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January 26, 2022

The Talbot Spy

The nonprofit e-newspaper for the Talbot County Community

Spy Highlights

Spy Review: ‘Moveable Image’ and More by Steve Parks

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Four video artists imbue a corner of the Academy Art Museum with motion pictures that invite you to supply your personal interpretations of installations ranging in form from multi-sensory to multi-screen.

As we entered the down-the-hall gallery space on the opening day of the Moveable Image exhibit, the front-door entry piece, Shala Miller’s “Mrs. Lovely,” was dark and silent, paused between 10-minute, 44-second continuous loops. So we moved on to the next alcove, Rachel Schmidt’s “Vanishing Points,” a 2020 triptych of stained-glass styled video windows framed in plastic trash, including takeout packaging and cheap sunglasses gilded in mixed-ink printer gold. While seated on a plush bench with a faux oriental rug at our feet, we viewed, TV-style, a video of human encroachment on nature. Ragged clothing hung from forested tree branches while prairie grassland rising to mountain vistas suggested climate-changing residue. Seen are rushing water lapping halfway up a street-level speed sign, dead fish left high and dry, and mining wastes piled up at the foot of a semi-decapitated mountain. 

Collis/Donadio, Moving Still, 2020-21

In the next room, Shannon Collis and Liz Donadia’s “Moving Still,” from 2021, garners scenes from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and other regional landmarks as a meditation inspired by Edwin Denby’s 1954 essay “Dancers, Buildings, and People in the Street.” Set to a quadraphonic soundtrack, the movement of rippling water and streaming clouds overlay everyday video imagery projected on rectangular shapes mimicking an urban skyline.

Re-emerging at the exhibit entrance, we found Shala Miller in mid-performance of her haunting love and love-lost soliloquy entrancingly delivered through a darkened window at the top of an antique stand-alone door. As “Mrs. Lovely,” Miller delivers a monologue about her absent, possibly abusive lover to viewers who she mistakes for confidantes, dropping such lines as “he says every woman is too much trouble these days” and “I hate poetry. It’s the language of the weak.” Miller seems just on the verge of roping us into an affair that would be none of our business even if we hadn’t just met “Mrs. Lovely.” 

Also recently opened at the Eastern Shore’s only fully accredited art museum are the Werner Drewes Retrospective, featuring groundbreaking abstract prints by the former Work Projects Administration artist, plus Academy Retrospectives on WPA Artists. My review of these important shows can be found elsewhere on this Spy website.

Meanwhile, in the newly refurbished Saul Atrium galleries, which occupy the hallway separating the two main downstairs galleries from its upstairs art space, you’ll find Zoe Friedman’s “Sentient Forest.” This artwork is an ode to the recent birth of her first child and animates the inviting entry passageway off the Harrison Street courtyard with large-scale, brightly colored, and layered illustrations of a crouching tiger and lurching alligator along with a pair of jungle-lolling parrots and a towering couple of giraffes pointing the way toward art just one more flight up the stairs. Each playful image, far more than lifesize in the case of the birds and imposing enough with respect to the carnivores and the docile long-necks, is enhanced by three-dimensional lighting geometrics. On a smaller, home-scale dimension, check out the limited edition prints of each “Sentient Forest” resident signed by the artist. 

Please remember that masks are still required indoors at Academy Arts, and as always, admission is free on Thursday.

‘Moveable Image’

Through March 6, Academy Museum of Art, 106 South St., Easton. Free open house reception 4-7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 13. 410-822-2787, academyartmuseum.org

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

 

Spy Review: Academy Retrospectives on WPA Artists by Steve Parks

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All the artists whose works fill three galleries displaying the Academy Art Museum’s two new exhibitions were once employed by the federal government. They were among thousands who earned $23.50 a week as part of the WPA – the Works Progress (later renamed Work Projects) Administration.

“In the Birch Forest,” Werner Drewes

One of them was Werner Drewes, a German-born and trained printmaker who emigrated to the United States as the Nazis came to power. The museum’s comprehensive look at his career encompasses more than 40 works of art spanning five decades and as many progressions in content, style, and technique. “Werner Drewes Retrospective” takes us on a still-image time trip through one artist’s growth toward becoming a leading figure in abstract printmaking both in his adopted country and the art world as a whole.

From 1935 to 1943, Drewes and fellow WPA artists painted murals in public spaces and created posters supporting out-of-work writers, composers, musicians, actors, dancers, singers, and directors, not to mention stagehands and camera operators. They also taught art to the next generation while honing their own skills. It was all part of the New Deal, FDR’s response to the Great Depression, and the most significant public works program before the present-day COVID initiatives.

From an artistic perspective, the WPA, which put few restrictions on content or subject matter of whatever was produced under the Federal Art Project, was a godsend to artists of all stripes but particularly to those who primarily produced abstract imagery, which was all but unsalable in the Depression-era. Among the artists that the WPA kept afloat were Berenice Abbott, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Lee Krasner and her husband Jackson Pollock, Jacob Lawrence, Louise Nevelson, Diego Rivera, Mark Rothko, and John Sloan.

“Interpenetration” by Werner Drewes

Drewes’ progress as an artist can be glimpsed from one gallery to the next through the lens of his mentors and predecessors, chief among them Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. At the start, notice the heavy black lines of his 1932 woodcut self-portrait compared to the far more delicate aquatint etching from 1977.

“Cabeza Roja,” Rufino Tamayo

His 1961 “In the Birch Forest” woodcut marks a departure with its subtle color undertones amid a dominating geometric cluster of light-toned tree trunks. Colors turn brighter in “Interpenetration,” a 1976 oil painting, one of his pure studies in geometry, while a floating red heart in “Valentine for Maria,” 1984, suggests a figurative feminine face within an abstract landscape.

In the next gallery, Drewes turns to silkscreen with “Behind the Canal – New Hope” from 1941 and produces a “Gandhi” woodcut as realistic as a photograph, dated a decade earlier. Posters, among them a 1974 offset reproduction entitled “Art of the Print” for the National Academy of the Arts, fittingly encapsulates his life’s work in the concluding images of this smartly conceived exhibition, expanding the realm of printmaking beyond an artisanal trade.

Upstairs in the hallway gallery, “A More Abundant Life: WPA Artists from AAM’s Permanent Collection and Beyond” takes us on a mini-tour of New Deal artwork and graduate studies, starting with Robert Blackburn’s “Man in a Top Hat” lithograph depicting the wearer’s doleful demeanor. Charles White’s long-after-the-fact “I Have a Dream” 1976 lithograph is inspired by a black Madonna’s thoughtful pose during Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 speech.

In sharp contrast, Fritz Eichenberg’s self-descriptive “Seven Deadly Sins” delineates each one in garish vignettes. From “Bronx El” to “Old House,” Jacob Kainen presents eight etched scenes, 1940-48, including men feverishly at work in “Street Breakers.” Surrealist Rufino Tamayo, a Mexican native who worked in New York, gets our attention near the show’s end with “Cabeza Roja,” a 1975 lithographic portrait of a clown apparently named for a red-headed bird.

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

WERNER DREWES RETROSPECTIVE and
A MORE ABUNDANT LIFE

Now through March 2, Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton
Opening reception, January 13 at 5:30 p.m.. academyartmuseum.org

 

At the Main Street Gallery: Artist Lisa Krentel

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“Chesapeake Appreciation Days,” hand-tinted black-and-white photo print by Lisa Krentel.

When Lisa Krentel was preparing for the annual holiday show at Cambridge’s Main Street Gallery on Poplar Street, she reached deep into her artistic and maritime past for inspiration. It was during the fifth annual Chesapeake Bay Appreciation Days at the Western Shore foot of the original two-lane Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 1969, three years before the parallel three-lane span opened. That’s when Krentel shot images of skipjacks sailing past celebrants gathered on the beach.

“We sailed our boat down from the Chester River to Sandy Point State Park for the day,” she recalls.

Lisa Krentel

Krentel comes from an extended family of artists whose talents ranged from silversmithing and jewelry-making to pottery and painting. “From a very young age, I was always creating things,” says Krentel, a graduate of Philadelphia’s Moore College of Art and Design who double-majored in painting and photography. She deployed both majors in creating six 11-by-14-inch reworkings of her photos in 16-by-20 frames. Krentel dug out vintage negatives from that day in 1969 and digitally printed them on photo paper. She then painted over the black-and-white photo surfaces, including one image of a skipjack sailing past the Sandy Point Lighthouse. Rephotographing the finished product, she made as many prints as she hopes to sell before the show ends on Jan. 2. (The prints are priced at $175 each.) 

“There were still hundreds of working skipjacks in the Bay back then,” Krentel says. “Now there are less than 10,” a few are based at Deale Island.

While photography was her primary artistic pursuit at the time, “I got tired of it when everybody started shooting photos with their cell phones,” she says. Although she admits that today’s smartphones can produce “great pictures,” Krentel misses the f-stops and lens choices at the fingertips of photographic pros back in the day. “Besides, I like to move on. So I gravitated toward mixed media.”

Among her other pieces on display and for sale at the “Bright and Beautiful” holiday show is a poster-like painting of Hulk Hogan posing aboard a Harley-Davidson to promote “Love Ride, November 1990,” a Jerry Lewis fundraiser to fight muscular dystrophy. She also photoshopped a print of sunlight-reflecting water with a blue crab painted near the surface. For $35, Krentel is also selling – sales was one of her earlier for-a-living careers – small “slices of life” circles in a box framing pen-and-ink drawings, among them “Queen Anne’s Lace.” Or her “Evening Glow” acrylic waterfront painting could be yours for $185.

“Casa de Botin,” acrylic painting by Lisa Krentel.

Krentel moved back to the Eastern Shore from Sedona, Ariz., in 2007 to be near her elderly parents, who have since passed. She’s now settled in Cambridge with her partner, Paul Clipper, former editor of the local weekly newspaper, The Banner and also an exhibitor. Three of his cigar box guitars were a hit in an earlier Main Street show and are prominently displayed in the front window.

As with most Main Street Gallery shows, all the nine-member artists, including Krentel, are featured. Linda Starling, an original member, and co-founder creates silver jewelry with beads of all kinds and sea glass, which is an inspiration for much of her work. Another co-founder, Theresa Knight McFadden, specializes in iPad art to create still lifes and interiors. Karen Bearman, also an original member, is Main Street’s resident potter, while Kathy Flament, a “paint toss” practitioner, is the gallery’s fiber artist as well, with wearable art for sale.

Deborah Colburn specializes in prints and acrylic paintings, both figurative and abstract. In contrast, Ellie Ludvigsen’s land- and seascape photos are printed on high-grade watercolor paper sprayed with a sealer that makes it unnecessary to cover in a glare-distracting glass. 

Pam Watroba, the newest member, is represented in the show with intricate mosaics composed in part of stained glass. Her pieces include “Pocomoke Riverdance” ($1,025) and “Lady of the Sea” ($225). Another relative newcomer, Leslie Giles, originally from England, sells her work internationally and makes a full-time living at it. Best known for oils on canvas, her “Last Light Choptank” is available for $390.

Next up at Main Street is “That 50s Show,” which has nothing to do with the 20th-century decade. Instead, “50s” refers to the sale price of selected artworks, none more than $50. “That 50s Show” runs from Jan. 7 through Feb. 27, 2022. Meanwhile, if you’re shopping for “Bright and Beautiful” art, be sure to arrive at the gallery with a mask, even if fully vaccinated, so as not to give or receive COVID for Christmas.

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

 

‘Bright and Beautiful’

Main Street Gallery holiday show and sale through Jan. 2, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday, closed Christmas and New Year’s, 518 Poplar St., Cambridge; mainstreetgallery.net, 410-330-4659,

 

A meditation on Sondheim by Steve Parks

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“In our perfect park
Made of flecks of light
And dark
And parasols
People strolling through the trees
Of a small suburban park
On an island in the river
On an ordinary Sunday
. . . Sunday
. . . Sunday!”

“Sunday” from “Sunday in the Park with George”
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

There was nothing mournful about the Sunday in the Square happening after Stephen Sondheim left us, not in the dark, but in the light of sharing his brilliance with fellow mortals in a way that uplifts us as a species worth saving. It’s the pursuit of happiness that counts. But it’s not guaranteed. It’s right there in the Constitution, written by a man, we’ll call him T.J., as gifted as any in American history and more flawed than most.

But some people, especially fellow Americans, seem to regard the Constitution as a document of leftist conspirators intent on sucking the Founding Fathers bloodline out of our national identity. It’s only the Second Amendment that they defend with every fiber of their citizenship.

I’ve been deeply depressed in the last five years or so about such things as the Constitution, democracy and the right to live one’s own life without being heckled or worse by those who think they have not only the right but the duty to stick their nose into your private business.

But at high noon Sunday in Times Square, such thoughts drowned in tears of gratitude for having lived in the time of Sondheim, experiencing first-hand the grace of his gifts. Watching the outpouring of emotion while hearing voices soar in choral unison streamed into our Easton home, my wife and I wept together. Many of the hundreds of actors, musicians, stage crew and fans gathered in Duffy Square, filling the TKTS grandstand and the street below, left that temporarily hallowed ground within the hour to show up for Sunday matinees at nearby Broadway theaters, including the Bernard Jacobs. That’s where the latest revival of Sondheim’s “Company” officially opens Dec. 9 with, for the first time, a woman playing unwed Bobby, now Bobbie.

This was hardly the first time that a musical lifted me out of despair. I recall the dark Friday of Dec. 14, 2012 when, in no mood for holiday cheer, I drove to a Long Island theater to review a performance of “White Christmas.” Twenty kindergartners and first-graders along with six adults had been killed in a gun-frenzy rampage by a suicidal 20-year-old. But as I couldn’t help but notice twin little girls seated in front of me, accompanied by grandparents, each delighting in the music and stagecraft arrayed before them, I pushed my gloom aside and shared my appreciation in a glowing review that night. Nearly a decade later, a hate-spewing troll spread the detestable lie that parents of those slain babies staged the massacre in order to confiscate guns from law-abiding citizens. But even his cause, protecting the Second Amendment, is a lie. He did it to reap more profit for InfoWars, a web purveyor of hateful untruths and truly “fake news.”

Aside from his many musicals reflecting on the complications of love in real life, from “Company” and “A Little Night Music” to “Into the Woods” and “Passion,” Sondheim also tapped into the darkest side of human nature. Cannibalism, you would think, qualifies as a theme you can’t make light of. But “A Little Priest” is one of the cleverest, laugh-out-loud songs in all of musical theater, recommending clergy as a meat-pie staple of the highest calling in “Sweeney Todd,” the demon barber whose co-conspirator is also his lover/chef who finds that plump men, too closely shaven, make far meatier pies than pussy cats.

One of Sondheim’s few political theater pieces delves into assassination from the point of view of the assassin. He even found humor in their deadly plots, though most of the jokes are on those who failed: two women who took poor aim at President Ford and the flaming anti-Nixon liberal who hijacked a plane to dive bomb the White House. And then there was Giuseppe Zangara who after ranting about the failed cures for his ailing stomach, heard a fellow assassin ask, “Have you considered shooting Franklin Roosevelt?” (Zangara took a shot at FDR but mortally wounded the mayor of Chicago instead.)

The opening theme of “Assassins,” reprised when JFK is murdered, applies to all such losers, including actor John Wilkes Booth, who, it is suggested in jest through Sondheim’s “Ballad of Booth,” shot Lincoln in a theater because of “bad reviews.”

Everybody’s got the right to be happy
Don’t be mad, life not as bad as it seems
If you keep your goal in sight
You can climb any height
Everybody’s got the right to their dreams . . .
Even though at times they go to extremes
Go to extremes
Everybody’s free to fail
No one can be put in jail for their dreams
Free country!

“Everybody’s Got the Right” from “Assassins”
Music and lyrics by Sondheim

Happily, nothing from “Assassins” fit the occasion of celebrating the life and career of Stephen Sondheim. And I felt a weight lifted from my brooding over what has become of our country, of our countrymen, women and, yes, others. My rightfully obsessive concern about the essence of America under literal attack by fellow citizens evaporated before my tears could dry. There was nothing but love in the air that I experienced only virtually. Yet it was real.

Just in the lifetime of this good and great man it is undeniable that the arc of justice has bent, however interminably, in the direction of what is right. It was not possible to imagine in 1930 that baby boy Stevie would leave behind at his death 91 years later a husband. The “assassins” of today, will try to take that away along with the right to choose and to be whomever you are destined to be. It likely won’t happen in my lifetime, but in the end, no one will be left to follow men who are not welcome at funerals because they speak ill of the dead, even calling some who oppose them “losers” for having lost their lives defending their country. Collectively, we will grow weary of such soulless men and reject their kind. They may steal the next election or two as they have falsely accused the current and legitimate occupant of the White House of doing, while they keep on killing us by comparing Dr. Fauci to Hitler’s Dr. Mengele.

The only question is will the arc of justice bend soon and far enough to save America from itself? I’m sure Stephen Sondheim would have had an inspiring lyric or two. But we’re on our own now.

Steve Parks is a retired theater critic now living in Easton.

 

Paired Kidney Exchange: How It Works by Steve Parks

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This time last year was particularly stressful and depressing for many Americans, not unlike my wife Liz and I. We faced our first holiday season—Thanksgiving imminently, Christmas and New Year’s on the calendar horizon—with no chance of celebrating in person with our children, a first for us as a family. But in addition to COVID-imposed separation—we had not touched, kissed or hugged our children in nearly a year—Liz learned from her Easton nephrologist that her kidney disease had just advanced to Stage 5.

That’s red alert on the vital-organ countdown.

A stark choice confronted Liz: surgery to prepare a port for her to receive life-saving but lifestyle-draining dialysis, or await a match—living or deceased—for a new kidney.

Happy Halloween.

As this story is meant to convey vital information, it is not a spoiler to reveal so soon that there is a happy ending which could be yours, too, if you or a loved one is ever in similar need.

Liz had three potential volunteer donors—potential not in the sense that she doubted their willingness to donate a “spare” kidney. (Most of us are born with two but can live full and healthy lives with one kidney.) The three—our son and daughter plus a friend, all living on Long Island, where we also resided until our 2017 retirements—were willing volunteers. But were any of them a kidney match for Liz? After a battery of tests, Liz’s volunteer trio all struck out as donors, leaving her to calculate the long odds of finding a deceased adult who happens to have registered as an organ donor and further happens to be a match for Liz whose name still further happens to rise to the top of a list of potential recipients for a precious kidney that remains viable 48 hours on ice outside the body of the lifeless donor.

Odds are, we were told, Liz and tens of thousands of others like her, could wait three to seven years for such a kidney. Maybe more. A patient at Stage 5 may not have three to seven months, let alone years, to survive without going on dialysis, which requires being hooked up to a machine for three hours three times a week to do the job of a healthy kidney—eliminating toxins from the bloodstream and replenishing with fresh blood.

According to U.S. Health and Human Resources Department statistics, about 5,200 Americans died in 2020 waiting for a kidney transplant. That’s 17 deaths each day, not including those with kidney disease who are not on waiting lists. Some die unaware of their imminent kidney failure until it’s too late. Regular blood tests ordered by her primary doctor and later by her nephrologist alerted Liz to the progression of her disease over a period of years from Stage 3 to Stage 5.


The happy ending for Liz and our family began with a recommendation by Dr. Anish Hinduja, the University of Maryland Medical System nephrologist whose primary office is off Idlewild Avenue in Easton. He suggested that Liz apply to the UMMS Paired Exchange Kidney Program database. Within a month, Liz had a kidney lined up with our daughter Rachel as a donor. Never mind that Rachel was not a match for her mother. The database of patients in need of kidneys includes other donors who are not a match for their loved ones either. Rachel was a match for another person while his or her volunteer donor was a match for Liz.

We had a tentative date for dual transplant surgeries just before Thanksgiving. But we got word from the University of Maryland Medical Center, downtown Baltimore, that the donor and recipient paired with Liz and Rachel requested a postponement until after the first of the year. We were not given a reason and, as each pair remains anonymous to the other, we guessed that the delay simply fulfilled a wish to wait until after the holidays.

Very early on Jan. 28, I drove Liz from the Inner Harbor Sheraton Hotel, one of the few open downtown at the height of the pandemic, to drop her off at UM Medical Center’s main entrance on Greene Street. Because of COVID, I was not allowed to be with her in the hospital. The medical staff timed her arrival a half hour later than her donor’s to protect each other’s anonymity. At 5:15 the next morning, I hugged Rachel good-bye and watched her walk through the same rotating doors to donate one of her kidneys to the loved one of Liz’s donor.

Since I could not visit either my wife or daughter, I returned home to Easton to await Rachel’s discharge. Donors have a much simpler surgery, a laparoscopic procedure by which the kidney is extracted through a small incision at the belly button. Most donors can go home the next day. But due to a minor snowstorm, Rachel was allowed to stay an extra day or so to keep her mother company. Liz was discharged in six days. Both have been fully recovered for months—Rachel several weeks earlier than her mom.

Although the success rate of living-donor transplants at UM Medical Center is 98.33 percent for one year or more of kidney function, Liz’s surgeon, Dr. Georgios Vrakas, put us further at ease during a final round of pre-surgery check-ups. While the identity of each donor and recipient remains anonymous, the affable doctor shared one reassuring detail. “You’re getting a young kidney,” he said with a broad smile, moments after describing the long- and short-term prognosis for transplant patients. (The typical kidney from a healthy living donor can be expected to last 15-20 years.) I cracked a joke to break the tension stoked by morbidity statistics—alleviated in our case by the “young kidney” Vrakas had just promised Liz. “That doesn’t mean she needs to go back on birth control, does it?” The doctor’s laugh felt reassuring. And my telling that joke now stands as validation of the success of the surgeon and the medical team attending Liz.

While a little more than 150 paired kidney exchanges have been performed at UMMC since the inception of the program, more than 6,723 kidney transplants have occurred there since the late ’80s—2,306 from living donors. How many more might have participated in paired exchanges, saving at least two lives, had they known such volunteer sharing existed?

But now you know.

Paired Kidney Exchange: Two Donors Save Two Lives

Paired kidney exchanges, which exponentially increase the chances for a person in need of a life-saving transplant to find a living-donor match, began in 2007 with the establishment of the National Kidney Registry. The University of Maryland Medical Center in downtown Baltimore started participating in the paired exchange program one year later and has since performed more than 150 such transplants.

Simply put, paired exchanges work this way: I’ll give your mother my spare kidney if you give my mom yours. (Or fill in other applicable loved ones.)

If a prospective kidney recipient whose volunteer donor is not a match, due to blood type or antigens poised to reject a transplanted organ, the registry database can locate mutual matches with another pair in a similar circumstance. As a result, the pairing extends and immeasurably improves the life of two recipients for years, if not decades, depending on age. (Most such transplants are covered by Medicare, coinciding with the age of a majority of patients needing transplants. Plus, private programs for rare cases, such as infants with birth defects, and other younger patients, help cover potentially tens-of-thousands in costs.)

Dr. Daniel Maluf

Dr. Daniel Maluf, UMMC’s director of transplant surgery involving kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs and pancreases since 2020, says that just since his time at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Medical Center, laparoscopic techniques have greatly increased success rates of transplants, especially kidneys, and similarly reduced time of recovery. “When you have 114,00 Americans waiting for a kidney or liver and half a million on dialysis,” Dr. Maluf says, “all of them facing a waiting time of at least three to seven years for an organ donation from a deceased person, you see the urgency of finding a volunteer living donor.”

The trouble with kidney disease, other than that it will kill you if left undetected, is that you may not know you have it until it has progressed past critical Stage 5. “The older you get, the more you may lose kidney function,” says Dr. Anish Hinduja, an Easton-based University of Maryland Medical System nephrologist. “At 1 percent loss a year, you could lose 30 percent of GFR by age 70.” (GFR, glomerular function rate, measures how well or poorly your kidneys eliminate wastes that, if retained, are toxic to your body.)

Dr. Anish Hinduja

My wife Liz was 71 when lab tests ordered by Dr. Hinduja showed that her kidney disease had reached Stage 5. “You may have critical kidney disease and not know it,” the nephrologist says. “You might notice some discoloration in your urine, but unlike liver disease you might not feel sick.” Regular blood and urine tests, even just once a year at age 55 or 60, can give you a heads up, Dr. Hinduja advised.

Six months after my wife’s successful kidney transplant in a paired exchange involving our daughter, minimally invasive laparoscopy surgery has been applied to recipients of kidney transplants. This follows by several years laparoscopy surgery reducing risks and recovery time for donors. Previously, some potential recipients of a loved one’s kidney refused because the donor would undergo major surgery that required removing two ribs to extract the kidney. This meant that the donor, often much younger than the recipient, missed weeks, sometimes months, of work or schooling. In our case, not unusual for mothers and daughters, Liz and Rachel got into a good-humored snit over order-in dinner the evening before surgery. “You know,” our daughter joked, “it’s not too late for me to change my mind.”

Rachel, of course, didn’t change her mind. And with current surgery protocols, a kidney donor may go home as early as a day or so with only a tiny incision at the navel. While a recipient’s laparoscopy incision is now a bit larger, the patient receiving a new kidney may be discharged in as little as three days. With the more invasive surgery my wife underwent in January, entailing an incision not unlike that of a caesarian delivery, about six days may be required before discharge from the hospital.

Dr. Silke Niederhaus

Recovery, however, involves more than just healing from surgery. The patient must adapt to a foreign organ in her body, one that she cannot live without unless she goes on dialysis. “For the best result,” Dr. Maluf says, “and the longest post-transplant life, a living donor kidney is far preferable to that of a cadaver.” Having a living donor, especially a direct match with a related volunteer, makes it more likely the transplant will not only be successful but that an otherwise healthy recipient may enjoy normal renal function for years or even decades.

While a kidney from a cadaver can also be lifesaving and is far preferable to dialysis, more can go wrong with such an organ, primarily because the clock is ticking from the moment the donor expires. However, among all the major organs, kidneys remain viable longer than liver, pancreas, heart or lungs—48 hours or more on ice, according to Dr. Maluf. And while many patients on dialysis can still receive a kidney transplant, chances of long-lasting success are reduced. Patients who have been on dialysis for an extended period may not be deemed viable candidates.

Dr. Maluf is one of eight surgeons on the UMMC transplant team, assisted by a staff of nine, including nurses and anesthesiologists. A pre- and post-clinical team prepares patients for the procedure and follows up in their recovery, including a nurse coordinator who may consult with the kidney recipient in person or remotely for six months and up to five years depending on the case. Four surgeons are required in a more or less simultaneous paired exchange. Or, as in my wife’s case, two surgeons are assigned to a paired exchange performed on consecutive days.

Among the surgeons on Dr. Maluf’s transplant team is Dr. Silke Niederhaus who is herself a recipient of a kidney from an eight-person paired exchange at UMMC. It was her second “new” kidney. As a child growing up in Germany, she contracted a severe strep throat infection at 8 and, after a stint on dialysis following renal failure, she received a kidney transplant. On the day of her first procedure, her surgeon asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

The little girl responded, “I want to be a transplant surgeon.”

And now, here she is.

Her first new kidney lasted 30 years. THIRTY YEARS! But by the time she had become a transplant surgeon herself, she needed another one. As both a surgeon transplanting vital organs and a two-time recipient of a kidney, Dr. Niederhaus is uniquely qualified to speak about important lessons in caring for a precious new kidney, especially by strictly adhering to the regimen of taking all prescribed medications to avoid rejection.

“Last I checked,” she says, “kidneys don’t grow on trees.”

Steve Parks is a mostly retired journalist now living in Easton.

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND TRANSPLANT CENTER

16 S. Eutaw St., Baltimore; 410-328-5408, umms.org

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND SHORE MEDICAL GROUP—NEPHROLOGY

* 5 Martin Court, Easton (call 410-820-9823 or search umms.org for all related Shore services)

* 713 Cambridge Marketplace Blvd., Suite 2-700, Cambridge

* 100 Brown St., Suite 217, Chestertown

* 125 Shoreway Dr., Suite 210, Queenstown

 

Spy Review: Mid-Atlantic Symphony Takes On Bach, Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky

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As soon as he stepped to the podium Thursday evening at the acoustically sublime Easton Church of God sanctuary before a masked and vaccinated audience, Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra music director Julien Benichou dispensed with what might have become a lingering elephant in the room. Why was it that the premiere of his concerto would not be performed as advertised? “The work is still in the works,” he said succinctly. And while we were left to wonder when his Romance for Strings might no longer be a work in progress but a part of the repertoire of the MSO, which he has skillfully led for 15 years, he moved on to the job at hand.

In place of his own piece, Benichou chose J.S. Bach’s Concerto No. 3 of his six Brandenburg masterpieces. As an unassailably safe and popular selection, the concerto also has the virtue of familiarity with any classically trained musician, of which the 18 assembled for the opening concert of three in this series. (You can still catch a performance Saturday night in Rehoboth Beach or Sunday afternoon at Ocean Pines.)

Before raising his baton to the string orchestra before him, Benichou advised the audience to listen for solo portions within the violin, viola, and cello sections, as well as the solo harpsichordist. The violin section, led by Celaya Kirchner and Regi Papa, and the violists, led by Dorothy Couper, stood while performing the 15-minute concerto to emphasize their collective role as occasional soloists. At the same time, principal cellist Katie McCarthy and Bozena Brown on harpsichord remained seated, of course. The stand-up effect was stimulating, even if the seemingly enhanced vibrancy in the sound might have been an illusory trick of the imagination. Regardless, it made for a rousing performance of a classical standard, taking the place of something new.

The two pieces that followed showcased the rock-star guest soloist of the evening, Joshua Lauretig. The first was Vivaldi’s Oboe Concerto in C Major. MSO followers may remember that Lauretig, then 25, played its solo portions to win the runner-up prize in the inaugural Elizabeth Loker Concerto Competition in January 2020, just before COVID shut down live performances. Here, with a full-string orchestra, his virtuosity became apparent with a lyricism that suggested actual lyrics on layered waves riding above the cello and bass underpinnings of the opening movement. The more somber second movement took on a seductively hymnal tone while he played lead “guitar” to lush string ballroom accompaniment on the minuet finale.

Benichou dug deeper into the oboe repertoire for a Venetian contemporary of Vivaldi, Alessandro Marcello. But if the heart-strings second movement of his Oboe Concerto in D Minor sounds like something you’re heard before, it was probably at a wedding. After Mendelssohn’s famous down-the-aisle march, the Marcello Adagio is one of classical music’s standard wedding themes, and Lauretig’s unmasked double-reed fortissimo soared above it all.

Following intermission, Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for String Orchestra brought to mind both the composer’s talent and his torment. To be gay in 19th-century Russia, or most anywhere for that matter, was equivalent to being forbidden to live one’s true life. Serenade debuted in 1880, 13 years before his death and his most productive stretch as a musical genius. (Symphony No. 6 Pathetique, as well as the Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and Nutcracker ballets, were yet to come.) The opening movement is almost schizophrenic in its moody and melodic teasing, never deciding where to go with either tendency.

The second movement, however, could find a home in any of the composer’s beloved ballets. A lovely and embraceable waltz that only strings could produce, this is Tchaikovsky as his best and most vulnerable. Knowing his history, you want to shed a tear for him. But the beauty, as tenderly rendered by the MSO string orchestra, is too joyful to be mourned.

Personally, I would have been happy to leave it at that. But for good reason, Tchaikovsky didn’t believe in happy endings. Subsequent movements of his serenade are both ponderous and reflective of his Russian folk musical background. But somehow, the piece manages to close with a note of hopeful harmony.

And the standing ovation was more than deserved for these purveyors of great music performed with skill, grace, and feeling.

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

MID-ATLANTIC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA’S ‘DOUBLE REED & SERENADE’

Tchaikovsky’s String Serenade with guest oboe soloist Joshua Lauretig, Vivaldi’s Oboe Concerto in C Major, and Alessandro Marcello’s Concerto for Oboe and Strings in D Minor. Thursday, Nov. 11, at the Church of God in Easton. It will also be performed at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Epworth United Methodist Church, Rehoboth Beach, and 3 p.m. Sunday at Community Church, Ocean Pines. Tickets: midatlanticsymphony.org, 888-846-8800

Spy Review: Winners of Chesapeake Chamber Gold Prize by Steve Parks

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Zelter String Quartet, from left, Allan Hon, Gallia Kastner, Kyle Gilner, Nao Kubota

The Zelter String Quartet, Lerman Gold Prize winner of Chesapeake Chamber Music’s ninth biennial international competition, performed in concert Saturday night at Ebenezer Theatre, the jewel of downtown Easton’s Prager Family Center for the Arts.

“Chesapeake Music was our first major competition,” Allan Hon, cellist and spokesman for the Los Angeles-based quartet, said in a phone interview before the Oct. 23 recital, which remains available on livestream through Oct. 30. Named for Arnold Lerman, founder of the competition, and his late wife Zena, the award included a $10,000 prize and the prestige of being judged the best of 50 emerging chamber ensembles from across the globe.

The Ebenezer program opened with Mozart’s appropriately celebratory “Hunt” String Quartet, given the award-winning circumstances and the joy of playing live again or attending a concert in person, although proof of COVID vaccination and masking were still required on Saturday.) The piece, fourth in a series created after Mozart finally met Haydn, his musical hero, takes its nickname from the opening theme suggesting a hunting call. The violin duet of Gallia Kastner and Kyle Gilner mimic a pair of clarion horns grounded to the fox hunt terrain by Allan Hon on cello with Nao Kabota’s violin powering the aural sense of a chase. By sharp contrast, the second movement offers a stately ballroom dance followed by an adagio that comes across as a lullaby eliciting alternately soothing and restless dream sequences. The finale reverts to the hunt motif with a high-low call and response of violins to cello and viola evoking a pell-mell pursuit of the prey.

As Hon announced the program would be “switching gears,” the foursome deviated sharply from the classical repertoire to a trio of Nordic folk tunes that few if any in the audience of about 120 had ever heard. Gilner switched to first-violin position occupied by Kastner on the Mozart for a flowingly melodic 18th-century minuet. The middle of the three pieces arranged by the Danish String Quartet suggested a wistful recollection of better days past and darker days ahead as a Scandinavian winter approaches. The pace quickened exponentially with “The Peat Dance” bringing to mind a furious square dance with no time for a doe si doe.

In Ravel’s String Quartet, the concert finale, the Zelter four made the most of their chance to demonstrate why they’ve been critically praised for “seemingly effortless precision” and “harmonic fusion” (LA Opus online arts website). “This Ravel is one of my personal favorites,” Hon said in the earlier interview. “It’s so textured and gorgeous to the ear.”

Best known as a brilliant composer for orchestra and the piano, Ravel wrote his sole string quartet–a 1903 masterpiece–at age 28, inspired by Debussy, who also wrote but one quartet. The opening sonata-style movement presents a neo-classical theme revisited throughout. The second movement scherzo, richly delivered with fierce pizzicato (plucked strings) punctuating a rhythmically complex syncopation as individual artists pluck their three different instruments in perfect simultaneity. The third-movement nocturne opens with a sumptuous melody introduced by cello and viola interrupted, like recovered memories, by brief returns to prior themes. Executing the final movement’s sober intensity, warily pondering an uncertain future, the Zelter musicians played as if that future was happening today.

Bravo and best of luck in what should be a bright Zelter future.

                                                                   ***

The Chesapeake competition, held every two years, was hampered in 2020 by the pandemic. Although the quest for the prize began, as usual, with chamber ensembles submitting recordings for blind judging, some struggled to find a way to play together safely. The five finalists, chosen from among the 50 recordings, performed virtual 45-minute sets instead of the live-in-Easton festival performances of past competitions. A finalist based in Switzerland was eliminated because quarantining left one of its musicians stranded in Germany past the finals deadline.

Three of the original members of the winning Zelter String Quartet have been playing together since 2018. At first, they performed for post-graduation course credit at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. “But our goal was always to perform professionally together,” Hon said. One of Zelter’s two violinists moved from California to continue studies elsewhere and was replaced by Gallia Kastner last November–in time to compete for the Lerman prize. Kastner, a master’s degree candidate at Colburn Conservatory in L.A., is concertmaster of the American Youth Symphony and has performed as a soloist with both the Chicago and Cleveland symphony orchestras.

Upon her arrival, Kastner joined Kyle Gilner in sustaining Zelter’s two-violin identity. Gilner, who holds degrees from USC’s Thornton school and the Cleveland Institute of Music, studied in masterclasses led by the Schubert Ensemble of London. His return from abroad completed the original Zelter foursome, led by Allan Hon on cello, whose first recruit was violist Nao Kubota, a fellow USC Thornton alum who earned a music master’s degree and a graduate certificate in viola performance.

Hon earned his bachelor’s degree from Rice University in Texas, his master’s from Yale and doctorate in musical arts from USC. A multiple competition prizewinner as a soloist, he has performed extensively in Europe and Asia as well as North America. Each resume of the four Zelter musicians now prominently notes the Chesapeake Chamber Music gold prize.

The quartet is named for Carl Friedrich Zelter, Felix Mendelssohn’s composition teacher and an  early influence on his career. Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 1 was the first piece these young musicians–now in their mid-20s to age 30–worked on when they came together.

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

 

ZELTER STRING QUARTET

Winners of the 9th Chesapeake International Chamber Music Competition in concert at Easton’s Ebenezer Theatre. Available on livestream through Oct. 30, chesapeakemusic.org

Music Notes: Gold Prize Winner of Chesapeake Chamber Competition Comes to Easton

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The Zelter String Quartet, Lerman Gold Prize winner of Chesapeake Chamber Music’s ninth biennial international competition, performs at Ebenezer Theatre, the jewel of downtown Easton’s Prager Family Arts Center, Saturday night, Oct. 23.

“Chesapeake Music was our first major competition,” Allan Hon, cellist and spokesman for the Los Angeles-based quartet, said in a phone interview. “It’s our biggest prize so far.” Named for Arnold Lerman, founder of the competition, and his late wife Zena, the award includes a $10,000 prize and the prestige of being judged the best of 50 emerging chamber ensembles from around the world.

Zelter String Quartet, from left, Allan Hon, Gallia Kastner, Kyle Gilner, Nao Kubota

The Ebenezer program opens with Mozart’s appropriately celebratory “Hunt” String Quartet, given the award-winning circumstances and the joy of playing live again or attending a live concert. (However, proof of COVID vaccination and masking is still required.) “The Mozart is such a happy piece,” Hon says. “It’s a lot of fun to play.” The group is deciding on two or three Scandinavian folk tunes to carry the concert to intermission. “We call it people music,” Hon says. “No matter what kind of music you prefer, you can enjoy these pieces.”

Concluding with Ravel’s String Quartet, the Zelter musicians get a chance to show why they’ve been critically praised for “seemingly effortless precision” and “harmonic fusion” (L.A. Opus online arts website). “This Ravel is one of my personal favorites,” Hon says. “It’s so textured and gorgeous to the ear.”

Zelter will be performing in the sumptuously restored former sanctuary of Ebenezer Methodist Church constructed in 1858, home to one of three Easton Methodist congregations that merged in 1962 to form St. Mark’s United Methodist. Eight new stained-glass windows on a secular theme have resurrected the former ecclesiastical space into a performing arts temple with tastefully plush amenities. It’s also the new home of Chesapeake Chamber Music, with offices downstairs in the Prager center.

The Chesapeake competition, held every two years, was hampered in 2020 by the pandemic. Although the quest for the prize began, as usual, with chamber ensembles submitting recordings for blind judging, some struggled to find a way to play together safely. The five finalists, chosen from among the 50 recordings, performed virtual 45-minute sets instead of the live-in-Easton festival performances of past competitions. A finalist based in Switzerland was eliminated because quarantining left one of its musicians stranded in Germany past the finals deadline.

Three of the four original members of the winning Zelter String Quartet have been playing together since 2018. At first, they performed for post-graduation course credit at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. “But our goal was always to perform professionally together,” says Hon. One of Zelter’s two violinists moved from California to continue studies elsewhere and was replaced by Gallia Kastner last November–in time to compete for the Lerman prize. Kastner, a master’s degree candidate at Colburn Conservatory in L.A., is the American Youth Symphony concertmaster and has performed as a soloist with both the Chicago and Cleveland symphony orchestras.

Upon her arrival, Kastner joined Kyle Gilner in sustaining Zelter’s two-violin identity. Gilner, who holds degrees from USC’s Thornton School and the Cleveland Institute of Music, studied in masterclasses led by the Schubert Ensemble of London. His return from abroad completed the original Zelter foursome, led by Allan Hon on cello, whose first recruit was violist Nao Kubota, a fellow USC Thornton alum who earned a music master’s degree and a graduate certificate in viola performance.

Hon earned his bachelor’s degree from Rice University in Texas, his master’s from Yale, and a doctorate in musical arts from USC. A multiple competition prizewinner as a soloist, he has performed extensively in Europe and Asia as well as in North America. Each resume of the four Zelter musicians now prominently notes the Chesapeake Chamber Music gold prize.

The quartet is named for Carl Friedrich Zelter, Felix Mendelssohn’s composition teacher and an early influence on his career. Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 1 was the first piece these young musicians–now in their mid-20s to age 30–worked on when they came together.

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

ZELTER STRING QUARTET

Winners of the 9th Chesapeake International Chamber Music Competition in concert perform Mozart’s “Hunt” String Quartet, Ravel’s String Quartet in F major, and traditional Nordic folk selections, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 23, Ebenezer Theatre, 17 S. Washington St., Easton; $35, $15 livestream through Oct. 30; 410-819-0380, chesapeakemusic.org

Spy Review: ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ at the Groove Theatre

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Groove wasn’t the only theater company to pick a bad time to open for business. In 2019, the final show of its rookie season was scrapped due to running out of money. (Cambridge-based Groove Theatre is rare, if not unique, among Eastern Shore troupes: Founder/director Talley Wilford pays his actors.) Next, COVID canceled 2020 live theater everywhere, although Groove managed to stage a drive-in “Little Mermaid.” Now, a year and a half after its originally scheduled opening night, Groove Theatre launched its 2021 season with its first adult musical, the rowdy and edgy “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” a 2015 Tony winner.

For people who have felt lost and isolated in pandemic land, this loud, lusty and lovably freakish show may be just the ticket.

As the title character, Mike Sousa plays an uninhibited, unabashed extrovert who deploys flamboyance to conceal Hedwig’s massive and richly earned insecurities. Born Hansel Schmidt, a self-described “slip of girlyboy” from Communist East Berlin, he/she/they borrowed his/her/their mother’s name and passport to travel to Junction City, Kansas, with Luther, soon to husband No. 2. (Drag queen Yitzhak was the first.) Mom finds her son a genital-reassignment surgeon in case Luther is expecting to marry a woman. But the operation is botched, leaving him/her/them virtually sexless with nothing but a scar-tissue mound between their legs.

“Angry Inch” doubles as the name of the band that accompanies the rip-roaring story of Hedwig’s life through 11 songs. Hedwig and Angry Inch are touring in the shadow of Tommy, a rock star they nurtured only to see him leave them all behind. Versatile music director Ray Remesch anchors the band featuring lead guitarist Jimmy Maguire, bassist Ben VanNest and John Stitcher on drums, plus a mysterious character from Hedwig’s past on vocals and piano. The playlist includes a nasty ode to the “Sugar Daddy” and to life as a trans-mutilated “genderqueer.”

Who could blame Hedwig for turning philosophical, claiming to have been inspired by German philosophers to write “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”? (The Rolling Stones classic, of course.) Hedwig also belts out “Origins of Love,” drawn from Greek mythology, principally Aristophanes’ “Plato’s Symposium” speech, positing that there were once three genders of the human race.Costume designer Jess Paguirigan layers Hedwig in combinations of denim, velvety red and diaphanous sequined see-throughs that together call attention to Sousa’s legs, possibly shaved for the role. His delivery of punchlines is slyly wicked and purposefully revealing as Hedwig sheds protective veneers in an emotional striptease until, on “Midnight Radio,” he is left to the barest essentials. He’s joined on stage for this finale by Laura Todd, whose transformative performance would be spoiled by revealing her character’s identity.

Let’s just say that Groove’s “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” is, by any measure, a triumph in perseverance, both in its message and its charmingly ragged delivery by Groove’s cast, crew, band and director. This is a must-see show, especially if you favor rock and roll. Also, due to pandemic unpredictability, Groove may not stage another grown-up show until spring or summer 2022.

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

“HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH”

Book by John Cameron Mitchell, music and lyrics by Stephen Trask.

Groove Theatre Company at Dorchester Center for the Arts, 321 High St., Cambridge: 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 8; Saturday, Oct. 9, and 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 10. Tickets: $10-$20, groovetheatre.com

MSO Season Opener By Steve Parks

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The Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra was one of the very few anywhere to complete an entire season of live performances in 2020-21, albeit with strings only. But the current season opener, Thursday night at Easton High School, marked the first time in 18 months that this fine ensemble of professional musicians had an opportunity to play as a full orchestra. They did not disappoint.

The evening also made news as Jeffrey Parker, president of the board of directors, announced that the MSO—the Delmarva Peninsula’s only professional symphony orchestra, has signed a three-year union contract with its talented cast of musicians. “This gives us stability,” Parker said in a brief interview during intermission. “Our musicians know that they’ll have work, not just now but next spring and two seasons after that.”

The opening night concert began with what felt like warm-up exercises. The first piece: Modest Mussorgsky’s Overture to Khovanshchina (The Khovantsky Affair), a prelude to the opera of the same title, was treated by the music director Julien Benicho like a music lesson as he outlined contours of the classical shorts. Running barely five minutes, the overture opens with a tranquil yet intense melody followed by several variations that hint at succeeding stanzas to be sung by the actors. As with most overtures, it ends abruptly, leaving you wishing for more.

The lesson continued with Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, introduced with a joke repeated by Benichou. “When Gershwin asked if he could study with Ravel,” the French composer asked the American how much money he’d earned lately. (The word “tombeau” denotes a memorial piece, a tomb, while Couperin was a 17th-18th musical family.) The Baroque suite in four movements runs about 20 minutes—perhaps another reason the maestro stretched the first half of the program. Ravel dedicated his tombeau to friends killed in World War I. Popular as a selection for summer outdoor concerts, it’s considered easy classical listening. Far from a requiem, it opens with a light call and response led by reeds answered by strings. Subsequent movements bring to mind the Alfred Hitchcock theme IF his TV series were a comedy, leading into darker tones suggesting melancholy and ending with a rousing, celebratory finish.

But it was Beethoven’s epic Eroica that fulfilled the theme of the season opener, “A Heroic Return,” which “pays tribute to all the unsung heroes of the period we have just gone through,” Benichou said, “while the second movement, the Funeral March, pays homage to the victims of COVID-19.” (MSO management paid heed to COVID medical recommendations by requiring all those attending to show proof of vaccination and wear a mask—musicians included.)

Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, which his 3rd (Eroica) preceded by a few years, includes a four-note opening coda, not unlike that which became the most famous notes in the classical repertoire. The response, by a violin section led by concertmaster Regi Papa, is so vigorous that one could work up a sweat playing or conducting its pell-mell pace. While the concert’s first half displayed the orchestra’s musical dexterity, Eroica showed off its muscularity. Bombastic with room for a woodwind break or two, the glorious sound and fury emanating throughout the spacious auditorium declared indisputably that full orchestral music is back, At least in Easton and the Delmarva Peninsula.

Far more somber, the second movement (the Funeral March) opens with strong cello and bass undertones along with mournful woodwinds and horns rising to the solemn occasion, amplified by a timpani heartbeat; or is it distant artillery? In any case, it’s a requiem for a fallen warrior. Beethoven had Napoleon in mind, though he was at the peak of his powers when Eroica was created. Movement 3 broke classical convention of Beethoven’s time by opening with cellos in the lead rather than violins, launching an explosive burst. A bassoon solo calls myriad instrumental parts together for a symphonic conversation, including a spirited scherzo—comedy in musical language—in stark contrast to the preceding dirge.

The final movement begins with a string-plucking tip-toe beat repeated at many times that volume by resounding strings to a crisp march-like cadence echoing earlier movements.

The performance richly deserved the standing ovation by the modest audience, its numbers still limited, perhaps, by COVID and its surging Delta variant. To hear classical music live again, by the Shore’s own professional orchestra, get vaccinated if you are not already, and encourage others to do the same. And we’ll all become conquerors together.

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

 

MID-ATLANTIC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: “A HEROIC RETURN”

Remaining concerts: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 25, Cape Henlopen High School, Lewes, DE; 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 26, Performing Arts Center, Ocean City
Tickets: $45, 888-846-8600, midatlanticsymphony.org All those attending must show proof of vaccination to be admitted.