Practically everyone who ever heard a Christmas song or tune knows that Irving Berlin wrote “White Christmas” and that Tchaikovsky composed “The Nutcracker Suite.” Although seasonal masterpieces get their due in the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s delightful “Holiday Joy” concert, Leroy Anderson is the star composer in this diverse and illuminating program.

Not exactly a household name, Anderson arranged a medley – first recorded by the Boston Pops in 1950 – into a classical overture he called “A Christmas Festival,” featuring the greatest holiday hits we all know (except maybe only Brits are familiar with “Good King Wenceslas”). After this collection opened “Holiday Joy,” MSO’s Grammy-winning music director confessed his love of Christmas music regardless of his Jewish heritage. Irving Berlin would very likely agree.

On a crowded Avalon Theatre stage with 39 musicians, including Repper, who played two pieces on a keyboard because there was no room for a sit down piano, the orchestra boldly proclaimed that “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” before another piece by Leroy Anderson riveted our attention thanks to the clarion call of three MSO trumpeters – Luis Engelke, Josh Carr, and Ross McCool. In fact, Anderson’s “Bugler’s Holiday” is more widely associated with Fourth of July fireworks than Christmas stockings hanging from a fireplace mantel. But as performed by the trumpet trio accompanied by a fulsome orchestra, the holiday spirit transposed seamlessly from a key of July to one of December.

But that was hardly the only liberty Repper took in presenting “Holiday Joy.” While the duet from Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville,” starring soprano soloist Claire Galloway and baritone Rob McGinniss, has nothing to do with Christmas or any other holiday – unless there’s one on the Italian calendar I missed – this rendition of a scene from arguably the best comic operas ever created is worth celebrating any day or night it’s performed. Never mind that it’s all sung in Italian, the actorly skills of Galloway and McGinniss translate beyond language barriers, not to mention their sonorous and soaring tones. But if you insist, McGinniss, as Figaro declares, “Women, women – eternal gods!/Who can figure you out?”

The lovely “Christmas Waltz” by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne and McGinnis’s interpretation of “White Christmas” preceded the “Barber of Seville” diversion that returned to seasonal form with Galloway’s soulful “In the Bleak Midwinter.” Based on a poem by Christina Rossetti, originally titled “A Christmas Carol” before Charles Dickens published his Scrooge salvation saga, it was later set to music by Gustav Holst. 

More cheerfully, we were advised to have ourselves “A Merry Little Christmas” by Galloway and McGinniss, who, it turns out, were classmates with Repper at Baltimore’s Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University Conservatory of Music. 

Not forgetting his heritage, Repper led the orchestra in Robert Wendel’s “Hanukkah Overture,” comprised of liturgical pieces and more widely recognized portions of “Rock of Ages” and “I Have a Little Dreidel,” laced with jazzy overtones suitable for Hanukkah’s eight-night Festival of Lights, beginning this year on Dec. 7.

Leroy Anderson kicks off the second half of “Holiday Joy” with “Sleigh Ride,” which, for my money, is way more jingly than “Jingle Bells.” You’ll be convinced I’m right when you hear it led by Repper in his Santa hat. A nod to the “Nutcracker Suite” is inevitable in any Christmas concert. But the orchestra gave Tchaikovsky’s sumptuous melodies their due with four selections we know from Disney’s “Fantasia,” if not from ubiquitous holiday performances of the ballet. 

One of the few sacred songs on the program, “O Holy Night,” just about brought the full house at the Avalon down – you might say on our knees, except there was no room for that at our seats. Galloway brought both reverence and inspiration to the lyrics and their echoes in what believers and non-believers alike have heard and recited most of their lives. Through all three verses, she calibrated her soaring lyric soprano voice to enable a thrilling culmination. 

Next, the program incorrectly listed “White Christmas” a second time. Instead, with Repper at the keyboard, McGinniss sang my (and the music director’s) personal favorite. I have no nit to pick on the baritone’s interpretation of “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” nor Repper’s accompaniment as the rest of the orchestra raptly listened along with the audience. But it’s not possible in my universe for anyone to top Nat King Cole on his simply perfect reading of Mel Torme’s all-time classic, “The Christmas Song.” 

The soprano and baritone returned with a “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” which, compared to their earlier contributions, amounted to a live singing holiday card. But their finale, narrating the text of Clement Moore’s literally immortal words in “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” showed off the acting skills of McGinniss and Galloway. The orchestra became an extra character in the reading to music composed by Bill Holcombe, with sound-effect punctuations emanating from every section of players. 

After a well-deserved standing ovation, virtually everyone sat back in their seats for a singalong encore of first-verse-only versions of songs everyone who ever observed Christmas knows by heart. The evening fully lived up to its billing: “Holiday Joy.”

Note: The “Holiday Joy” concerts are dedicated to longtime MSO patron Norma Redele, who passed away recently. Repper said Redele introduced Jeffrey Parker, the current MSO board president, to the orchestra.

***

The MSO is not done with its season’s greetings after the weekend’s remaining “Holiday Joy” performances. As part of the orchestra’s Ensemble Series, a pair of “Holiday Quintet” concerts will be presented at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 15, at Epworth United Methodist Church in Rehoboth Beach and at 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 17, at Christ Church in Easton. After that, at the same Easton venue, “A Toast to the New Year” concert, featuring the full orchestra and mezzo-soprano Taylor Hillary Boykins, offers a joyful, tuneful New Year’s Eve celebration starting at 7 p.m., time enough for you to welcome at midnight the year 2024 in your own way. Remember that admission to the MSO concert is separate from the First Night Talbot events happening up and down Harrison Street just outside Christ Church. 

‘Holiday Joy’ Concerts

Thursday night, Nov. 30, at Avalon Theatre, Easton. Also, 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 2, Epworth United Methodist Church, Rehoboth Beach, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 3, Ocean City Performing Arts Center, midatlanticsymphony.org

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

 

Let’s start with First Night December – Dec. 1 in Rock Hall with pianist and impresario Joe Holt’s concert presentation of “It’s Almost Christmas, Charlie Brown.” The show is a tribute in song to Charles Schulz’s holiday TV classics by the late jazz pianist and composer Vince Guaraldi, who pretty much defined the “Peanuts” animated soundtrack. Drummer Greg Burrows and bassist Tom Baldwin join Holt at Rock Hall’s “home of musical magic,” The Mainstay, 5753 N. Main St. Showtime begins at 8.

mainstayrockhall.org

Chestertown’s Garfield Center for the Arts gift wraps its production of the 2019 screenplay adaptation based on Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel “Little Women,” which begins and ends on Christmas Day, 15 years apart. The Off-Broadway debut of Kate Hamill’s revision brings still-relevant women’s issues to light while still focusing on the March family of a mother and her daughters growing into adulthood while their father is off to defend the Union during the Civil War. The play runs on weekends, Dec. 1-17.

garfieldcenter.org 

’Peake Players, the student theater company of Chesapeake College at Wye Mills, brings “The Snow Show” – a mash-up of 18th- and 19th-century Christmas tales – to the stage of Todd Performing Arts Center, Dec. 7-9. The plot, such as it is, finds a family stuck in a snowbank on the way to Grandpa’s place. Pushing a wheelbarrow uphill, Grandpa struggles to come to their rescue. But he can’t make it without the help of dancers moving to tunes inspired by characters from “The Little Match Girl,” “Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox,” and “The Beggar King” in this multicultural celebration.

chesapeake.edu/peake-players

Church Hill Theatre’s holiday season offering is a staged version of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” based on the 1938 radio version directed by Orson Welles and starring Lionel Barrymore as Scrooge. (No, we’re not expecting either of those late-greats to appear as the Ghost of Christmas Past.) But you can catch this adaptation at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Dec. 15 and 16, or matinees at 2 on Dec. 16 and 17 at 103 Walnut St., Church Hill.

churchhilltheatre.org

Adkins Arboretum in Ridgely invites you to ride along with them to Kennett Square, Pa., to enjoy the ever-popular, always-spectacular “A Longwood Christmas” – as in Longwood Gardens. Upon arrival, take a walk and a look around the botanical wonders, indoors and out, before settling down – maybe you can find a cozy spot next to a firepit – to experience the wondrous show of a half-million lights entwined in a botanically inspired configuration to create a visual rivaling the best Fourth of July fireworks you’ve ever seen. (Sunset at this post-daylight-savings time of year is 4:35 or so.)

The bus trip departs Aurora Park Drive in Easton at 1 p.m., 20 minutes later at the U.S. 50/Route 404 park and ride, and 1:45 at the park and ride at Routes 301/291, Millington. The return trip begins at 8 p.m. and arrives at 10-ish at Queen Anne’s and Talbot stops. Members of Adkins get a $40 discount on advance reservations. (If you miss the bus trip, “A Longwood Christmas” runs through Jan. 7 with Christmas Day and a few more days off.) Meanwhile, coming up at Adkins: Although it will still be several days short of winter on Sunday, Dec. 10, you can get a taste and up-close view of the season with a guided walk through the arboretum’s Caroline County meadows, woodland, and wetlands led by Margan Glover revealing sounds and sights of thrumming woodpeckers, dry forest weeds abloom and unfrozen creeks trickling. 

adkinsarboretum.org

Temple B’nai Israel in Easton, more widely known regionally as the Salter Center for Jewish Life on the Eastern Shore, holds an ecumenical Community Menorah Lighting, 5-6:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 10, led by Rabbi Peter Hyman. The first night of Hanukkah is observed at the temple on Dec. 8 with a candle lighting and a new-member Shabbat service with guest cantorial soloist Anita Stoll. Hanukkah observances will continue each evening through the eighth night, with a final candle lighting at 4:26.
bnaiisraeleaston.org

Easton Choral Arts Society didn’t steal my “Home for the Holidays” line for its annual Christmastime concerts at Christ Church. We both “borrowed” it from Perry Como’s holiday hit of the same name – “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays” – released in 1954. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if that classic made it to the playlist for performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 7, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 10. Artistic director Alexis Renee Ward promises a musical travelog, from Southern gospel and Midwestern regional folk to Northeastern folk rock and West Coast cinematic soundtracks. But the highlight may well be the world premiere of “Santa Lucia” composed by Ward, based on the Festival of Lights first observed on these shores by 17th-century settlers along the Delaware River. The ecumenical program of secular and sacred music includes works celebrating Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, as well as Christmas. The winter holidays, indeed.

eastonchoralarts.org 

Dorchester Center for the Arts hosts its annual “Merry Market” show and sale where you can peruse potential holiday gifts no one else will find on Amazon or at whatever mall that still exists. That’s what Shop Small Saturday, the day after Black Friday, is all about. Member artists display various finely crafted art, including pottery, jewelry, candles, and more, along with paintings, small sculptures, and other art constructs. Meet many of the artists at DCA’s Second Saturday reception on Dec. 9. But while you’re at it, don’t overlook the center’s current exhibit, the “Red Zone Project,” drawn from the Human Trafficking Awareness Art Project as part of the partnership of the Talbot-based For All Seasons crisis center with the Dorchester Detention Center. Not so merry, merry. But, as they say, there but for the grace of God (or whomever) go I. Both shows run through Dec. 23 at 321 High St., Cambridge.

dorchesterarts.org

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It’s not exactly a holiday, but it’s well worth celebrating the career of Don Buxton, who is retiring from 30-plus years as executive director of Chesapeake Music. But his influence and leadership in music on the Shore stretches beyond his extraordinary accomplishments at CM. Besides establishing the top-notch Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival that ushers in the summertime with notes of inspiration and artistry, the springtime Chesapeake International Chamber Music Competition for Young Professionals showcases the talents and promise of the next generation of virtuoso geniuses. 

But beyond Chesapeake Music, Buxton was a central figure in establishing a professional symphony orchestra in Easton and the Delmarva Peninsula, serving as conductor in the inaugural seasons of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra. In celebration of his career, CM presents its “Salute to Don Buxton” with a video presentation too short to cover all his merits, but also a performance by Chesapeake Music co-artistic directors – cellist Marcy Rosen and violinist Catherine Cho – as well as fellow chamber festival stalwarts pianist Diana Walsh and violist Todd Phillips. Expect only the best in honor of Don Buxton, 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 10, at the elegant Ebenezer Theatre. Chesapeake Music headquarters are next door in downtown Easton.

chesapeakemusic.org

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

Remarkably, 50 years after the assassination, seven of the surviving doctors who attended President John K. Kennedy at Parkland Hospital in Dallas were interviewed for a documentary, “JFK: What the Doctors Saw,” now streaming a decade later on Parliament +. 

Several of those doctors – along with others who have since died – were among those I was scheduled to interview for the Baltimore Sun in 1976 when the House Select Committee on Assassinations was investigating the murders of Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. (More later on what became – or didn’t – of my attempt to interview those who tried to save JFK’s life 60 years ago on Nov. 22.)

As directed by Barbara Shearer, “What the Doctors Saw” is just that. There is no sidetracking – nothing about Lee Harvey Oswald except his claim to be a “patsy” in denying that he was the assassin, whether alone or with help. We don’t even hear a word about what we’ve all known for six decades – that Jack Ruby murdered Oswald just two days after JFK was shot dead.

What we do hear over and over, almost ad nauseam is that each doctor observed what they consistently and unanimously maintain was a dime-sized entry wound at the president’s throat, subsequently obscured by a tracheotomy in a futile attempt to resuscitate him. The massive wound they observed on the right at the back of his skull was unquestionably, to all of them, an exit wound. Any such bullet entering and exiting in that manner would have to have come from the front or slightly to the right of the president from his back seat in the fatal limousine. It could not possibly have been shot from behind – a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository where Oswald was working on the day of the assassination. Other shots causing a shallow wound in the president’s back and another that seriously wounded then-Texas Governor John Connally in the front seat of the limousine did come from that direction.

Most disturbing in the documentary are recollections by Dr. Robert McClellan and others that a dark-suited man they took to be a Secret Service agent approached Dr. Malcolm Perry, the lead surgeon of the Parkland team, in Trauma Room 1 after he announced the president’s death and described an entry wound to the throat. “You must never call that an entrance wound again if you know what’s good for you,” McClellan quoted the presumed member of JFK’s security detail.

More suspicious, if not downright conspiratorial, was the apparently botched presidential autopsy, as recalled by Jim Jenkins, the one surviving member of the naval team conducting it. Under Texas law, an autopsy resulting from a deadly crime must be conducted in the county of jurisdiction. But the Parkland doctors and investigators of the assassination say that the Secret Service muscled the president’s body into a vehicle bound for Love Field and a flight to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. The autopsy was performed at Bethesda Naval Hospital by two military physicians who were not pathologists and had virtually no experience performing autopsies.

While the documentary strongly suggests a government coverup that resulted in a rubber-stamp lone-assassin verdict by the Warren Commission on Sept. 24, 1964 – barely two months before the presidential election that resulted in President Lyndon Johnson’s first full term in office – there are arguably benign motives behind this rush to judgment. The Cuban Missile Crisis, resolved peacefully just more than a year before JFK’s assassination, involved a former member of the Marine Corps – Oswald – who defected to the Soviet Union and returned to the U.S. with no apparent action taken against him. Johnson is heard in a recorded conversation regarding the Warren report that it would help avert a third world war and save millions of lives. 

We’ll never know, of course. And most likely, after 60 years, we’ll never know the whole truth about the JFK assassination. 

But personally, I’m disappointed that the questions asked in this documentary were not asked before a half-century had passed. At least they were asked before all the Parkland doctors had passed on. The Sun was prepared to ask those questions of the same doctors – when, back in 1976, many of them were still working at Parkland. Based on my front-page story derived from House Select Assassinations Committee leaks and an interview with photographic expert witness Robert Grodin, Sun managing editor Paul Banker authorized my trip to Dallas with autopsy photographs turned over to the panel. My mission: Ask the doctors I had contacted – including one attending Connally – about what they saw when the president and the governor were brought to trauma rooms 1 and 2 on Nov. 22, 1963. 

Accompanied by an attorney who would notarize their comments about the photographs, I boarded a flight to Houston from Baltimore-Washington International with a subsequent connection to Dallas. The flight, however, was delayed more than three hours after a fuel truck struck a wing of our TWA jetliner. Engineers from McDonnell Douglas were consulted about safety concerns. We arrived in Houston too late for flight connections to Dallas and had little chance of getting there by car rental before the early Saturday tee times for four of the doctors I was to interview. 

In a 1975 TV interview with Geraldo Rivera, Grodin, and Dick Gregory introduced a home movie of the assassination, shot by Abraham Zapruder in shocking color. A year later, after being introduced by one of my sources, Grodin agreed to give me copies of JFK autopsy photos for the purpose of showing them to the Parkland doctors. In a minority report as part of the House probe, Grodin argued that the official autopsy photos were doctored to make the massive wound toward the back of Kennedy’s head – much of his brain was exposed with bits of it splattered on Jacqueline Kennedy’s pink suit – to resemble a nickel-sized entry wound. 

The photos that the doctors called fakes in the Paramount + documentary appear to my eyes to be the same images I had in my possession 48 years ago. But, unbeknownst to me, my most conspiratorially minded source had made his own way to Dallas. Freaked out and suspecting some sort of foul play at BWI, he called my boss in the middle of the night, advising him to call the FBI and speculating that the CIA had targeted me. Though I had arranged interviews with Parkland doctors the following weekend, I was taken off the story. And the photocopies were returned. With nothing to show the doctors but grainy black-and-white Xeroxes, the reporter sent in my stead to Dallas came up empty.

So, that’s my excuse for never getting to ask the doctors what they saw. But what about the rest of the news media? Why didn’t anyone else step forward to ask the doctors what they saw on Nov. 22, 1963? I procured the photographs surreptitiously. But they’ve long since been published. Maybe it’s the mishandling of JFK assassination investigations that launched our national doubts about the official line fueling our current conspiracy-theory gullibility.

I have a novel on weird theories about JFK and 9/11. Unpublished – like my best shot in 1976 for a Pulitzer in investigative reporting. It’s called “Camelot and the Second Coming.” Tell me if you know a likely agent.

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

Although the standard classical music repertoire is vast, until recently much of the typical symphony orchestra playlist was dominated by greatest-hits masterworks by long-dead European composers with rock-star names – Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky. Although each of the three pieces performed by the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Friday night in Rehoboth Beach (reprised this weekend in Ocean City and at Chesapeake College) were also composed by long-dead European composers – one that even the principal players who performed her overture had never heard of – it may as well have been a world premiere to those in attendance in the acoustically bright Epworth United Methodist Church sanctuary.

Never mind that it was written in 1873, the Overture in D major, Op. 43 by pioneering Swedish composer Elfrida Andree was new even to many players on stage before they began rehearsing it. (Full disclosure: I never heard of her before either.) Andree was considered pioneering largely because she was female. Women composers and conductors, such as herself, were a minority rarely recognized or even given a chance to publish or perform their works. Her thrilling overture fell well within the late Romantic idiom of the time, but with beautiful deviations. Surprising and lovely solos pop up throughout the piece, largely by woodwinds and French horn, led in the 43-player MSO ensemble by first flutist Mindy Heinsohn, first oboist Dana Newcomb, first clarinetist Jay Niepotter and first bassoonist Kari Shea.

In part because the woodwind section was so instrumental to this performance, Heinsohn, a 2004 Easton High School alum and graduate of the Yale School of Music and Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, was chosen to make opening remarks about the program before introducing concertmaster Kim McCollum, followed by the entrance of music director Michael Repper. He wasted no time diving into this remarkable rediscovery, which, besides the woodwind solos, is marked also by soaring first-violin melodies.

And that was just the first 20 minutes of the concert. The Symphonic Variations by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a promisingly mature piece for a composer who died in 1912 at the age of 37, came next. Inspired by an African-American poem, “I Am Troubled in Mind,” the variations flow from one into another without pause along a theme established by brass instruments, principally tuba, trombones and French horns, led by Zach Bridges, Jeffrey Gaylord and Michael Hall, respectively. Without the usual pauses between variations, the piece flows like a cascading river that helped make Coleridge-Taylor a trans-Atlantic superstar at a time when his racial identity might not have been widely known. (No Facebook or Instagram.) Posthumously, much of his music was not recognized then in the music industry and is no longer published. As a result, much of his work is new again in our time.

After intermission, Mendelssohn’s historically significant Symphony No. 5, better known as the “Reformation Symphony,” turns the concert program back to traditional classical music sources though not exactly in the greatest-hits category. Not that it is deficient as a masterwork, but it is on a once-controversial theme. Religious uprisings, even of centuries past, linger in the minds of future generations. The Reformation, of course, refers to the Protestant revolt against Catholic hegemony, particularly in Europe.

The four-movement symphony proclaims which side Mendelssohn is on with a salute to Martin Luther, founder of the Protestant Reformation widely credited as author of the hymn translated from German into “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” The opening Andante, appropriately solemn and contemplative, gives way to a joyful and exuberant second movement Allegro Vivace, as if celebrating the Reformation to come, though it had already advanced 300 years earlier with the “Augsburg Confession” enumerating Lutheranism articles of faith. The third-movement Andante offers a melodic respite from controversy that melds without pause into the full orchestra, fourth-movement statement of resolve and determination with a glory-be finish, which left some in the audience hesitant, at first, to offer a standing ovation. Was that three or four movements?

No matter, the “Reformation Symphony” was a fitting conclusion to a greatest-hits medley of gems many of us have never heard before. Hopefully, it’s part of an accumulating trend. The Metropolitan Opera has been trying to recruit new, younger audiences by staging works by living artists on contemporary themes. Credit Repper and the MSO for unearthing great music by composers whose work has been buried by centuries-old racial and gender biases. Bravo.

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra

Opening concert, Nov. 3, Rehoboth Beach, followed by concerts 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, Ocean City Performing Arts Center, and Sunday, Nov. 5, Todd Performing Arts Center, Chesapeake College, Wye Mills. midatlanticsymphony.org

Except for the centerpiece tulips, colors are muted on Church Hill Theatre’s set for the laugh-out-loud profanity of French author Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage.”

The 2009 Tony winner for Best Play, translated into American vernacular by Christopher Hampton, reminds us that you’re on your own regardless of marital status.

A pair of 11-year-olds – Benjamin and Henry, who we never see in this four-hand, four-letter-word dramedy – got into an argument that ends in the latter child losing two incisors as the former clobbers him with a stick. The assailant’s parents are invited by the victims to “discuss the situation.” Veronica, Henry’s mom, makes clafouti (a dessert) for the occasion. Michael, her husband, offers coffee but serves espresso on request. Annette guardedly accepts, but her husband, Alan, an attorney, digs in – literally and figuratively. At the start, both parties are edgily polite. But you sense it can’t last.

Alan tests everyone’s patience by incessantly answering his cell phone to conduct business that takes precedence over the matter at hand. While the decorum dissipates gradually, it’s splattered for good when Annette vomits over and under the coffee table where Veronica’s out-of-print art books are stacked.

J.W. Ruth serves up a deliciously contemptible Alan. (Didn’t he hear the warning to silence all cell phones as we settled into comfy new seats at Church Hill?) Worse, he’s slickly devising a cover-up of a pharmaceutical company’s new drug that’s making people bump into the furniture – including Michael’s landline mom – also unseen. Ruth delivers the title line with Alan’s smug contempt of good manners.

Played with on-his-best-behavior artifice by Christopher Wallace, Michael is a hardware and home-goods wholesaler – think toilet fixtures – who’s a rock until he isn’t. Michael is in way over his head, intellectually and temperamentally, with his wife. She’s writing a book about Darfur during the African nation’s outbreak of genocidal atrocities. Christine Kinlock imbues Veronica with a rage that she struggles to contain to preserve her judgmentally arch notion of civility.

As Annette, whose career is in “wealth management” – her husband’s – Brianna Johnson fidgets nervously while seated on one of two sofas anchoring a spare living-room set designed by director Michael Whitehill before she loses all control – first by not holding it in and then by holding back not at all once rum replaces espresso as the beverage of choice.

Whitehill directs this well-cast civil-to-savage quartet as if they were changing-partners square dancers, switching sides with each virulent shift in allegiance. Think your spouse is on your side? Think again. Not even a child’s pet hamster is spared in this domestic jungle. 

‘God of Carnage’

Fridays-Sundays through Nov. 19, opening 8 p.m. Nov. 3, Sunday matinees at 2, Church Hill Theatre, 103 Walnut St., Church Hill. churchhilltheatre.org

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

 

The Sunday after Thanksgiving – Nov. 26 – marks one year since the passing of Stephen Sondheim. While that may not seem an occasion to celebrate, the great master of American musical theater is being celebrated in triplicate on stages across the island of Manhattan, where his gifts to the world will live on for as long as the arts and civilization survive.

Except for the pandemic years of the recent past, the holiday season has been a time when out-of-towners from all over the nation flock to New York City for the Thanksgiving Day parade, to see the lighting of the Rockefeller Centre Christmas tree or to watch the Times Square ball drop to end the old year and ring in the new. But it’s also an occasion to take in a Broadway show, many of which are featured with musical numbers performed live in front of Macy’s at Herald Square. This year, three Sondheim musicals are playing at the same time – one of which is a posthumous world premiere of the last notes and lyrics ever created by the beloved genius of his craft.

“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” just one of many masterpieces in the Sondheim canon, stars Josh Groban in the title role and Annaleigh Ashford as his lover/co-conspirator in meat-pie cannibalism. While you can still “attend the tale of Sweeney Todd” through Jan. 14, 2024, at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre after that date, it will be with two new leads, yet to be announced.

Also playing on Broadway is the critically acclaimed revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” surprisingly so because it has long been regarded as Sondheim’s most notable flop. Starring Jonathan Groff (“Hamilton,” “Spring Awakening”), Daniel Radcliffe (still best known as Harry Potter, who he first played at age 12), and Lindsay Mendez (Tony-winner for her role in the 2018 revival of “Carousel”), “Merrily” rolls along at the historic and intimate Hudson Theatre.

Finally, and most precious as these tickets will not come easily, is “Here We Are,” the musical Sondheim had been working to complete before he died at 91 last November. David Ives wrote the book for the musical, with lyrics and score by the Great One, inspired by two films by Luis Bunuel of Spain, the 1972 Oscar-winning “Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and the lesser known movie of a decade earlier, “The Exterminating Angel.” “Here We Are” is making its premiere Off-Broadway at The Shed through Jan. 21, 2024. The all-star cast, directed by Tony winner Joe Mantello, includes David Hyde Pierce, Denis O’Hare, Rachel Bay Jones and Bobby Cannavale. The Shed is a new and innovative performing arts center located at the spot where the High Line meets Hudson Yards along Manhattan’s West End riverfront.

sweeneytoddbroadway.com; merrilyonbroadway.com; theshed.org

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Fifty-two years ago, a year after I graduated from the University of Maryland at College Park, I returned for a weekend visit with my parents at their new Arcadia Shores home on the Miles River. Something new was happening in Easton. It was timed for the opening of goose-hunting season, which my father, newly retired, took up with a duck blind just off the beach of the two-acre lot purchased after selling our Dutchman’s Lane farm.

The art part of the festival was largely in the form of actual duck or goose decoys colorfully painted, plus watercolors of scenes a hunter might see as he trained his eyes on feathered game that his water dog would retrieve. My favorite part of this first-time festival was the abundance of raw oysters chased with Natty Boh beer.

Since those days, the Waterfowl Festival has turned into a tourist industry that put Easton on the national – even international – map for other annual cultural attractions, notably the summertime Plein Air Festival.

Waterfowl 2023, weather cooperating, promises to be bigger and broader than ever. Favorite additions to the festival since I retired and moved back to Easton in 2017 are the raptor demos – birds ranging from owls to falcons – are released and trained to fly back to their handler, almost but not always on command, and the Dock Dogs competition, judged on the length of their dives, are emblematic of the festival’s roots. What good is shooting a bird out of the sky if you don’t have a good swimmer to retrieve it? Otherwise, you’re just shooting birds for sport. No, the sport for that sort of shooting is clay pigeons.

Not all events at this year’s festival are water-related. As a native farmboy of Easton, I can say that cornhole is a landlubber sport. I never imagined it would become a televised competition on ESPN. It’s not too late to sign up for the 2023 Waterfowl Festival Cornhole Tournament.

The festival runs from Thursday, Nov. 9, through Sunday, Nov. 12. Unless you’re planning to enjoy the Waterfowl happenings that weekend, you may want to steer clear of downtown Easton for a few days – other than the Saturday morning farmer’s market between Harrison and Washington streets. But if you’ve never experienced Waterfowl, hey, the birds and dogs are live and up close, the art is pleasing and environmentally affirming. And the oysters – remember November has an R in it – are sublime. Bring your own horseradish in case your vendor runs out of it.
waterfowlfestival.org

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The Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra and the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra compete for your attention on the same couple of days in early November. The MSO opens its second series of concerts out of town, as it were, away from its Easton-area home base. The opening concert is Friday night, Nov. 3, at Rehoboth Beach’s Epworth United Methodist Church, followed by a matinee at the Ocean City Performing Arts Center on Saturday, before concluding with a Sunday matinee at Chesapeake College’s Todd Performing Arts Center in Wye Mills. The program centers on African-American themes with an overture by Elfrida Andree and symphonic variations by Samuel Coleridge Taylor before a change of pace after intermission with Felix Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” (Symphony No. 5.) That means my review of the concerts will appear on Spy websites in advance of the Sunday concert at Chesapeake College.
midatlanticsymphony.org

Meanwhile, at Maryland Hall, the Annapolis Symphony performs a program titled “A Taste of Spain: Ravel, Ravueltas & Rodrigo” opening with a Rossini overture and featuring a solo by guitarist Pepe Romero on Rodrigo’s signature piece, “Fantasia for a Gentleman.” The concerts are Nov. 3 and 4.
annapolissymphony.org

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Plein air is proliferating on the Shore. Everyone in the universe of plein air artistry knows about Plein Air Easton. Now we have season 2 of Plein Air Adkins in the sylvan environs of Adkins Arboretum, a short ride from Ridgely in Caroline County. The one-day paint-out will be held Saturday morning, Nov. 4 as participating artists gather to paint the forested and stream-streaked landscapes. Live music will accompany the artists’ painting in real time and those who peruse the artworks and make an offer to take a painting home. Refreshments and light fare will be available as well for the day-long event beginning at 11 a.m..
adkinsarboretum.org

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“God of Carnage,” a four-hand play by Yasmina Reza, won the Tony for best play in 2009 and the Laurence Olivier prize in Britain for the same honor. Church Hill Theatre opens its production of the drama with farcical, booze-fueled outbursts by two sets of parents at war with their opposite pair and spouses turning against each other over a physical assault by one child on the other couple’s boy. The play runs Nov. 3-19 at 103 Walnut St., in downtown Church Hill.
churchhilltheatre.org

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

The Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra opened its 2023-24 season with something old and something entirely new, led by its Grammy-winning music director, Michael Repper.

The first selection of Thursday night’s program signals that the new season will feature, along with classical masterpieces by long-dead composers, music by our contemporaries, and works by women and men of color, living or dead. First up was Jessie Montgomery, an African-American woman born in New York City in 1981, which makes her at least 23 years shy of Medicare eligibility. Her “New York Strum” debuted in 2006 as a string quartet piece and, over the next six years, evolved into a full orchestral “voice,” as Montgomery calls it, giving “Strum” a more expansive sound.

Montgomery was among the black female composers whose works comprised the recording that won the New York Youth Orchestra and Repper their 2022 Grammy. In introducing the piece, Repper stated what would become apparent – why it was called “Strum.” The first notes and a great many that followed were plucked on strings, starting with first cellist Katie McCarthy as violin and viola pizzicato joined in to create a percussive throughline. A thoroughly modern piece emerged, without atonal digressions, to mimic a NYC vibe, much as Gershwin did for another city in “American in Paris” nearly a century ago (1928). Bouncy changes of pace introduced with gliding bows led to a rapid-fire coda featuring a sonorous bass undertone by Chris Chlumsky and T. Alan Stewart.

Moving back a couple of centuries, Tchaikovsky created some of the most recognizable and romantic melodies in all of classical music. Some of his most beloved pieces were ballets – “Swan Lake” and “The Nutcracker.” But most of his work was written for full symphony orchestration. “Serenade for Strings,” second on the opening night program, is a Tchaikovsky rarity – strings-only. While it is not a greatest-hits medley for strings, its melodies are so accessible and memorable – ranging from melancholy to a folk romp – they may leave you humming them at intermission, even if you’re unfamiliar with the entire “Serenade.”

The highly romantic sonata opening features dramatic flourishes typical of Tchaikovsky that blend seamlessly into the busy second movement with violins in charge of the balletic cadence challenged by cello and bass counterpoint. The third movement sets a lighter dance mood with a flowing waltz refrain heard in other contexts, such as cinematic soundtracks. The finale begins with what could be a requiem before settling into a pastoral disposition that morphs into a reawakening embroidered with spirited repeats of earlier themes.The finale, post-intermission, takes us back still one more century to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4. For all its ingenuity, his Fourth is dwarfed in significance and widespread recognition by the bookends of his Third (“Eroica”), which revolutionized classical music of the 18th Century, and his Fifth, featuring the most famous phrase in musical history (“da-da-da DUM”). The Fourth wanders at times, seemingly aimlessly, to an uplifting allegro. In context, the celebratory finish seems ironic in that Beethoven is said to have endured serial rejections by women he desired and was worried, to the point of suicidal thoughts, about the onset of deafness. Without the light-hearted Fourth, maybe there would be no Fifth. 

The ominous opening, with soft strings and echoing brass and reeds, breaks into a gallop and the declarative bombast we expect of a Beethoven symphony, executed here with conviction. The lighter second movement gives us and the musicians a breather with melodic changes in tempo and temperament. The third movement introduces one of the more relatable passages dominated by the higher strings led by concertmaster Kimberly McCollum and first violist Yuri Tomenko. The finale is a high-energy race to a happy ending that brought the appreciative opening night audience to its feet.

Which brings me back to the actual first notes of the concert, which are not listed on the program: “The Star-Spangled Banner,” played, of course, with lyrics unsung, had me keeping pace up to the moment where at any sporting event, I shout out “O” at the “O say can you see” line. Professional decorum persuaded me to reduce my shout to a whisper. But in acknowledgment of my urge and perhaps that of others, Repper pointed out that the national anthem had just been played (and sung) at Camden Yards in Baltimore about an hour earlier as the Orioles went on to clinch the American League East division title on their way, hopefully, to the first World Series ever at Oriole Park since its debut in 1992. Go O’s! And the MSO, too.

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Season Opener

Thursday night at Church of God in Easton. Also, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30, Cape Henlopen High School, Lewes, Delaware, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 1, Community Church, Ocean Pines

midatlanticsymphony.org

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic (and Oriole fan) now living in Easton. 

    

 

Barely a month ago, James William Buffett departed the beach party for good. But “Margaritaville” parties again just a short drive from Maryland’s beach capital, Ocean City. “Parrotbeach: A Tribute to Jimmy Buffett” throws a one-night-only dinner party and concert on Saturday evening, Oct. 14, at the Wicomico Youth & Civic Center in Salisbury. The Parrotbeach tribute band, with Remy St. Martin as Buffett fandom’s leading man, plays his greatest hits, from “Cheeseburger in Paradise” and “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” to “Come Monday,” culminating, of course, with “Margaritaville.” Dinner starts an hour before the 7:30 show with a salad menu, key lime slaw, margarita chicken, Caribbean pork loin, Jamaican rice, and mac-cheese. Adult beverages – featuring margarita concoctions for sure – are available on your tab. Tickets are on sale until 4 p.m. Oct. 10.
wicomicociviccenter.org

Meanwhile, two more tribute events are coming up at the Avalon Theatre in Easton. “Forever Tina” features Suzette Dorsey in the title role of a theatrical show with 12 cast-and-crew members that has toured three continents to keep the music of Tina Turner alive. “Forever Tina” comes to the Avalon for one performance on Oct. 6. 

A week later, on Oct. 13, The Weight Band takes the same stage for the evening. Led by Jim Weider, a longtime member of The Band and the late Levon Helm’s spinoff band, The Weight takes its name from one of The Band’s greatest hits, written by Robbie Robertson, who died in August. Also on the show’s playlist is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Up on Cripple Creek,” and a new song by The Weight Band.
avalonfoundation.org

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The national tour of the Broadway revival of “Funny Girl,” starring Katerina McCrimmon of the New York City Center’s Encore production of “Light in the Piazza” in the title role of Fanny Brice with Melissa Manchester as her mom and Stephen Mark Lukas as Fanny’s gambler boyfriend and later her jailbird husband. The musical runs for eight performances Oct. 24-29 at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center downtown.
france-merrickpac.com

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Whether or not you’re worried about the writers and actors strike putting new releases of movies in deep freeze, or even if you haven’t been to a movie theater since the COVID shutdown, the Chesapeake Film Festival has you covered every which way. Starting with a preview reception at the Academy Art Museum on Saturday, Sept. 30, the live festival presents 31 films – documentaries and features along with topical shorts – on opening night and Sunday, Oct. 1, at the Avalon Theatre and the Ebenezer Theatre in Easton. Among the live film presentations are the Maryland premiere of “Karen Carpenter: Starving for Perfection” and “The Life and Legend of Jane Goodall,” who devoted her life’s work to studying chimpanzees.

The virtual festival continues Oct. 2-8 with 37 films you can stream at home. Among them are “Delmarva and the Ground for Change,” about family-owned farms and the effect of climate change on local agriculture.  A documentary short on a similar theme, “Dear President Biden,” asks the question, “How’s he doing?” regarding his promise as a candidate to do everything he can to address the “existential threat” of climate change on water, land, and air.
chesapeakefilmfestival.com  

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The Phillips Collection, which opened on Washington, D.C.’s DuPont Circle in 1921 – eight years before Manhattan’s Modern Museum of Art – bills itself with apparent justification as “America’s First Museum of Modern Art.” 

A century later, the Phillips, now at 1600 21st St. NW, opens a special exhibition examining the emergence of modern African and African-American artists in the post-World War II era. “African Modernism in America, 1947-67” runs Oct. 7-Jan. 7, 2024, featuring works by 50 artists from Africa and the United States – among them Jacob Lawrence, David Driskell, and Ibrahim El-Salahi. The exhibition draws on transcontinental connections between artists and curators to challenge racial assumptions about African artworks. Along with pieces from the postwar period, the show also includes “The Politics of Selection,” a 2022 commissioned work by Ndidi Dike addressing the absence of women artists in recognizing African modernity.
phillipscollection.org

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The 26th annual craft show of the Academy Art Museum, one of its most popular events, brings 70 artists from all over the United States to Easton for a preview event Oct. 27 and a two-day show and sale – from jewelry to woodworks, fabrics to glass-blowing – Oct. 28 and 29.
academyartmuseum.org

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

 

“Just because I’m coming from a human-rights perspective doesn’t mean we don’t have fun in concert.” So says Leyla McCalla (her first name is pronounced like the Derek and the Dominos title song from their 1970 mega-hit double album “Layla.”) This Leyla and her band play the main stage at Avalon Theatre Saturday night.

While “Layla” and its “Other Assorted Love Songs” were short on issues of social justice, Leyla McCalla, born in New York to Haitian immigrant parents and an American citizen by birthright, is immersed in her heritage and Haiti’s historic struggle with democracy and basic survival from one catastrophe after another.

“Haiti’s always seemed like this faraway place,” McCalla says, “but we’re far more connected as Americans than we realize. Haiti was the first independent black nation in the Western Hemisphere. Its very existence,” she says, “is and remains a threat to colonial power.” (Slavery was abolished in Haiti decades before Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War Emancipation Proclamation.) “When we talk about ‘Black Lives Matter,’ Haiti is a huge part of that.” 

The largest population of Haitian immigrants in Maryland is located in Salisbury, with more than 2,300, doubling the population of Haitians living in Baltimore. Most are drawn to Salisbury for work in the poultry industry. About 200 or so live in the Mid-Shore area triangle of Easton, Cambridge, and Federalsburg. “About 20 percent of our clients are Haitian immigrants,” says Matthew Peters, executive director of the Easton-based Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center. 

Earthquakes, hurricanes, attendant floods, plus the 30-year Duvalier dictatorship following an American occupation of Haiti, left the country bereft of leadership. It culminated in the 2021 assassination of its democratically elected president, Jovenel Moise. 

In 1995, at age 10, McCalla spent months visiting her grandmother in Haiti, exploring her roots and learning first-hand about the nation’s daunting challenges. She cannot visit Haiti now because it is ungovernable, ruled by gangs who raise “taxes” by kidnapping people of means and holding them hostage for ransom.

A multi-disciplinary arts project commissioned by Duke University based on Radio Haiti archives it acquired inspired McCalla’s most recent album, “Breaking the Thermometer,” released in 2022. The title is a recognition of the demise of a free press, or in this case, a free voice of a radio network spreading the truth across Haiti. 

The comparison of lost democracy in Haiti and the threat of authoritarianism overtaking American one-person/one-vote is hardly lost on McCalla. Her latest project is a four-song cycle called “Freedom Series,” of which two songs have been released so far.  

But while the concert on Saturday will call attention to injustice, it will not be a gospel or political sermon. Leyla McCalla and her band – drummer Shawn Myers, bassist Pete Olynciw, and guitarist Nhum Zdybel – know how to make “a big and joyous sound,” says McCalla. Check her out on YouTube, especially her banjo and vocal riffs with the Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops on a foot-stomping number called “Cornbread and Butterbeans.” 

I don’t know if that song is on her playlist, but it’s a good-time, makin’-love celebration of just being alive, which is itself a fundamental human right.

Leyla McCalla and Band in Concert
8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 23, Avalon Theatre, 40 E. Dover St., Easton; avalonfoundation.org

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