From chamber music to movie scores, many high-brow composers could do it all. Chesapeake Music’s Sunday matinee “Interlude” performance – its final 2025 concert – featured five whose works, richly presented by the Catalyst Quartet, originally played in venues ranging from concert and opera halls to movie and TV screens.

The program opened with John Adams’ “Fellow Traveler,” a short piece written as a birthday gift to his friend and collaborator Peter Sellars, with whom he wrote the 2005 opera “Doctor Atomic” about the life and career of Robert J. Oppenheimer – also the title character in “Oppenheimer,” winner of the 2024 best picture Oscar. The “father of the atomic bomb” was later investigated for communist sympathies, which made him a so-called “fellow traveler.” In his opening remarks, cellist Paul Rodriguez thanked Adams for his permission to play the piece, which is given only sparingly.

“Fellow Traveler” weaves together echoes of Adams’ “Son of Chamber Symphony” and his best-known opera, “Nixon in China,” also created with Sellars. His work is characterized by a minimalist style of repeating patterns mixed with the late Romantic influences of Mahler and others. Violinist Ali Fayette led much of the piece’s melodic theme, such as it is.

More minimalism followed with the next two selections by Max Richter and Baltimore native Philip Glass. Richter’s six-minute “On the Nature of Daylight” from his 2004 “The Blue Notebook” album may sound familiar to viewers of the popular streaming series “The Handmaid’s Tale” with its cycles of introspective harmonies, from a mournful all-stings opening to a brief violin solo deftly played by Karla Donehew Perez, introducing a new rhythmic theme.

Glass’ 18-minute String Quartet No. 3, written as a score for Paul Schrader’s 1985 film “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” about Japanese novelist Yoika Mishima, reflects each of the life chapters in six movements, building toward a finale of swelling bursts of energy climaxed by heaving sighs of relief – or is it regret? – led by the Catalyst violinists, including Fayette, who said Mishima was radicalized by Japan’s leanings to the West throughout decades of war in Afghanistan.

Two longer compositions comprised the second half of the concert, starting with Bernard Herrmann’s 20-minute “Echoes for a String Quartet.” In terms of music for the cinema, Herrmann’s award-winning career ranks among the greatest in the 20th century with credits spanning from Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” (1941) to Martin Scorcese’s “Taxi Driver” (1976). His string quartet figuratively echoes musical hallmarks from his illustrious career – short phrases repeated again and again while posing in varied dynamic tempos and dramatic situations which, as violinist Perez said, “makes you feel like you’re in a movie.” To that end, its emotional rollercoaster is tempered by thoughtful passages performed with delicate expression by cellist Rodriguez and violist Paul Laraia.

Of the five composers on the “Cinematic Refuge” program, Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s string quartet was the most classically “classic,” if you will. His 1933 quartet in four movements is considered the most “Viennese” in his body of work. It opens with an allegro of weeping and laughing sensibility followed by a larghetto of deeply felt melancholy followed by an intermezzo laced with his typically melodic charm and closing with a highly spirited and sweepingly danceable waltz. Quite Viennese, indeed, in violist Laraia’s words, “Romanticism as he colorfully created later in Hollywood.

But the stars of Sunday’s matinee were the four on-stage collaborators who so skillfully delivered precise, well-practiced and in-the-moment spontaneity

CATALYST QUARTET: ‘CINEMATIC REFUGE’

Chesapeake Music concert, Sunday, Nov. 23, Ebenezer Theater, Easton. chesapeakemusic.org

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

 The Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra bills its 28th season, 2025-26,  as one of “Bold Voices, Eternal Resonance.” It’s hard to beat Beethoven for eternal resonance. And as for bold voices, Bartok certainly comes to mind. But for a surprise entry opening night Thursday at the Easton Church of God, music director Michael Repper turned to a 19th-century composer whose music is largely new to 21st-century listeners.

 Emilie Mayer (1812-1883) was one of the first European women to make her mark as a composer of orchestral music. But her Symphony No. 1, performed by the MSO, and her entire classical canon – including seven other symphonies along with piano sonatas and chamber works – was all but forgotten after her death. Never mind that she was hailed as the “Female Beethoven” and in popular demand for her Romantic repertoire, especially in her native Germany.

The evening opened with Bela Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances he created as a way to overcome post-World War I depression. Inspired by tunes he heard during trips to Transylvania, the piece runs seven minutes or so, played orchestrally. In such a short span – one of the bits is 30 seconds start to finish – the tunes fly by almost indiscernibly one from another. Better to consider them a single folk instrumental ranging in tempo and temperament from fast to slow, gleeful to wistful. While strings set the tempo, reeds rule the temperament – especially flutes (led by Mindy Heinsohn) – which moved Bartok to get over his funk.

The Bartok appetizer whets our palate for a main course. And Emilie Mayer does not disappoint. For a first symphony, each of the four movements are mature, diverse in style and way ahead of her time, having debuted in Berlin in 1847. The opening adagio/allegro energico morphs from contemplative to bombastic. Energetic for sure.  The slower second movement gives us and the players time to catch our breath before it grows in emotional intensity. A satisfyingly lively and rhythmic scherzo leads to a finale testing every part of the orchestra to peak at the climatic close of what for me and most of the audience was a triumphant debut, sadly, for a long dead and neglected composer. My suggestion going forward is to bring Mayer back to musical life with one of her later pieces: Repper mentioned her “Faust Overture” – if not for this season, perhaps next.

After intermission, the “male” Beethoven, one of Mayer’s early classical music heroes, proved his “eternal resonance” in a spirited performance of his Symphony No. 7, which the master himself called one of his greatest works. 

The odd-numbered genius can hardly be surpassed in Symphonies 5, 7 and 9, compared to which even the estimable No. 4 is a dud. And for my money (which I am not betting on) his Symphonies 7 and 9 outrank even the fabled 5th. There is not a moment in the 7th that permits your attention to wander for one note. It must be a thrill for someone who can play for a living to perform with a full and entirely capable orchestra of fellow musicians by a conductor who knows how to lead.

So the particulars: The distinctively familiar opening, with a single note repeated thrice, establishes the movement’s prevailing theme, picking up the pace feverishly to a dramatic finish that would bring a less informed audience to its feet in bravo appreciation. The second movement allegretto settles into an almost lullaby cadence before bursting into a declarative resolution offset by the playful exuberance of the presto scherzo to follow.  

  The allegro con brio finale begins as if it’s at the fantastic finish line, though it’s way too soon to go home. Bow-to-string lightning bolts and thunderous drumbeats are about to strike, led by concertmaster Kimberly McCollum and associate Paula Sweterlitsch, along with violist Yuri Tomenko, cellist Katie McCarthy, bassist Chris Chlumsky , and timpanist Barry Dove. 

Coming up in early November is “Echoes of Greatness” with guest conductor George Jackson leading the MSO in a program of Mozart and Mendelssohn symphonies and a Beethoven overture.

MID-ATLANTIC SYMPHONY SEASON OPENER

Easton Church of God, Thursday night. Upcoming performances of the same program, 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 27, Epworth United Methodist Church, Rehoboth Beach; 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 28, Ocean Pines, Md. midatlanticsymphony.org

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

 

As remarkable and important as the Water’s Edge Museum collection of Ruth Starr Rose paintings and prints may be, its provenance is even more so. Dating back to a time when women had just recently won their right to vote and when Jim Crow laws sought to deny all human rights to African-Americans, Rose – a white woman – created, as she put it, “a record of the life of Negroes of the Eastern Shore. It had never been done,” she wrote, “and is still unique in the annals of art.”

While art depicting people of color is no longer “unique” to this collection at the museum located on the Tred Avon’s edge in Oxford, it most likely was the case in 1933 when she wrote about her work. Moreover, it’s hard to imagine that anyone else could have achieved such a legacy. In the early decades of the 20th Century it was rare for black artists or women artists of any color to gain much notice. And her access to an isolated community with every reason to mistrust white strangers is itself remarkable. There were black artists whose success at the time was hard-earned – from Jacob Lawrence in fine art to Paul Robeson in performing arts – they won their notoriety in metropolitan capitals of the United States, principally New York City.

By comparison, Rose, the daughter of staunch Wisconsin abolitionists, won the trust of all-black communities of Talbot County at a time when the Eastern Shore – before any Bay Bridge was even dreamed of – was a geographic backwater. Yet she made friends with residents of The Hill in Easton, the historic neighborhood of free African-Americans dating back before the Civil War, as well as Unionville and Copperville settled by veterans of the war that won their emancipation.

Rose attended their AME churches regularly and developed her appreciation of spirituals performed by people she regarded as friends and neighbors. Among the oil portraits she painted were those of Isaac Copper, namesake of the founding family of the village bearing his surname, and Bernard Moaney, whose descendant, George Moaney, narrates the five-minute video “The Afterglow of Ruth Starr Rose” by Talbot Spy that can be seen on the Water’s Edge website, You Tube or talbotspy.org. He’s also a founding member and genealogical adviser to the museum.

Even in major museums of the world, George Moaney notes, “You don’t see a black person in their paintings except in the background as servants” or, more recently, in portraits of celebrities and political figures, notably Muhammad Ali and President Barack Obama. Before 2015, when the Rose collection surfaced, “Our family didn’t even know these images existed.” The unveiling of the works by Rose (1887-1965) marked, he said, “the first time I had seen on the Eastern Shore black and white people coming together for a cultural event.”

Of her 1933 color serigraph “Jonah and the whale,” featured four years later at the Paris International Exposition, Rose wrote: “Long ago the slaves sang, ‘If the Lord delivered Jonah from the belly of the whale, He will deliver me.’ And these words came too: The Negro race has been delivered from dangers and torments worse than Jonah knew. They have been given a vision of the freedom that can finally be complete.”

But there is much more to see and experience at the Water’s Edge Museum. In its special exhibits gallery, “Black Watermen in the Chesapeake” opens later this month. In the hallway just outside, pause to view “Victoria Park as a Civil Right.” In 1848, about a decade into her 63 years and seven months reign – surpassed only by the 70-year monarchy of Elizabeth II – Queen Victoria granted an “urban botanical garden” for the people of Antigua and Barbuda, part of the British Empire until 1981. The garden, she wrote, serves as open space “for the healthful enjoyment of air and space” for the people of the Caribbean island colony – now a nation.

Be sure, then, to step outside to the Water’s Edge botanical garden. Replete with flowers, plus basil, bell pepper, cucumber and tomato plants, the fruits of which are composted. Besides the staff, the garden is tended, in part, by visiting elementary to middle school children who “learn about environmental justice that is denied to those who live in food desert neighborhoods,” said Sara Park, co-director of Water’s Edge along with Ja’lyn Hicks.

Water’s Edge was awarded a certificate of recognition from the Talbot County Council for the “pictorial history and artifacts on display [portraying] a resilient people who lived their lives, and loved and fought for their country and continued to forge ahead, despite the obstacles and hardships faced.” Council member Keasha Haythe, who had attended the museum’s anniversary celebration earlier in February, commented on the recognition: “Thank you for telling these stories. Having a grandfather who was a waterman, it’s important to tell stories of the heritage, history, and diversity that we have in Talbot County.”

Coincidentally or not, this occurred at the same council session in which a motion to rescind the county’s declaration supporting the goals of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) was defeated. However, following Trump administration threats to deny federal funding for expansion of the Easton Airport, the council voted in June to delete all mention of DEI goals in its official statements.

Nevertheless, Kay Brown, the museum’s assistant director, continues her work as manager of the Middle Passage Port Marker Project. Oxford is the only UNESCO-documented Middle Passage port on the Eastern Shore with no sign declaring that this is where slave ships docked to deliver its human-bondage cargo for sale. It’s a distinction shared in part just across the Tred Avon River where the Bellevue Passage Museum is planning and raising funds to build a space to tell the story of one of the country’s oldest African-American waterfront communities, which became self-sufficient following the Civil War abolition of slavery. The goal is to add on to one of the few remaining historic buildings available, located next to the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry dock. For now, the museum is a virtual one where you can view photos, artifacts and documentation of Bellevue’s own water’s edge past. In partnership with the museum in Oxford, the two would comprise a ferry-linked match in presenting an immersive educational and heritage tourism experience.

***
For more on slavery to self-sufficiency and the Eastern Shore’s witness to both, the Harriet Tubman Freedom Center in Cambridge is exhibiting “Harriet: A Taste of Freedom” through Sept. 30. Curated by Larry Poncho Brown, a Baltimore-based artist, through interpretive works by 40 artists whose visions know no bounds as they are both local and international. The art ranges from portraiture to abstract imagery. In that sense, it’s almost as varied as Tubman’s remarkable life’s work – starting as a runaway slave herself who returned time and again to free family and other fellow slaves in Dorchester County to freedom at least as far north as Philadelphia. And she literally fought for freedom in the Civil War, having recently been promoted posthumously to the rank of general.

While you’re at it, and especially if you haven’t already visited, drive a few miles out of town to the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park. The visitors center there serves both as a stand-alone attraction with exhibits and films changing from time to time with the goal of orientation as a gateway to the multi-state Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Scenic Byway. Tubman is quoted as saying, “I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”

FROM RUTH STARR ROSE TO HARRIET TUBMAN

Water’s Edge Museum, 101 Mill St., Oxford. watersedgemuseum.org; Bellevue Passage Museum, online only bellevuepassage.org
Also, “Harriet: A Taste of Freedom,” Harriet Tubman Freedom Center, 3030 Center Dr., Cambridge, through Sept. 30 (possibly extended through December); harriettubmanfreedomcenter.com; Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitors Center, 4068 Golden Hill Rd., Church Creek, nps.gov/htu

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

 

 

“To the Edge of Your World” is the intriguing title of a new exhibition by Anita Groener at the Academy Art Museum where she was its 2024 artist-in-residence. But in my initial walkthrough at the opening reception on Saturday, Aug. 16, I found the show – consisting of delicate constructs (I hesitate to call them sculptures) and drawings punctuated by a checkerboard gouache on paper – visually underwhelming. But my first impression was devoid of context aside from the brief wall-label introduction, which mentioned another premiere that day – this of an accompanying animated video, “Shelter,” inspired by highly personal narratives of residents at the Talbot Interfaith Shelter homes on Goldsborough Street in Easton. 

Context makes all the difference in this exhibit of works by the Dutch-born and now Ireland-based artist. Here, Groener deploys appropriately common materials – twigs, cardboard and paper – to reflect the edgy themes suggested in the title: the everyday impact on those directly or indirectly affected by conflict, migration and remembrance of what is left behind as well as trepidation about what lies ahead. At the reception, “Shelter,” the stop-motion animation by Groener in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Matt Kresling in partnership with TIS was shown on a wide screen to a full-capacity audience in the museum’s auditorium. During the run of the exhibition through Oct. 26 visitors can view up close on a video screen in the lobby.

One of the themes that instantly came to my mind as I entered the museum’s Lederer Gallery was “Shelter,” a piece by the same name that looked like anything but. Rather, it resembles a series of cages for imprisoned migrants like those in some border-state detention facilities and on Florida’s notorious Alligator Alley. A series of small drawings bookended by a pair of larger gouache images incorporating bits of twine enigmatically titled “At the Still Point of the Turning World” and “I am Here Because You Are There” leands you toward the gallery back wall lined with tiny stick-constructed objects resembling baby cribs or tree houses, some sprouting leafy saplings and others inhabited by human stick figures. Stick objects on a long table seem to be waiting for assembly into something more than the sum of their parts. We can only guess what.  

Nearby, you are invited to leave written comments about what you have seen. But before you do, check at least a few segments of the animated “Shelter” video for the context I was lacking at first. You’re not expected to stand through the full half hour in front of the screening of “Shelter,” which runs in loops during museum hours. The imagery constructs and then deconstructs rectangular stands of sticks amid a growing gathering of humans while at other times forming a patch of trees blowing in the wind. Each such scene is accompanied by vocal recordings of TIS residents telling how they became homeless – each very relatable in the sense that – as the saying goes – “there but for the grace of God [or whomever] go I.” Death of a parent or spouse, loss of employment after 22 years, addiction to pain killers after an accident or by self-medication, whether by alcohol or drugs. Each story is separated by photographic images from the artist’s past, usually including a baby or young child and a parent or other relative.

After viewing a few of these vignettes, return to Anita Groener’s exhibit to see what you may have missed at first glance. I missed a lot. But that’s just me.  Maybe you’ll be more intuitive. 

***
While you’re at the museum, walk across the hall to the Healy Gallery for “Fields, Voids, and Translations,” a show of works on paper and textiles by Piper Shepard. A Baltimore-based artist, Shepard specializes in large-scale works – she calls it “architectural scale” – such as weavings that mimic botanical or even celestial imagery. My favorite was “Soft Light Shifting,” a handcut lunar graphic that casts a full-moon shadow on the wall a foot or so behind it, bringing to mind a solar eclipse if you’re at the right place and time for such an event. Three squarish black-and-white prints on paper offer “Textile Translations” from fabric to art on the far wall from the moon. 

In the hallway Atrium between the AAM’s main galleries, stop long enough to take in and contemplate Anne Lindbergh’s commissioned site-specific piece called “seen and unseen.” The most easily “seen” portion are three drawings in parallel lines of complementary colors. These  reflect shades that are largely “unseen” until you stand against the north wall of the natural-light Atrium and look up through an opening toward the second-story ceiling. A luminous sculpture of chromatic threads creates a rainbow effect in earth-and-sky hues that can be seen both above and below. But you’ll  need to climb the stairs to the upper hallway gallery and stroll back to the far wall to discern whether the colors take on a different shade from on high. See for yourself.

ART, ANIMATION, ATRIUM & FIBER IMAGERY

Anita Groener’s “To the Edge of Your World” and “Shelter” video, through Oct. 26; Piper Shepard’s “Fields, Folds, and Translations, through Oct. 12; Anne Lindbergh’s “seen and unseen” installation, through the fall of 2026, all at Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton, Tuesdays-Sundays, free admission, academyartmusuem.org 

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