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.”

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

 

When Al Sikes, founder of the Monty Alexander Jazz Festival, first proposed the idea of showcasing big-name jazz in a small town, there was a pause of at least 30 seconds over the phone—as if to say, in silence, “Are you kidding me?”

“I didn’t know this guy from Adam, but I could tell he was an out-and-out jazz lover,” Monty Alexander recalls. “He told me, ‘Man, I grew up with Dave Brubeck in the ’50s.’ He had this idea of bringing jazz to a cozy little town that reminds me of that charming village in the movie ‘Back to the Future.’ ”

“We needed to show proof of concept,” says Sikes. “If you asked people who they’d like to see in a jazz concert, they’d probably mention Louis Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald”—both now deceased. “But would they come hear someone not quite as famous? I had seen Monty Alexander play when I was living in New York, and when someone mentioned his name as a guy who could help bring this about, I gave him a call. He was a little hesitant, but finally said, ‘Let’s take it one year at a time.’ ”

Now, 10 years later, what started as a one-off concert by Alexander and his band has become Easton’s Labor Day weekend tradition.

The idea of bringing jazz stars to a 400-seat theater—the Avalon’s seating capacity—was not such a stretch. Even the greatest names of the genre sometimes play small nightclub venues. But these are most often boozy big-city hideaways. Would Easton be hip enough to support jazz, even just for a holiday weekend?

“I never would’ve guessed that we’d be doing this after 10 years,” says Alexander, now 75. “It’s a joy each time we come here—so rich in spirit. You can feel the sense of anticipation in the audience. They appreciate that jazz is a better representation of America than Coca-Cola.

“I call it appreci-love,” he says, inventing a new word

This from a native of Kingston, Jamaica, who’s made New York his home base for an international career. Just before his 10th anniversary concert at the Avalon, Alexander will play Royal Albert Hall in London.

“But Easton’s where I’ll be every Labor Day weekend,” he says.

Of course, since that first concert, Alexander and his band are no longer alone in jazzing up the town.

Friday night’s first act of the festival brings Allan Harris back for a centennial salute to Nat King Cole. Originally a jazz pianist of great renown, “the King’s” deep and seductively smoky voice made him a 1950s radio superstar and the first African-American artist to host a network TV variety show. To this day, for me, no Dec. 25th is complete without hearing his recording of “A Christmas Song.” Maybe Labor Day is too early for that, but I hope not.

Harris is just one of the headline artists for this 10th anniversary celebration who have played the festival previously. “We wanted to bring back some of our favorites from the last 10 years,” Sikes says. That includes Baltimore native Cyrus Chestnut for the closing Sunday matinee concert. The Peabody Institute and Berklee School of Music alumni deploys his classical, gospel and professorial background into a broad-based survey of jazz’s American roots.  

In between, festival fans will be treated to an encore performance by Matthew Whitaker, an astonishingly talented wunderkind who made his debut last year in the festival’s showcase for young artists. Blind at birth, Whitaker, 18, plays the piano and a B3 organ simultaneously, swiveling seamlessly between the two. “As gifted as they come,” says Alexander. Whitaker plays Saturday afternoon.

This year’s featured young artists are Randy Napoleon and Dan Wilson in a free 11 a.m. “Guitars Without Compromise” concert. They’ll also play both Sunday brunch seatings across the street at the Tidewater Inn, accompanied by bassist Tommy Cecil, a Chestnut sideman, and drummer/vibraphonist Chuck Redd, part of Monty Alexander’s ensemble. Bass player J.J. Shakur is another “joyful presence” in his band as Alexander puts it. Also featured with Chestnut is soaring jazz vocalist Christie Deshiell, who appears regularly with him at Blues Alley in Washington.

You can expect Alexander, pianist and composer who also plays the keyboard reed instrument known as the melodica, to perform selections from the past and present—including some of his reggae-influenced originals. Don’t be surprised if he also draws on the Sinatra songbook. Alexander was once the house pianist at Jilly’s, a Manhattan nightclub where Frank Sinatra frequently sang.

It should be a very good year, this 10th for the Monty Alexander Jazz Festival.

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

 

Jazz on the Chesapeake Presents the 10th Annual Monty Alexander Jazz Festival

Allan Harris Centennial Tribute to Nat King Cole, 8 p.m., Friday, Aug. 30

Free Community Concert: Randy Napoleon and Dan Wilson, 11 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 31

Matthew Whitaker: Exciting Debut, Eagerly Awaited Return, 2 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 31

Monty Alexander Celebrates 10th Anniversary, 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 31

Jazz Brunch: Napoleon and Wilson with Chuck Redd and Tommy Cecil, 10:30 and 11:30 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 1

Cyrus Chestnut: Where Gospel Meets Jazz, 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 1

All concerts at Avalon Theatre except brunch seatings at Hunter’s Tavern, Tidewater Inn

Tickets: $25-$50 (except free Saturday morning concert), $90-$165 for festival pass; 410-819-0380, jazzonthechesapeake.com, 410-822-4034 for brunch reservations

 

 

 

 

 

 

The opening-night reception, drawing more people than you’ll encounter at other times in the Academy Art Museum galleries, was no occasion to absorb—much less appreciate—the content of the major new exhibition, Amze Emmons’ “Pattern Drift,” or figure out what the artist is trying to say.

I struggled to glimpse the wall labels, denoting the title of each seemingly inscrutable image amid people balancing canapes and plastic cups of wine. I gave up, knowing I’d return Monday morning to see each of Emmons’ 100-plus pieces in splendid isolation—briefly interrupted by dismissal of a kids’ class upstairs at the museum. Later, Emmons prepared for his three-day artist-in-residence workshop.

The problem with “Pattern Drift” is that there’s way more than meets the eye. Which may not be that unusual in a visual art exhibition—yes, we who appreciate art beyond pretty pictures get that—but Emmons’ architecturally based prints, drawings and cartoon inclinations are almost infuriatingly barren. To view them is to imagine a world left behind, structurally intact but devoid of human life after—what?—a nerve-gas holocaust? (A dog, the only figure I spotted in the show, reminded me of the nuclear-disaster classic “On the Beach.”)

For instance, there are no closing hours at major airports around the globe these days. Yet, if you take in “Pattern Drift” chronologically, clockwise from the first gallery to the left upon entering the museum, you’ll encounter a few takes on “Personal Baggage,” depicting luggage-claim architecture devoid both of landing passengers and arriving suitcases. I found those images sterile. But as I made my way around the “Modern Traveler” iconography of everyday life, from “Urban Lift,” an elevator interior, to “Insinuated Economy,” a plastic-poles and vinyl-ribbon maze to the head of the line, I started to get it. 

In the opposite gallery, orange traffic cones and concrete traffic barriers become a recurring theme. “Monument Parade” strings together a non-navigable array of cones strung together by yellow crime-scene tape. But the most currently relevant images are under the rubric of “The Great Machine”: Three abandoned voting stations, devoid of voters, are scattered amid trash and a “VOTE HERE” sign. In “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” two plastic chairs are set before a tangle of concertina wire. 

The less-satisfying final galleries at the rear of the museum are highlighted by a cartoonish depiction of an ice chest, like those found outside liquor stores or gas stations, opposite a table of perishables in need of refrigeration, and “Breakfast,” a food truck piled high enough to include a mid rise domicile.

Whether “Pattern Drift,” an architecturally driven show, is satisfying artistically is in the eye of the viewer. But, together with its teasingly enigmatic titles, this singularly focused exhibition attempts, if not altogether succeeds, in eliciting thoughtful engagement. Just take your time to process.

HEATHER HARVEY

Borrowing a Celtic term for her first exhibition in Easton, where she collects discarded material and turns it into art at her studio, Heather Harvey combines scientific curiosity with found

objects to create installations that express her vision of “The Thin Place.” Not that I’ve encountered such a place, but it’s said to be a permeable divide between living and dead, heaven and earth, commonplace and out of this world. Three installations and a dozen watercolors explore this theme through very different means and skill sets. You wouldn’t guess the installations and paintings are by the same artist. 

Two poster-sized paintings greet the viewer who takes the stairs to Academy’s second-floor gallery space. But these cheerful abstracts don’t prepare you for the turmoil a few steps ahead. “Up,” a 2019 installation—all works in this show were created this year—suspends large pieces of plastic, metal and wood debris as if caught in a stop-action tornado. Similarly, “All the Tomorrows,” a collage of mostly identifiable objects—measuring tape, ribbons, plastic and cardboard packing material as well as broken eyeglasses and a child’s sandal—appear to be streaming in a ferocious wind temporarily holding its breath. Somewhat more subdued, “Order of Things,” projects pure disorder in its amalgam of crumbling plaster on twisted wire, tinsel from a bygone Christmas tree and a collapsed smiling-sun balloon. Each piece suggests chaos, a maelstrom of that which once was, now ripped asunder. 

Harvey’s paintings, by contrast, radiate a geometric sense of order. “Belonging” brings to mind celestial objects clumped together against a field of vectors, while “Joy” evokes orbiting spheres in a bright peach-and-lime universe. “Nothingness Shows Through” begs the question: Is this the Big Bang or is that dark center a black hole? By contrast, “Hobe Sound, 1-17-19 [for Mary Oliver],” is far more personal, denoting the place and time of death of a poet friend of Harvey’s while reflecting both gloom over loss and celebration of a life fully lived.

Will you know, after viewing this show, what a “thin place” is? I can’t say, but it’s a phat place to visit.

JAMES TURRELL

“Mapping Places” is not quite an exhibit. Rather, it’s five new acquisitions added to the Academy Art Museum’s permanent collection showcased in its lobby. For a half century, James Turrell has worked with light and space as he says, “to create an experience of wordless thought, to make the quality and sensation of light itself something really quite tactile.” 

These five pieces were created by Turrell in 1987 as a print reference to portions of an unprecedented artwork being created within the volcanic Roden Crater in Arizona’s Painted Desert. Enumerated 1 through 5, each “mapping space” offers the artist’s take on human visual and psychological perception. One evokes an image we’ve all seen: Moonlight, perhaps, reflected on a dark body of water.  Another projects a mapping device over what appears to be a wood-grain plain. Or is it a desert seen from the sky? Another is a photo of the Roden Crater itself with what appears to be beacon of light at its core. 

All are worthy additions to the Academy’s collection. But none can possibly hold a candle, so to speak, to the actual Roden Crater project, the culmination of a lifetime of work in the field of light as perception. Maybe that could one day be an ambitious Academy-sponsored road trip.

 

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

AMZE EMMONS: “Pattern Drift”
HEATHER HARVEY: “The Thin Line”
JAMES TURRELL: “Mapping Spaces”
Through Sept. 30, Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton (soon to have new Harrison Street entrance); academyartmuseum.org, 410-822-4787

 

 

 

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Or in this case another woman’s treasure. If you live in Easton and you happen to check out one of the three new shows at the Academy Art Museum you just might recognize some of your trash featured in the Heather Harvey exhibit “The Thin Place.”

Harvey, a Washington College associate art professor, prowls the streets, alleyways and parking lots of Easton on what she calls “urban beachcombing” expeditions. She searches for debris that comprise her installations, three of which hang at the museum through Sept. 30.

Harvey, a Syracuse native whose undergraduate degree from the University at Buffalo—“I’m an upstate New York girl,” she says—is in anthropology and archaeology. She regards herself as a science-inspired artist. Harvey earned her MFA in art from Virginia Commonwealth University and now chairs art and art history at the Chestertown college. She lives in Easton with her husband, who teaches history at Salisbury University—splitting the geographical distance from their academic venues.

At the Academy museum, her installations are accompanied by about a dozen paintings, watercolor and acrylic, that reflect a different side of Harvey’s exploration of “areas where we don’t have everything figured out, re-inculcating childlike enchantment and wonder.” These are “thin places,” a Celtic expression for permeable divides between living and dead, sacred and profane, commonplace and extraordinary—even extraterrestrial. The science part of that enchantment, she says, are “invisible ordering systems” that define our life on this planet—astronomy, gravity and weather, including wind (“we only see its effects”) as well as magnetic fields. Other paintings are metaphors for certain effects on our lives, such as emotions, or even more defining biological or sociological realities, including gender, race and class.

Among the most personal of her paintings is “Hope Sound,” the name of the place in Florida where poet Mary Oliver passed away, it expresses, Harvey says, her grieving and her appreciation for the poet’s work. By contrast, another painting derives from scientific curiosity, inspired by her trip with her husband two years ago to South Carolina to experience a total solar eclipse.

“There’s a little bit of Baroque in my pieces,” Harvey says, referring to a suggestion of exaggerated motion and detail to produce drama and a sense of exuberance. But she also goes for the sublime. “That’s beauty mixed with awe that borders on terror. An eclipse is like that,” she says. “An unsettling tension between the two.”

As for the trash you may or may not recognize, Harvey on her nocturnal sojourns seeks surprise in whatever she finds. “I’m not looking for anything in particular,” she says. “I don’t get the idea first and then go out and look for something to complete it. The objects themselves inform my work.”

Not all the objects are recognizable. Twisted pieces of metal. Shards of plastic or rubber. Others we can guess at, such as a bit of green-and-red ribbon. A discarded piece of Christmas wrapping? Maybe a tree decoration. Still others are unmistakable. A child’s sandal missing its mate.

Whatever, Harvey endeavors to create aesthetic treasure out of it.

For Heather Harvey, who has exhibited from New York City to Los Angeles, this is her first show in the hometown where she gathers most of her material. The other two shows coinciding with Harvey’s at the Academy Art Museum are Amze Emmons’ “Pattern Drift” and James Turrell’s “Mapping Spaces.”

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