Seating is by movable plush chairs in grape-green upholstery, both on the concert hall floor and balcony at the back of the theater.

For this COVID restricted concert, chairs were grouped in pods of two to four seats together, totaling no more than half the Ebenezer’s expected capacity of about 180. Masks are still required of those attending the festival, including the musicians. 

The evening opened with brief remarks by Chesapeake Music director/founder Don Buxton, who called attention to the stage’s centerpiece–a restored Steinway grand piano. Fittingly, the inaugural piece played in the grand new concert hall was Mozart’s “Piano Trio No. 2,” written at a time in his career when the pianoforte, forerunner to the modern piano, emerged as an instrument displacing the harpsichord. Mozart, himself a keyboard virtuoso, wrote this trio in part to showcase his own performance skills. The piece opens with a bright and lilting solo performed Friday night by Ieva Jokubaviciute. Catherine Cho quickly joins her in a sparkling violin turn bolstered by Marcy Rosen’s cello underpinning. Together they create a lyrical dream sequence followed by mood-shifting movements indicating discord, regrets, and hopeful resolution.

violinist Catherine Cho

From the comfort food of Mozart, the program turns sharply to Webern’s piece that undercuts the key structure of every piece Amadeus and other grand masters wrote. Webern’s early 20th century “Langsamer Satz,” roughly translated as Slowly with Feeling, gives equal measure to all 12 notes on the chromatic scale. No E-sharp, C-flat, or whatever. A quintet–violinists Cho and Francesca dePasquale, violist Molly Carr, cellist Peter Stumpf, and Peggy Pearson on oboe–incrementally build “Langsamer” to a searing emotional crescendo abetted by a throbbing cello vibrato, mournful violins, and a piercing woodwind that ultimately relax their grip into a placid and somewhat anticlimactic resolve.

Intermission provides a break to prepare us for Dvorak’s “Piano Quartet No. 2,” performed by pianist Diane Walsh with dePasquale, Carr, and Stumpf on strings. From the lush four-instrument opening to march-like cadences and staccato interludes, the quartet takes us on a roller-coaster of moods that might be interpreted as psychotic episodes. Indeed, Dvorak wrote the piece in a fevered stretch of a few summer weeks after one of his benefactors complained that he had not delivered the promised piano quartet in 14 years. It would be Dvorak’s last quartet, but well worth the wait.

Marcy Rosen, cellist

Kudos to Chesapeake Music’s adventurous program, delivering both a splendid portion of meat and potatoes (Mozart) and exotic fruit and vegetables (Webern and Dvorak). Kudos also to Paul and Joanne Prager for this Ebenezer jewel. There is more to come in future restoration as the name atop of the former church suggests: The Prager Family Arts Center.

Full disclosure: Because of COVID restrictions and the early sellout of the opening concert, I am reviewing the music via livestream, although I did observe a pre-concert rehearsal by the musicians. Second disclosure: I attended church services and Sunday school at the Ebenezer until St. Mark’s opened when I was in junior high. Although I vaguely recall the organ music and choir, it’s doubtful that either was as artfully inspiring as the new Ebenezer’s opening night, justifiably billed as “Extravaganza.”

By the way, the name Ebenezer has nothing to do with Scrooge. It stands biblically for “stone of help,” of which Easton’s Ebenezer was and could be again by virtue of arts inspiration. 

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

36th CHAMBER FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT

Mozart’s “Piano Trio in G Major, K. 496;” Webern’s “Langsamer Satz” (Slowly with Feeling); Dvorak’s “Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, Opus 87.” 

Ebenezer Theater, 17 S. Washington St., Easton. Festival continues at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 5, with “Dynamic Duos,” Sunday, June 6, “Summer Nights,” Tuesday, June 10, “Masterworks,” Friday, June 11, “Piano Spotlight,” and Saturday, June 12, “Festival Finale.” Tickets $50, live-streaming $15 (viewing available for one week, including Friday’s opening night). chesapeakemusic.org, 410-819-0380

Femme et Oiseau Devant-la Lune by Joan Miró

You could say without exaggeration that Miro in New York 1947, the new exhibition at Easton’s Academy Art Museum, was centuries in the making–preceding by one year the inauguration of the first president of the United States. Much of the printmaking derived from works by Atelier 17 artists now on display until just past the Fourth of July are rooted in a relief-etching technique invented by poet William Blake in 1788.

William Stanley Hayter’s “Falling Figure”

Blake dubbed it “illuminated printing,” by which some of his written masterpieces were published in book form. Works by artists-in-residence at the New York-based atelier–many of them refugees of war and genocide–adorn illustrated texts of then-living poets, principally Ruthven Todd, whose first name honors a Norse clan of Scottish noblemen. An early 1947 Miro print enhances Todd’s verses, translated from Spanish:

“Once he had a country where the sun shone,
Through the enchanted trees like lace.
But now it is troubled, and happiness is gone.
For the bombs fell in that fine place
And the magician found we he had woken
His people killed, his gay pots broken.”

Literal words meld progressively into visual art as one moves through the two galleries of about 70 Miro, Hayter, and Atelier 17 works. Although Miro–Joan Miro of Spain–is the headliner of this exhibition, British artist Stanley William Hayter was the seminal printmaking artist whose spark and glue held the transplant school together through the early postwar years that drew them to New York in the first place.

“Harriet Tubman” by Norma Morgan

Notably, Hayter created a welcome environment for women artists, a dozen of whom are represented in this show–principally Czech-French printmaker/painter/sculptor Terry Haass, but also Norma Morgan, whose artworks are featured in a companion solo exhibit in AAM’s two smaller first-floor galleries initiated and curated by Mehves Lelic, the museum’s new chief curator. Lelic also completed curation of the “Miro” exhibit planned by the administration of museum director Benjamin Simons, now directing Telfair Museums in Savannah, Ga., and Anke Van Wagenberg, currently curator at Vero Beach (Fla.) Art Museum. Sarah Jesse, formerly deputy director of California’s Orange County Museum of Art, is now Easton’s new director.

Among the stars of the main AAM exhibit, besides Miro and Hayter, is American artist Fred Becker, whose wife, fellow American Jean Morrison, was also an Atelier 17 mainstay when it relocated to New York City after the Nazis marched into Paris in 1940. Around this time, Miro also arrived in America as fascist troops overthrew government loyalists in his native Spain’s civil war. Miro joined Hayter’s group of artists in refining a method of printing in the cursive style of handwriting deployed by Blake a century and a half earlier. These largely text-driven prints resemble a printed page–including copper-plate etchings. Others by Miro feature a more vibrant intaglio technique embroidered with imagery that offers a glimpse into his later Surrealism period–primitively expressive and free-flowing.

Atelier 17’s printmaking explorations stretch far beyond text in the next gallery. Femmes et Oiseau Devant  la Lune (Women and Bird in Front of the Moon) from 1947 captures the Miro we’ve come to know in paintings that succeeded this experimental phase in a long career. (Miro lived to survive his 90th birthday by several months.) 

Haass’ Breaking the Vicious Circle engraving of three highly abstract figures is more painterly than etchingly–if that’s a word–more brush-stroked than carved out. Becker’s Aerial Jungle series progresses from three copper plates to earth-toned flyover views suggesting an untrammeled rainforest. Hayter’s Falling Figures series represents a stark departure from poet Blake’s plate-making that originally launched the Atelier 17 mission. Waxy “soft-ground” etching facilitates drawing by pencil point, offering a free hand for artists to experiment with abstractions bringing to mind, for instance, works by Yves Tanguy, foreseen in text-anchored Slender Dignity of Isolated Bones. 

The best works of Norma Morgan are saved for her Enchanted World exhibit. So, don’t skip the galleries just down the hall from the museum’s new Harrison Street courtyard entrance. Her hand-colored engraving of Harriet Tubman in a biblical-miracle setting is not to be missed. Nor is her Sojourner Truth, Spirit of the Mountain, a celebration of the ongoing civil rights struggle. 

And now that spring is no longer threatening snowstorms (we hope), as in the upper Midwest, it’s an ideal time to take in the outdoor Waterwall installation by Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann before it comes down in June. The mixed-media enclosure of acrylic, silkscreen, and collaged vinyl-over-glass evokes the artist’s interpretation of Chinese cave murals transformed minute to minute by sunlight and passing clouds. 

Indoor and outdoor art. Masks are still part of our collective viewing experience. But at least we have one now. And these works are well worth any trivial inconvenience. 

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

MIRO IN NEW YORK, 1947: Miro, Hayter and Atelier 17

Through July 8, Academy Art Museum, 106 South St. Easton, online viewing available through Aug. 1. Zoom conversation with Carla Esposito Hayter, art historian, and daughter-law of Atelier 17 founder Stanley William Hayter, led by AAM curator Mehves Lilic, 10 a.m. May 8, $20-$24.

NORMA MORGAN: ENCHANTED WORLD

Through Aug. 1, Academy Art Museum; 410-822-2787, academyartmuseum.org. Admission: $3, free for children 12 and younger. Hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, noon-4 p.m. Sundays, closed Mondays. 

WATERWALL: Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann

Through June 6, an outdoor installation on museum grounds, South and Harrison streets

“This was,” as Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra board president Jeffrey Parker said, “the most unconventional season ever.” And the season finale Thursday night, performed live in Easton–like each previous MSO concert in this pandemic-infected season–was no less ‘unconventional.’ Only more so. 

The concert, available on live-stream through April 29, opened with a world premiere commissioned by the Mid-Atlantic orchestra–its first commission in 12 years–by Baltimore-based composer James Lee III. (Full disclosure: I viewed this concert by live-stream, not in person.) 

Rodolfo Zanetti

The MSO has a close connection with Lee, a professor of music at Morgan State University, where its general manager and lead percussionist, Dane Krich, is the director of percussion studies. With little demand for new work during the artistic desert of the pandemic year 2020, Lee wrote a piece for one of the few orchestras performing throughout the current season. Lee said his Restored Images, written specifically for a string orchestra of 18 players, is his response to the challenges of 2020. “After Minneapolis,” he said, referring to the George Floyd murder at the hands–or rather, knees–of convicted former cop Derek Chauvin, “not that many people were in the mood to celebrate. Various tensions were always arising. Amid all the darkness and sadness, there are notes of hope. And you have these bell tones of things becoming much calmer.”

Restored Images begins solemnly with slowly ascending lines growing more urgent as the challenges we can imagine or vividly recall lead to hope and joy over what was once considered normal life. The word ‘Hopeful’ plastered across edifices all over downtown Easton comes to mind. Whether the joy anticipated in Lee’s piece comes to fruition is for the listener to accept or deny. To me, hopefulness is left in doubt, perhaps as it should be. Still, something of a downer.

A similar musical throughline is evident in Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night). Before he graduated from what was known as High German Romanticism into atonal modernism–young Schoenberg was a disciple of Wagner, Mahler, and Richard Strauss. He wrote music for operettas, including this piece composed for a string sextet, later transcribed for string orchestras. Inspired by a Richard Dehmel poem, it tells the story of two lovers alone in the woods. The woman confesses that she’s pregnant by another man and, after some hesitation, her current lover says he will accept the child as his own. The nocturnal mood is carried by cellos, picked up by lighter tones of violas before growing agitated as news of her expectancy is revealed. Confusion and emotional chaos ensue before a resolution of forgiveness is suggested by mellow cellos and violins. Still, the ending feels almost indifferent, certainly unresolved. Life may well be like that, particularly in arenas of romance. But musically, Verklarte Nacht is a bit like a therapy session curtailed too soon. 

With no intermission, the third piece comes as a stark break from the previous two—almost a mood-altering nullification. To me, having reviewed tango-based musicals in Queens, New York, for Newsday, Astor Piazzolla’s Aconcagua Concerto for Bandoneon and Orchestra was a welcome break from moody strings of lockdown and love-lorn recoveries. 

Argentinian soloist Rodolfo Zanetti proved to be, as advertised, a virtuoso on the bandoneon, a concertina/accordion-style instrument essential to tango ensembles popular all over his homeland. While the bandoneon can hold its own when matched with a string orchestra, it is usually performed with other bandoneonistas playing together or in isolated solo riffs that draw applause often associated in other contexts with drum or sax solos. The opening lassitude of Piazzolla’s 1979 piece, named for the highest mountain in South America, gives way to tango-laced exuberance in which you can almost, but not quite, hear the stomping feet of women in spike heels. If only the MSO had dancers in its bandoneon budget.

Nevertheless, the orchestra deserves high marks for performing an unlikely repertoire on a symphonic stage, deftly led by maestro Julien Benichou. You may never hear such a range of largely obscure works again. Enough meat-and-potatoes Beethoven, OK? It’s been a quarter of a millennium since his birth. What difference will a year make if we don’t hear him again until the next season or so. Roll over, Ludwig.

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

MID-ATLANTIC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA SEASON FINALE

 Restored Images, a world premiere by James Lee III commissioned by the MSO; Verklante Nacht by Schoenberg, and Aconcagua Concerto for Bandoneon and Orchestra, by Piazzolla, featuring soloist Rodolfo Zanetti. Thursday night, April 22, at Easton Church of God. Available on live-stream video through April 29, midatlanticsymphony.org; $15, 888-846-8600.

Barring some new catastrophe in the meantime, the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra will complete its 2020-21 season of live and live-streamed concerts on Earth Day, April 22, without missing a beat–though its musicians undoubtedly broke a string or two. 

Achieving a full season during the COViD-19 pandemic is more than the New York Philharmonic or almost any symphony orchestra from Baltimore to Berlin can claim. (That would be the Berlin Philharmonie of Germany. Maryland’s Berlin is well within the Mid-Atlantic Symphony’s regional orbit.)

Holiday Joy 2020 Livestream

The MSO hasn’t canceled a concert since April 5, 2020, one month after Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan declared a COVID state of emergency and just days after he issued a statewide stay-at-home directive. Still, the Eastern Shore and Southern Delaware’s only professional orchestra managed to perform last season’s belated finale by way of a free live stream on August 13. But the real work in getting the orchestra back on stage for this season began last March, even before the first COVID-19 death in Maryland on March 18.

“We had planned a glorious season for 2019-20,” MSO board president Jeffrey Parker recalled. “We would have had as many as 55 musicians playing as one. That’s how a symphony orchestra should sound. As one instrument. But we suddenly realized we couldn’t perform any of it. Not on that scale. So, we came up with the most unconventional season ever and put the whole thing together in three weeks” — just in time to announce a new slate of concerts for subscribers who otherwise might have thought there wouldn’t be a next season.

As he explained in a letter posted on the MSO website to both subscribers and those who purchase tickets to individual concerts, it would be “A Season of Strings.” The cast of musicians was limited to string players and percussionists. The decision was mandated by health considerations, though cost-cutting and social distancing also figured in. Woodwinds and brass instruments were eliminated because the spewing of breath droplets requires much more distance between musicians and the audience.

Rodolfo Zanetti

This remarkable “Season of Strings” concludes Thursday with the world premiere of Restored Images, written by James Lee III, an internationally acclaimed Baltimore-based composer. The piece was commissioned by the MSO, its first since 2009. The season finale also features soloist Rodolfo Zanetti, performing Astor Piazzolla’s Concerto for Bandoneon and Orchestra. (The bandoneon is an accordion-like instrument associated with the tango.)

 “We shouldn’t be just a musical performing arts museum,” Parker said of the concert’s eclectic program. He spoke during a Zoom interview along with MSO Maestro Julien Benichou and general manager Dane Krich, who doubles as a percussionist.

“We should play more music by living musicians,” Benichou chimed in. “And other pieces you haven’t heard before, along with the standard repertoire from the four main classical periods: Baroque, Romantic, Classical, and 20th Century.”

Anticipating a future with, hopefully, the pandemic long behind us, Parker spoke with rhapsodizing enthusiasm about his No. 1 goal, which he shares with music director Benichou, to establish a Mid-Atlantic Symphony Youth Orchestra. “Outreach to young people has long been part of our DNA,” Parker said. He cited a recognition from the Yale School of Music for the orchestra’s efforts in introducing school kids to instrumental music–the 2016 Distinguished Educator Award to JoFran Falcon, then MSO’s vice president of education and outreach. 

Benichou envisions creating virtual master classes for Delmarva schools using videos by individual MSO musicians demonstrating basic techniques on their instruments of choice. “Our goal is to have a youth orchestra performing with us by our 25th anniversary.” That’s the 2023-24 season.

Meanwhile, Parker and Benichou hope to further raise MSO’s profile through two other initiatives: Recruiting soloists to record with the orchestra, which as general manager Krich pointed out, would require contract negotiations with MSO’s regular ensemble of freelance musicians. Parker said he sees a day when the Mid-Atlantic might become unionized.

The second initiative is a summer pops concert series, which would provide more work for MSO musicians and a new stream of box office revenue. “We’re kind of inspired by the Proms concerts in London,” Parker said. The Avalon Foundation’s new performing arts tent might be a prospective venue along with outdoor sites in or around Ocean City.

But back to the not-yet-post-pandemic reality of “A Season of Strings:” “We were very fortunate to have a solid core of string players to pull it off,” Benichou said.

Aside from health considerations, there were artistic challenges, not the least of which were musicians hindered by playing while masked, unable to communicate or hear each other at a distance of six feet or more. Moreover, “most of our musicians, myself and our concertmaster included, had never performed this repertoire,” Benichou said.

James Lee III

It was a lucky break that the orchestra had played the Easton Church of God in previous seasons. Other MSO venues, including the Avalon Theater and the Ocean City Performing Arts Center, were off-limits by the governor’s order. An exception was made for houses of worship if they abided by seating restrictions. The Church of God is allowed up to 150 people in its sanctuary, which also serves as an acoustically pleasing concert hall. “God works in mysterious ways,” Parker observed.

Meanwhile, “our balance sheet is healthy,” Krich said. “We were able to pack all our preparation into just two rehearsals per concert.” One of the rehearsals was at the Church of God, where all concerts were performed this season, and the other in Baltimore, where many of the MSO’s freelance musicians are based. 

“Our expenses are down with fewer musicians, and we saved on venues. Ticket sales are way down, of course, but our fundraising remains steady,” Parker said, adding, “We’re grateful to our loyal supporters for that.”

Looking ahead, Parker says, “There’s no turning back from live-stream. We’re reaching a wider audience–people who’d rather stay at home out of caution, even if they’re vaccinated. And subscribers who’d otherwise miss a concert because they went on vacation. If I had a crystal ball, I’d predict that 75 percent of our audience will return and 25 percent will live-stream.”

In the meantime, expect next season to be mostly strings early on, with winds and brass gradually phased in. “We hope by the end of next season to be where we had planned this season,” said Benichou. “We wanted to play the Porgy and Bess Suite (also known as Catfish Row) at this month’s finale. Maybe we can do it next spring. Also, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, a very popular piece we’re never done before,” which was scheduled for last season’s COVID-canceled finale. “And since we missed Beethoven’s 250th birthday” – for the same reason –” we hope to do Saint-Saens’ 100th.”

A few masterpieces to look forward to in 2022.

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

MID-ATLANTIC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA SEASON FINALE

“Restored Images,” world premiere by James Lee III; Piazzolla’s Aconcagua Concerto for Bandoneon and Orchestra featuring soloist Rodolfo Zanetti, and Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht.

7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 22, Easton Church of God, 1009 N. Washington St. Limited seating,  $45. Also available by live-stream through April 29, $15; 888-846-8600, midatlanticsymphony.org

Fred Hughes, founder and director of Jazz Alive based in Talbot County, has been a musician all his life growing up in Lancaster, Pa., and spending summers with his dad on and off his boat at Kent Island. He later moved to Washington and, for years, had a gig with a jazz club in National Harbor on the Maryland shore of the Potomac River along the D.C. Beltway.

Fred Hughes

“I remember looking out at the white-haired audience and thinking, these seats will be empty soon if we don’t do something to turn kids onto jazz,” he said in a recent phone interview from his home in Royal Oak.

Now he’s launching his second virtual season of concerts and interviews he calls “Jazz Tales” beginning Wednesday, January 13 with bassist Pepe Gonzalez. The shows are available online free to students with the support of a Talbot Arts Council grant and Mid-Shore jazz lovers who can livestream the program for a fee.

The idea had occurred to Hughes, a jazz pianist, for years. But the impetus to make it a reality was prompted in part by the demise of his regular gig when the National Harbor jazz club folded. Recalling fond memories of summers on the Shore, Hughes found a house on Bellevue Avenue and moved there in 2019, intending to start a jazz mentoring and concert series early the next year.

Pepe Gonzalez

“My idea was to introduce middle and high school kids to professional jazz musicians,” he says. “I’d interview the artists and have them talk about getting into music as a living. And we’d play for the students and then have an evening concert for the community.”

Hughes had experience mentoring young people on tours he did as a solo musician or with his Community Concert Band as well as local academic connections he made through the Avalon Foundation. He had 15 concerts lined up for his inaugural season in 2020. But then came the pandemic. No chance of performing at Easton High or any other school where, for the most part, students weren’t even allowed to attend classes in person. Everything went virtual, as did Hughes’ Jazz Tales.

“I have a studio in my home,” he says. “It’s pretty small, but it can accommodate me and one other musician. So that became our format.”

Hughes takes a few minutes at the beginning of his hour-and-a-quarter show to introduce his guest artist to an online audience. They take a break from talking to play a dozen tunes or more and then resume chatting, sharing anecdotes and advice about a music career.

“The first question I always ask,” Hughes says, “is what was it in growing up that got you into music–and particularly into jazz.”

Hughes credits Jazz Alive board member Donna Ewing with encouraging Easton High students to get on board with his free (for them) program. There are now 35 Talbot County students enrolled, so to speak, along with others from outside the county. In a post-pandemic future, Hughes says he’d like to expand directly to Dorchester North- and South High and perhaps other secondary schools in the Mid-Shore region.

The first concert of the 2021 season features Gonzalez, who as a teen formed Zapata, one of the first integrated bands in D.C. (African-American and Hispanic). The band was successful enough to open for such greats as the late Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Sly, and the Family Stone, and the Isley Brothers. Later, sticking more exclusively to the jazz idiom, Gonzalez also performed for three presidents–Bill Clinton and both Bushes and at jazz festivals spanning the globe.

Next up, January 27, is D.C.-based saxophonist Bill Mulligan, who has collaborated with such diverse ensembles as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra as well as superstars ranging from the late great Ella Fitzgerald to Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. He’s followed on February 10 by guitarist Steve Abshire, who has played with various Navy bands for decades, principally the Commodores, the U.S. Naval Academy’s premier jazz ensemble.

The only vocalist and female in the series, Imani Gonzalez, appears on February 24. She has performed and toured with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for eight consecutive years, and her vocals were featured in the Emmy-winning National Geographic film “Jane Goodall: My Life With Chimpanzees.”

March sweeps in on the 10th with trumpeter Dave Ballou, a New England native mentored by, among others, jazz legend Clark Terry. Moving to New York, Ballou played in pit orchestras for many Broadway shows, including the Tony-winning revival of “42nd Street.” Joining the music faculty of Towson University in 2004, he’s become known as the foremost teacher of improvisation in the Baltimore area.

The finale in the series is the only one with Hughes absent from the keyboard. Instead, he’ll squeeze one more musician into his cozy studio, bassist Paul Langosch, who will accompany jazz pianist Bill Butta on March 24. A Baltimore native, Butta has played and recorded over the decades with legends Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Shaw, Sonny Stitt, Roy Haynes, and current jazz genius–both as performer and composer–Terrence Blanchard.

The instrumental diversity of the 2021 lineup is impressive from both an artistic and educational standpoint. There’s a little something for every student considering what he or she wants to play. Or what you may prefer to hear.

And if that’s not enough, all 15 programs from 2020 are still available to download–free for students. For us grownups, the price for each concert/interview is $35.

“I’ve got to pay the musicians,” Hughes says. “They’re professionals.”

Indeed, they are.

JAZZ ALIVE’S JAZZ TALES SERIES

Free to participating students, $35 for non-students, or $180 for all six 2021 concerts. Also, $35 each for Jazz Tales archive concerts from 2020. All available online at jazz-alive.org

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