The 22nd annual Academy Art Museum Craft Show arrives a week or so early this year to accommodate the construction of a new main entrance to the museum from the courtyard facing Harrison Street. The late October date for previous craft shows was timed for holiday shopping. But no matter. The long Columbus Day weekend is not too soon—is it ever too soon?—to shop for Christmas or Hanukkah or that anytime holiday of buying a gift for yourself. 

New this year, you’ll have an extra day, Friday, to check off your shopping list with one-of-a-kind creations, ranging from wearable fabric art to baskets woven into masterpieces, from jewelry artistry to wood carvings and from hand-crafted furniture to colorful glass-blown sculptures. 

Besides all that, the juried craft show, this year “Celebrating the Makers”—70 craftspeople and artisans—also benefits the museum, the art jewel of Delmarva. “It’s one of our two major fundraisers of the year,” says AAM director Ben Simons—the other being the spring gala. “Without them, we couldn’t do what we do here,” he says. Proceeds from the gala and the craft show, which draws thousands of shoppers with an eye for unique fine-art objects, “support a significant percentage of our operating budget,” Simons says. (If you care about the museum or culture more widely, note the sponsors, among them Maryland Environmental Service.)

As a way of “Celebrating the Makers,” Simons’ museum staff, led by development manager Jennifer Chrzanowski, has assembled podcasts on the craft-show website by some of the artists talking about everything from what brings them to Easton year after year to what inspires their creativity. 

Alexandria (Va.) jewelry artist Estelle Vernon says she “decided to take her business up a notch, to go for it” after surviving a breast cancer diagnosis. Since then, “one of my longtime collectors,” Vernon says, “coined a phrase for my work as ‘sensuality meets elegance.’ ”

Hailing from Bellefontaine, Ohio, Jessica Joy, whose artistic bag is designer handbags, says she does at least 20 shows a year, but adds that “I look forward to returning to Easton” as much or more than any other craft-show venue. “The town itself wraps its arms around the show,” she says, “and the support is absolutely amazing.”

The 2019 Visionary Artist—the museum names a visionary each year—is Aaron Taylor Kuffner of Brooklyn. His sonic kinetic sculpture greets you inside Academy Art’s picket fence at Harrison and South streets. Docents will clue you into the sound experience of sitting between two iron gongs tapped by cloth-covered mallets to produce bass-note tones and vibrations. Kuffner calls his artwork “Bodyphones,” as opposed to headphone listening devices. Don’t fret if you miss the chance to listen this weekend. “Bodyphones” remains in place on museum grounds through May 31, 2020.

For an investment of $125, you can snag a crafty sneak preview Thursday evening. You’ll get first crack at buying items on display and, of course, for sale while nibbling hors d’oeuvres and sipping cocktails. You’ll also get a pass for the full weekend and a chance to cast your people’s choice vote.  (Besides jury awards for best in this or that category and best in show, there are people’s choice awards for which ballots can be cast as late as 2 p.m. Friday by anyone in attendance.)

Among other craft-show features is the “Makers Forum,” 2-4 p.m. Friday and Saturday, when artists talk about their work. Ongoing art demonstrations are also happening Friday and Saturday. Docent-led tours of the show are available both days if you want to be better informed about what you’re seeing and possibly purchasing.

Local artists returning this year to the craft show include Matt Gorin, a bartender at Hunter’s Tavern in the Tidewater Inn who moonlights as a wood carver and furniture maker, and Heidi Wetzel, who first took a basket-weaving class in Easton in 1997 and now takes her woven-fabric and fine-art basketry to juried shows in five states. 

As a bonus for parents of small children in tow, the museum offers a Little Crafters program in which kids create their own arts-and-crafts stuff with grown-up guidance while you browse three stories in two buildings brimming with designer objects you won’t find in any mall or, very unlikely, on Amazon. And if you’re starving in the meantime, Piazza Italian Market of Talbot Town offers lunch fare while a Rise Up Coffee kiosk keeps you caffeinated, or decaffeinated, as you please.

And did we mention beating the havoc of holiday shopping?

Steve Parks is a retired journalist, arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

“Celebrating the Makers”
2019 Academy Art Museum Craft Show

Show dates:
5:30-8 p.m. Thursday, preview event, $125
10 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, $10
10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday, family day, free
Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton, and Waterfowl Building, 40 S. Harrison St. (across South Street from the museum); 410-822-2787, academyartmuseum.org/craftshow

We think of sound, of course, as a hearing experience received through our ears and processed in our brain to identify the source and interpret what that noise is all about. What it all means, if anything. But the science behind aural sensations and the anatomy of hearing reveals the physicality of sound itself and of our ability, or inability, to be cognizant of its manifestation.

We use headphones to isolate sounds when we want to pay particular attention to them, listening to music or speech—whether a country or classical recording, a lecture we might have missed in person or a book being read to us by an actor. But in “Bodyphones,” a sonic and kinetic sculptural installation on the lawn outside Easton’s Academy Art Museum, conceptual artist Aaron Tyler Kuffner endeavors to teach us how to “hear” with our whole bodies. (We have plenty of time to learn as the installation remains in place through May 31, 2020.) 

“It’s an orchestra of two percussion instruments,” Kuffner says, created out of his five-year studies of gamelans in Indonesia. Traditional gamelans are percussive metallophones played by banging the iron-and-brass instruments with a mallet accompanied by a set of hand-thumped drums. By adding an electronic component Kuffner, who considers himself a sculptor and a musician as well as a composer with “tech inclinations,” created what he calls a Gamelatron, which allows him to “exercise diverse artistic muscles.”

Now based in Brooklyn, Kuffner collaborated with Eric Singer, an engineer and musician, to build a prototype of a robotized musical instrument, which has since “evolved more into a sculpture breaking the boundary between performer and listener,” as Kuffner describes it.

OK, I get the sculpture part. The installation looks a bit like a museum artifact of TV’s 1970s game series, “The Gong Show.” Only it’s played not for laughs but with gongs positioned on either side of the listener seated inside a glass enclosure looking out toward the Waterfowl Festival building across South Street from the Academy museum. From behind, Christ Church is out of sight but not necessarily out of hearing, across Harrison Street, as its steeple bells go off every quarter hour. 

Playing the “Bodyphones” Gamelatron is simple and intuitive if you adhere to instructions to press, one at a time, five gold-colored buttons situated in front and just below the installation’s cushioned seat. You may or may not recognize the sonic waves that come your way as music. To me, they sound more like a meditative “ohhhmmm” some of us may have practiced transcendentally in the 1960s and ’70s, except that it’s electronic rather than vocal. The sounds are mostly deep bass caused by cloth-covered mallets resembling miniature Halloween pumpkins clanging against brass nipples on the outer center of the iron gongs that open on opposite sides like giant mushroom caps aimed at the head and upper body of a seated audience of one. On some of the five variations, a hum one or two notes higher than the low-pitched resonant gong resembles a symphonic monotone in rising or pulsing wavelengths. 

Perhaps that’s the point—experiencing sound as physical waves, which is what makes it possible for them to burst through barriers at a certain shattering speed. As there are no prohibitions against “touching” the sound, I reached out to feel the range of vibrations with each gong and each hum. It’s sort of like hearing in braille, you might say. But I doubt it will sell on Spotify.

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

“Gamelatron @ AAM: ‘Bodyphones’ ”

“Gamelatron @ AAM: ‘Bodyphones’ ”

Through May 31, 2020, Academy of Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton
Art talk and discussion by Aaron Taylor Kuffner, 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 6, ($24-$29) at the museum
INFO: 410-822-2787, academyartmuseum.org

The 12th annual Chesapeake Film Festival opens Thursday with a more ambitious and diverse program spread across more venues than ever before. 

The festival goes big time opening night. Newly restored film footage and outtakes shot by director William Wyler for his 1944 World War II documentary “The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress” are featured in “The Cold Blue,” which chronicles the daily life and heroism of Eighth Air Force pilots who flew one deadly mission after another in defeating the Axis powers. Catherine Wyler, daughter of the late multiple Oscar-winning director, produced “Cold Blue,” winner of the 2019 Chesapeake festival jury prize for best film. She will be on hand for a Q&A after its screening at the Avalon Theatre. William Wyler won best-picture Academy Awards for “Mrs. Miniver,” “The Best Years of Our Lives” and “Ben-Hur” as well as a record-setting 12 nominations for best director, plus directing 31 different actors to best-acting Oscar nods, including 13 winners. Talk about legendary.

Following a gourmet reception, opening night festivities continue with another true story, “The Spy Behind Home Plate.” You couldn’t make this one up. Moe Berg was a journeyman major-league baseball catcher who batted .243 lifetime and clubbed a grand total of six home runs in 1,813 at bats. Not exactly movie-worthy stats. But it was his post-baseball career that made him an undercover legend. A Princeton graduate who spoke several languages fluently, Berg was recruited by the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), forerunner to the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). His eventual mission was to determine if the Nazis were close to assembling an atomic bomb. He might have become an assassin had he determined that German physicist Werner Heisenberg was about to succeed in delivering one to Hitler. Aviva Kempner, who directed this intriguing documentary (see the Spy’s video interview with the director), will answer questions about her film and the life and dual career of Moe Berg.

Narrated by actress and activist Ashley Judd, “The Bonobo Connection” documentary opens the closing night of the festival at Easton Premier Cinemas. The bonobo great apes are regarded as the closest cousins to homo sapiens and their survival in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo should get our attention. Through research of bonobos in Columbus (Ohio) Zoo captivity, we learn that bonobos in the wild are intelligent enough to set up a system of cooperation that may save them and make peace between them and humans who would eradicate them. Director Irene Magafan answers your questions afterward.

The festival closes on a lighter note with “Swing Away,” a humorous look at professional golf co-produced by George Stephanopoulus who will take post-screening questions. Zoe is a rising PGA star whose meltdown leads to suspension. She returns to her Greek homeland where she befriends a 10-year-old determined to become the next great thing in golf. Together they help stymie the greed of an American developer who would overwhelm the natural beauty of their hometown. 

Between opening and closing nights, highlights of the 62-film festival—both shorts and feature-length—include “Bedlam,” a revelatory look at the mental health crisis spreading across urban America, and “Light From Light,” a thriller about a single mom whose paranormal dreams leads to a moonlighting career as crime-solving investigator. Both are films that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. “There’s a tremendous ethos surrounding Sundance. And it’s for a reason,” says Cid Collins Walker, artistic director of the Easton-based festival. “The experience is so intense, so raw in terms of the power of storytelling. . . . While scouting films, I was able to procure six of Sundance’s finest films.”

Among the other Sundance entries: “Apollo 11,” an intense behind-the-scenes look at the science and human endeavor that made the first man-on-the-moon mission a triumphant success; the Leonardo DiCaprio-produced “Sea of Shadows” in which Mexican cartels and Chinese Mafia harvest “cocaine of the sea” in the form of totaba fish; and “Tigerland,” probing the poaching underground led by Russia and India that has decimated wild tiger populations. The investigative documentary is directed by Oscar winner Ross Kaufman, who will be in attendance at the festival to answer questions.

Those last two films are part of a wider emphasis of the weeklong Chesapeake festival on environmental concerns, both local and existentially global as it relates to climate change and extinction of species. 

But to make the next step to a top-tier film festival, the Chesapeake will need to recruit star power that would enable it to attract higher profile sponsors, plus films in competition that would be making American or at least East Coast premieres, along with distributors eager to scoop them up for a run at multiplexes and streaming outlets across the country and worldwide. A celebrity movie name as the face of the Chesapeake fest would be a start as it was and remains to this day for Robert Redford, the original “Sundance Kid,” the second half of the “Butch Cassidy” classic movie collaboration with Paul Newman. 

There’s a possible candidate out there with Maryland and, by way of grandparents, Easton connections.

Steve Parks is a retired journalist, arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

Chesapeake Film Festival 2019

Thursday, Oct. 3 through Thursday, Oct. 10
Venues: Avalon Theatre, Easton Premier Cinema and Talbot County Free Library, Easton
Cambridge Premier Cinema, Gallery 447, Cambridge
Oxford Community Center, Oxford
INFO: 410-822-3500, complete schedule at chesapeakefilmfestival.com

The Eastern Shore and southern Delaware’s only professional symphony orchestra opens its 22nd season with an American premiere and one of several world-class soloists scattered throughout six sets of concerts beginning Sept. 26 and running through April 5. This season also marks Julien Benichou’s 15th as music director of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, which plays half its concerts in Easton or nearby Chesapeake College.

“We’ve come a long way,” says Benichou, looking forward to the new season. “I think our orchestra has become one of the better regional orchestras in the wider mid-Atlantic region.”

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s Julien Benichou

A native of Lyon, France, Benichou opens the season, as he has the last few years, with a performance at the French Embassy in Washington. “It’s an artistic experience and opportunity for them to showcase their skills on the Western Shore,” the maestro says of his musicians—free-lancers who supplement their MSO work with other gigs or by teaching. 

The embassy concert, a tune-up for the “From Movie Themes to Classics” season opener Sept. 27 at Chesapeake College’s Todd Performing Arts Center and Sept. 29 in Ocean City, is highlighted by the aforementioned U.S. premiere: Lalo Schifrin’s Mandolin Concerto performed by internationally acclaimed mandolin artist Vincent Beer-Demander. “His creations reflect his musical versatility and virtuosity,” former French President Francois Hollande remarked in 2017. “Through a rich repertoire and a renewed vision of the mandolin, he helps highlight this remarkable instrument.”

The movie themes of the concert title are represented in the “Mission Impossible” variations composed by Nicholas Mazmanian, while the classic that tops off the opening-night program is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, performed ahead of the 250th anniversary next year of his death. “The power is just shared joy,” Benichou says of the 7th.

November brings a widely varied autumnal “Appalachian Spring” concert—Dvorak’s “String Serenade,” Vivaldi’s Two-Cello Concerto, Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D Major, featuring soloist Dider Castell-Jacomin, plus the Copland classic and concluding with a “surprise encore,” Benichou says. The annual holiday concerts in December feature Metropolitan Opera baritone Kevin Short in a salute to pops orchestras from the Big Band era and beyond. Short, who performs the title role of “Porgy and Bess” at the Met through Feb. 1, will be accompanied by a student opera chorus from the University of Maryland along with, of course, the MSO. The holiday spirit continues on New Year’s Eve with the annual Easton Christ Church celebration, this year with two guest soloists—trumpeter Andrew Balio and soprano Rochelle Bard.

The finals of the first of annual Elizabeth Loker Concerto Competition Jan. 9 at the Avalon Theatre are followed March 5-8 with the winning concerto performance in Easton, southern Delaware and Ocean Pines, plus what Benichou describes as Mozart’s “beautiful but rarely performed” Symphony 33.

The season finale, “Portraits of Life and Love,” opens with “Creation of the World” by the late Darius Milhaud, once a professor at Baltimore’s Peabody Institute, where Benichou earned a graduate degree. “It’s a Franco-Russian jazz fun piece,” the maestro says. Tchaikovsky’s stirring Piano Concerto No. 1, with soloist Boris Slutsky, and Mussorgsky’s fabled “Pictures at an Exhibition” wrap up the Mid-Atlantic’s subscription season April 3 at Chesapeake College and two nights later in Ocean City.

“We hope to keep on growing as we have the last few years,” says Benichou, noting last year’s season finale: Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Symphony No. 9 with two regional chorales. “We hope to get to the point where we can play all of Mahler, Strauss and Wagner. You need a certain number of musicians and they need to be paid. We’ll get there. Word of mouth helps.” 

In my experience as an arts critic on Long Island for 30 years, the Mid-Atlantic is comparable to the late Long Island Philharmonic, led in its hey-day by Marin Alsop, now music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Unfortunately, Long Island’s professional free-lance orchestra succumbed to debt. The BSO has its own labor issues now. No symphony orchestra of worth should be taken for granted. Neither the BSO nor the MSO. If you appreciate classical music, check out your local symphony orchestra if you haven’t heard them play, and come back if you have. 

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

MSO 2019-20 Season

“From Movie Themes to Classics”: Nicolas Mazmanian’s “Mission Impossible Variations,” Lalo Schifrin’s Manolin Concerto, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, Vincent Beer-Demander, mandolin soloist; Sept. 27, French Embassy, Washington; Sept. 27, Todd Performing Arts Center, Chesapeake College, Wye Mills; Sept. 29, Roland Powell Convention Center, Ocean City; all concerts at 7:30 p.m.

“Appalachian Spring”:  Dvorak’s String Serenade, Vivaldi’s Two-Cello Concerto, Haydn’s D Major Piano Concerto, Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” Dider Castell-Jacomin, piano; Nov. 7, Easton Church of God; Nov. 9, Ocean View Christ Church, Ocean View, Delaware, both concerts at 7:30 p.m.; Nov. 10, Community Church, Ocean Pines, concert at 3 p.m.

“Holiday Joy: Salute to Great Pops Orchestras,” selections highlighting the big band era, baritone soloist Kevin Short, Dec. 6, Avalon Theatre, Easton; Cape Henlopen High School, Lewes, Delaware, both concerts at 7 p.m., Roland Powell Convention Center, Ocean City, 3 p.m.

“A Toast to the New Year,” celebrating impending arrival of 2020, soprano Rachel Bard and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra trumpeter Andrew Balio, 7-9:30 p.m. Dec. 31, Christ Church, Easton

Inaugural Concerto Competition Concert, winning concerto of first-ever MSO competition to be announced in February, also Mozart’s rarely performed Symphony No. 33, 7:30 p.m. March 5, Easton Church of God; 3 p.m. March 7, Church of Christ, Ocean View, Delaware, 3 p.m. March 8, Community Church, Ocean View

“Portraits of Life and Love,” Darius Milhaud’s “Creation of the World,” Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” Boris Slutsky, piano, 7 p.m. April 3, Todd Performing Arts Center, Chesapeake College; 3 p.m. April 5, Roland Powell Performing Arts Center, Ocean City

Tickets: single concerts $30-$85, season tickets $195 (5 concerts) to $750 (new-subscriber discounts); 888-846-8600, midatlanticsymphony.org

“Thy head stands so tickle on thy shoulder that a milkmaid, if she be in love, might sigh it off.”
–Lucio to Claudio in Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure”

Talk about staying power. The enduring relevance of William Shakespeare to current events well into a new millennium from his time, just more than half-way through the last, is an amazement. In dialogue from “Measure for Measure” (circa 1603-04) performed with impassioned zeal and due respect for its source by the Brown Box Theatre Project, we hear lines spoken today by both the accused and his accusers in #metoo sexual harassment/assault cases. He: “Who will believe you?” She: “No one will believe me.”

“He” is Angelo, cousin to the Duke of Vienna, who’s taken leave from his royal duties. Or has he? “She” is virgin novitiate Isabella, who on the cusp of taking her convent-for-life vows has learned that her brother, Claudio, is sentenced to beheading for the crime of lechery. It is the penalty prescribed by law. But the duke, a law-and-order moderate, has not ruled with a tight fist. He notes, in turning his reign over, temporarily, to Angelo, that his subjects are growing slack in moral conduct.

When Isabella, granted an audience with Angelo, beseeches him to spare her brother, he steadfastly refuses. That is, until he turns from his desk to gaze upon her. Stunned by her beauty, Angelo proposes a remedy that amounts to a proposition. He will lift the death sentence if Isabella will “lay down the treasures of your body”—with him, of course.

Isabella flees in horror to inform her brother that she cannot save him by this means. When he suggests it is not a sin to sin under such duress she flees in equal horror, while impregnated Julietta, the young woman with whom Claudio fornicated, lingers somberly by his cell. Comforted by a friar who is instead the duke in disguise—spying on the rule of his cousin—Isabella flinches at the offer of a work-around involving Marianna, betrothed to Angelo but spurned after losing her dowry.

Young professionals mostly a few years or less out of college, the cast is, for the most part, spot-on in each role, crisply directed by Kyler Taustin. Imposingly tall Chris Kandra strikes a royal pose as the duke, haughty yet approachable in his stage manner while Sarah Boess embodies the play’s emotional core with a convincing range from anguish to anger. She’s still recovering from shock as the lights go out—the end. Drew Cleveland presents a desperately bewildered, respectably clean-cut Claudio, making his sentence seem all the more merciless. Spencer Parli Tew as Angelo, the hypocritical heavy, oozes hubris while also allowing a glimpse of conscience in tortured soliloquies. Aislinn Brophy as Marianna and Ivy Ryan as Julietta bring victimization of women to glum witness. For his sharp comic relief as Claudio and Isabella’s friend, Francis Xavier Norton’s Lucio is found guilty of impertinence.

Though “Measure for Measure” is by any measure a drama, its ending is oddly typical of Shakespeare’s comedies. 

Framing and embroidering this ambitious production is a grand ecclesiastical set by Abby Shenker and gilded-royal to religious-garment costumes by Chelsea Kerl.

Well-dressed and well-played this “Measure for Measure” is tailored for provocative present-day pertinence.

Boston-based Brown Box, which tours the Delmarva peninsula each May and September, brings its free Shakespeare-in-the-park to St. Michaels Saturday night.

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

Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure”

Saturday, Muskrat Park, 207 Willow Green St., St. Michaels
Sunday, Pemberton Hall lawn, 5561 Plantation Lane, Salisbury
Wednesday, Teackle Mansion lawn, 11736 Mansion Lane, Princess Anne
Thursday, Northside Park, 200 125th St., Ocean City
Sept. 20, Exmore Town Park, 3386 Main St., Exmore, Delaware
Sept. 21, Lewes Public Library lawn, 111 Adams Ave., Lewes, Delaware

Admission: Free, bring lawn chairs or blankets, brownboxtheatre.org