The matinee performance is billed as a “Stars of the Next Generation” concert. But these three young musicians are already stars of their own generation.

On Sunday, February 5, Chesapeake Music presents violinist Randall Goosby, violist Natalie Loughran, and pianist Zhu Wang — all in their mid-20s — in a program of works by Beethoven, Schumann, Mozart, and Florence Price at the resplendent Ebenezer Theatre concert hall in downtown Easton.

Randall Goosby has performed with big-name orchestras from all over the United States and Europe – including the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and London Philharmonic. And this year, he will stretch his performance map to another continent with concert dates in Japan and South Korea. His precocious resume includes his debut with the Jacksonville Symphony at age nine and the New York Philharmonic at 13. He is the youngest winner ever of the Sphinx Concerto Competition and later a recipient of Sphinx’s Isaac Stern Award. A graduate of Juilliard, Goosby continues his studies for a distinguished Artist Diploma under the tutelage of Itzhak Perlman and Catherine Cho, co-artistic director of Chesapeake Music’s annual chamber music festival.

Goosby will perform Florence Price’s Two Fantasies, accompanied by pianist Wang and, after intermission, in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat for Violin and Viola, with Loughran and Wang.

Natalie Loughran won first prize in the 2021 Primrose International Viola Competition and the BIPOC (Biracial Indigenous or People of Color) Composer’s Prize for her arrangement and performance of “Mother and Child” by African American composer William Still Grant. In addition to her work as a concert soloist, Loughran regularly plays with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. She will pair with Wang on Schumann’s Fantasiestucke, Opus 73.

After his Carnegie Hall debut, pianist Wang’s recital was named “The Best of 2021” by New York Times classical music critic Anthony Tommasini. And as the 2020 Young International Artists Audition winner, he earned the Stern Young Artist Development Award in the name of the Linda and Isaac Stern Foundation.

All three will perform together on the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante.

“Stars of the Next Generation” concert, 2 p.m. February 5, Ebenezer Theater, 17 S. Washington St., Easton; chesapeakemusic.org

***

The annual Annapolis Film Festival doesn’t return until March 23. But in the meantime, the festival screens a very timely and important documentary – “The Educational Divide: The Story of East Side High” — highly relevant to Black History Month. After a federal judge ordered the town of Cleveland, Mississippi, to merge its two separate but unequal high schools, found to violate Brown Vs. Board of Education, the community is faced with how to deal with the ruling. Until very recently, we may have thought that Roe v. Wade was “settled” law. Now we’re left to wonder if Brown is the law of the land. Are our public schools allowed to continue racial segregation or not? Can we put our faith in the U.S. Supreme Court to do the right thing? How long does a precedent have to exist before it is unassailable? Your guess is as good as mine.

This high court decision came down in 1954 – nearly two decades earlier than Roe Vs. Wade. What’s next? Abolishing same-sex marriage? Interracial marriage? How about making only white male landowners eligible to vote? That’s how it was in states-rights interpretations of the original Constitution. Even free black men who may have owned land counted only as three-fifths of a person. Personally, I’m not sure bigots who might favor this could do the math.

“The Educational Divide: The Story of East Side High,” 7 p.m., Feb. 8, Maryland Hall’s Bowen Theatre, Annapolis, annapolisfilmfestival.com

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Imagine. An emerging Impressionist artist you never heard of – much less seen any of his art. I confess. I didn’t know anything about Giuseppe De Nittis until I read about him in the Washington Post. And now I can’t wait to see his under-discovered paintings at the venerable Phillips Collection museum in D.C. De Nittis was born into a wealthy family in largely impoverished southern Italy. Making his way to Paris as a young man, he hobnobbed with the likes of Degas and Manet before making his debut in the historic first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. He died of a stroke at age 38, just ten years later.

From the few online images of his art, I say with some assurance that he had great facility as a painter with an eye for capturing scenes that inspired him to paint them. I love Impressionists and their fellow travelers I’ve seen at the Phillips – especially Pierre Bonnard, who helped bridge Impressionism to Modernism. But there is that impression – forgive the word assimilation – that you’ve seen it all before. And while I never tire of seeing, for instance, certain favorite movies, I am looking forward to discovering for myself an accomplished Impressionist painter whose work I have never experienced in a museum. 

“An Italian Impressionist in Paris: Giuseppe De Nittis,” Through February 12, Phillips Collection, 1600 21st St., NW, Washington, DC.,

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

 

The word ‘Labor’ in the title of the companion exhibits that open the new year for the Academy Art Museum (AAM) takes on very different meanings upon viewing. Although there are no depictions of women delivering babies in any of the etchings or paintings that make up the slender but charming Mary Cassatt exhibit in AAM’s Lederer Gallery, there are plenty of mother and child together.

Across the hall, in the Healy Gallery, the “Labor and Leisure” show drawn from the museum’s permanent collection is long on images of men at work. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with the 1945 watercolor of a shirtless man powering a “Drill,” the title of a Robert Riggs print.

Taken together, the two exhibits have little to do with each other except that they are mostly of prints, etchings, and engravings with scattered oils or watercolors here and there. Plus, in the case of Robert Rauschenberg’s conspicuous, if enigmatically titled, 1986-87 “Tibetan Garden Song,” there is a cello bathed by scrub brush in a gleaming metal tub. Who knows – I don’t – what to make of it? But it’s really cool.

Cool is not the word that comes to mind while taking in Cassatt’s prints and paintings in this interpretation of “Labor and Leisure.” Her images are warm and reflective of a life observed but not experienced first-hand. She never bore nor raised children of her own. Several of her models are children of her siblings, in many cases described in titles you can discern without reading them, such as the loveliest oil painting in the exhibit, “Mother Resting Her Cheek on Her Daughter’s Blond Hair,” from 1913. Apparently unrelated to her is a little girl and her mom in a preparatory sketch for Cassatt’s 1893 painting “The Child’s Bath,” seen in a drypoint drawing resulting from her study of Japanese printmaking.

From a period in her career largely realized in Paris with the help of her mentor Edgar Degas, are two images depicting leisure-time diversions: Cassatt’s delicate multi-plate color etching “The Banjo Lesson” and her tender aquatint print of mother and daughter in the shade “Under the Horse-Chestnut Tree.” Other images of ink or pencil on paper, executed in sublime detail, leave the impression of not-quite completed works. Perhaps it’s indicative of her near blindness in the last decade or so of her life, which ended in 1926. It reminds me of Beethoven, all but deaf in his last years. Cassatt might have been drawing, almost, from memory.

Supplementing the labor/leisure theme – very much needed as this purview of Mary Cassatt’s career as a pioneering female artist is somewhat limited – the accompanying exhibit of works from the museum’s collection makes this survey well worth your attention. It’s all over the place – from the aforementioned Rauschenberg to Rembrandt, represented here by an exquisitely etched if minor, 1647 portrait of fellow painter Jan Asselyn.

You can hardly miss David Hockney’s text-driven “Old Rinkrank” panel standing in stark contrast to Thomas Patton Miller’s “Summer in Baltimore” and “Maryland Crab Feast” screenprints juxtaposing bright poster colors against black-face figures. And don’t overlook the 1799 Goya etching “Tantala” mounted next to Emily Lombardo’s “Tantalus” after Goya from 2013 when she was an AAM artist-in-residence,

In the end, there’s a lot to see here. All for free admission.

Just don’t try to pluck the strings on the Rauschenberg – what do you call it? – an instrumental construction. Leave it to a cello virtuoso. Personally, I nominate Yo-Yo Ma. Book him to play that cello, Sarah Jesse, and I’d guarantee a sellout worth covering your budget for a year or more.

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

‘Mary Cassatt: Labor and Leisure’
‘Labor and Leisure in the Permanent Collection’
Both exhibits run through April 15
Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton academyartmuseum.org

 

Elizabeth Song, a 13-year-old violinist from Haworth, NJ, won the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s Elizabeth Loker Concerto Competition Thursday evening in performances by five finalists in front of a live audience and panel of judges at the Avalon Theatre in Easton.

Ethan Nylander, a flutist from Townsend, DE, was awarded the runner-up prize and pianist Emma Taggart of Brooklyn, NY, was recognized with an honorable mention. First prize includes a $2,000 cash award plus performances as a violin soloist with the MSO in three concert programs March 9-11 in Easton, Ocean Pines and Rehoboth Beach. Second prize is a $500 award and a concert performance in the orchestra’s ensemble series next season. 

Song played 19th-century Belgian composer Henri Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Minor, widely known in competition circles as a complex and challenging concerto that gives performers a chance to display their virtuosity. Young Song played with beyond-her-years confidence and expressive nuance. 

Nylander performed with a piano accompanist 20th-century French composer Jacques Ibert’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra. Playing solo, Taggart chose the Piano Concerto in One Movement by Florence Price, the first African-American woman to have her composition performed by a major American symphony orchestra.

The other finalists included three pianists: HaozhouWang of Philadelphia playing a Prokofiev concerto and Valerie Wellington of Kansas City, MO and Philina Zhang of New York City, both performing pieces by Rachmaninoff. James Kang of Newark, DE, played Paul Hindemith’s “Der Schwanendreher” viola concerto.

The three judges seated before a live audience of about 40 were MSO music director Michael Repper, concertmaster Kimberly McCollum and principal bassoonist Terry Ewell. The competition is named for the late board member of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra and a supporter also of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.

Michael Repper, the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s new music director, is now a Grammy-nominated conductor.

Repper, who also serves as music director of the New York Youth Symphony through the end of this season, led the Manhattan-based student orchestra on its debut album, which has been nominated for the best orchestral performance. The Grammy will be presented on February 5 at the 65th annual Grammy Awards ceremony. The untitled New York Youth Symphony album likely never would have been recorded were it not for the COVID pandemic. During that time, live performances were canceled for both the spring and fall semesters for his student musicians, and Repper embarked on creating some sort of virtual performance. 

With the lockdown in New York occurring just a week before the orchestra’s March 2000 Carnegie Hall concert, Repper says, “I was looking for an educational experience for these young musicians that would be energetic, rewarding, and safe. So I thought of an album. All you have to do is get the whole orchestra together in a room and hit the record button. But obviously, that was impossible.”

Not so, it turned out. Together they proceeded, playing safely distanced, masked where possible, and remotely in some cases. Not one of the 120 musicians, including Repper, got infected with COVID. As for the Grammy nod – the first ever for a pre-college ensemble in the orchestral performance category – Repper says, “To get the nomination was a big cherry on top of the whole amazing experience.”  

Besides the New York Youth Symphony’s performance of works by African-American composers Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery, and Valerie Coleman, the other Grammy orchestral nominees include Dvorak’s Symphonies No. 7-9 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by maestro superstar Gustavo Dudamel and “John Williams – The Berlin Concert,” with the Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of the composer famed for his movie scores. Also nominated are performances by college musicians. One of which is John Adams’ “Sila – The Breath of the World” with Doug Perkins conducting University of Michigan chamber ensembles. The other is “Eastman: Stay on It” – Christopher Rountree leading his Wild Up contemporary chamber orchestra in an improvisational piece by the late Julius Eastman.

Besides COVID, also dominating the news at the time were issues of social justice sparked by the murder of George Floyd. Together, Repper and his young musicians shaped a music program by African-American women composers, who had long been underrepresented in terms of both gender and race. “We need to promote music that deals with these issues,” Repper says of their choice of works. 

To that end, including Price on the album was a no-brainer. Born in 1887, she is recognized as the first African-American woman to have her composition performed by a major classical orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Price’s Piano Concerto in One-Movement, performed with pianist Michelle Cann, and “Ethiopia’s Shadow on America” are featured along with pieces by contemporary American composers. “Umoja: Anthem of Unity,” by Coleman, 52, was the first orchestral work by a living African-American woman performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, which also commissioned the piece. Montgomery, 40, who is represented on the album by “Soul Force,” played violin with the New York Youth Symphony in her teens. She’s now the Chicago Symphony’s composer-in-residence.

Fitting right with his penchant for working with young musicians, Repper’s next appearance for his new orchestra is as judge of the MSO’s Elizabeth Loker Concerto Competition. The live-performance finals of the national competition are at the Avalon Theatre on January 12. The finalists are flutist Ethan Nylander (Townsend, DE), violinist Elizabeth Song (Haworth, NJ), violist James Kang (Newark, DE), and pianists Philina Zhang (New York City, NY), Valerie Wellington (Kansas City, MO), Hoazhou Zang (Philadelphia, PA), and Emma Taggart (Brooklyn, NY).

The $2,000 top prize winner will perform with the full Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra in Easton, Ocean Pines, and Rehoboth Beach March 10-11. In addition to a $500 prize, the runner-up will play in the MSO Ensemble Series sometime next season.

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

Elizabeth Loker Concerto Competition 

Finals

January 12, 7 p.m. Avalon Theater, Easton, midatlanticsymphony.org

Concerts featuring the winner: 

March 9, 7:30 p.m., Easton Church of God, Easton

March 10, 7:30 p.m., Community Church, Ocean Pines; 

March 11, 3 p.m., Epworth United Methodist Church, Rehoboth Beach

65th Grammy Awards Show
8 p.m. Sunday, February 5, on CBS from Los Angeles

 

The upcoming show of the new year at the Academy Art Museum marks another step toward greater access to notable works by not only emerging artists but also masters from centuries past.   

“Mary Cassatt: Labor and Leisure,” opening Jan. 19, accompanied by a tandem “Labor and Leisure” show drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, includes oils, aquatints, and other etchings by one of the premier 19th-to-20th century American-born artists. And certainly, among women who were then disparaged in competing with males in any form of visual art, Cassatt stands as one of if not the most accomplished female American artists of her time. 

Besides pieces from AAM’s own collection – including works by Cassatt, as well as Cezanne, Rauschenberg, and David Hockney – art on loan from the New York Public Library, Adelson Gallery New York and Atlanta’s High Museum of Art signals a serious glimpse into Cassatt’s career, progressing from Impressionist painter to painterly printmaker.   

These loans follow AAM’s collaboration with Art Bridges, a fine-art nonprofit that helps small-to-medium museums gain access to critically acclaimed artworks. The late-summer/early-fall “Fickle Mirror” exhibit was enhanced by a loan of Nigerian-American artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s “I Refuse to Be Invisible,” among other paintings and related live events.

While Cassatt disdained being pigeonholed as a female artist, her subjects were often mother and child as reflected in the labor of homemaker and the leisure of parent-and-progeny playtime. But she did so mainly as an observer. Cassatt was never a mother. Nor did she marry. Art was her passion.

New for 2023, Academy Art Museum admission will be free for all, starting Jan. 3.
academyartmuseum.org

***                                                                  

Speaking of free admission, there are only a few days left to absorb the National Gallery of Art’s extraordinary “Sargent and Spain” exhibition. John Singer Sargent, another American-born painter, was regarded as the preeminent society portraitist of his time (1856-1926). But here, more than 120 oils, watercolors, and drawings – many rarely seen anywhere – capture his personal fascination with Spain that inspired this remarkable collection documenting his travels through the country – north to south and the island of Majorca. The show reflects a rich Spanish culture through lush landscapes, shimmering marine scenes, and depictions of everyday life with candid portraits of people he met in his travels. Don’t overlook the 28 photographs very likely taken by Sargent himself. The last day to catch “Sargent and Spain” is Jan. 2.
  

Also closing soon – Jan. 8 – is the compact “Vermeer’s Secrets” exploration of works by or attributed to the revered 17th-century Dutch painter. There are only about 35 paintings by Johannes Vermeer as far as we know, of which the National Gallery has four that are by or credibly attributed to him. Featured are “Woman Holding a Balance,” “A Lady Writing,” “Girl with the Red Hat,” and “Girl with a Flute,” along with two others ranging from highly questionable to ridiculously fake. But this is no mere display of masterpieces and forgeries. Decades of research by conservators, curators, and scientists are revealed in examples of image sleuthing and technology. The popularity of this exhibit, especially as it closes soon, makes it necessary for visitors to sign up upon arrival to receive a text with the time to show up for a walk-through. You may have an hour or more to spend on checking out the Sargent show or “Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice,” which remains open through Feb. 12. And, yes, it’s all free, except for the Bay Bridge toll and maybe Mall parking (free on Sundays). 
nga.org

***

The “British Invasion Experience” dinner and show, long postponed from its original Oct. 1 date, has been rescheduled for Jan. 14 at Salisbury’s Wicomico Civic Center. The British Invasion Experience tribute band pays live concert homage to this historic rock-and-roll genre. For baby-boomer popular music fans, it all began in the early ’60s with The Beatles, followed closely and to this day by the still-rockin’ Rolling Stones. But there were so many more–from The Who to the Hollies, the Kinks to Cream, The Animals to The Yardbirds. The show begins at 7 p.m. on Jan. 14, with doors opening at 6 for dining choices from a menu of Irish stew, fish and chips, baked ham, chicken tikka plus sides, and dessert. Cash bar alcohol beverages available. Ticket sales close at 4 p.m. on Jan. 11.
thebritishinvasionexperience.com

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The Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s (MSO) second annual Elizabeth Loker Concerto Competition moved toward its live phase, with invitations going out on Dec. 19 for finalists to perform before a panel of judges on Jan. 12.

The first prize is $2,000, and performances with the orchestra are on March 9-11. The second prize is $500 and concert gigs in MSO’s Ensemble Series (dates to be determined). Finalists are selected by blind judging of audio recordings. The finals, before a public audience as well as judges, will be at Easton’s Avalon Theatre. The winner of the inaugural competition was alto saxophonist Joseph McNure, a University of Maryland graduate music student.

The late Elizabeth Loker, for whom the competition is named, was a retired Washington Post executive who moved to Talbot County and, as a classical music aficionado, became a Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra board member and benefactor 
midatlanticsymphony.org

“Mary Cassatt: Labor and Leisure”
Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton

“Sargent and Spain” & “Vermeer’s Secrets”
National Gallery of Art, 6th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

The British Invasion Experience
Wicomico Civic Center, 500 Glen Ave., Salisbury

MSO Elizabeth Loker Concerto Competition Finals
Avalon Theater, 40 E. Dover St., Easton

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

“Abstract Surge” strikes me as an apt title for Cheryl Warrick’s exhibit of 28 images in the two snug Academy Art Museum galleries just off the atrium main entrance. 

The acrylic paintings, watercolors, and works on paper present the viewer with waves of creative imagination. It starts with loose geometric grids and repetitive patterns, first in “Dialogue I” and continuing on the adjoining wall with “Start of Something,” two sheets of paper forming a mural of progressive sequences dotted with unintelligible written words and hints of about-to-bud plant life against a desert-sand landscape interrupted by black-hole tunnels. “Intersection,” another two-sheet mural on paper, suggests a roadmap against a variegated topography with disconnected segments of a paved highway to nowhere.

 Moving toward the next gallery, you’ll begin to see a transition to brightly colored patterns and shapes that bring to mind, perhaps, colliding hot-air balloons, a jumble of wrapped gifts, or decorative party baubles. Making figurative sense of these images is a fool’s errand, perhaps mine as an art critic. They are the evident product of a fertile visualization by a skilled artist who may or may not know what they mean herself. Who am I to say? Your guess may be as good as hers. Other than that, each piece is rendered with the insight and artistry it takes to express whatever brought hand and brushstroke to a blank painting surface.

***

 For the next three weeks, the annual student exhibition occupies most of the remaining AAM gallery space with more than 350 artworks by schoolchildren and teens from Talbot, Dorchester, Queen Anne’s, and Caroline counties. 

The Lederer Gallery is devoted to paintings, watercolors, photography, drawings, sculptures, and even fashion design by middle and high school artists. Some of them took inspiration from the Warwick show, unveiled about a month before the Dec. 17 student opening. Awards of merit will be presented during the Jan. 11 closing night. Two of these works stood out to me. It’s hard to miss “Rise and Sparkle,” by Easton’s SS Peter and Paul 11th grader Genevieve Webb, a brightly painted non-functional toilet with glitter accents. “Dr. Strangelove,” a pen-on-paper print by Centreville’s Gunston School senior Brielle Tyler, features a picture-perfect likeness of General Jack Ripper who, as played by Sterling Hayden, “learned to love the bomb” as the subtitle to Stanley Kubrick’s film classic suggests.

Across the hall, the Healy Gallery is chock full of pieces by K-6 students, with still more student works on display in the auditorium. A reception for grades K-3 is at 4:30 on Jan. 9 and for grades 4-8 at the same time on Jan. 10.

*** 

Hosey Corona’s site-specific “Terrestrial Caravan” exhibit greets AAM visitors in the Saul Atrium entryway gallery with a climate-change message and colorful notes of hope through the upcoming seasons until the end of August. The word “Caravan” brings to mind a former president’s characterization of Latin American mass migration to the United States’ southern border – unabated to this day – driven by drought, floods, violence, and impending starvation. Painted vignettes hanging over lobby windows depict migrants traversing a torrid landscape bearing backpacks or towing suitcases. On the opposite wall, Corona’s “Climate Ponchos” double as wearable rain-gear sculptures. Despite the underlying theme that large swaths of the planet may become uninhabitable, the “Terrestrial Caravan” imagery is leavened by reminders of the restorative powers of nature. Witness the floral headdresses worn by these weary and desperate travelers to glimpse a hope that is not yet lost.

In the upstairs hallway gallery, “Earth Abides” from the museum’s permanent collection touches on similar climate-change motifs through Feb. 28. (See a previous review on this Spy Media site.)

“Cheryl Warrick: Abstract Surge”
Through Feb. 19,

Mid-Shore Student Art Exhibition
Through Jan. 11

“Hoesy Corona: Terrestrial Caravan”
Through Aug. 31 

academyartmuseum.org

Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton

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

 

The Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra celebrates the winter holidays from one end of December to the other, beginning with “Holiday Joy” on Dec. 1 at Chesapeake College’s Todd Performing Arts Center and ending with a concert on First Night Talbot, New Year’s Eve. 

Traditionally, pre-COVID, the “Holiday Joy” program of secular and sacred Christmas music with a nod to Hanukkah (there just aren’t that many Hanukkah songs; just ask Adam Sandler) had been held at Easton’s Avalon Theatre. MSO board president Jeffrey Parker said the move was made, in part, to accommodate a larger number of musicians than can safely and comfortably perform on Avalon’s smaller stage. 

This year’s program,” with new music director Michael Repper conducting his second set of concerts since his appointment last summer, also features soprano Rochelle Bard, who specializes in Verdi and bel canto repertoires. Earlier this season, she performed in Verdi’s “Attila” (as in the Hun) as warrior princess Odabello for Sarasota Opera. In February, she moves on to the title role in “Norma” for Opera Tampa. Two other “Holiday Joy” performances are on Dec. 3 at Cape Henlopen High School in Lewes, Delaware, and Dec. 4 at Ocean City Performing Arts Center. 

The Eastern Shore’s only professional classical music orchestra returns to Easton during the First Night Talbot in anticipation of the new year. MSO’s annual New Year’s Eve concert at Christ Church features two guest vocalists: alto soprano Anna Kelly and soprano Rachel Blaustein. Beginning at 7 p.m., the Auld Lang Syne concludes with plenty of time to celebrate the last hour of 2022 on your own.

First Night Talbot, the only New Year’s Eve celebration of its kind in Maryland, is billed as an alcohol- and drug-free family event with live entertainment at various downtown venues. These include Avalon Theater’s main stage and the upstairs Stoltz Room, the Academy Arts Museum, Easton Town Hall, and the Waterfowl Building. Grown-up celebrants can grab a seat at the Avalon for two live shows starting at 9:30 and ending at 11:45 – just in time for the midnight hour – with the Karen Somerville Quintet followed by a Scandinavian musical celebration. For just $10, a collectible Crab Button gets you into all venues except the symphony concert. 

Just outside the Waterfowl Building, two Maryland Crab Drops will mark the New Year. At 9 p.m., for early birds and young kids, and at midnight to show the world that Times Square has nothing on Easton when it comes to welcoming 2023. The Parade of Sea Creatures, led by bagpiper Randy Welch gets you ready for the countdown.

firstnighttalbot.net, midatlanticsymphony.org

 ***

Meanwhile, starting Dec. 8 at the Avalon, it’s a friends-and-family holiday season with its traditional musical production starring neighbors and neighbors’ kids from Easton and not far beyond. This year’s show is “Roald Dahl’s “Willy Wonka,” with performances by alternating casts to accommodate all the kids who want their moment on stage. Shows run from Dec. 8-11 and 15-18, with evening showtimes and matinees for little ones who can’t stay up late – unless maybe they’ve had too much chocolate. 

avalonfoundation.org

***

Chestertown’s Garfield Center for the Arts at Prince Theater presents “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” with music by Andrew Lloyd Weber and lyrics by Tim Rice – the creative duo’s very first musical performed before a paying audience back in 1972. Based on a parable in the Old Testament Book of Genesis, this family-friendly musical is a cautionary tale about the dangers of picking a favorite son among a dozen brothers.

garfieldcenter.org

***

If you’re like me, you haven’t even started shopping for Christmas or for Hanukkah (the eighth night of which falls this year on Dec. 25). To help get you selections, the Dorchester Center for the Arts has turned its art galleries into a “Merry Market” bazaar. These will be unique gifts created by dozens of artists – including jewelry, candles, traditional arts and crafts items, paintings, and more. There’s a Second Saturday reception on the closing evening of the holiday shoppers’ market with live music, light refreshments, and a good chance to meet the artists.

dorchesterarts.org

***

For a Nation’s Capital celebration of the arts this holiday season, the Kennedy Center hosts a plethora of performances and celebrations, among which we have a few choice ones to suggest. 

* We’ll begin with a Kennedy Center-sponsored annual event on Dec. 6 – the “Ugly Sweater Holiday Concert” as the National Symphony Orchestra goes casual, if not comical, by performing off-campus at The Anthem, the nearby waterfront music hall. The musicians will leave the tuxedos and gowns at home in favor of ridiculous holiday sweaters and jeans while, as the concert promotion ads say, “deconstructing the concert experience without deconstructing the music.” You will be admitted with or without an ugly sweater.

* Kennedy Center’s family-friendly theatrical offering this holiday season is the hugely popular Broadway musical “Wicked,” running Dec. 8-Jan. 22. In case you have no daughters or any other cause to pay attention, “Wicked” is the Good Witch/Bad Witch prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” based on the novel by Gregory Maguire. Even if you miss it in D.C., the show’s still going strong on Broadway with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. 

* Although there’s no chance of landing a ticket for this one (even major donors need lottery luck to make it into this event), we’d be remiss in failing to mention the annual Kennedy Center Honors on Dec. 4 (you and I can catch it on CBS Dec. 22). This year’s honorees are George Clooney, R&B-pop singer Gladys Knight, singer-songwriter Amy Grant, Cuban-American composer Tania Leon, and the Irish rock band U2. The president of the United States and the First Lady are expected guests.

* On a somber note of war and hopefully peace, Gerdan – Kaleidoscope of World Music, a Washington-based ensemble named for intricately woven, multi-colored beaded necklaces of Ukraine, will be on Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage.  Their “Christmas in Ukraine” tribute will also be live-streamed at 6 p.m. on Dec. 21.

*** 

Sticking with family fare, though not necessarily of the happy-face holiday variety, 

Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center downtown presents the Broadway-touring production of “Little Jagged Pill” with a Tony-winning book by Diablo Cody, lyrics by pop artist Alana Morissette and music by Morissette and Glen Ballard. The show also won the 2021 Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album. The “Pill” in question is by prescription – an opioid – by which an otherwise “normal” suburban mom and wife becomes all-consumingly addicted – tragically an all-too-familiar American story these days. 

france-merrickpac.com

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

 

My first thought after reading the title of the Academy Art Museum’s compact but highly pertinent exhibit of selections from its collection was about “The Dude.” That would be Jeff Bridges’ character in the Coen Brothers’ film “The Big Lebowski.” That’s because AAM has called its exhibit “Earth Abides,” which coincides with variants of The Dude’s favorite expression: He either abides or decidedly does not.

Although the dictionary definition of “abide” is to follow the rules, to obey, or, in the negative, to disobey. But for The Dude, it’s more like going with the flow or swimming upstream against it – often disastrously. That’s sort of how our planet abides: It can take whatever humans and the elements inflict on it, but disaster eventually catches up, usually to the perpetrators living on its surface.

A Thomas Hart Benton study of his “Prodigal Son” painting catches your eye across from the top of the stairs to the museum’s second-floor gallery. The New Testament parable of a wayward son welcomed as he returns home, takes on a Dust Bowl twist as poor farmland management and drought devastate the landscape. The lithograph portrays a son returning to a long-abandoned family home. He passes a bovine skeleton beside the dusty lane. To the left, Grant Wood’s “March,” another fine example of Regionalism art of this period, keeps topographical company with Benton’s print, both circa 1939. In Wood’s sepia-toned scene, a winding road leads up a hill where a lonely tree abides, bending over in the stiff wind.

Further along the same wall, a grizzled middle-aged woman stands tall in abiding tolerance in George Schreiber’s “I Raise Turkeys and Chickens,” a 1953 lithograph. A scraggly stand of cornstalks – no turkey or chicken in sight – signifies the sparse yield of the earth beneath her feet.

Some of the art in “Earth Abides” speaks to the notion of who is boss. Ansel Adams’ “Upper Yosemite Falls – Spring” (1946) is one of many photos he took of the national park’s titular falls. Together with “Cedar Trees and Maple Leaves” (1974), they depict landscapes that will survive long after we’re gone. That is, except in the case of climate- or human-caused fires such as the infernos at one of Adams’ other favorite national parks, Sequoia in California, that threatened stands of ancient trees from which the park takes its name.  

Amid these mostly black-and-white artworks, Melissa Miller’s 1998 four-color lithograph, “Fossil,” stands out refreshingly. The title suggests that her predator-prey food chain is not what it seems, as horses do not hunt anything, much less fish, and fish have no means to eat birds. Miller’s imagery may signal an ecosystem gone awry, perhaps by pollution or climate change. None of which any carnivore or vegetarian can abide.

James Turrell’s enigmatic 1987 “Mapping Space (1)” turns research on an extinct volcano into a topographical, multi-media etching that maps in cake-like layers both aerial and surface views of the volcano with a white-circle aperture in the middle. Is it art, a geological record, or both?

On the opposite wall, Leonardo Drew’s 2012 collage of handmade papers bearing stenciled pigment represents a dead tree. The roots below that once sucked nutrients from the soil now release them, both below and through the dead or dying branches above. A rectangle rising amid the branches appears to recall the tree’s once-living bark. From death, life – a phenomenon we see sprouting after every forest fire. 

Kiki Smith’s 2018 etching “Healers” isn’t about human healing but rather that of bees. In recent years, there’s been an alarming die-off of bees, which humans absolutely cannot abide by. Maybe we could live in a world without flowers but not without plant blossoms that metamorphose into fruits and vegetables after pollination. Smith presents a bouquet of uncut wildflowers against a cloud-like background as if served up as an airborne feast for busy bees on a pollinating mission. 

Collagist Robert Rauschenberg’s 1982 sojourn in China inspired one of his most ambitious projects. Working with the University of South Florida’s Graphicstudio, he produced a 100-feet-by-30-inch color photographic mural printed on a single linear sheet entitled “Chinese Summerhall,” cutting and collaging small portions of his photos to assemble the final image. Another 28 photos that did not make the cut for his mural were printed in two portfolios, one of which, his moody study for “Chinese SummerHall (Man and Tree),” captures a figure, his back to the camera, in a prayerful pose – or perhaps he’s just reading – with a deciduous tree towering above the bench he’s seated on. The tree abides. What else can it do?

***

Winners in the 22nd Annual Members’ Exhibition were announced in nine cash-award categories at the opening reception Friday evening, Nov. 18. 

Jinchul Kim juried the show, now on display through Dec. 7 in the Academy Art Museum’s two main galleries. A South Korea-born artist and professor at Salisbury University, Kim has been commissioned to paint the official portrait of the First Lady of Maryland, Yumi Hogan, also a South Korean native. Kim, who has exhibited his art internationally, is a recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council Distinguished Artist Award and Salisbury University’s Distinguished Faculty Award. 

The winners he selected in a blind viewing of the art (no names attached) are:

Best in Show in Honor of Lee Lawrie: Michael Iandolo, The Madness of Plein Air Easton, 2022, oil on board.
Nancy South Reybold Award for Contemporary Art: Christopher Harrington, Blue Triangle, 2022, resin
M. Susan Stewart Award for Best Collage: Sheryl Southwick, My Collapsing House, 2022, collage
Trippe Gallery Award for Best Work on Paper: Barrie Barnett, Michele, 2022, pastel
Jane Shannahan Hill Offutt Memorial Award for Painting: Linda Perry, Aqualung, 2022, mixed media on canvas
Academy Clay Award: Kathy Bodey, Forgotten, 2022, clay
Best Landscape Award (sponsored by the St. Michael’s Art League): Nancy Tankersley, Lovely Intruder, 2022, oil
Arielle Marks Award for Best Print (sponsored by Amy Haines and Richard Marks): Judith Wolgast, Assateague Marsh, 2022, etching and aquatint
Excellence in Photography (sponsored by Tidewater Camera Club): Sahm Doherty-Sefton, Eastern Shore, 2022, inkjet print

Besides the prize money, many of the artworks in the show are for sale by both winners and non-winners. 

“The Members’ Exhibition is an annual tradition at the museum that dates back to our founding in 1958,” said director Sarah Jesse. “We are fortunate to have many talented artists living in the area and for the museum’s adult class program, in many cases, to have played a role in helping hone their skills. The exhibition is a testament to our wonderfully creative community and the museum’s exceptional teaching artists.”

“Earth Abides: Selections from the Collection”
Through Feb. 28, Academy Art Museum, 106 South St. Easton

2022 Members’ Exhibition
Through Dec. 7, academyartmuseum.org

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

 

The hot new music series, “Gabriela Montero at Prager,” hit its highest note so far, literally, at the resplendently restored former sanctuary known as the Ebenezer Theater Saturday night, thanks largely to guest artists soprano Larisa Martinez and her super-star husband, violinist Joshua Bell.

Pianist Montero, who headlined the September 17 series opener with just her two hands, played a supporting role on this night, skillfully accompanying the couple on nearly all the program’s ten primarily short pieces. The Pragers in the title of the series are, of course, Joanne and Paul Prager and the Prager Family Center for the Arts. Montero is the artist-in-residence of the center, of which the Ebenezer Theater is its crown jewel.

Saturday’s concert opened with a 10-minute Bell and Martinez duet, one of the three longer pieces on the program. From Mendelssohn’s concert aria for soprano and orchestra, or in this case, violin, they performed “Ah, ritorna eta dell-oro.” (return to a valley of gold). To unobtrusive piano backing, violin and vocals trade places intermittently in a call-and-response duel before introducing an assertive change of pace as Bell propels his bow with the thrust of a fencing foil to Martinez’s dramatically ascending intensity. 

Bell left the stage for the next piece, described by his wife as Schubert’s “love letter to music.” With a lilting voice and light piano touch, Martinez and Montero delivered a brief and soothingly sweet respite before diving into the “Je suis” encore from Massenet’s “Manon.” Moving her sheet-music stand aside, Martinez sang in character, ranging from flirtatious girl to sultry woman, curling up and down the scale in rehearsed improvisation even as she laughed on key. Next, French composer Delibes’ “Les filles des Cadix” (The girls of Cadiz) opens with a pounding piano riff that launches a song suggesting Bizet to a flamenco beat with Martinez’s smoky soprano rising to toweringly high notes. 

Her husband returned with remarks complimenting the Ebenezer venue and the appreciative audience, as well as the Pragers, for the salon-style atmosphere far more intimate than Bell’s usual vast concert hall settings. He then drew laughs while recounting the pandemic hibernation as a “year-long honeymoon at home” for the newlyweds who married in 2019. Bell had enough time on his hands to arrange Chopin’s best-known, much-loved nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2, to his violin interpretation. At Ebenezer, his playing rose to heightened romantic tension with a silvery smooth flow to the melody repeated with ever-more decorous techniques, culminating in quavering vibrato trills and a big-finish violin-and-piano coda. 

Martinez followed with a prayerful lullaby for children by Spanish composer Montsalvatge of the Catalan region and its capital, Barcelona. Continuing her Spanish-language tour, she sang a medley of traditional Latin folk tunes and short pieces by Ovalle (Brazil), Gimenez (Spain), concluding with Figueroa of her native Puerto Rico.

For the rousing finale – Bernstein’s “West Side Story” Suite – Bell returned to the stage for an instrumental prelude with Montero, which morphed into the familiar “Maria” melody. As if responding to the invocation of her concert character’s name, Martinez rejoined them to deliver in dulcet tones the best-known songs suitable for soprano from the 1957 Broadway musical, beginning with “Tonight,” pausing for violin solo interludes. Next, she was feeling pretty as Bell’s strings sounded delighted while she figuratively looked into a mirror. But the smile on her face faded as the suite segued into “There’s a Place for Us,” even as we all know there is none for them. Once the impending doom is realized, Martinez emits a tragic soprano scream drenched in operatic anger and loss, punctuating the suite’s violent denouement to a standing ovation. 

Full disclosure: My relationship with this former house of worship still evokes in me a sense of nostalgic sentiment whenever I walk up to what has been converted into a splendid and inviting concert chamber. I attended Sunday school downstairs and services in the upstairs sanctuary until 1962, when Ebenezer Methodist merged with two other Easton congregations to form St. Mark’s United Methodist Church. I was in ninth grade, and although that was a half-century ago, and I was too young to appreciate many of the sermons or hymns fully, I don’t recall anything quite as inspired as the performance I experienced Saturday night.

                                                                                     ***
If you haven’t bought tickets to the sold-out Saturday night concert or the Sunday matinee, you can catch Joshua Bell performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Meyerhoff Hall in Baltimore April 21 and 23 or the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda April 22. bsomusic.org  

Gabriela Montero at Prager Concert Series
Canadian pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin, December 10
Irish tenor Anthony Kearns, December 17
The 2023 season opens with Cuban clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, on June 10
monteroprager.com/concerts

 

 

It became apparent from before the start that the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s choice of an “Eight Seasons” format for its November concerts was popular. This on an evening when it felt as though we have but two seasons now: summer and winter separated by teasingly brief intervals of spring and autumn.

Beforehand, a long line of music appreciators moved patiently toward and into the acoustically pleasing sanctuary of the Easton Church of God for the performance of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” and Astor Piazzolla’s “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.” But before a note was struck, MSO board president Jeffrey Parker scotched any rumors that might ensue regarding the conductor-less concert they were about to witness – not unusual for a chamber orchestra. “I assure you, Michael Repper is still with us,” he said of the music director who made an auspicious debut at the September season opener at Chesapeake College’s Todd Performing Arts Center and will return to the podium for holiday concerts next month. The 15 strings-only musicians were led by example and cues from the evening’s guest soloist, Russian-born violinist Igor Yuzefovich of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and, after moving to the United States and earning advanced degrees at Peabody Conservatory, played with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Without a syllable of introduction, Yuzefovich launched the program with the beloved Spring concerto of Vivaldi’s 18th-century “Four Seasons.” Those whose only exposure to this masterpiece are a few chords amplifying myriad scenes in movies, TV miniseries, or commercials might say to themselves, “Oh, I know that one” – even if they think maybe Vivaldi is a sports-car brand. Of course, this audience was more attuned than that. But the sonnets were written, perhaps by Vivaldi himself, to accompany or clarify what became known as “program music” are included in the concert program: “Springtime is upon us” Da-Da DA Duh-Duh DA . . .

Vivaldi’s “Seasons” concerto is divided into three fast-slow-fast movements. The slow pianissimo segment features a viola and violin call-and-response with harpsichordist Bozena Jedrzejczak Brown providing soft textures suggesting a nap in a newly flowering meadow. The third movement celebrates the season with a festive dance pastorale.

Leaping two centuries forward, Piazzolla’s Argentinian Summer introduces the tango-meets-modern-jazz portion of the program. Here the tempo emulates torrid heat with searing violins led by Yuzefovich and concertmaster Kimberly McCollum, foreshadowing thunderous cloudbursts accented by the lower strings’ lightning strikes.

Vivaldi’s Summer follows a similar path with far different arrangements in the soft breezes of ensemble strings dotted with chirping violins suggesting songbirds until the second and third movements prestos roar with the growling and plucking staccato of violas, cello, and bass.

Buenos Aires Autumn arrives with pizzicato stomping to a tango dance beat accompanied by cellist Katie McCarthy’s sonorous solo sitting in for Piazzolla’s instrument of choice, the accordion-like bandoneon. Violins take over in solo and ensemble configurations to flutter like falling leaves in a tree-swaying zephyr.

After intermission, Autumn resumes with Vivaldi’s lilting harvest revelry segueing into a post-celebratory slumber. The awakening allegro opens with a march-like theme of hunters on the prowl signaling a fearsome rustle of strings pointing to prey fleeing for their lives. Spoiler alert: On a downbeat note, it seems that not all survive.

Winter comes to Buenos Aires with the guest soloist evoking somber anticipation of long, dark nights, alleviated by a flickering acceleration that heats up to the crackling fire of all strings on hand. Vivaldi’s winter counters with shiveringly tremulous violins and fierce winds howled by violist Yuri Tomenko, bassist Chris Chlumsky, cellist McCarthy and lower-string accomplices.

The concert concludes where it commenced: In spring, fittingly so because Spring in the Southern Hemisphere is Autumn here, north of the Equator. McCollum introduces the season with a restless theme picked up by Yuvefovich and the entire string ensemble in a Bach-inspired counterpoint leading to a torrid ending punctuated by a harpsichord tingle of chill in the air.

A standing ovation without a word spoken, from first note to last – a post-election blessing.

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra

Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” and Piazzolla’s “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires”
Repeat concerts: Epworth United Methodist Church, Rehoboth Beach, 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12, and Community Church, Ocean Pines, 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 13; midatlanticsymphony.org

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