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January 20, 2021

The Talbot Spy

The nonprofit e-newspaper for the Talbot County Community

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Arts Arts Portal Lead Arts Arts Top Story

Keeping Jazz Alive on the Shore with Fred Hughes

January 11, 2021 by Steve Parks 2 Comments

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.

 

Filed Under: Arts Portal Lead, Arts Top Story

The Sorest Loser of All Time by Steve Parks

January 6, 2021 by Steve Parks

I’ve always felt there was nothing more unattractive than “I told you so,” but now I know something worse–far worse than that. And his name is Donald Trump, lame duck, sore loser of all time president of the United States.

I’ve written from time to time in this cyberspace about this man’s total unfitness to be our commander in chief. The I-told-you-so part comes from having edited coverage of this jerk–that’s the kindest word I can say about him–for decades on Long Island and New York City. He was a joke. No one with any sense, regardless of political persuasion, took him seriously, except if you were unfortunate enough to do business with him. He could bankrupt you by his notorious modus operandi. He hired independent mom-and-pop contractors, rarely big corporations so that when it came time to honor his contract with them, he would pay 20 to 40 cents on the dollar and dare you to sue him. Mom-and-pops couldn’t afford to take him to court. And he got away with it for decades.

He has no political or moral convictions whatsoever. Nor is he even aware of what an idiot he makes of himself owing to his psychotically overrated estimation of his wherewithal. I almost fell out of my newsroom chair in laughter, listening to Donald pretending to be his own publicist. We couldn’t figure out whether he did this because he was too cheap to hire a professional or that he thought he could do a better job himself. One thing was clear: He never listened to anyone who might tell him he was making a damn fool of himself. This is long before he even ventured into the political arena by claiming with zero evidence that Barack Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia–who knows?–Mars. Anywhere but in the USA.

My point is that maybe in my participation in coverage of this megalomaniac of minimal qualifications for anything beyond carnival barker, I was, among my colleagues, in a better position to peg this guy as disaster-in-chief. There’s a phrase for guys like Trump in far lesser positions of power than he found himself in. He doesn’t now nor ever has known his ass from a hole in the ground. I hardly exaggerate when I say that everyone I have ever known–possibly excluding the dead, though they would do less damage than Donald–would make a better president than Trump.

OK. So here’s what I REALLY think of Donald, the demented, deranged, delusional, damnable, and dangerous: He will bring you down if you continue to support and make excuses for this unchallenged title holder of Sorest Loser of All Time.

The House of Representatives should convene as soon as possible to listen to the hour-long harangue of Donald Trump committing sedition against the Constitution he was sworn to uphold, badgering Georgian Republicans to manufacture just enough votes to put him over the top. Citing thousands of dead who voted in the Nov. 3 election, he was informed that the number was actually 2–both of whom cast invalid ballots FOR Trump.

Upon listening to this obscene assault on democracy and the rule of law that is supposed to cover us all, presidents not excepted, the House should vote immediately to impeach Trump and send the indictment to the Senate for an up-and-down vote the next day. The 25th Amendment might be a more appropriate measure, except that the toad who calls himself vice president will never be on board.

Donald Trump needs to be gone. Now. All the insults he slings at his imagined enemies apply directly to him.

Fake. Disgraceful. Treasonous. How about just plain stupid?

Add up all the hits–all of them deserved–that he has taken from the New York Times, the Washington Post, news networks excepting (though not so much lately) Fox–none of this even collectively has inflicted as much damage on Trump as he inflicts on himself. He’s a moron, ignoramus, liar, and imposter. Listen to this obscene hour of sedition recorded by Republicans and leaked because even they realize he’s unhinged from reality. Then tell me you continue to support this insanely brainless would-be dictator. He’s our worst constitutional nightmare. And thankfully, hopefully, he will be gone very soon, though not soon enough.

Donald talks, ridiculously, of having won in Georgia by “hundreds of thousands” of votes while at the same time complaining that the number of COVID dead is “wildly” exaggerated. Donald could give a damn, as he has proven by his pandemic negligence, about the very life and death of “ordinary” Americans. All he cares about is staying in the White House long enough to outlast the felony statute of limitations on potential New York state charges against him. But now he’s added Georgia state charges as well. I suppose if he manages to get himself self-appointed president for life, he’ll outlast that statute of limitation as well.

Never mind all that. The president had no New Year’s message for the nation. But I have two words, especially for surviving Trump supporters, and for all of us as well: President Biden.

Meanwhile, there is massive election fraud going on right now. Donald is hitting on his supporters for contributions to support “investigations” into the election he lost to Joe Biden by a wide margin. And Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who stepped up first to say he would object to Congress’s Electoral College certification, has likewise widely solicited donations for a similarly non-existent investigation. Both are nakedly fraudulent enterprises: Trump’s to line his pockets in order to survive the avalanche of legal costs he will incur once he’s evicted from the White House and Howley’s so he can run for president in 2024. Both of these grifters are counting on fools to rush in with their wallets. For heaven’s sake, give to your favorite charity instead in this new and hopefully far better new year than 2020.

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

Filed Under: Archives

Spy Music Review: Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s End of Year Concert

January 1, 2021 by Steve Parks

In the final hours–thankfully–of 2020, the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra served up an evening of classical as well as pops comfort food. After the year from hell, we could all use a little comfort–perhaps appropriately in a house of worship.

My wife and I caught it on livestream. And so can you through Jan. 7.

As he has for concerts the MSO performed since last March when all our lives suddenly were confined by varying degrees of isolation, Maestro Julien Benichou has skillfully wrought programs that can be performed live with as much safety as one could ask. A small ensemble, 16 musicians for this concert, play only strings while spread out and wearing masks. The Easton-based orchestra performs before a limited and socially distanced live audience and a much wider one on YouTube.

The New Year’s Eve program opened with a trio of pieces by Johann Strauss II, beginning with a short but sweet polka comprised of pizzicato string-plucking followed by a formal waltz, Wiener Blut, translating as Viennese Blood. Your mind’s eye could visualize ball gowns and tails swirling on a grand dance floor. The Strauss troika concluded with the overture from the operetta Die Fledermaus, which introduced us to the luscious voice of mezzo-soprano Lisa Chavez.

Mezzo-soprano Lisa Chavez

Tchaikovsky’s String Serenade, perfect for a string-only orchestra, served up perhaps the evening’s most familiar comfort menu item with its festive waltz melody that even classical neophytes would recognize. Leaping from the 1880s to 1945, Chavez returned to the stage for one of the evening’s emotional highlights, singing “La Vie en Rose” like she owns it, though it will always belong to Edith Piaf. The legendary Piaf’s reedy rendition evokes tears of joy in memory of falling in love and seeing the world “in pink,” as if through rose-colored glasses. Chavez brings a far richer tone to the song while losing none of its poignancy.

Benichou next chose to rouse us with a salute to Winter from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” The current season marches in furiously on the resolute bowstring of concertmaster Regi Papa, which in the next movement settles into a windswept reflection gently accompanied by the viola, cello, and bass.

Abruptly changing pace again, this time turning to Broadway, Chavez delivers the ultimately tragic “Somewhere” from “West Side Story” before Benichou returns to the Viennese waltz with Strauss’ buoyant Wine, Women, and Song.

The maestro was sure to make room in the program for “Carmen,” the opera for which Chavez is best known, having performed the Bizet masterpiece for various companies, including the New York City Opera. In Habanera, she displayed her acting chops while trilling through the saucy refrain, “Love is a rebellious bird that nobody can tame” (sung in French, of course). Together with the rollicking Gypsy Song, also from “Carmen,” Chavez exercised her vocal dexterity in both buttery lower registers and soaring soprano coloratura.

But she was hardly done. Returning to opera, Chavez sang from the impish Isabella role in Rossini’s “L’Italiana in Algeri,” navigating the highs and lows again with ease.

Next to that, “I Could Have Danced All Night” from “My Fair Lady” must be a delightful child’s play to her. Chavez’s final assignment from Benichou was to deliver the traditional Auld Lang Syne singalong as a “sing alone” for the masked live audience. (But you can singalong at home.)

The orchestra did, however, close with a live clap-along string finale.

On that note, it occurred to me that there is hope for a far better new year. Maybe it takes a new millennium 21 years to come of age. Happy 2021.

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

A TOAST TO THE NEW YEAR

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s New Year’s Eve concert from Easton Church of God featuring mezzo-soprano Lisa Chavez as soloist is available to be viewed through Jan. 7. Tickets are $25. https://midatlanticsymphony.org/ 410-289-3440

Filed Under: Arts Portal Lead, Arts Top Story

The Thanksgiving of Health by Steve Parks

November 26, 2020 by Steve Parks

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. My fondest wish for you is a safe holiday with your loved ones–however many or few they may be. If your children are school-age and they’re at home every day, learning online instead of in class, you may be sick–or at least weary–of seeing them constantly.

And that’s OK. They’ll be at the table for Thanksgiving.

“Sick,” of course, is just a euphemism in this case. The last thing in the world you want for you or any of your loved ones is to become ill. It may happen because of an undiagnosed and/or asymptomatic virus one of your guests, either a friend (maybe your niece’s current flame?) or a family member may pass on innocently, but with just as deadly effect.

I know, it’s a total bummer. But way less of a bummer than if the worst were to happen to anyone you love dearly and whose life you may have saved by disinviting them or yourselves to a traditional Thanksgiving ‘gorgy.’ (As in platter-sharing gorge fest.)

My wife Elizabeth and I have disinvited our children to Thanksgiving dinner this Thursday. It will be the first time in their 30 and 34 years, respectively, of sharing time on this planet with us that we will fail to share Thanksgiving as a family. Our story is not incredibly unique, though the reasons for our choice to abridge the sharing of an in-person Turkey Day together may be more mortally relevant than others.

It can be said that both Liz and I have what are widely regarded as “underlying conditions” that make us more susceptible to serious illness or death by way of COVID-19. I had a heart attack about 13 years ago and was diagnosed a year later with atrial fibrillation. However, I’ve never acknowledged its severity because my heart has been beating with constant irregularity for as long as I can remember. (It’s been broken, too. But that’s another story: Remind me some time, it’s pretty funny.)

My wife, however, has Stage 5 kidney disease. If she wasn’t imminently in line for a kidney transplant, she’d need surgery that would enable her to undergo dialysis two or three times a week. Our son, who turns 35 in December, and daughter, who turns 31 the same month, failed tests as donors for Liz. However, our daughter, Rachel, with a relatively universal blood type, qualifies as a “paired” donor whose kidney will save the life of a recipient whose volunteer partner will donate his or her kidney to Elizabeth and, ultimately, save her life.

So, as you can see, for any of us to risk infections that disqualify Rachel as a donor or her mother as a recipient would be intolerably stupid and reckless. We hope and trust that the paired donors matched to Rachel and Elizabeth have as safe a Thanksgiving as we expect to enjoy, virtually.

I’ve been tracking the care package Liz prepared for our children–a loaf of cranberry bread and a baking pan of brownies. We will set a table for ourselves–just Liz and me–along with place settings with our best china and silverware for our absent children. We’ll also pour wine into crystal glasses at their settings–red, white, or sparkling, according to their choice–for a virtual Zoom Thanksgiving toast.

It’s the best we–or anyone in our circumstance–can do.

Thanksgiving menu footnote: Because our celebratory feast is just for two, the main course will be duck. We would be eating turkey till Christmas–when we’ll also miss our children who no longer expect Santa to slide down the chimney. In any case, Liz and I both favor dark meat. So, our Thanksgiving will be ducky, if a bit sparse in family company.

Never mind. We’ll drink an extra toast to our family’s health.

Steve Parks is a writer, husband, and father of two children, one living in Brooklyn and the other in Long Island. Steve and Liz, both retired and living in Easton, dearly miss Tyler, Rachel, and their grandson, Matthew.

 

Filed Under: Op-Ed

Note to Donald – Do the Right Thing by Steve Parks

November 13, 2020 by Steve Parks

Far be it for me to offer Donald Trump a graceful path to exit from his disastrous presidency. But there is now an obvious and plausibly productive off-ramp for Donald Trump to end his first and now-evident only term as president on a high and heroic note.

I hereby dare you to take it, Donald.

Do I believe that Trump deserves full credit for a vaccine that may be successfully administered in the next several months? Far earlier than all expectations, certainly when compared to the development of vaccines against previous widespread diseases? Sure, he hyped the unlikely prospect of a vaccine available before Election Day. And, yes, he and his supporters now grouse about the fact that the Pfizer announcement of a 90 percent positive rate in its early tests for efficacy against COVID-19 was not published until a few days after the election rather than a few days before. I get that. Why shouldn’t he think, well, great for Pfizer? But why did they stick the knife in my back by not announcing this a week earlier? Or what about Johnson & Johnson? Well, first of all, Pfizer and J&J announcements of preliminary good news on vaccines would not have reversed the president’s electoral fortunes.

There are two stark facts that confront any remaining Trump loyalists. One is that Joe Biden is the president-elect. Period. And the second is that as of 12:01 p.m, Jan. 20, 2021–one minute after the inauguration of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.–the Capitol Police who enforce law within the District of Columbia’s Federal Triangle, encompassing the Capitol, White House and Supreme Court–will evict any White House trespassers from the new president’s residence. That means you, Donald, and any Trumps hanging out in a government-owned house where they no longer enjoy free lease. I fully expect that Donald lacks the grace even to attend the inauguration ceremony, where he no doubt will witness a far larger crowd on the Washington Monument grounds than attended his 2016 event.

But if he wants to avoid the humiliation of forced eviction–a perfect bookend to his disgraceful reign, which began with a don’t-believe-your-eyes lie about his crowd size as compared to Barack Obama’s 2008 inauguration overflow–Donald now has an opportunity to claim a heroic presidential epitaph.

Donald can say now, whatever the facts to support his claim, that his Operation Warp Speed brought a successful vaccine to Americans, and to the world at large, months before anyone reasonably expected. I did that for you, he can claim. I personally don’t buy it for a minute. The timing is inauthentic, accidental, but maybe not entirely so. 

The Trump administration did indeed push hard for a quick vaccine solution. But this did not save his presidency. Nor should it have. COVID-19 administrative malpractice was not, by any means, the only black mark against the appalling record of the Trump presidency. I hardly know where to begin, but separation of hundreds of breastfeeding and otherwise preverbal children from their parents at the southern border–with NO MEANS OF REUNITING THEM–is a good place to start.

As far as I’m concerned, Donald Trump is an indecent reprobate guilty of international crimes of moral turpitude. But if he is at all invested in restoring his standing in history–and it stands so low now that I would oppose a Trump portrait ever being hung in the Capitol Rotunda (he’s already delayed Obama’s portrait ceremony because of baseless, racist assumptions about President 44’s legitimacy)–I humbly submit this one opportunity as his only shot in four fetid presidential years to do the right thing. Claim credit for a life-saving vaccine. Campaign for everyone to take it. Many of your followers don’t believe in science. Some regard a vaccine as voodoo, largely but not entirely because of your reckless rhetoric. Your followers no longer believe in anything Dr. Anthony Fauci says, even though you ignored him at YOUR PERSONAL PERIL.

Step up, Donald, and do the right thing. Again, I dare you. 

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

Filed Under: Op-Ed

The Return of the Outlaw Gunner

November 10, 2020 by Steve Parks

Bet you didn’t know the Waterfowl Festival, which would have been celebrating its 50th anniversary this month but for a pandemic, traces its roots back to an outlaw culture, not unlike that of bootleggers of the Prohibition era.

Harry Walsh, who died in 2009 at the age of 85, was for many years an Easton doctor, surgeon, and healer who often accepted oysters and duck decoys as payment for his lifesaving and life-giving services. “He was owed millions, but got all that back and more in friendships,” says his son, Joe, who recently moved to Tilghman from Annapolis. He has put together the second edition for release this month of his father’s bible of waterfowling, “The Outlaw Gunner,” subtitled “A Journey from Hunting for Survival to a Call for Waterfowl Conservation.”

Walsh was a co-founder of the Waterfowl Festival, which launched in 1971. Born in 1924 along the Chester River in Chestertown, Walsh came of age during the Great Depression. It was a time when men learned to find the next meal for themselves and their families by bending nature and its wild bounty to their will and wiles. In communities up and down Tidewater country, from the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, watermen devised more efficient and deadly ways to “harvest” ducks–to kill them en masse whether flying overhead or landing in baited fields or amid a decoy flotilla just offshore.

In their heyday, especially during the Depression and the prolonged recovery that didn’t reach anything like prosperity until the close of World War II, these men–known as “market gunners,” were regarded as upstanding citizens in their hometowns. They fed more than their families. They helped feed their neighbors and supported their communities with the wholesale marketing of their excess haul of slain birds. In his book, Harry Walsh quoted Mrs. Sophie, whose inn took in hundreds of ducks a season, “Lord, seems I stay in blood and feathers all winter long. Ain’t no sin to be poor, but it sure is unhandy.”

Restaurants in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York–as well as millionaires who threw lavish parties–ordered ducks and geese by the hundreds a weekend.

To meet the demand, market gunners–as opposed to sport hunters–invested in the latest and deadliest artillery, as well as baiting and decoy techniques that led to quick and massive kills.
One of the most warlike weapons was the punt gun. Weighing 100 pounds or more in a teetering skiff skimming low in the water, it snuck up on floating congregations of ducks at nightfall. With a half-pound of powder and 10 barrels of gunnery, a boatload of men could blow 200 to 300 hundred ducks out of the water each night.

“It was horrible,” Joe Walsh says. “Ducks used to fill the sky like bees. They’re coming back, but only because of conservation.” Translate: enforced limitations on bird kills.

Unlimited hunting became illegal in the late ‘30s, and market hunters tried to adapt. While their faces were not on wanted posters, they risked being handcuffed by game wardens and fined a week’s worth of dead-duck income or imprisonment for failure to pay such fines.

“My father saw what was happening to the environment that had supported generations of hunters,” Walsh says. As a physician, he espoused stewardship of wildlife and the natural world he grew up in.

Still, he loved hunting. “Good hunting companions are a treasure,” Harry Walsh wrote in his book. “They are a lifetime in the making.”

The second edition of “The Outlaw Gunner” introduces two chapters of Walsh’s unpublished “My River,” as well as a pair of forwards by Pete Lesher, Talbot County councilman and chief curator of St. Michaels’ Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, and Henry Stansbury, maritime museum vice-chair.

Walsh’s first donations of his collection–mostly decoys and hunting guns–went to the maritime museum at its 1965 founding. Decoys later anchored the artistic aspect of Easton’s inaugural Waterfowl Festival.

Duck decoys, while less aggressively deadly than guns, played an essential role in both sport and market hunting. Typically, carvers were not primarily hunters. They specialized in carving realistic likenesses of canvasbacks–among the earliest to be protected due to over-hunting–black ducks, redheads, and sprigtails, among others. To the extent that hunters participated in creating decoys, it was in training live birds to play the role of killer lures. One such legendary decoy, a goose, was dubbed Old Pete.

These days, art-object wood carvings aren’t meant to be cast into the water. Their shelf life is literally that. They exist on display in art galleries or the homes of collectors.

In the absence of an in-person Waterfowl Festival this year, your best chance to appreciate the art of decoys and maritime scenes in oil or watercolor is through the virtual art gallery organized by Waterfowl Festival, Inc. While you can’t see the art displayed in galleries or festival tents, nor can you meet the artists in person, you can check out their works online. “It’s our way of connecting art collectors to the artists they love,” says Margaret Enloe, festival executive director, “some of whom,” she adds, “are struggling in this time of COVID.”

As for next November, Enloe says, “We have plenty of time to get it done.”

That will be the 50th Waterfowl Festival because this year’s golden anniversary event isn’t happening. “Masks or no masks,” a masked Enloe told us, “we’ll figure it out by next summer.”

Steve Parks is a retired Long Island arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

Online sales by individual artists indefinitely through waterfowlfestival.org. Release of “The Outlaw Gunner,” second edition, November 2020,

 

Filed Under: Spy Highlights, Spy Top Story

Review: MSO Takes on Bartok’s Divertimento and Vivaldi’s Lute Concerto by Steve Parks

November 8, 2020 by Steve Parks

It’s unusual to make a full-disclosure admission at the start of a review. But special circumstances appear to call for it on this occasion. I did not attend the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s concert live last Thursday night at the Easton Church of God because of a conflicting assignment: covering Susan Werner’s concert at the grand opening of the Avalon Foundation’s new Stoltz Pavilion tent. I spent Friday writing that story as well as another Talbot Spy assignment. Therefore, I didn’t see the livestream of the MSO concert until Saturday morning. One more disclosure: My attention was diverted during the second of three movements of Bartok’s Divertimento by a news flash many Americans had been awaiting. Something about a president-elect.

My attention momentarily diverted from the Divertimento, I recorded the news bulletin, resumed viewing the concert and, with a discipline I strained to maintain, retreated to my home office to write this review.

If that turns out to be the most dramatic part of my review, don’t blame the maestro or the musicians. Once again, the Eastern Shore’s only professional symphony orchestra has soldiered on to bring live classical music to a shrinking in-person, pandemic-wary audience, which may, in the end, broaden the MSO’s outreach through live-concert streaming. There are necessary restraints, however. Because wind and brass instruments require far greater distance than strings for both audience and musicians’ safety, the Mid-Atlantic, led by music director Julien Benichou, is performing as a string orchestra with selections enlisting those instruments alone. Benichou has proven adept at presenting pieces that are rare on the symphonic stage, in this case, including Anton Arensky’s homage to Tchaikovsky with his variations on a theme by his musical hero. Better known as a teacher, Arensky counted among his students Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin. He might have enjoyed greater success as a composer had he not died at age 45 of tuberculosis.

As performed Thursday night, Arensky’s variations opened with a solidly romantic theme played by all the orchestra strings. Later themes were alternately quicker paced with staccato punctuations and more contemplative with an almost sleepy finish that became obvious only when the maestro motioned for his musicians to take a bow. Overall, Arensky’s homage captured some of Tchaikovsky’s romanticism without his dramatic flourishes.

A pair of Vivaldi concertos–one written for lute and another for two mandolins–are now widely performed on guitar, which had not been invented in the 17th and early 18th centuries. The twinned pieces were impeccably interpreted, first by Thomas Viloteau on French guitar, and then paired with his wife Alexandra on classical guitar, replacing two mandolin players. Thomas Viloteau’s solo on the contemplative opening of Vivaldi’s Lute Concerto’s second movement, with light string accompaniment, soothingly carries the familiar melody that inspired such rock-star composers as Mozart and continues to inspire modern rock and pop stars. Joined by Alexandra on the concerto re-arranged for two guitars, she and Thomas harmonize as a couple in the celebratory opening that brings to mind a wedding-party masterpiece processional.

The Bartok Divertimento skips a century from Vivaldi’s time to the advent of modern dissonance in the classical realm. There are ominous overtones to this last piece he wrote in Europe, 1939-40, as political circumstances motivated Bartok to depart for the United States. The foreboding opening suggests danger ahead with complications lurking at every musical turn. Concertmaster Kurt Nikkanen led his fellow violinists and the rest of the orchestra in a quickening string heartbeat and a staccato uptick in plucking to an abrupt finish.

Not as exhilarating as the news that had just flashed. But that was likely due to my bad timing. You can choose your own in livestream land, now through Thursday, Nov. 12.

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

MID-ATLANTIC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

String orchestra concert of Arensky, Vivaldi and Bartok featuring guitar soloists Alexandra and Thomas Viloteau; Thursday, Nov. 5 at Easton Church of God, simulcast through Nov. 12, suggested donation of $15, midatlanticsymphony.org

Filed Under: Arts Portal Lead, Arts Top Story

Review: Susan Werner Brilliantly Inaugurates Avalon’s New Pavilion

November 7, 2020 by Steve Parks

The seventh time was definitely a charm. Susan Werner’s concert appearance No. 7 in Easton marked the grand opening Thursday night, Nov. 5, of the Avalon Foundation’s Stoltz Pavilion. The concert tent Pavilion will stage live outdoor performances through the fall and winter months.

Susan Warner

It was a mildly chilly night, with temperatures later dipping into the 40s. Al Bond, Avalon’s president, and CEO warmly welcomed the first audience members.

Seating is by two- and four-person clusters at tall cocktail chairs and tables as well as love seats–all socially distanced more than the minimally recommended six feet apart. Drinks are ordered by text messaging and delivered to your seat. Payment is by credit card only. Compliance with mandatory mask-wearing appeared will be strictly enforced. I was asked, politely but firmly, to pull up my mask while I was between sips of my gin and tonic. Message received: Don’t linger, mask-down, for more than a minute. 

Seating at the Stoltz, named for the Avalon supporters whose surname also identifies the Stoltz Room upstairs at the indoor Dover Street theater, will vary according to stage configuration and audience turnout. Bond estimated Thursday night’s crowd at 80 or so, a lower figure than expected, possibly because the original opening night, Oct. 30, was postponed due to delays in erecting the tent. The maximum capacity for the pavilion located adjacent to the TalbotTown shopping center is 125.

Werner is a versatile singer-songwriter whose folk-pop repertoire ranges from ballads to blues, from story songs to foot-stomping country. One such selection performed Thursday evening was “Wine Bottles” from her just-released “Flyover Country” album. She calls it her pandemic song: “They’re making wine bottles smaller all the time,” just when we may need that comfort beverage more than ever. 

Alternately accompanying herself on piano and guitar, Werner–in a sleeveless denim outfit–opened with a rollicking New Orleans blues ode to “Oysters Rockefeller at Antoine’s,” after which she recalled playing Easton’s Farmer’s Market where she was surprised and delighted to find a vendor selling oysters. “It’s not what a girl from Iowa expects to see at a farmer’s market,” said the farmgirl turned troubadour, French for a singing poet. Werner, who first aspired to an opera career, showed off her vocal chops most compellingly on Edith Piaf’s heart-tugging love ballad, “La Vie en Rose”–in French, of course.

In between, she entertained us for 90 minutes without intermission, dispensing good humor on such songs as “City Kids,” from her “Hayseed” album, complaining that, unlike herself, those title kids “never did no chores.” Then, after observing, “Revenge is good for your health,” Werner’s “Egg Money” protagonist confesses to breakfast homicide. But it was her pooch-smooch ditty that nearly brought the tent down with laughter: “You kissed your dog on the mouth/That’s when it all went south/That’s when my feet hit the floor/And I walked out your door.” (I could go further, but I don’t want to spoil the fun. Catch the song and the rest of the concert on YouTube.)

Attending opening night of the Stoltz Pavilion was Caroline Boutte of Easton, who declared the evening “wonderful,” to which her husband Peter Gallagher added, “We’re so grateful to have this new place to enjoy live music.”

Let’s hope Susan Werner makes a return trip to Easton sooner than later–perhaps in a COVID-free future. Since moving from Chicago, she now lives just a couple of hours up the road in Philadelphia.

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

STOLTZ PAVILION

Susan Werner, Nov. 5 concert available on YouTube, $25 suggested
Cris Jacobs, live 7 p.m. Nov. 6, $60-$120 or live-streamed on YouTube, Facebook, $25 suggested
Chris Tapper, 7 p.m. Nov. 7, $50-$100
Martin Sexton, 7 p.m. Nov. 8, $100-$200 

410-822-7299, avalonfoundation.org 

 

Filed Under: Top Story

The Little Radio Station that Could: WHCP’s Mike Starling at Five Years Old

October 31, 2020 by Steve Parks

It’s hard to imagine now why it took the combined legislative clout of two presidential candidates, Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama–opponents in the historic 2008 election–to make it possible for a low-power community radio station, like Cambridge’s WHCP 105.1 FM (if you can find it on your radio dial), to make its on-air debut.

The station, located on Race Street in the downtown historic district, was to have celebrated its fifth anniversary Spring Gala in March. But WHCP’s Friday the 13th fundraiser that month was canceled by Gov. Larry Hogan’s COVID-19 lockdown order announced the day before. Timing challenges for founder/general manager Mike Starling and other low-power radio pioneers stretch back well before its January 2015 launch (the service was proposed to the FCC in the last millennium). But thanks to listeners’ support, broadcast equipment donated through a career’s worth of NPR connections, a staff of 50 volunteers led by three seasoned broadcasters–Starling, program director Doug Scheutz (veteran of ABC’s Good Morning America) and morning DJ Bruce Patrick, a well known Cambridge DJ –WHCP has become “a companion and a watercooler for thoughtful conversation. “We’ve become infectious–in a good way,” Starling says with a laugh.

Among the volunteers, an eclectic ensemble of music lovers with diverse tastes ranging from big-band to Boomer greatest hits, are the “Sublime Nine” – the original on-air hosts who chronicled the WHCP’s fifth-anniversary observance virtually in a series of interviews about the station’s beginning. “They’re all still doing their shows for us,” Starling says, noting their passion and expertise. For instance, he cites Cheryl Campbell, an event planner who hosts “Celtic Crossroads” on weekends. “She’s now on the Intercoastal Waterway en route to Florida,” Starling says. “When staffing Cruise Ships Cheryl would record her show in her stateroom and then tell the Captain, ‘Hey, I need a little satellite time to send in my show from my Mac.’”

Drew Sheckler pulls double-duty with “Indy City,” in which he endeavors to discover music by new artists, and “JazzmaTazz,” which helps sate his other musical addiction. Meanwhile, Jim Marquette’s Big Band show has such a loyal following one listener issued a family rule which Starling learned applies to him, too. “Do NOT call me when Jim’s show is on!” That would be 7 p.m. for “Swingin’ with Jim,”. As Starling puts it, “Jim curates his show,” presenting the big-band sounds of Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, and the greats from the genre’s 1940s heyday.

A relative newcomer, “Dr. Donna, a vet”–veterinarian Donna Flaggs of East New Market–“is deeply into the blues,” Starling understates. The host of “Lady Spins the Blues” totes stacks of vinyl with her. “That’s why we have two turntables,” Starling says.

To fill the classical music niche, WHCP imports a Sunday program from North Carolina, “Concierto,” hosted by a bilingual DJ who introduces symphony hall selections in Spanish and English.

Overnight you can tune into the Grateful Dead marathon. “Raising the Dead” takes you to near dawn and morning programming anchored by “MidShore Wakeup with Bruce Patrick.”

Interspersed in the WHCP’s 24/7 programming are community news and happenings featured on such shows as “MidShore MidDay” and “Cambridge Conversations,” in which Starling says, “We just try to be a good conduit and stay out of the way of the on-air guests.” That approach, he says, lets the word out, unfiltered. “Those are the real gems of what we do here,” he adds.

Chief among recent highlights was WHCP’s coverage of the unveiling of the traveling statue of Harriet Tubman and a young girl, presumably a slave she led to freedom. Wesley Wofford, who sculpted the nine-foot-high figurative depiction of flight from bondage, said of his subject, “I think [Tubman] is so symbolic of freedom in a way that just speaks across everything.” Wofford suggested that the scene–Tubman and the child in rapid stride–represented the instant “when she stepped over that state line” to freedom in Pennsylvania.

“I have to say how touched I was when the names [of Dorchester slaves] were being read,” said Circuit Administrative Judge Brett Wilson, who addressed those gathered for the Sept. 12 Day of Resilience unveiling. “It brings a tear to your eye because I imagine those names came from an inventory just like property. Now, we have the statue of Harriet Tubman on the Dorchester County Courthouse lawn, not a statue of the people who fought to keep her enslaved,” Wilson said in a thinly veiled reference to the Talbot Boys statue on the courthouse lawn in Easton. (The Tubman statue moved on earlier this month.)

Since COVID-19 shut down the station’s open-door, open-mic policy for in person interviews, WHCP has turned, like others, to Skype and Zoom to “maintain the flow of content,” Starling says. In a particularly vital community service, he adds, “We started the online Cambridge Community Conversations and immediately looped the county health department into a series on Wednesdays about the evolving set of COVID guidelines. One on reopening schools drew 6,000 people to our broadcast and video-stream on Facebook and YouTube.”

Although WHCP, like other low-power community stations, is nonprofit, it carries messages by local businesses. “They’re not commercials,” says Starling. “These are acknowledgments of those who underwrite what we do here,” similar to what his NPR alma mater does.

As I tried to tune in from home in Easton to prepare for this story, the term “low power” became readily apparent. After futilely fumbling around on my alarm-clock radio, I backed my car out of the garage to capture the signal in my driveway. That’s because LPFM signals are limited to 100 watts. (Many lightbulbs match that wattage.) You can receive WHCP over the air only a few miles in any direction from downtown Cambridge. You can also listen online, available worldwide if you download the WHCP app or use the Foxfire web browser on their whcp.org site. But for technical reasons that the industry will fix Starling says such browsers as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge cannot link you to WHCP.

That WHCP exists at all recalls the high-powered fight on Capitol Hill over low-power radio dating back to the turn of the millennium. “There was teeth-gnashing by incumbent broadcasters,” Starling says, “mostly about signal interference,” which kept a bill from coming to a vote until 2010–even with McCain as a sponsor and Obama as a co-sponsor. Ultimately, Obama signed it into law as president in 2011. 

By the time the station was ready to launch four years later, a key milestone was to come up with four call letters. “The first three came naturally,” says Starling. “W, of course, and then HC, for Historic Cambridge. But I struggled with the fourth letter. Then morning man Bruce Patrick came in and said ,. ‘I’ve got it!… P! WHCP stands for We Help Cambridge Prosper!’

“And that truly symbolizes our mission.”

You can contribute to that mission during the October fundraiser, culminating on Halloween with the “Listen Live, Listen Virtual” community concert hosted by Drew Sheckler.

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

WHCP 101.5 FM
Studio call-in line: 443-637-6000
“Listen Live, Listen Virtual” community concert, noon-6 p.m. Oct. 31, whcp.org, streaming on Facebook and YouTube

 

This video is approximately five minutes in length. For more information or to make a donation to WHCP please go here.

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

 

WHCP 101.5 FM

 

Studio call-in line: 443-637-6000

“Listen Live, Listen Virtual” community concert, noon-6 p.m. Oct. 31, whcp.org, streaming on Facebook and YouTube

 

Filed Under: Top Story, WHCR

The Avalon Loves Susan Werner and Susan Werner Loves Them Right Back

October 26, 2020 by Steve Parks

PAVILION POSTPONEMENT. The Avalon Foundation announced late Wednesday that it has rescheduled the grand opening of the Stoltz Pavilion outdoor concert tent featuring Susan Werner to Thursday, Nov. 5 from the original date, Friday, Oct. 30. Avalon artistic director Suzy Moore cited delays in construction work on the pavilion for the postponement, likely to be hindered by remnants of Hurricane Zeta. The story below, first posted Monday on Talbot Spy, has been edited to reflect that change in concert dates.

“We love Susan Werner,” said Al Bond, president of the Avalon Foundation, in announcing that she will be the inaugural performing artist for the Stoltz Pavilion. The Pavilion, a tent structure just behind TalbotTown, will safely bring outdoor live entertainment to Easton through the fall and winter months beginning Thursday, Nov. 5.

It turns out that Susan Werner loves the Avalon right back. She told us so in an interview from her home in Philadelphia. “I just love that theater,” Werner says of the 400-seat Art Deco indoor venue she’s played six times during her career as a singer-songwriter with a wide range of musical styles and lyrical themes. “It’s a very big small theater. Everybody’s so close in; you can really pick up their vibe.” 

Susan Werner

But this time, everybody will be socially distanced under the tent. Seating will be by 40 pods accommodating two to four people together in “love seats” or at bar-stool tables–similar to that of the Stoltz Listening Room upstairs at the Dover Street theater but more spread out.

Initiatives like the Avalon’s $210,000 investment in a heated, fresh-air concert tent is making it possible for artists like Werner to begin touring again, if with limited dates and audiences. 

“I imagine my experience has been similar to others’,” Werner says of the lockdown starting in mid-March. “No one was going anywhere. My digital manager had been after me to do a series of livestream concerts. She said this would be a good time for a kind of a variety show.” “Susie on Sundays” was launched from her studio with guest appearances and requests. “My supporters have been very generous,” Werner says, referring to her online “tip jar.” That, together with a sharp drop in touring expenses–no airfare or hotels–not only helped sustain Werner but also keep her in touch with her fans while attracting new ones. She announced her Easton date on a Sunday night when her virtual guest was Frank Figliuzzi, former assistant counterintelligence director of the FBI. “I sang ‘Secret Agent Man’ and ‘The Spy Who Loved Me.’ We try to have fun,” she says.

Besides concert tours–live or virtual–and recordings, Werner’s artistry stretches to musical theater, having written the music and lyrics for “Bull Durham.” Based on the romantic-comedy baseball movie starring Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, and Tim Robbins, the show premiered in Atlanta in 2014. New York workshops followed along with talk of a national tour and Broadway opening until COVID-19 darkened theaters everywhere. “But business is still going on,” Werner says, citing “conversations about coming out of the gates roaring on the other side. We hope to be part of that.”

Meanwhile, at the Stoltz Pavilion–named, like the listening room, for Avalon Foundation supporters Jack and Susan Stoltz and their son, Keith–expect in its grand opening to hear selections from Werner’s just-released album, “Flyover Country.” It’s the latest in her series of concept albums. “Hayseed” was inspired by her experience growing up on her family’s Iowa farm. “As a writer, I like to have something in common with the audience going in,” she says. “Even if you don’t know who I am, we might have a connection if you have an affection for agriculture. I love farms and farmers.”

She recalls playing the Avalon in 2013 when “Hayseed” came out. That weekend, she also performed at the farmer’s market in Easton. “It was fascinating to me that they have products from the Chesapeake Bay. I’ll probably get it wrong,” she said, trying to recall if it was scallops, clams, or crabs. 

“Oysters,” I said.

“I’d never been to a farmer’s market selling oysters,” the one-time Midwest farmgirl said. “I just loved that Eastern Shore encounter and what people love about where they live.”

She followed “Hayseed” with “The Gospel Truth,” which is about “faith and doubt next to each other. We did a lot of churches on that tour,” she recalls.

“Flyover Country” embraces all the twang and lonesome tales of a country album. “The subject matter is rural and what is wonderful about that and also what is hidden in the shadows,” Werner says. “Wine Bottles” is the surest bet to make her playlist for this tent debut concert. It’s a novelty song with a chorus that proclaims, or maybe complains, “They’re making wine bottles smaller all the time.” But Werner calls it a pandemic song. “There’ve been days when you feel like downing a whole bottle all by yourself. These bottles aren’t quite enough…

“There’s some truth to those stereotypes about country music,” she adds. “We were isolated in some ways on the farm. We entertained ourselves, learned to play the guitar as a way of connecting. My family has an unusual ear for harmony. It’s called ‘blood harmony:’ voices joined by DNA as well as the major third.” The Carter Family and Everly Brothers come to her mind as prime examples.

Her song, “Barn Music,” reflects the Werner family’s appreciation of a good song while milking the cows. “Nothing is harder work than dairy farming,” she proclaims. I agree with her, having been raised on a farm with 100 milk cows on Dutchman’s Lane in Easton. “Those cows sent you through college,” my mother used to say.

But that’s another story from another time in which you might wear a mask if you were, say, robbing a bank or maybe trick or treating.

“The Avalon has been very creative,” Werner says, “in figuring how people want to be together, enjoy themselves and still be safe at a time when we’re feeling kind of isolated and anxious.”

Amen.

Steve Parks is a retired New York journalist and Easton native son of a dairy farmer.

####

Susan Werner Inaugurates The Stoltz Pavilion

7 p.m. Thursday, November, 5, under the tent just north of TalbotTown shopping center, Easton
Tickets: $60 for two in seating pods; $120 for four. Concert livestream: facebook.com/avalon.staff or youtube.com/avalontheatremaryland; suggested donation $25, see tickets.avalontheatre.com

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Arts Portal Lead, Arts Top Story

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