Royalty has come to the Nation’s Capital just in time for Independence Day. King Tut makes his first visit to the United States in 25 years with what is described as a “cinematic immersive” Smithsonian exhibition. But what’s a quarter-century in the short life and 3,300-year afterlife of the legendary child pharaoh? Beyond King Tut: An Immersive Experience celebrates the centennial anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt’s fabled Valley of the Kings. 

Instead of the don’t-touch artifacts in standard museum displays of mummy paraphernalia, this National Geographic show deploys replicas and high-definition projections to take you inside Tut’s tomb. Beyond that, as the title suggests, you’ll catch glimpses of the ancient world outside – from the Great Sphinx to a sunrise ascent over the Pyramids of Giza and a two-millennium time trip to the 1922 unearthing of Tut’s resting place constructed and accessorized with his quest for immortality in mind. Timed admission tickets: nationalgeographic.org/tickets/events

Re-emerge into the here-and-now literally outside on the National Mall, and depending on the time of your visit, you can stroll through the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival on your way to the Constitution Avenue side of the Mall to take in the Independence Day Parade featuring floats, marching bands, and giant balloons. Other highlights of the D.C. Fourth include a 3 p.m. Musical Celebration at the National Cathedral and, of course, fireworks starting at 9:09 p.m. bursting across the skies over the Mall. (For the best view, fireworks cruises on the Potomac depart from Washington Harbour at 7:30.) The Capitol Fourth Concert on the West Lawn of the Capitol itself is best seen on PBS since post-Jan. 6, 2021 security makes in-person attendance problematic.

Among July 4th observances on this side of the Bay, Ocean City offers free beach entertainment all through the holiday weekend with family-friendly movies, including Sing 2 on July 1st, and games at the 27th Street beachfront or near the Carousel Hotel and fireworks on the night of July 4th. Just up the coast in Delaware, Rehoboth Beach celebrates one day early with fireworks at 9:30 on Sunday, July 3rd, preceded by a concert on the beachfront bandstand. There’s even a small chance of a President and First Lady holiday sighting. 

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Get ready for the next big art event in Easton by checking out galleries all over the Midshore. Although most painters who enter the Plein Air Festival starting July 15th select vistas in Talbot County, a few go further afield to neighboring counties. Here’s a gallery sampler for the month.

In Cambridge, you might be intrigued by the Hookers, Strippers & Dyers exhibit – but it’s not what you think. Artists Betty Burbage and Elissa Crouch practice the traditional folk art of rug hooking, which also involves dying and stripping fabric into colorful strands woven into whatever patterns the artists imagine. The show runs only through July 3rd at Main Street Gallery www.mainstgallery.net. Despite its name, the gallery’s location is 518 Poplar St.

Nearby on High Street, the Dorchester Center for the Arts dorchesterarts.org brings Outside In with its July exhibit of works by self-trained “outsider” artists. Among them are Mose and Annie Tolliver and Howard Finster – whose imaginative creations have appeared in Baltimore’s Visionary Art Museum and Smithsonian’s American Art Museum in D.C. Ed Krell of Hooper’s Island, who specializes in large-scale chalk artworks, demonstrates his technique in a free Second Saturday reception, 5-7 p.m. July 9th, with music by Marianne and the Misfits, also from Hooper’s Island.  

An untitled piece by Ed Krell

In Chestertown, MassoniArt, massoniart.com which has expanded to a street-level gallery on Cross Street near the original second-story High Street space, splits its Summer Gallery Artists Exhibition on July 1st between the two locations. A few doors down on High, the Artists’ Gallery theartistsgalleryctown.com opens Shore Delights by Nancy Thomas with a First Friday reception on July 1st, introducing a month-long tag-sale show. 

Get in the plein-air mood at Adkins Arboretum adkinsarboretum.org near Ridgely with botanist Anna Harding’s vibrant color-pencil Wake Up . . . We Need Everybody drawings opening July 5th at the visitor’s center gallery. Then take a forested stroll through the site-specific Re-Vision installation by Howard and Mary McCoy.  

Circling back to Easton’s arts district along Harrison Street, Trippe Gallery thetrippegallery.com hosts a First Friday reception for artist David Csont, 5-8 p.m. July 1st. Next, the gallery celebrates the Plein Air Festival’s opening day with a Variations exhibit of paintings by 15 artists inspired by the same photograph taken by gallery co-founder Nanny Trippe. Among them is Nancy Tankersley, a Plein Air Easton founder.  Also on Harrison, Troika Gallery troikagallery.com continues its summerlong Raoul Middleman, A Life Well Painted show and sale of works by the late Baltimore painter and one-time Plein Air Festival celebrity artist.  

Meanwhile, around the corner on Goldsborough Street, Studio B Art Gallery studiobgallery.com hosts a Plein Air workshop starting July 11th at various Talbot County outdoor sites led by painter Jove Wang. A free reception toasts the opening of Masterstrokes: Visions of Jove Wang exhibit, 5-8 p.m. July 15th at the gallery.   

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

The 37th annual Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival opened its second week with “Mozart and More” – something familiar and something probably never heard before by most if not all the audience at an early evening concert at downtown Easton’s beautiful Ebenezer Theater.

In his mid-to-late 20s, from 1782 to 1785, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed six string quartets in apparent homage to Haydn, his mentor and father-figure friend, who had just published six of his own quartets. But there’s no mistaking this third piece in the series for that of anyone but Mozart.

Violinist Catherine Cho

As played by a stellar foursome – Chesapeake Music’s co-artistic directors, cellist Marcy Rosen and violinist Catherine Cho, along with violist Maiya Papach and violinist Jennifer Liu – Mozart’s String Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 428 got what this masterpiece deserves: a spirited and finely honed performance.

An energetic opening movement is marked by the deployment of nine notes of the 12 in the chromatic scale. Arranged with oddly spaced intervals, it somehow delights in the form of a sonata jumping unexpectedly to a new key, B-flat major, and teases with a few others while still managing a crisp landing. In the more somber second-movement andante, Rosen lays down a meditative undercurrent to Cho and Liu’s duel violin entreaties echoed by Papach on viola.

As if awakened from a dream, the more assertive third-movement minuet comes closest to a salute to Haydn with its witty and playful opening before resolving into a distinctly Mozart tableau of artfully rendered expressions of sadness and consolation. The complex allegro finale seems to pose a question with teasing fillips that are answered with rambunctious conviction before evolving into a pleasing upper-string melody punctuated with finality by four triumphant chords.

The second half of the one-hour-and-change concert without intermission featured J. Lawrie Bloom in Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet in f-sharp minor, Opus 10, performed with the same quartet as on the Mozart piece. Bloom, now retired, co-founded the Chesapeake chamber festival, now in its 37th year, with Rosen. The performance marked the first time that Bloom, for many years bass clarinetist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has performed this quintet, which he says is both “magnificent” and “massively overlooked” – perhaps in part due to racial bias as it was written by an Anglo-African composer who died at 35 in 1912.

Bass clarinetist J. Lawrie Bloom

Seated in the center, flanked by the two violinists to his right with the cellist and violist to his left, Bloom is quiet at first as the Rosen plucks the cello forcefully in a percussive manner accompanied by syncopated viola and pizzicato violins, announcing that this is a true ensemble quintet and not just a vehicle for solo clarinet virtuoso moments. Not until its recapitulation does the clarinet play the principal theme of the first movement, resembling jazz in its phrasing.

The second-movement Larghetto is also introduced by strings, principally by violinists Cho and Liu, in a pastoral theme suggesting a folk melody. The theme is repeated with tender, almost harp-like upper strings of the cello, and the soaring pianissimo of the first violin. A gently emotive cadenza passage led by Bloom’s bass clarinet brings the movement to sweet and satisfying repose. A double-time scherzo movement awakens the audience from the preceding lullaby effects with a rhythmic buoyancy and an affable clarinet melody before the strings grow restive again like an antsy brood before settling down to accompany Bloom’s birdsong reeds.

The finale, aptly characterized as an allegro agitato, opens with a boldly wandering exploration flowing in a rapidly swirling stream from F sharp minor to G minor and back again. A brief interlude recollects the tender theme of the Larghetto until the vivace, now in F sharp major, whips up a bit more frenzy, perhaps influenced by Dvorak – greatly admired by Coleridge-Taylor – before emerging from the musical forest with a peaceful coda pulling it all together.

The festival continues Friday, June 17, with a performance by Trio Colores, the Swiss-based percussion ensemble that won the Chesapeake Chamber Music International Competition in April. The concert begins with the Trio in b minor for Oboe, Clarinet, and Piano by Edouard Destenay. Saturday night’s “Festival Finale” program opens with Mozart’s Piano Trio in E Major, K. 542, followed by living American composer John Harbison’s “Six American Painters” performed by oboist Peggy Pearson with violinist Cho, violist Papach and cellist Rosen. Amy Beach’s Piano Quintet in f-sharp minor, Opus 67, featuring pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute concludes the festival. Except in case of an encore.

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

CHESAPEAKE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL

“Mozart and More” concert, Thursday, June 16. Mozart’s String Quartet in E-flat Major, K. 428 and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet in E-sharp minor, Opus 10. Upcoming concerts: Friday, June 17 and Saturday, June 18, Ebenezer Theater, Easton. Tickets: chesapeakemusic.org

This year’s two-week classical series should take nothing away from musicians who performed in the 2021 Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival, which also marked the debut of the Ebenezer Theater as an exquisitely tasteful and tune-worthy concert hall.

Just as we began to think COVID-19 might become a past-tense pandemic, its resurgence last summer – the first of several – forced such precautions as masking and spaced concert seating that cut the potential in-person audience in half. But now, it’s likely that some or many of the concerts will draw capacity or near-capacity attendance. Chesapeake Music, the resident company of the Joanne and Paul Prager Family Center for the Arts, of which Ebenezer is the crown jewel, has lined up a stellar cast of musicians performing a diverse and challenging program spanning centuries, including these early decades of the 21st.

“Our festival theme is ‘Artful Dialogues,’ which allows the artists and audiences to connect through sound, song, and musical storytelling,” says Chesapeake Music’s co-artistic director Catherine Cho. “I feel that having a home at the Ebenezer Theater has inspired the artists, administration, and audiences to create a circle of trust and creative flow due to the beauty of the hall aesthetically and acoustically, and in the spirit and aura it exudes. The hall draws the listener in, on stage and off, and allows our imagination to have boundless possibilities.” 

Those possibilities are enhanced by a pair of stars in the operatic and orchestral realms performing on opening weekend with the festival’s impressive roster of mainstay musicians, among them Cho (violin/viola) and co-director Marcy Rosen (cello). 

Jennifer Johnson Cano

Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano arrives in Easton on the heels of her concert world premiere in The Hours, an opera based on the Pulitzer-winning novel by Michael Cunningham and the Oscar-winning movie, both of the same title, inspired by a novel by Virginia Woolf who is, herself, a character in the plot. Pulitzer winner Ken Puts composed the music for The Hours, which will receive its first fully staged production by the Metropolitan Opera next season. Along with Cano, it stars Renee Fleming, winner of the National Medal of Arts and four Grammys, and Tony winner Kelli O’Hara. Meanwhile, Cano performs three Bach cantatas at the chamber festival starting June 10, a lesser-known melody by 19th-century French composer Ernest Chausson (June 11) and a set of Ravel art songs (June 12).

Cano says, of her work ethic, “I don’t think my approach changes from one piece to another. With every project, be it part of the beloved canon of a new work, my responsibility remains the same – to serve the music and text and to communicate it.”

Among the chamber musicians performing with her is Peggy Pearson, principal oboist with the Boston Philharmonic and longtime student of composer John Harbison, whose chamber piece, Six American Painters, originally written for flute, was re-scored for oboe at the request of his star student in 2003, one year after its concert debut. Six American Painters – George Caleb Bingham, Thomas Eakins, Martin Johnson Heade, Winslow Homer, Hans Hoffmann, and Richard Diebenkorn – is a highlight of the June 18 festival finale, performed along with Mozart’s Piano Trio in E-Major and Amy Beach’s Piano Quintet in F-Minor, Opus 67. Both piano pieces are played by Ileva Jokubaviciute, who performs on Chesapeake Music’s Steinway grand all through the festival, including the Mozart trio with the co-artistic directors Rosen and Cho.

Further Week 2 highlights include Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet in F-Sharp Minor, Opus 10 on June 16. It will feature J. Lawrie Bloom, retired Chesapeake Music Festival co-founder and co-artistic director, performing with Rosen, who shared both titles with him, and Cho, his artistic directing successor. Jennifer Liu (violin) and Maiya Papach (viola) round out this distinguished quintet.

The quintet is on the festival program at Bloom’s behest. “It’s a wonderful piece,” he said in a phone interview from his Oregon home, adding that “I’m not unconscious of the fact that it’s by an Anglo-African composer.” Born to a son of an African-American slave and an unmarried Englishwoman, Coleridge-Taylor remains best known for his cantatas, particularly Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast. His three American tours were such a success that he was dubbed “the African Mahler.” But his legacy was cut short. In 1912, he died of pneumonia at age 37. 

“This magnificent work has been greatly overlooked,” Bloom said. So much so that the Chesapeake festival marks the first time the retired bass clarinetist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has played the Coleridge-Taylor quintet in concert. 

Colores Trio

Bloom also performs on June 17 in Edouard Destenay’s Trio in B-Minor for Oboe, Clarinet, and Piano, Opus 17, along with Pearson and the ubiquitous Jokubaviciute. Following intermission, Trio Colores makes a triumphant return to the scene of its double victory in the April 2 Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition, winning both the $10,000 Lerman gold prize and the audience choice award. Trio Colores is a percussion ensemble based in Switzerland specializing in reinterpreting classical music on serial drums, marimbas, and something called “musique le table,” which you probably never encountered unless you attended the competition finals. Several of the pieces in the trio’s repertoire are arranged by Luca Staffelbach, who performs with his percussion partners Matthias Kessler and Fabian Ziegler. 

Additional chamber works by such masters as Brahms, Dvorak, and Haydn as performed by ensembles including flutist Tara Helen O’Connor and string players Daniel Phillips, Peter Stumpf, and Carmit Zori complete an ambitious and wide-ranging festival program.

Note: As of now, there are no mask mandates nor required proof of COVID vaccination to attend the chamber concerts. But Don Buxton, executive director of Chesapeake Music, advises ticket holders to check the festival website near the concert date for any health guideline updates. 

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

37th Annual Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival

Friday, June 10: “Festival Opening Extravaganza,” 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, June 11: “From Bach to Brahms,” 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, June 12: “Artful Dialogues,” 5:30 p.m.

Thursday, June 16: “Mozart and More,” 5:30 p.m.

Friday, June 17: “Chesapeake Music Competition Winners,” 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, June 18: “Festival Finale,” 7:30 p.m.
Free open rehearsals, Wednesdays June 8 and 15, 10 a.m. All performances at Ebenezer Theatre, 17 S. Washington St., Easton; tickets (including video recordings) chesapeakemusic.org(click on tickets) or call 410-819-0380

Cecile Storm, Casey Rauch, & Dave Cherry

The Tred Avon Players bring Agatha Christie’s classic mystery back to homicidal life in this tale of a serial killer who accomplishes nine murders–or is it 10? –on a foreshortened weekend.

Dame Agatha considered “And Then There Were None”–scandalously known by other titles–her most challenging novel to write. Published in 1939, it was followed by a 1943 stage adaptation, also by Christie, and a 1945 movie. The book was also one of her greatest successes–more than 100 million copies sold, making it to this day among the all-time best-sellers.

The book and play were long known as “Ten Little Indians,” and before that, “Ten Little . . .” (Africans)–except that’s not what they were called in the original title, both derived from a children’s counting rhyme and minstrel song. The rhyme, which plays a prominent role in more recent play productions–including this one–has morphed into “ten little soldiers.” The more intriguing, certainly more appropriate, current title comes from the rhyme’s final line.

Aside from the one-by-one murders, the plot revolves around invitations to eight strangers and a married servant couple by an absentee host identified as U.N. Owen. (Mr. Unknown?) An ominous recording accuses each guest, and the help, of dastardly crimes for which none have done penance.

The Spy asked each Tred Avon Player, aptly cast by director Tim Weigand, to cite their character’s choicest line. Here’s what they offered and what those lines and their interpretation may suggest.

William Blore (played by David Cherry): “They done a murder and got away with it.”

Cherry acts the part of a suspicious character because, to everyone else who arrives at the “Unknown Estate,” he’s Suspect No. 1 after the first murder. For one thing, he alone introduces himself using an alias. For another, he’s a cop, very possibly rogue.

Anthony Marsden (played alternately by Alex Greenlee): “Tricky, what?” (and by Nick Richards): “I need another drink.”

It may have been drunk driving that got this devil-may-care young man invited to this soiree in which no one, except perhaps the perp, gets out alive. A tricky what’s-what, eh, Tony?

Sir Laurence Wargrave (Steve Ford): “I cooked Seton’s goose.”

Edward Seton was a hirsute young man sentenced to hang by Judge Wargrave for the murder of an elderly woman. Ford, who besides the judicial wig he wears as part of his character’s official duties, is as bald as he is inquisitive, fittingly so for an esteemed lord.

Rogers, the butler (Michael Sosler): “And there’s plenty of beer in the house.”

Appropriately obsequious as a hired servant, Sosler projects his own taste in beverage preference over that of his guests, who tend more toward whiskey, brandy, and fine wine.

Mrs. Rogers, the cook (Mary Ann Emerson): “Rich folks is queer.”

Remember, the Christie novel was written just before World War II. So translate “queer” as “odd.” You can bet that sexual orientation would not occur to Mrs. Rogers, played by Emerson as a woman not often seen outside the kitchen, possibly not even by her husband.

Emily Brent (Lynn Sanchez): “I would have thought you might be a bit uncomfortable in that dress.”

The lack of “comfort” Miss Brent ascribes to a fellow guest is all her own. To her, Vera’s tattoos are wicked stains on her soul. Revealingly, Sanchez excuses her spinster character’s own wickedness in hounding an unmarried teenage mother to literal death as God’s judgment on the girl.

Vera Claythorne (Cecile Davis Storm): “Such restraint in the face of danger is truly heroic.”

Vera claims to be a secretary mysteriously hired for this occasion. Her attire, and the tattoos it reveals, draw spinster Emily’s condemning attention. But, as played by Storm, Vera is more receptive to carrots than sticks. She flirts back with the handsome Capt. Lombard as they dance around the whodunit conundrum.

Philip Lombard (Casey Rauch): “What a law-abiding lot we seem to be.”

A debonair womanizer as portrayed by Rauch, Lombard picks up on “heroic” as his cover for the deaths of 21 African tribesmen under his command, calling his abandonment of them in seeking their rescue as “the only truly heroic thing” he’s ever done. Still, he looks good, formally dressed for dinner that never comes, caressing a glass of whiskey.

General Mackenzie (Rob Sanchez): “Fellow’s a madman.”

We won’t say to whom the general is referring. In any case, as played by Sanchez, Mackenzie may have no clue. He teases us with threads of insight here and there but mostly imagines being in the presence of a deceased loved one. Maybe his comments are self-referential.

Dr. Armstrong (Cavin Alexandra Moore) “Many homicidal maniacs are very quiet, unassuming people.”

Truer words, it can be said, or in this case, spoken. But take care in taking this as a spoiler. Or is it just a ploy by Christie to throw you off? Whatever, Moore’s performance only adds, as it should, to the riddle on the fireplace mantle – counting down the stick-figure soldiers.

Two production observations: First, the set design by Cece Davis Storm (aka Vera) captures the elegant taste and wherewithal of the mystery host. The architecturally framed sightlines invite us to imagine an English Channel view glimpsed from within this remote island estate.

Secondly, if you have a choice of performances to see, skip the matinee. Daylight makes it impossible to produce a blackout in Oxford Community Center’s theater space. Director Weigand suggests individual or communal blackouts: Closing your eyes on cue in Act II. (Lest you accidentally catch a visual spoiler.) In any case, closing your eyes is no dramatic equivalent of an actual blackout. Who isn’t afraid of the dark in the presence of mass murder?

Also, be prepared for a two-and-a-half-hour show. I put that one on Dame Agatha falling in love with her own talky script.

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

“AND THEN THERE WERE NONE”

Agatha Christie’s classic play performed by the Tred Avon Players, Oxford Community Center, Thursday, April 28 through Sunday, May 1. tredavonplayers.org

If you think the third National Juried Photography Exhibition opening the Academy Art Museum’s spring-summer season is more of the same, think again.

For starters, the summer of 2020 edition was seen on-online-only by many who viewed it at all due to COVID-19 restrictions. But what truly distinguishes this national juried show from its two predecessors is the serially thematic nature of each presentation, selected blind (no names attached to prospective entries) by artist Kris Graves.

In the historic Lederer Gallery, the original circa 1800 museum structure, “New Photography III,” begins on the left with Kristen Joy Emack’s intimate 2021 black-and-white series of her daughter and her daughter’s cousin wading in their undies and, later, focusing on one of the girl’s faces framed by a canopy of ferns and the two of them in a tangle of twisted tree branches. In a final image, one girl lies on the pavement with a mask atop her head as the other’s hand draws a chalk tiara to complete their play portrait.

The contrast with the next series could hardly be sharper. Michael Iacovone deploys geometric curves to connect earth-scapes with solar objects in studies bearing such titles as “A System to Measure Myself Against the Arch of the Sunset,” in which “myself” is represented by an ant-scale figure on a desert landscape. Meanwhile, Gregg Evans concentrates on everyday life in his relatable series, from “Reptile,” a turtle traversing a gravel path, to “Sunset, May,” a satellite dish upstaging a blush-red sky.

“Portrait of a Chicago Schoolgirl” by Melissa Ann Pinney

Returning to human engagement, Melissa Ann Pinney brings a youthful arena of diversity into individual interpretation with her 2020 Chicago public schools project. These are not your mother or father’s school photos but rather a series of look-at-me personal statements: a girl wearing cartoon-figure tights accented by a colorful stack of bead bracelets and a pastel necktie; another young lady poised as if for flight in her turquoise jacket with arms spread like butterfly wings, and a COVID-masked black man wearing a gold Christian cross necklace.

Portraits of a more abstract nature mark Aline Smithson’s Fugue series exploring the finite lifespan of seemingly immortal digital files. Some of her “Fugue States” involve otherworldly negative imagery while others evoke right- or left-facing striped profiles, some with peek-a-boo conventional photos glimpsed like trapped personas within.

Lenard Smith introduces an architectural theme with tall cylindrical shapes beneath a roof, cones and triangular shapes supporting a bridge, and other geometric forms imitating a statue with arms. That sets the stage for an architectural shelter from what might be considered R-rated themes in the last two displays in the Lederer Gallery. Michael Young’s “Hidden Glances” series is partially hidden from wider gallery view behind a three-sided alcove which encompasses photos of a topless man inside a featureless male torso and a “Leather on Leather” composite of a partially nude male interspersed with S&M play clothes and toys. Margaret Murphy offers a feminine glance into social media “self-televication,” including such selfies as “Rosy Cheeks” (freckled) and “Adoration,” a girl apparently admiring her skimpily clad body.

In the Healy Gallery across the hall, “New Photography III” continues with a series of images by Korean-American Jeong Hur that, ironically, endeavors to “disprove the notion that photos depict the world truthfully.” Among these are digitally manipulated shots of a cloud-shaped human figure and a hand-of-God tableau inspired by Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco. Noel Spirandelli further explores the sleight-of-eye theme with his “oddities of modern life,” among them reverse white tattoos on a black man’s face and color-matching prints on the clothes of “Mike” and the entire Fremont Hotel room he occupies.

“Wish” by Jeong Hur

Rashod Taylor endeavors to capture a slice of domestic African-American life with photos of himself and his son LJ, from “Bathtime” to “It’s Complicated” – a shot of his son holding a small American flag with his dad’s image reflected in the glass door behind him. Jon Feinstein addresses a tragic family theme indirectly with his typology study comparing the deterioration of evergreens in the Northwest with the progression of his mother’s Alzheimer’s disease.

Ahmed Ozsever’s series of rural and industrial landscapes takes an aerial view of scenes tinted in what reminds me, as unlikely as it sounds, of fine blue-on-white Delft chinaware, scarred in one image with gray gravel. Thomas Stoffregen’s panoramic study focuses on severely neglected urban architecture in an undisclosed Midwestern city. It’s a Rust Belt photo album sadly familiar in American cities on either coast or in-between flyovers – boarded-up commercial properties on either corner and a ballfield no one plays on anymore.

Edward Bateman’s series indirectly reflects the pandemic years from which we are now, hopefully, emerging. Confined indoors in his Utah home, Bateman recreated famous Western landscapes on his kitchen tables to photograph instead of the real thing – from “Yosemite in Winter” to “Bryce No. 26” in a virtual national parks tour. All without leaving the gallery.

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“The World” by Adrienne Elise Tarver

Just down the hall, be sure not to miss “Manifesting Paradise.” Adrienne Elise Tarver creates a mini-Garden of Eden in her caulking and acrylic wire mesh mimicking botanical fronds and ferns amid other products of her artistic skillset. This includes the “Mirage” series of small watercolors inspired by a deck of Tarot cards; “The World,” a three-eyed tapestry displayed above the fireplace in the first of the two-room gallery; and “Namesake,” a painting of a plantation house near the lost town of Tarverville engulfed in flames, symbolizing slavery’s end.

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

“NEW PHOTOGRAPHY III” through July 10, Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton. Also, ADRIENNE ELISE TARVER” MANIFESTING PARADISE” through July 24, artist talk on July 13. 410-822-2787, academyartmuseum.org

Thank but no thanks to the COVID pandemic, the 10th biennial of the International Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition enjoyed its first in-person concert finals in more than two years at downtown Easton’s Ebenezer Theater with five ensembles vying for the $10,000 Lerman Gold Prize and a concert appearance in June’s Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival.

Due to severe travel and visa restrictions, not to mention the shutdown of nearly all indoor concert venues, the ninth biennial was a virtual livestream event. All of which made Saturday’s matinee and evening competition such a celebratory occasion. A sellout live audience plus at-home livestream spectators got to vote for their favorite contestants after five 45-minute performances. Many in attendance stuck around for the finalist judges’ verdict in awarding the gold and silver prizes.

While some chamber music competitions feature string quartets only, Chesapeake Music requires diversity in performance repertoire and musical instruments. Trio Colores, a percussion-only chamber ensemble based in Zurich, Switzerland, won both the Gold and Audience Choice awards, the latter adding $500 to their $10,000 grand prize. Abeo Quartet, a string ensemble based at the University of Delaware in Newark, earned the $5,000 silver award.

We met with all 19 musicians of the five-chamber groups at a Sunday brunch, April 3, at a Bellevue estate overlooking the Tred Avon and Oxford across the river. Some of the contestants enjoyed an extended weekend stay with host families. Others stayed as guests with Easton families.

Lerman Gold Prize and Audience Choice Award–Trio Colores (Percussion): Fabian Ziegler, Matthias Kessler, and Luca Staffelbach

As Don Buxton, chairman of Chesapeake Music and host of the finals concert, said while re-introducing the contestants before audience voting took place and before the judges announced the gold and silver winners, Trio Colores alone managed to “fill the stage.” A table accommodating three musicians dominated center downstage for the first piece in their performance. Six hands scraped across and pounded on tablets, punctuated by rhythmic clapping in four movements of Musique de Table by Thierry de Mey. Each new movement was indicated by a ceremonially timed turning of pages in a collective gesture that borrowed from performance art techniques. In our subsequent interview, Ziegler said they usually perform this piece with a microphone at the table to better project the percussion throughout the concert hall.

Lerman Gold Prize and Audience Choice Award–Trio Colores (Percussion): Fabian Ziegler, Matthias Kessler, and Luca Staffelbach

From there, the trio moved seamlessly to three marimbas that dominated the upstage geography. For those not familiar with marimbas, think large-scale xylophones producing everything from dainty teardrop notes to more assertive mallet-pounding, bringing an easily recognizable melodic rhythm to such classical staples as Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin (four movements’ worth) to Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre, both arranged by trio member Staffelbach. Folding the marimbas to make room for spreading their drum assemblage, the trio worked up a sweat attacking a bass drum ringed by bongos and high-pitched metallic Chinese opera instruments to Serbian composer Nebojsa Jovan Zivkivic’s Trio per Uno, Part I.

Of the marimba pieces, Staffelbach says, “I do arrangements of music that we like.” Added Fabian, “We try to do our version of a piece but not get too far from the original.”

It may well be that the trio’s originality moved the judges to award them the Lerman prize.

Silver Prize–Abeo Quartet (Strings): Njioma Grevious, Rebecca Benjamin, James Kang, and Brian Gadbow

For the graduate string quartet of Delaware, the Chesapeake was their second competition together, having made the finals of the 2021 Young Artists Competition in New York. Like each of the three string quartets competing in Easton, their selections reflected current world events. “We always draw inspiration from what is going on around us,” cellist Gadbow said. “It’s our way of connecting with the audience and processing what is happening for ourselves.”

Silver prize-winning Abeo Quartet (strings): Njioma Grevious, Rebecca Benjamin, Brian Gadbow, and James Kang.

Of the pandemic part of the equation, Grevious, one of Abeo’s two violinists, said, “The music is very meaningful for all of us. As a diverse group, we want to play pieces by underrepresented composers.” Their performance of Billy Childs’ White Room was particularly moving, reflecting anxiety from the start with short and searing strokes signifying pain, followed by a screaming violin solo morphing into a full quartet staccato alarm and a tremulous undercurrent of fear for a loved one’s survival.

They capped their set, which included string quartets by Haydn and Mendelssohn, with Shostakovich’s No. 3, mastering its dramatically abrupt endings and an equally dramatic allegro with a torrid opening that takes a solo viola turn toward an intense sense of urgency.

Aero Quartet (brass): Salvador Flores, Walt Puyear, Matthew Koester, Brian Kachur 

Matthew Koester politely corrected our designation of Aero’s all-sax instrumentation as “brass.” “Saxophones can incorporate some of the woodwind and reed repertoire,” he said. “So they’re not just brass” – despite the bright and shiny sparkle of their instruments. Their performance proved his point as the sax quartet – Flores on soprano sax, Puyear on alto, Koester on tenor and Kochur on baritone – embraced all the complexity of Robert Schumann’s “Bouquet” and the war-torn foreboding of Guillermo Lago’s Ciudades: Sarajevo and Addis Abbado.

Their University of Michigan quartet is “custom-made,” said Kochur. “Others we played in were preassigned by faculty.”

The Aeros, gold medalists in the 2021 Fischoff Chamber Music virtual competition, plan to record an album this summer or fall.

Terra String Quartet: Amelia Dietrich, Harriet Langley, Ramon Carrero Martinez, and Geirthrudur Gudmundsdottir

The New York-based foursome brought to the competition sharply contrasting classical compositions they’ve been working on for two years leading up to this, their first chamber competition as a group. All four movements of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 3 cover the classical realm like a blanket. Adding Britton’s Quartet No. 2 “shows the diversity of what we can do,” said cellist Gudmundsdottir.

Each of them, as well as other contestant groups, praised the feedback they received from Chesapeake judges after the winners were announced. In previous competitions as solo performers, “We’d get just cursory remarks, like ‘too slow’ or ‘too soft,’ ” recalled Dietrich, one of Terra’s two violinists. “Here, the judges spent 25 minutes to a half-hour with us.”

Elless Quartet (Strings): Emera Gurath, Megan Lin, Marcus Stevensen, and Cecelia Swanson

“We’re all still in school” at the Cleveland Institute of Music, violist Stevensen noted. “We didn’t make it to the finals last time we entered. So we feel like winners this time.”

Citing the renowned Cleveland Orchestra, cellist Swanson said, “Cleveland has its own sound,” adding that many of the orchestra’s musicians are on their school’s faculty. “We wanted to bring that sound here with us.” To that end, they played a challenging program ranging from the finale of Haydn’s String Quartet No. 1 and Mendelssohn’s Quartet No. 6 to Jesse Montgomery’s Strum, showing off their pizzicato skills.

“We all see chamber music as a major part of our future,” says violinist Gurath.

All five Chesapeake ensembles offered their appreciation for the warmth of host families who opened their homes to them and the large, attentive live audience at the Ebenezer Theater. Each of the finalist groups demonstrated that their musical ambitions are well within reach in terms of skill and discipline.

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton. Photos by Calvin Jackson.