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January 13, 2025

Talbot Spy

Nonpartisan Education-based News for Talbot County Community

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Mid-Shore Arts Plein Air Easton and ESLC Pair Up to Promote Land Conservation

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Painting by Russell Jewell

Plein Air Easton introduced a new collaboration during its just-concluded 20th anniversary festival with the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy. This invitational for past and current PAE artists was intended to connect art to the cause of – guess what? – land conservation.

Eighteen artists participated in the exhibit that ran through the end of the Plein Air fest on July 20. The show and sale at ESLC headquarters on Washington Street was mounted, in part, by way of a grant by Bruce Wiltsie, who has partnered with the Avalon Foundation since the start of Plein Air Easton. He has just been inducted into the PAE Hall of Fame for, as the event program stated, “years of support for the many ways that art can underscore the vital importance of conservation of our land and the beauty that surrounds us.”

The participating artists were Jill Basham, Tim Beall, Zufar Bikbov, Hiu Lai Chong, Lisa Egeli, Martin Geiger, Stephen Griffin, Joe Gyurcsak, Charlie Hunter, Debra Huse, Russell Jewell, Mick McAndrews, Charles Newman, Daniel Robbins, Mark Shasha, John Brandon Sills, Mary Veiga and Stewart White.

Some of the paintings are along the lines of what you may have viewed (or purchased) at the festival, including Debra Huse’s lavish brushstroke-textured “Historic Beauty” of trees bending over river’s edge and pointing toward a puff-clouded sky. But several others reminded me personally of the farm I was raised on in the ’50s and ’60s on Dutchman’s Lane, virtually next door to where I live now in Easton Club East. One-hundred acres of that farm are being developed into a Four Seasons 55-and-up community. (Full disclosure: My parents sold the farm in the ’70s.)

I remember a time when much of the waterfront acreage in Talbot County was tilled as farmland harvested for corn, wheat, rye and soybeans. Most of that land is now occupied by grand waterview estates, many like the ones hosting the annual “Meet the Artists” party which opens Plein Air Easton. I have no quarrel with that as those former agricultural fields with a view – maybe even a beach – were not much more accessible to trespassers than these myriad private waterfront properties, now best seen by boat or by rare – but often generous – invitation.

The paintings that resonated most with me depicted farm scenes that are still integral to Talbot County’s rural character. John Brandon Sills’ “Sunset, Yorktown Farm” for one, arrays a planted field in the fading evening light. Another, from the same 500-acre Talbot County farm, features a large harvesting combine like the one I was not allowed to operate as a boy but occasionally perched upon when my father was done or when it was parked in a shed – just like the one in Russell Jewell’s “Deep Breath & Swallows.” Can’t figure the title to that one, priced at $1,900. Other paintings in the show fetched up to $3,000.

Proceeds from the sale go to the artists and to Plein Air Easton, care of the Avalon Foundation. ESLC plans to use the paintings or copies of them as future educational tools.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Spy Theater Review: Tennessee Williams’ ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’

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The Factory describes itself as a “community arts project [providing] creative space for individuals to explore their passion for the performing arts.” And although I didn’t get a chance to see this stunning company debut in the “evocative atmosphere of our open-air venue,” I can say that the performance lived up to The Factory’s promise “to deliver a fresh and captivating interpretation” of this great American classic.

A rainy Friday – which put a damper on opening night of the 20th anniversary of Plein Air Easton – forced the company to scramble for an indoor venue. Thankfully, the Avalon Theatre accommodated The Factory after raffling off prizes to deserving Plein Air Easton volunteers.

But “Streetcar” was scheduled as a double feature with The Factory’s rollicking riff on Wild West gender roles – “The Ballad of Jesse Devereaux Radio Play” as the opener. Take-down of one set and replacing it with another pushed the Williams masterpiece, which runs 2 ½ hours, into a late-show time zone. I strongly encourage those of you who missed the Friday performance or left it early to see it in the Talbot Historical Society gardens before it closes on July 21. It’s too good to miss.

The 1947 Broadway original, as well as the 1951 movie starring Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh, is a taut and fraught love-hate story involving sisters and the husband of one and brother-in-law of the other. We encounter the first main character as she arrives at her destination on the title streetcar. Blanche DuBois is shocked to find what she considers the squalor her sister Stella lives in with her husband Stanley Kowalski. Stella returns home shortly after to greet her and suffer Blanche’s complaints about sleeping arrangements consigning her to a couch. Because it is his bowling night, Stanley shows up just in time to wolf down his supper before reporting for his overnight job.

That gives the sisters more time to talk, which proves painful as Stella learns the real reason for Blanche’s sudden arrival. The family plantation, Belle Reve, has been lost to profligate spending by previous male heirs and likely by Blanche herself, who brought a trunkful of once glamorous gowns and accessories, including a rhinestone tiara that Stanley later mistakes for diamond. “Death is expensive,” Blanche says, further explaining that funeral expenses of family elders cost her the plantation mansion and the remaining 20 acres.

Citing what he calls the “Napoleonic Code,” that which belongs to the wife (or her family) belongs to him. This motivates Stanley to ask questions about Belle Reve and Blanche’s side of the story and why she now has no place to turn to but the Kowalski second-story walk-up. If you aren’t already familiar, never mind the spoiler answers his investigation reveals.

All of which transpires in the apartment, appropriately unprepossessing but hardly squalid as Stella has kept it as presentable as she can for Blanche’s arrival. The two love each other but are appalled by their sibling’s circumstances. Ben VanNest’s set design somehow captures all this along with the center of attention on poker nights – the kitchen table with seating for four. That’s where Blanche catches the eye of one of Stanley’s guest gamblers. Among the foursome, Mitch, as they call him, is the only gentleman. He’s lonely and easily taken in by Blanche’s flirty, lady-like solicitations. Anchoring the other side of the set is the Kowalski marriage bed, around which most of the sisters’ conversations take place. Whether intentional or not by the set designer, it appears to be long overdue for a new mattress.

Running virtually the length of the rear wall of the Avalon stage is a black-and-white photo of rowhouses, long-ago broken up into multiple apartments, upstaged by a commuter train. There’s a streetlight visible just outside the Kowalski bedroom window, which we imagine is about the size of a bathroom mirror.

Costumes by Jeri Alexander – mostly for the sisters – speak volumes about where one comes from and who the other has become. Flimsy dresses Blanche steps in and out of are of no professionally appropriate use for a schoolteacher. In one amusing opening night scene, the rear hem of Blanche’s dress clings to the slip, leaving it exposed where no one seems to notice except anyone in the audience. Inadvertent wardrobe malfunction.

By contrast, Stella wears loose-fitting gingham or print dresses barely hiding what Stella has yet to tell Blanche: She’s pregnant. Her short sleeves and, in one dress-up case, a diving neckline, myriad tattoos on her arms, legs and along her collarbone are meant to reveal – effectively – perceived new class distinctions between the sisters.

The lighting, relatively dim as Blanche prefers, also plays a shifting role implying the drama of the moment, credited to Factory producer Cecile Storm. And uniquely, except of course for the film version, are instrumental overlays performed offstage by the “Ballad of Devereaux” combo. Movies deploy music to accent whatever is happening on-screen. Here, as directed by Willoughby Buxton, the instrumentation indicates dramatic moments – pay attention – or to provide sound effects such as a passing train whistle. My only complaint on opening night was that at times the incidental music obscured lines spoken from some parts of the stage. Perhaps it was designed for an outdoor venue where the show now moves – weather permitting.

The theatrical accessories were far more pertinent to than distraction from the storytelling, which in this case, inspired Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece. But all are nothing without actors who seem to live the lines rather than just speak them.

Here are the leading suspects in making this happen. Cavin Moore as Blanche achieves such an astonishing transformation, particularly as we had an hour or so earlier caught her as a radio-play singer and deliverer of zingers. In “Desire,” we see her struggling to relive her long-past post-graduate schoolgirlish days like those of ones she later taught. But she can’t hide behind badly told jokes to lift her spirits after an unhappy birthday cake-and-candles ritual. As Stella, Liv Litteral tries to hide desperation for her sister but also for herself in that, with a baby coming, she has no better way forward than Blanche if the bully in her husband overtakes his professed love for her.

Alex Greenlee, in the pivotal role of Stanley – loved by his wife, hated by her sister – manages all the explosiveness of a brute, seeming to slug his pregnant wife hard with impressive fight-scene precautions for Litteral’s safety and later violently clearing his plate from the table on Blanche’s birthday. Other infractions by Stanley – all well-played – would be further spoilers to reveal here. All I would add is that Greenlee still seems just a little too civilized to be a monstrous Stanley. But he does scream with convincing agony, “Stella! Stella!” – begging forgiveness without actually asking for it.

Another key player is Mitch, played by Noah Thompson with both the infatuation and disillusion of a jilted lover who was neither jilted nor a lover, though he wanted to be the latter. But the suitor side of his equation and the plaintive side come through viscerally in Thompson’s deft interpretation of his character’s conflicted emotions.

One other in a fine cast, all worthy of mention, is aforementioned costume designer Alexander, doubling as Stella’s downstairs neighbor who figures in supportive roles in both the crucial opening and closing scenes.

So there could only be kudos for director Iz Clemens. Whatever these fine actors brought to the table in this challenging psychological/sociological drama, Clemens has brought out the best in them. So far. Maybe they can be even better next time. Following the “Shakespeare in Love’ royal directive, it might as well be a comedy or musical.

In the meantime, try not to miss this “Streetcar Named Desire” before its last stop on July 21.

A production by The Factory, a community arts project in Easton. Remaining performances at 7 p.m. July 19-21 in the Talbot Historical Gardens, 30 S. Washington St., thefactoryproject.org. Photos by Henley Moore.

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

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Plein Air ‘Meet the Artists Party’ and More by Steve Parks

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Plein Air Artist Abby Ober

Among the 58 artists competing in the 20th anniversary Plein Air Easton festival, one who planted his easel along a water view from the sumptuous greens of Wye Heights Plantation, was John Brandon Sills of Cockeysville, making his 17th appearance in one of the leading events of its kind in the United States.
Of the three he’s missed, one was the COVID-restricted event that amounted only to a show and sale of art by local plein-air painters at what was once the News Center space in Talbottown. As grand prize winner of the 10th anniversary PAE in 2014, the award was increased for the occasion to $10,000. “So this year,” Sills said as he added brushstrokes to his water-meets-sky oil of the scene before him, “I asked if they were raising the grand prize to $20,000.”
No dice. It will be $5,000 as usual.
While water views were still well-represented among the paintings presented for sale under the Meet the Artists tent Saturday evening, there were so many other views to capture within the myriad gardens and the sloping greensward from the Wye Heights Plantation mansion where dozens of black sheep grazed oblivious to the guests and artists ambling around their space.
Nancy Tankersley, one of the co-founders of Plein Air Easton and judge of this year’s competition, made the rounds to reconnect with many of the local and far-flung painters she has known from her own tours of the plein-air circuit that inspired her to help bring one to Easton.
It has been a great and unexpectedly successful event. And one of the keys to that success, besides the beautiful land-and-seascapes that provide painterly inspiration, is one word I’ve heard repeatedly from artists who come back year after year, or others from transcontinental distances who return occasionally to a place they fondly remember. The word is hospitality.

Plein Air Artist, Fairley Lewis

Many of the painters we encountered at Meet the Artists congregated in the various gardens on the grand estate, owned by Lisa and Tim Wyman, including one that encompasses a pub rebuilt to 17th-century specifications but which provided air-conditioned relief from the sweltering midafternoon heat otherwise leavened only by shade or a breeze off the water. Fairley Lewis of Springfield, Missouri, making his Plein Air Easton debut, said he made the trip because “this is a famous event that everybody who does plein air knows about.”
We asked Christopher Leeper or Confield, Ohio, making his second trip to Plein Air Easton – his first since 2019 – if he had chosen his spot along Skipton Creek for its shade. He smiled and said, “Mostly I just liked the view.”
Abby Ober of St. Michaels, who has competed in a dozen other festivals from Florida to Pennsylvania, was making her Plein Air Easton debut. She was painting a landscape perspective of the estuary and trees on the opposite shore.
Far across the gardens and an open expanse, one painter stood alone, capturing the view where Skipton Creek and Wye River funnel into each other – with a portion of Wye Island in a corner of her canvas. Olena Babak was making her ninth pilgrimage to Plein Air Easton. What brings her back so many times from Maine? “I love the beautiful scenery here. But I also appreciate that they do the best job in treating the artists – always making you feel special.” Babak cites as evidence a time when her car broke down after the long drive from Maine and a volunteer said, “Just hand me the keys and go paint. And it got fixed” – while Olena painted.
As we settled with cool drinks into comfortable outdoor sofas for two, watching the sheep grazing their way from one side of the lawn to the other, we watched the artists, one by one bringing their paintings to the tent where they would be displayed briefly, just before a buyer takes one home with them. Among those that sold early that evening was one by Plein Air Easton first-time Lewis. It fetched his price of $1,200. That was the same price as PAE regular Jill Basham of Trappe got for her “Wye Riverview.” In just his second PAE appearance, Leeper of Ohio sold his “River View with Oak” for $1,600.
One of the true veterans of the festival out-of-towners, Sills was among the last to mount his painting under the tent. He priced his “Across the River” at $2,200. Before it was marked “sold,” we left to pick up our bright orange bag filled with gourmet entrees, sides, dessert and wine.
Besides taking care of the festival artists, the Avalon Foundation also takes care of its guests.
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Former winners of Plein Air Easton first, second and third place awards, along with artist choice winners and other featured alumni painters, have been invited to paint during this 20th anniversary PAE. Their works will be exhibited for sale at the Eastern Shore Land Conservatory at 114 S. Washington St., Suite 101. The show opens Wednesday, July 17, 6-8 p.m., and remains up through July 19.
Other happenings this week include the “Paint Tilghman” exhibit and sale, Monday, July 15; “Happy Hour Paint-In” featuring costumed actors from The Factory, Tuesday, July 16; “Local Color” demos by PAE artists Tim Beall and Charles Newman, Thursday, July 18; Collectors Preview Party, Friday, July 19; Quick Draw and Next Generation Painting competitions, Saturday, July 20; competition judge Nancy Tankersley’s discussion of her winning selections for Plein Air Easton 2024, pleinaireaston.com/calendar.
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Easton Art Galleries Host Plein Air Shows by Steve Parks

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On Plein Air Easton/s opening night, July 12, Trippe Gallery celebrates with its “Variations 3.0: 1 Photograph, 15 Painters” exhibit and party. This third annual “Variation,” like its predecessors, is in part a contest involving both artists and appreciators. Fifteen painters participating in the Plein Air festival create their own interpretations of a single photo challenge presented by gallery owner and photographer Nanny Trippe. Viewers compete in matching the artist to his or her painting and then vote for a people’s choice winner.
“Mingle with the artists,” Trippe says, adding that the opening night “party starts here.”
The 15 artists who will paint their own variations on the photo include some who have been in most of the previous 19 Plein Air Easton festivals. They are, alphabetically, Olena Babak, Jill Basham, Beth Bathe, Zufar Bikbov, David Diaz, Vlad Duchev, Stephen Haynes, Charlie Hunter, Len Mizerek, Diane DuBois Mullaly, Elise Phillips, Crista Pisano, Cynthia Rosen, Nancy Tankersley and Mary Veiga. The first “Variation” came about during the 2020 COVID shutdown when the only public event was a show and sale of paintings in the Talbottown space that was formerly the News Center bookstore and gift shop.
A few doors south from Trippe on Harrison Street, Spiralis Gallery, which shares space with Zebra Gallery, opens its “Vistas and Viewpoints” show on First Friday, July 5, featuring interpretive landscapes by Larry Horowitz, Leslie Lumen, Kerream Jones, Francis Eck and James Stephen Terrell.
In adjoining rooms, Zebra has welcomed three new artists with exhibits ranging from Gabriel Lehman’s delightfully colorful paintings, which are essentially children’s-book illustrations of fairies and “real” kids in fanciful settings, to Adam Himoff’s patterned-face oil portraits “Plain Sight” and “She Looked Right Through Me,” among others. Golsa Golchini completes the threesome with mixed-media constructions, including “Knock Knock,” a document displayed within a frame on which a woodpecker is hammering away and “The Snow Shortcut” enveloping skiers riding a three-dimension avalanche downhill. Both, weirdly fascinating.

Kevin Fitzgerald “Ocean Nightfall”

Heading further south on Harrison, just past the Avalon Theater, the Troika Gallery renews its popular “Fabulous Forgeries” format with paintings by member artists creating paintings inspired by – “after” is the word – of various masters with photos of the original masterpieces posted next to their “forgeries.” That show runs before and after the Plein Air fortnight, along with Kevin Fitzgerald’s “Points of Departure II” exhibit of horizon-view land-and-seascapes.

Betty Huang “Splendor of Provence”

On Goldsborough, between Washington and Harrison streets, Studio B Art Gallery hosts its First Friday salon-style open house July 5, featuring new paintings by previous Plein Air Easton winners and participants in this year’s event, as well as paintings by Bernard Dellario and Studio B owner Betty Huang who just returned from France, where they applied their brushes in capturing Provence landscapes. On July 16, Dellario leads a live painting demonstration in floral still life for those who’d like to learn the technique or who just enjoy seeing how it’s done.

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For this 20th anniversary Plein Air Easton, Nancy Tankersley serves as awards judge of the festival, now managed by the Avalon Foundation.

Tankersley, who founded Plein Air Easton two decades ago this month in partnership with the Academy Art Museum and Al Bond, then Easton’s economic development director who now leads the Avalon Foundation, brings her founding partners together again 20 years later.


Academy Art Museum opened its “Reflections: Nancy Tankersley” exhibit in the upstairs landing gallery, running through July 28, which bookends, calendar-wise, 2024 Plein Air Easton. Her art talk late last month revealed her reasons for choosing these particular reflections on her career – not only as an artist but as plein-air enthusiast, promoter and co-founder. Before 2004, such painting, historically associated with French art painted outdoors, was popular mostly in this part of the world along the West Coast.

Tankerley encountered the regional phenomenon first at Carmel, California, in 2004, and brought the idea to Easton and to Bond, who was seeking attractions in the summertime that might lure tourism to Easton rivaling the hugely successful Waterfowl Festival in November. It took only a few years to catch on, and Plein Air Easton is now regarded as one of the premiere events on the plein-air circuit.

Painters who come from all over the United States and other countries find that they can sell their artworks even before the paint is dry. It’s practically a Plein Air Easton trademark. From day-two’s “Meet the Artists” painting-and-purchase frenzy to the closing-night sales and festival awards, you can sniff the aroma of oil-on-canvas as prospective buyers are warned that they can look but not touch still-wet paint. It’s the closest that fine-art painting comes to matching the spontaneity of live performing arts.

Tankerseley’s “Reflections” attempts but never quite achieves that spontaneity, although a few of her most recent 2024 oils in this show gave me a still-drying whiff. Of course, you’re not allowed to touch them anyway. “Old Partners” (2024), portraying friends out for a leisurely crabbing-by-boat expedition – laughing and likely sharing old stories – practically reeked of fresh paint when I took it in. Or was it just my imagination? I don’t think so.

Several other paintings were chosen, it seems, to show the geographical extent of Tankersley’s plein-air experience, ranging from 2015’s “Curacas Ball” at Plein Air Curacao, South America, to “The End of the Island,” painted at 2019’s Plein Air Easton’s “Tilghman Island Paint-Out” at midday.

You’ll also see decades-apart Tankersley self-portraits, from her current home and studio on Aurora Street, still evoking fresh oil scents, to her first studio in Arlington, Virginia, in 1990. No such sniffs. One of my favorites comes from the mouth of what defines our region: “Bound for Baltimore” depicts in large-frame oil the view of Bay meets Ocean as you approach by automobile one of the apertures of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in far southeast Virginia. I vividly recall feeling on my first crossing that we might drive directly into the ocean before the enveloping tunnel ahead became apparent. Still-life drama in oil.

For this 20th Plein Air Easton, Tankersley serves as awards judge of the festival, managed by the Avalon Foundation.
Gallery Happenings During Plein Air Easton
“Reflections: Nancy Tankersley,” through July 28, Academy Art Museum, 106 South St.
“Fabulous Forgeries” and Kevin Fitzgerald, through July 29, Troika Gallery, 9 S. Harrison St.
New artists at Zebra and Spiralis galleries, through Aug. 18, 5 N. Harrison St.
“Variations 3.0,” opening night July 12, Trippe Gallery, 23 N. Harrison St.
First Friday Salon, July 5; still-life demo, July 16, Studio B, Goldsborough St.Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic and editor now living in Easton.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Concert Review: Chestertown’s National Festival by Steve Parks

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The National Music Festival, now in the orchestral phase of its two-week residency at Washington College, performed one of its signature apprentice-and-mentor concerts Saturday night, anchored by Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3, better known as “The Scottish Symphony,” conducted by festival artistic director Richard Rosenberg.

Richard Rosenberg

Most of the players in these symphonic concerts are talented young musicians who are on the cusp of professional careers. Coming from about 30 states and a dozen countries, they auditioned for a spot in the festival to be mentored by seasoned professionals and teachers who perform among them in major concerts on campus at the Decker Theatre concert hall. First up was Friday night’s program featuring Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, with soprano soloist Caitlin Redding, whose usual concert venues are in Barcelona, Berlin and other European arts capitals.

I wondered why several men in the lobby on Saturday, waiting for the pre-concert talk to begin, wore kilts. But then it dawned on me. Of course, the “Scottish Symphony” was the final piece for what turned out to be an all-Scottish program. The first of the evening – Overture in C, Opus 1, No. 2 by Thomas Erskine, the 6th Earl of Kellie – is a title linked to the 12th-century Scottish castle. Erskine was famed for his talent as a composer but also for notoriety as founder of an all-male drinking club. His music fell into obscurity in modern times. So its performance in the festival was something of a curiosity.
Written in the 1760s for a comic opera that made its way to London’s Covent Garden Royal Opera House, the overture in three movements bears some resemblance to a symphony, but not quite full blown. Its sprightly opening creates a see-saw aural effect as written for the string section, broken only by occasional brass and clarinet shoutouts.  The more solemn second movement resembles a strings-only weeping fit that settles into a soothing melody only to switch back and forth before the third movement’s rhythmically danceable motif presents a catchy, if repetitive, melody. Conductor Elisabeth Thomas and the mostly strings orchestra deliver a coherent interpretation of a flawed and outdated museum piece of an overture. An “underture,” if you will.
The difference in quality of composition takes a notable leap with Alexander Campbell Mackenzie in his Pibroch Suite for Violin and Orchestra, ably conducted by Britney Alcine. (Pibroch is associated with Scottish bagpipe music, but no bagpipers were in play Saturday night.) Though his music largely fell out of favor after Mackenzie’s death in 1935, a 1997 recording by Malcolm Stewart and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra brought new attention to the piece’s robust and physically challenging intensity. Although technically written for violin and orchestra, one of the most outstanding contributions by the latter were harpist Eric Sabatino’s dreamy embroidery as violin soloist Emma McGrath endeavored to bring us to tears,  playing her melodrama that ends the first-movement “Rhapsody” with a whispering whistle of bow-on-string.
The middle “Caprice” movement is indeed capricious – given the abrupt changes from dramatic violin pyrotechnics to a tender folk motif that enlivens the full orchestra – brass section and all –  with the opportunity to be more than a mere supporting cast. The final “Dance” movement begins with a chattering solo passage by McGrath, up and down the scale at a flawlessly furious pace with rare breaks from the lead. She looked at times as if she was about to cry herself – maybe from exhaustion at the extraordinary volume of notes to execute, leading to a thunderous finish with all strings on board, led by mentor concertmaster Dane Goode and, of course, the star soloist.
Most remarkable was that McGrath only started to learn the piece a few weeks earlier when the scheduled violin soloist had to drop out. The standing ovation she earned required an encore appearance to take one more bow.
Intermission gave a welcome break, not just for the audience, but for the final performance of the evening with such a tough act to follow. Fortunately, Richard Rosenberg was conducting a piece that more fully engaged the whole orchestra, which proved up to the challenge. Swollen to its fullest extent with upwards toward 90 musicians made for a richer sound than you can expect these days from even the finest professional orchestras whose players all must be paid.
The orchestra got to show its muscle in the somber opening Andante, followed by the sound-and-fury of the aptly named Allegro “agitato” that concludes the first movement. The relatively brief Vivace second movement, introduced with barely a pause, a Scottish folk music theme both in melody and rhythm, which grew in intensity and pace to something of a gallop. The third movement Adagio, suggesting a pastoral scene with a thunderous interlude that subsides before alternating in pace and mood again. Another very brief pause signals the final movement’s serialist Allegro starting with the “guerriero,” which sounds and signifies a combative stance. It’s followed by an Allegro “vivacissimo,” vibrantly fast-paced as if reacting to danger or strife. The Allegro “maestoso,” builds to a triumphant finish heralded by an all-brass bugle call or in this case, trumpet and horn, with patriotic fervor.
There’s another week of the festival ahead. Besides the orchestral concerts, there are intimate chamber music performances, free “Lunchtime Bites” recitals and outdoor pop-up concerts in various Chestertown locations, as well as master classes and open rehearsals. Rehearsing for concerts in a week or less gives the apprentice musicians experience they will need as professionals performing in ensembles ranging from string or brass quartets to full symphonic orchestras.
This year’s cast of mentors include Brazilian guitarist Camilo Carrara and violinist McGrath, who traveled from Australia, where she is concertmaster of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. They join mentors who have been with the festival since its 2011 inception: Dana Goode (violin), Jared Hauser (oboe), Jeff Keesecker (bassoon), Tom Parchman (clarinet) and Jennifer Parker-Harley (flute).
Among the upcoming festival concerts are Friday, June 14, featuring a Rossini overture and Emilie Mayer’s Symphony No. 1, and the June 15 Saturday night finale culminating in the Ravel orchestration of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” with Rosenberg conducting.
NATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL
Through June 15 in and around Gibson Center for the Arts, Washington College, and other Chestertown locations. nationalmusic.us

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Concert Review: Chamber Music Fest Opening Night, by Steve Parks

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The Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival celebrated its 39th annual opening night on Friday with a diverse medley of classics performed by its longtime lineup of globally acclaimed musicians along with scene-stealing guest artistry by a young Grammy-nominated string quartet known for its dressed-for-fun virtuosity.

The only apparent hitch in the evening had nothing to do with the music. On a relatively last-minute decision, the concert – and possibly the entire festival – was relocated from its Ebenezer Theater home base to the auditorium in nearby Academy Art Museum. More on that later.

Opening night, billed as an “Extravaganza,” mostly lived up to that superlative, beginning with Richard Strauss’ Sextet in Strings, Opus 85, featuring two paired violins, violas and cellos with co–artistic directors Marcy Rosen (cellist) and Catherine Cho (violist) joined by the aforementioned string ensemble, the Aizuri Quartet: violinists Emma Frucht and Miho Saegusa, violist Brian Hong and cellist Caleb von der Swaagh. (No strangers to Easton, they were finalists in the Chesapeake Music International Concerto Competition a decade ago at the Avalon Theater.) The lush Strauss sextet that opened “Capriccio,” the final opera he wrote, introduces  a somber motif passed among the players. Picking up the pace dramatically and without pause, the six string players turned seamlessly to searing passages with violin calls and viola responses, concluding with dual cello solos revisiting the opening theme, this time in a major key.

pianist Leva Jokubaviciute

Next up, and to me the highlight of the concert, was Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio in G minor, Opus 17. As pianist Leva Jokubaviciute observed in her opening remarks, Schumann was recognized as one the finest pianists of her 19th-century time but also – rare for that era – as an accomplished composer. She wrote remarkable piano pieces that she played as well or better than anyone of either gender of which this piano trio is regarded as her masterpiece.

After cellist Rosen took charge to rearrange the chairs and music stands to her liking, the wistfully melodic opening allegro gave way to high-drama string interchanges and tumbling piano keystrokes suggesting an intemperate demand for resolution that grows more and more impatient as if throwing serial fits. The mood turns distinctly lighter in the second movement with strings taking the lead early in an almost cheerful demeanor. The piano introduces the third movement Andante tenderly as the melody is taken up by Todd Phillips’ violin, suggesting a let-it-be acceptance. The final movement advances with renewed confidence and determination through perky strings amplified by expressive piano overlay before racing toward an assertively optimistic conclusion.
After intermission, the guest Aizuri Quartet proved their mettle in Schubert’s famously melodramatic “Death and the Maiden” String Quartet No. 14 in D minor. Severely ill at the time he wrote it, Franz Shubert was fully aware he was dying, which accounts for the ferocity of his composition as well as the attacking of strings by the Aizuri foursome. Taken from a song Schubert had written years earlier, a young girl asks Death to pass her by. Moods shift inexorably between dark and light throughout the piece, expressed alternately by angry fortissimo and placid (or resigned) pianissimo. The spirited first movement brings to mind parrying and thrusts as if fencing for notes – or for one’s life.
Throughout, moods shift from lyricism to agitation and back again, rendered by each player, with brief solo violin turns of almost screaming vocalizations of despair to the percussive heartbeat of cello pizzicato. The final movement mimics a chattering exchange among the four in musically disparate states of their duel with Death before returning to agitation at a galloping pace to the end.
So who was the winner of the evening? Everyone who attended. And the best news is there is much more to come.
Festival concerts that follow the opening-night triple play include Saturday night’s “Personal Perspectives,” with festival co-artistic director Cho performing Mozart’s Duo for Violin and Viola with her husband, violinist Phillips. Also on the program is Schubert’s counterintuitively lighthearted Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat major composed just a year before his death. In between is a short work commissioned for the Aizuri Quartet, Reena Esmail’s Zeher (Poison) for String Quartet, combining South Asian and Western themes. The guest ensemble returns Sunday with Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s String Quartet in E-flat major, recognizing the unsung sibling of Felix, who – due to conventions of the time – is credited with writing six of his big sister’s songs. Next is Schubert’s Fantasia for Piano
Four-Hands in F minor, considered one of his greatest hits. Wrapping up the late matinee program is Erno Dohnanyi’s Piano Quintet No. 1 in C minor, Opus 1, written when the composer was 17. It so impressed Johannes Brahms that he performed its premiere himself.
The festival resumes on Thursday next week with Haydn’s “London” Symphony for Flute, String Quartet and Piano. It’s followed by Pietro Bottisini’s Andante and Variations for Flute, Clarinet and String Quartet, featuring perennial festival contributors Tara Helen O’Connor and J. Lawrie Bloom on the woodwind instruments. Brahms puts the final notes on the evening with his Piano Trio No. 1 in B  major, Opus 8, with Sahun Sam Hong on the ivory. Next Friday’s concert puts the spotlight on winners of Chesapeake Music’s most recent biennial International Concerto Competition, the Amara Trio – Christina  Nam (violin), Nagyeom Jang (cello) and Kevin Jansson (piano) – likely reprising their prize-winning number, Shostakovich’s challenging Piano Concerto No. 2 in E minor, Opus 67, preceded by 20th-century composer Rebecca Clarke’s Piano Trio. The opener for the evening, Luigi Bocchereni’s String Quintet in A major, composed by the virtuoso cellist, brings two other cellists to the fore – Rosen and young Sterling Elliott, who wowed Chesapeake Music audiences twice before, followed by young Oregon-born  composer Kenji Bunch’s “Vesper Flight for Flute and Piano,” a 2021 work commissioned by flutist O’Connor in memory of her parents.
The Festival Finale next Saturday night begins with “A Night Piece and Scherzo for Flute and String Quartet” by American composer Arthur Foote who favored late European Romanticism, Claude Debussy’s “Reverie” arranged for cello and piano, performed by Elliott and his “Rising Stars” partner Eliot Wuu, “Serenade for Clarinet, Cello and Piano” by Danish composer Emil Hartmann inspired by Scandinavian folk tunes and, finally, Elgar’s Piano Quintet that approaches or achieves orchestral proportions.
Something old, something new, something unexpected. That’s the mark of the latest iteration of this distinguished chamber festival.
On a practical note: Ticket holders should pay attention to their emails or text messages. It’s possible that week 2 of festival concerts may switch back to the Ebenezer. According to Bluepoint Hospitality, which owns and operates this and other downtown Easton arts-related businesses and restaurants, the Ebenezer “needed repairs on the former church built in 1856.” Stay tuned.
Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival
Through Sunday and next week through June 15, Thursday-Saturday, Academy Art Museum (or possibly in week 2, at Ebenezer Theater), both in downtown Easton. Concerts start at 7:30 p.m. except Sunday at 5:30. chesapeakemusic.org
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.

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Dar Williams & Friend Together in Song at the Avalon by Steve Parks

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“I won’t forget when Peter Pan came to my house, took my hand
I said I was a boy
I’m glad he didn’t check
I learned to fly, I learned to fight
I lived a whole life in one night.”
–“When I Was a Boy,” Dar Williams
She was born Dorothy Snowden Williams. One of her big sisters, Julie or Meredith, first mispronounced her name. Dar instead of Dorothy. And it stuck. For life. It’s just as well. Her parents had thought about naming her Darcy, after the character in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” But he was Mr. Darcy. When asked in a phone interview if that’s why she identified as a boy in the song she wrote and recorded on her album, “The Honesty Room” in 1993, Williams replied with a sly smile in her voice: “Maybe.”

Dar Williams

But how did she learn “all the tricks that boys know,” as she wrote in “When I Was a Boy”? She didn’t have brothers to mimic. But the Mount Kisco, New York, neighborhood she grew up in “was filled with boys,” she said, adding that she was more interested in their games – such as football. More than playing with Barbie, we suppose. She was also into garbage and where it went. A teacher told Dar that she might grow up to be a “garbage-olist.” She sort of has. More on that later. For now, just know that she’s playing the Avalon Theater Saturday night, May 11,

Her first love in the arts was theater. Maybe because she grew up acting and dressing like a boy “with short hair and all. I was very theatrical,” she says, as if she might’ve auditioned for the tomboy role of Anybodys in “West Side Story.” Moving to Massachusetts in 1990 to explore a career in theater, she worked as stage manager for the Opera Company of Boston, but soon turned to music, writing her own songs. “When I Was a Boy” led off her self-produced “Honesty Room” album. Williams had enough talent and good luck to attract the attention of Joan Baez, for whom she opened in the early ’90s. Baez was impressed enough to record some of Williams’ songs herself.
So then, Dar Williams had a career. “Joan went out of her way to be a mentor,” Williams says. In the realm of folk music, who could possibly have a better mentor? “She was sisterly,” Williams recalls with love and gratitude. “She modeled for me how to be on the road and enjoy it all and find a home away from home wherever you are.”
Williams seems to be paying it forward during this “Spring Colors Return” tour with Heather Maloney, who in her 30s is 20 years or so younger than Dar. Easton is their ninth stop in 10 days and nights on this road odyssey, which ends in Hawaii after a six-week break. They shared the driving throughout the South before winding up at the Avalon. “We share ideas for audiobooks to listen to, and Heather jumps out of the car to remove a cone that’s placed for our parking spot or calls ahead if we don’t know where the venue’s parking lot is.”
On stage Saturday night, Williams will sing some of her songs and Maloney some of those she’s written “and we’ll sing a few together,” Dar says.
Aside from writing music, Dar Williams is also an author of a few non-fiction books, including “What I Found in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musicians’ Guide to Rebuilding America’s Communities – One Coffee Shop, Dog Run & Open-Mike Night at a Time.” Her theme is the recovery of downtowns across the U.S. that were drained by the crush of malls and big-box stores. Easton is on her list of favorite small-town downtowns, possibly because there was never a mall here. And now there probably never will be.
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When the tour ends in late June, the singer-songwriter and budding “garbage-ologist” moves on to her next gig – the annual River Roads Festival in Easthampton with a full day of music Sept. 7 headlined by Dar Williams, along with Cheryl Wheeler, Haley Heynderickx, Gail Ann Dorsey, Paula Cole, the High Tea duo and more artists. But the garbage mission comes into play the next day, as concert-goers and performers turn out to clean up the shoreline of the Connecticut River with the help of Connecticut River Conservancy, for which the festival concert raises money.
“Playing music is very abstract,” says Williams. “Getting my feet wet wading into the river is really grounded.”
When asked if she has a list of songs she considers must-play numbers on her tour, Williams says she has about 10 songs that would qualify, of which she may play two or three. She likes to mix it up, especially with a talented fellow singer-songwriter on the bill with her. But if Dar reads this story, she may consider “When I Was a Boy” my request. Among other songs that might be on her top-10 list are “Beauty of the Rain,” “Fishing in the Morning,” “The Great Unknown,” “It Happens Every Day,” “Mercy of the Fallen,” “The One Who Knows,” “So Close to My Heart,” “You Rise and Meet the Day” and “February.” Williams’ most recent album is “I’ll Meet You Here,” 2021; Maloney’s most recent is “Soil in the Sky,” 2019.
If you miss Saturday’s Avalon concert and can’t make it up to Massachusetts for River Roads, you can book a cruise next fall, October 2025. “Rhine, Women & Song” features Dar Williams, Susan Werner and Heather Maloney. Apparently, Dar loves rivers and the road.
Dar Williams in Concert With Heather Maloney
8 p.m. Saturday, May 11, Avalon Theatre main stage, 40 E. Dover St., Easton.
avalonfoundation.org; River Roads Festival, Easthampton, Mass., Sept. 7. riverroadsfestival.com; “Rhine, Women & Song” Rhine River cruise, Oct. 7-14, 2025. fanclubcruises.com/event/rhine-women-and-song

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Spy Art Reviews: From Heirlooms to Master Antiquity Prints by Steve Parks

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“Remembering the Name of Slaves” Darlene R. Taylor

Heirlooms are defined in dictionaries as “valuable objects that belonged to a family for generations.” The word “valuable” in that description is highly subjective. Such objects likely have value to family members or descendants. But they may or may not have monetary as opposed to sentimental value. “Darlene R. Taylor: Heirlooms,” at the Academy Art Museum, is an oddly resonant reflection of 18th- to early 19th-century free black families of the Hill neighborhood of Easton – all of them women – depicted with their backs to the viewer, ensuring their anonymity, which defined the lives of most African-American women, free or enslaved, in pre-Civil War America.

Taylor, a black woman born in 1960, has created a series of mixed-media collages, some of which are near life-size, incorporating vintage cotton, linens, laces and even buttons handed down mother to daughter mostly, but also cousin to cousin or friend to friend. Artifacts from excavations commissioned by the museum of the long-ago home of Henny and James Freeman, who headed one of the earliest free land-owning black families in Talbot County from 1787 to 1828 are part of Taylor’s motifs that almost invite touching, which of course is not allowed. The fabric-on-paper derivations are so homey they seem drawn directly from unfinished work from a sewing basket. For me, the most tempting piece to reach out and feel its domestic textile hand-me-downs is “The Children of Slaves Remember,” 2023.

Taylor says her archival works reflect untold stories of “the love, labor and thriving of black life and family.” The Freeman home and adjoining properties on Talbot Lane just behind the museum are being repurposed for much-needed administrative space.

Full disclosure regarding a possible personal connection: I grew up on a farm next to what is now Chesapeake Easton Club East on Dutchmans Lane, where I now live in retirement. From age 5 in 1952 to when I attended and graduated from the University of Maryland College Park, that farm remained my home-away-from-college. My mother taught a young man named James Freeman to read. He worked on our farm until my parents sold it in the mid-’70s. Freeman was a common name for children or grandchildren of former slaves. But I wonder now if the gentle farmworker I knew as James Freeman back in the 1950s to ’70s was a descendant of the free land-owning black family next door to what is now the Academy Art Museum.

Sometimes, it seems like an awfully small world when you move back to your childhood hometown.

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“Fall of Man,” Albrecht Durer

An important collection on loan from the Reading Public Museum in Pennsylvania of works by Albrecht Durer, the Renaissance artist who revolutionized European printmaking in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, fills the two small first-floor AAM galleries.

You’ll see a copy of a color print of young Durer with an introductory wall label summarizing his career that made him one of the most notable artists of his time. Hanging next to the portrait are magnifying glasses that you should use in the next room. There, on the far wall, you’ll see 16 remarkable prints from Durer’s “Engraved Passion” series depicting the final days in the life of Christ. All the New Testament scenes described in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are there – among them the kiss of death by Judas, Pontius Pilate washing his hands as Jesus is found guilty, the crown of thorns affixed on Jesus’ head on his way to the cross, his Crucifixion and of Christ resurrected with a halo of illumination above his head. The magnifying glass makes a great difference in viewing these engravings not much larger, if at all, than baseball cards. The magnification brings their incredibly detailed imagery into stark focus. The technique reveals the delicate intricacies that distinguish Durer’s engravings from the earlier woodcuts that are also masterpieces – including his “Fall of Man: Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise.”

Returning to the first gallery, don’t miss the posthumous portrait of Durer by Erhard Schon, dated 1538. Durer died in 1528 at age 56.

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“The Voyage of Memory,” Philip Koch

Philip Koch, like many American artists born in the mid-20th century (1948), was very much influenced by abstract painters who were all the rage at the time. But then he met realist artist Edward Hopper, born in the previous century (1884), who died in 1967 at age 84. There was still time, however, for Koch to be taken under Hopper’s wing and, posthumously, earned him an unprecedented series of residencies – 17 of them – at the elder’s Cape Cod studio and access to the Edward Hopper Art Center in his Nyack, N.Y. birthplace. That changed the arc of Koch’s career from abstract to stark realism in landscapes and architectural detail. You’ll notice his fondness for Mansard rooflines in the current Koch exhibit at AAM. Switching in style from his previous landscapes, represented in this show with a few paintings from the early ’80s, Koch began producing colorful picture-postcard scenes as opposed to flora abstractions of his imagination.

Whether or not you see this as an improvement in his artistry may depend on your taste in paintings. Hopper’s influence on Koch’s later works is unmistakable, though it strikes me as somewhat more imitative than creative. But then, there’s nothing wrong with pretty pictures.

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With four shows going on at once, not counting Marty Two Bulls Jr.’s “Dominion” installation that went up in AAM’s entry hallway months ago – there’s a lot to take in. But don’t skip the charming little exhibit upstairs, “Remnants of Childhood,” curated by teen interns who selected art from the museum’s permanent collection. My runaway favorite is Austrian artist Ossi B. Czinner’s “Man, Moon, Umbrella” interpretation of Jack jumping over the candlestick. Or, for local flavor, you might want to check out Claudia DeMonte’s “Shrine to Maryland” mixed-media diorama adorned with blue crabs that turn red when you boil them, reminding us that it pays to be head of the food chain.

Four New Exhibits at AAM

“Darlene R. Taylor: Heirlooms,” “Albrecht Durer: Master Prints” and “Light: Paintings by Philip Koch,” all through July 14. Also, “Teen-Curated Exhibition: Remnants of Childhood” through June 9, all at Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton. academyartmuseum.org

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

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Spy Review: They’re All Winners in this Contest by Steve Parks

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The Amara Trio

A trio who got together barely nine months ago – late in the summer of 2023 – came away with the top prize of $10,000 in the 11th biennial Chesapeake International Chamber Music Competition Saturday at Easton’s exquisite Ebenezer Theater.

The Amara Trio, who met at Manhattan’s prestigious and hugely competitive Juilliard School, performed a challenging and musically diverse program of chamber compositions by Rebecca Clarke, better known as a viola virtuoso who cracked the British orchestral barrier to female musicians, and two wildly haunting movements from Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which was somehow topped by their rendering of Mendelssohn’s sumptuous, if repetitive, first piano concerto.

The next biggest winner of the competition was the all-saxophone quartet Pulse from Michigan State University, three of whom are graduating – leaving their junior member to fend for himself. Pulse captured both the audience-choice prize of $5,000, and a judges’ tie vote for the runner-up prize with the Hesper String Quartet, representing the “usual suspects” among chamber music competitors.

That said, it doesn’t mean in any way that Hesper did not rise to the occasion. They were the only chamber group that concentrated their skilled efforts on just two compositions, playing them more or less to completion under the 45-minute performance time limit. The Schubert String Quartet No.  14, subtitled “Death of the Maiden,” opens solemnly as you might expect from the title, turning urgent and then melodic to a climactic finish.  The discordant Bartok Quartet No. 3 showed off the range of these Stony Brook University musicians based in Long Island and New York. The moderato refrains built toward crisis tension with quivering violin strings and assertive cello strokes and thumps leading to a reflective surprise finish.

To my eyes and ears, what seemed to win for the Amara Trio was their connection to each other – especially in the complexities of the Shostakovich No. 2 from which they dropped the first movement because of time constraints. (Folks who heard them in the Sunday matinee performance at Holy Trinity in Easton got the full treatment of that piece.)

In the Saturday competition, it was impossible for the audience, and perhaps the fellow musicians, not to notice the emotional expression of their pianist to whatever phrase presented a potential coda response that turned out to be a mere tease. If their idea was not to have too much drama, it worked. There were several such moments, and I was fooled each time. Best to wait for the great climax. These guys – a guy and two girls, actually – were terrific that way,

The same might be said of Pulse, the winner of the audience-favorite award, who also tied for the runners-up judges’ prize with the Hesper four. Pulse blew me away with no less than six pieces in a 45-minute tour de force on brass: A suite by Grieg, Marquez’s Cuban romanticism to O’Halloran’s “Night Music” jazz romp and a melodically soothing Puccini, followed by Itoh’s “Doublethink,” a deeply wrinkled take on Orwellian political mythology, anchored by the improvisational “Converging Spectrum” by young African-American jazz pianist Kevin Day – all of it displaying Pulse’s incredible range. I was particularly impressed with their wind-blown technique that produced the sound of ocean waves without vibrant brass notes.

The Amara Trio winners, I suspect, earned their prize with an on-stage presence that may have separated them from the evident skill of each of their competitors. It was impossible not to notice their connection – remarkable in that they just got together – to my well-aged mind – basically the day before yesterday. May the Amara Trio achieve the success they deserve. They’re really good.

That said, all the other chamber groups who came away without a specific prize deserve the standing ovations they received on Saturday. Each finalist also earned a $1,000 cash prize.

Among them are the Trio Menil, who performed a challenging program of Haydn, Ives and an emotional rendition of Mendelssohn’s Trio No. 2. Plus the opening act, the Kodak Quartet’s ambitious five-piece medley starting with the Ligeti nocturne memorialized by the Holocaust, known as “Metamorphoses.”

To pick winners or losers among these five competitors was to me, all but impossible. But that’s what a competition is about. Congratulations to all these young up-and-comers.

Remember these names for future classical music reference:

Amara Trio: Pianist Kevin Jansson, cellist Nagyeom, Jang, violinist Christina Nam.

Pulse: Zachary Costello, soprano saxophone; Michael Ethier, baritone sax;

Owen Robinson, tenor sax; Spencer Cox, alto sax.

Hesper Quartet: Violinists SeJeong Kim and Ye Jin Yoon, violist SoHui Yun, and cellist Connor Kim.

Kodak Quartet:  Violinists Edgar Donati and Martin Noh, violist Daniel Spink, and cellist Blake Kitayama.

Trio Manil:  Pianist Jonathan Muk, cellist David Dietz, and violinist Jeongwon An (also known as Claire).

Congratulations to all five finalists. You’re all winners.

Chesapeake International Chamber Music Competition
Saturday, April 13, Ebenezer Theater, Easton; chesapeakemusic.org

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

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Spy Music Review: Concerto to Die For by Steve Parks

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Cellist Amit Peled

A remarkable evening of music and reflection opened appropriately with what amounts to a prayer.

The lyrics to the hymn inspired by Sibelius’ tone poem “Finlandia,” performed by the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Thursday night in Easton, came instantly to mind with the first notes of the beloved middle movement of this piece about peace.

“My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine
But other lands have sunlight, too, and clover
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations
A song of peace for their land and for mine.”

In a concert anchored by the performative genius of an Israeli-American cellist, peace inevitably came to mind there as well. But it was principally the music that spoke to appreciative listeners in Saints Peter and Paul High School’s auditorium. “Finlandia” is a 19th-century musical commentary on the Russian Empire’s oppression, continued under the Soviet Union, of neighboring Finland – now a member of NATO in defensive response to war-criminal misdeeds by Vladimir the Terrible.

The eight-minute “Finlandia” was but an appetizer for much more to savor and to mull over on the drive home from this rewarding concert.

Next up was an until-recently undiscovered masterwork by Florence Price, the first African-American woman composer to have her symphony (No. 1 in E Minor) performed by a major U.S. orchestra. Her three-movement “Ethiopia’s Shadow in America” breaks the era of slavery into “The Journey” from homeland captivity to being chained and shipped into a life as two-legged chattel, followed by “Struggle and Resistance,” which captures the loss of liberty and far worse before morphing into a resolve to overcome. Then, finally, it moves to a hopeful “Celebration of Heritage,’ in an emancipation nation clinging to racist hangovers.

Price’s “Ethiopia’s Shadow” was recorded on the New York Youth Symphony album that won the musicians and Michael Repper, now music director of the MSO, 2023’s Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance. The three movements – capture, slavery and emancipation – are marked by what-will-come-next trepidation in the first instance. The second connotes both resignation to hardships – somber notes of lost humanity and a resilience that comes from somewhere within as the higher strings and woodwinds strike a tone of getting ahead rather than getting even. Finally, a lilting passage introduced in a clarinet solo by Wendy Hatton suggests a brighter future in which dancing is one of freedom’s rewards.

Post-intermission, Repper ceded his usual role of introducing the final piece on the program to the soloist who plays most of the notes in Dvorak’s Cello Concerto widely acclaimed as the best ever written. Turns out that Amit Peled, a cello professor at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory, whose professorship hardly begins to encapsulate his accomplishments as an artist, loves to tell stories about the pieces he plays. The dramatic effect was so profound that I could not possibly take in the concerto without references Peled made spinning in my head as the wordless magic of his playing or Dvorak’s genius in composing it – probably both – influenced my perception of the music and musicianship.

According to Peled, Dvorak was hopelessly in love with a lass named Josephine who, like himself, was a Czech native. He offered his hand to her. But Josephine’s father insisted that he marry his older daughter instead. Meanwhile, Dvorak had accepted the challenge of writing a cello concerto, which he previously thought all but impossible. After writing a promising first movement, he decided to sail to Europe and his homeland to visit Josephine, who he heard was sick. En route, he wrote a second movement, inspired by the prospect of seeing her again, and then wrote a third upon his visit. But on his return voyage, he learned that Josephine had died. He tore up the third movement and the astonishing one we hear today of which Peled tipped us all with a musical spoiler by playing the note he cues just before a dying response from Josephine – in this case delivered by concertmaster/first violin Kim McCollum.

Aside from his storytelling, Peled’s utter mastery of this complex and athletically challenging concerto was spellbinding. An introspective opening quickly eclipsed by a bold orchestral statement featuring horns and woodwinds establish a grand entrance for the soloist, who shows who’s in charge with higher-register notes than you’d expect from a cello, played with violin dexterity mixed with cello/bass authority. While full orchestral outbursts periodically gave Peled a chance to catch his breath and rest his bow arm, he showed a knack for coming in just on the heels of a supporting instrumental phrase, such as by Dana Newcomb on oboe. You’d think the cello and oboe were one.

In the final movement, Josephine’s death note follows Peled’s lead, punctuated by a gentle pluck of a single string. Sprightly folk melodies of their shared Czech roots ease any maudlin preoccupations with death to instill a celebration instead of life.

The performance is indeed a celebration of life as interpreted through music.

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra

Spring concert series: Thursday, April 4, Saints Peter and Paul High School, Easton. Also, 3 p.m. Saturday, April 6, Epworth United Methodist Church, Rehoboth Beach, and 3 p.m. Sunday, April 7, Community Church, Ocean Pines.

midantlanticsymphony.org

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

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.