MENU

Sections

  • Home
  • About
    • The Chestertown Spy
    • Contact Us
    • Advertising & Underwriting
      • Advertising Terms & Conditions
    • Editors & Writers
    • Dedication & Acknowledgements
    • Code of Ethics
    • Chestertown Spy Terms of Service
    • Technical FAQ
    • Privacy
  • The Arts and Design
  • Local Life and Culture
  • Public Affairs
    • Ecosystem
    • Education
    • Health
  • Community Opinion
  • Donate to the Chestertown Spy
  • Free Subscription
  • Talbot Spy
  • Cambridge Spy

More

  • Support the Spy
  • About Spy Community Media
  • Advertising with the Spy
  • Subscribe
June 12, 2025

Chestertown Spy

Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Chestertown

  • Home
  • About
    • The Chestertown Spy
    • Contact Us
    • Advertising & Underwriting
      • Advertising Terms & Conditions
    • Editors & Writers
    • Dedication & Acknowledgements
    • Code of Ethics
    • Chestertown Spy Terms of Service
    • Technical FAQ
    • Privacy
  • The Arts and Design
  • Local Life and Culture
  • Public Affairs
    • Ecosystem
    • Education
    • Health
  • Community Opinion
  • Donate to the Chestertown Spy
  • Free Subscription
  • Talbot Spy
  • Cambridge Spy
1A Arts Lead

Spy Concert Review: National Music Festival Opening Night by Steve Parks

June 3, 2025 by Steve Parks 3 Comments

Share
The National Music Festival opened its 13th annual season with a rousing full-house concert that may prove 13 is a fortunate number for the festival and for music connoisseurs in attendance Sunday evening at Washington College.
The concert began auspiciously with a pair of piano-and-string ensemble pieces – a quartet and a trio – followed after intermission by an amusing allegro from a serenade played live to accompany the cartoonish 1907 French film (“The Dancing Pig” in English). But the best – a revelation when it debuted in Paris in 1923 – was saved for last. Darius Milhaud’s “La Creation du monde” translating grandly as “The Creation of the World,” was a revelation to me as well. Seventeen exuberant musicians, some playing unusual instruments for an orchestra – saxophone and a drum kit – bring Milhaud’s Book of Genesis re-interpretion to life as a jazz-inflected symphony culminating with the first humans, Adam and Eve.
Initially, the piece was panned by critics who considered it musical “violence” and “noise.” But to me, even before I read the program notes, “Creation” brought to mind George Gershwin’s jazzy masterpiece, “An American in Paris,” debuting five years later in 1928. Gershwin animated automobile traffic in his symphony rather than newly created flora and fauna.
In “Creation,” the saxophone takes the solo lead in what would be the first viola in a standard symphony orchestra, joined in the opening overture by a clarion-call of woodwinds. Moving on to the “chaos before creation” movement, drumbeat rumbles with a jungle-like undertone were dismissed by early critics as the wild dissonance of “backward peoples.” More traditional symphonic passages in a pastoral patch suggest the creation of trees and greenery, followed by jazz-infused flute, oboe and horn solos that welcome animals to planet Earth.
It’s quite a racket, but not inappropriately as the Creation itself caused a ruckus. By the final movement, as man and woman appear to a mixed orchestral hello featuring an alternately soothing and searing sax intro flawlessly performed by “apprentice” Laura Ramsay, it becomes apparent that Milhaud created a whole new genre in classical music beyond reimagining the mere creation of the world as we know it. The piece ends blissfully with a gentle strings-led kiss of a final note.
Many of the opening-night musicians are instructors, referred to in festival-speak as “mentors” to the apprentices, such as aforementioned Ramsay, who come from all over the United States and abroad. (Apprentices had only one rehearsal as of Sunday’s opener.) Later, more apprentices will perform in concert, learning or brushing up on their skills to play, for instance, with a scattering of mentors on closing night Stravinsky’s challenging “Consecration of Spring” and Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 adagio, reorchestrated by festival artistic director Richard Rosenberg, who will conduct as he did for “Creation” on opening night.
Sunday evening led off with Ernest Chausson’s Piano Quartet in A, opus 30, performed by pianist Minji Nam, cellist Joseph Gotoff, violinist Elizabeth Adams and violist Renate Falkner, all of whom are festival mentors. The piece begins with a sonorous cello phrase soon joined by searing violin and viola notes as the piano carries the opening Anime movement to a complex emotional plane. Written not long before Chausson’s death at 44 due to a bicycle accident, the piece reflects what had promised to be a prolific final stage of his career. The lyrical second movement morphs into melodic dance configurations in the third, concluding with a vigorous blending of preceding elements into a dramatically torrid finish.
Next up, Joaquin Turina’s Piano Trio No. 2 in b, opus 76 was briskly played by three University of Maryland College Park musicians led by mentor James Stern on violin, whose doctorate in music could hardly eclipse his virtuosity or his passion for teaching. He is joined by two fellow “Terps” as he calls them – referring to Maryland’s terrapin mascot – David Agia on cello and Leili Asanbekova on piano, both doctorate-worthy apprentices. The string players dive in with a three-bar Lento introducing an allegro molto moderato that embraces an evocative tendency to switch among alternating themes and tempos dotted with brief cello solos. The middle vivace movement has the violin and cello competing for space against emphatic piano statements in classical and romantic forms that reflect both Spanish and French influences. The moods change repeatedly in the final Lento andante and allegro with ominous piano chords and a serene strings interval before returning to passionate intensity to the finish.
Post-intermission offers refreshing levity with Stern leading another threesome. Together they provide music so that a colorized silent-film pig in a tuxedo can dance with his petticoat-swishing human partner. The embarrassed pig strips before changing into various costumes, none of which hide his corkscrew tail. The four-minute piece is taken from Leone Sinigaglia’s Serenata for String Trio. Despite its brevity, the allegro moderato encompasses two themes, both disarming as played by the Stern trio.
This is the first classical concert I can recall reviewing lately in which every piece played was new to me. Quite the ear-opener.
NATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL

Opening night, Sunday, June 1: Chausson’s Piano Quartet in A, Torino’s Piano Trio No. 2, Sinigaglia’s allegro from “Le Cochon Danseur” and Milhaud’s “La Creation du Monde,” Hotchkiss Recital Hall, Gibson Center for the Arts, Washington College, Chestertown. Upcoming events daily through July 14 with Festival Symphony Orchestra concerts Friday and Saturday nights July 6-7 and 13-14. nationalmusic.us

 

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

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

Filed Under: 1A Arts Lead

Spy Concert Review: MSO Season Finale by Steve Parks

May 10, 2025 by Steve Parks 1 Comment

Share
The Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra winds up its 2024-25 subscription season with a cello concerto masterpiece and a Mendelssohn double feature.
The concert got off with a bang, though it’s almost tragic to think about a time when women, no matter their talent or even genius, were under-recognized or, worse, ignored because of their gender.

Gabriel Martins

Fanny Hensel (nee Mendelssohn), born in 1805, was overshadowed throughout her professional life as a gifted composer by her famous kid brother Felix, four years her junior. Judging from her Overture in C major, written when she was 25, Fanny was at least as gifted as her soon-to-be far more famous sibling. Her overture opens with a dynamic theme engaging every instrument in the orchestra, from horns to woodwinds, every timbre of strings, and bombastic percussion. Yet the piece remains far more mature and measured than show-offy, reflecting classical elegance blended with romantic swooning.

Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto, featuring guest soloist Gabriel Martins, continued and enhanced the romantic theme of the opening-night program. Schumann’s career and life story were checkered by severe bouts with mental illness, including one instance when he voluntarily committed himself to an asylum. But during a remission of sorts, he wrote in what might be seen as an inspired piece or recovery celebration. Introspective in its expressiveness, particularly in the sweeping solo cello interludes, reveal, we imagine, Schumann’s personal turmoil and apparent relief from its impact. Martins’ interpretation of these key solo passages is alternately emotive and reflective, expositive at times, and then serene — a range that becomes a variable orchestral and solo theme throughout.
Following intermission, we are introduced to what’s known as Kid Brother Felix’s “Happy” Italian Symphony No. 4. What’s not to be happy about? Felix and Fanny were born into a Jewish banking family, more or less a century before Hitler’s Nazi party. Felix could well afford a year’s tour of Italy.  And he apparently enjoyed every minute of it. His symphony is a party — a celebration — almost from start to finish. Except you need respites in between to stay in the light of the second movement’s breezy sunny afternoons on the water on one coast of Italy or overlooking the shore.
The closing program celebrates another season of finely tailored music from an orchestra that represents, with great musical taste and skill, a small mid-Shore community and two satellites on the Delaware and Maryland ocean beaches. Enjoy the sunshine and the music of next season. We should be grateful for this wondrous gift of beautiful music.

MID-ATLANTIC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

“Romantic Triumph and Celebration” season finale concert series: Thursday night, May 8, Todd Performing Arts Center, Chesapeake College. Also, coming up: 3 p.m. Saturday, May 10, Cape Henlopen High School, Lewes, Deleware, and 3 p.m. Sunday, May 11. Ocean City Performing Arts Center. midatlanticsymphony.org

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

Filed Under: 1A Arts Lead

Spy Art Review: Photorealism at the Academy by Steve Parks

May 8, 2025 by Steve Parks 1 Comment

Share

Richard Estes’ “Reflection” from a car windshield, 2006

“Urban Landscapes,” the subtitle of the new photorealism exhibit at Easton’s Academy Art Museum, has been the subject of Richard Estes’ lifelong career as a fine art painter.’

Estes, now 92, studied art at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago, starting in 1952 when his family moved to Illinois. By the early 1960s, the art-world cognoscenti grew weary of Abstract Expressionism, though not so much with appreciative public consumers. Expressionists were then thought to be self-indulgent libertarians. What came into focus was the verisimilitude, the opposite of free-flowing abstract art. Not that there’s anything wrong with realism, but I never quite got it. So maybe you, dear reader, should take that into account regarding this review. I was a lifelong news-print journalist. And an arts critic. I regarded news photography as the recording of history in pictures. Photorealists’ work – besides Richard Estes, considered a leader in this movement – Audrey Flack, Chuck Close, and many others – copied images captured on photos. The skill involved is undeniable. Better than any number of art students I’ve witnessed copying masterpieces in major museums, many of them from Abstract Expressionist paintings. But to what end? Improving on a photograph from which it is taken? At least the students are copying from the real thing to learn how to do it, better or as well if possible.
The urban landscapes Estes interprets in this show of two dozen or so paintings are captured in reflective mirror imagery – Manhattan skyscrapers casting their architectural edifice on the windshield of a parked car. Several others are more directly transparent except for the backward-reading billboards in mirrored opposition. Most impressive to me is the large city-scape 1988 “D-Train” painting encompassing much of the Manhattan skyline from across the East River with the D-train commuter tracks in the anchoring foreground to the right. Yes, you’d recognize the scene if you had stood there in person. The technique and meticulously detailed artistry of what it took to produce is almost overwhelming. But to me, it’s a painterly likeness of a photograph. Which says nothing about the integrity either of photography or painting. I guess I just know what I like in terms of art. All of that makes me an Abstract Expressionist retrograde. I make no apologies except, perhaps, for artistic prejudice.
If photorealism – also known as hyper-realism – is your thing. Richard Estes in this show organized through the highly reputable Portland (Maine) Museum of Art, is not one you’ll want to miss.
***
Quite apart from photorealism is the reality of a very different sort in the archival collection of pieces, including Faith Ringgold’s stunningly joyful quilt panorama she calls “Dancing on the George  Washington Bridge II,” evidently her second take on the subject – brightly dressed African-American women in dance still-life posed against the GW bridgescape separating New Jersey from the Bronx. More fabric art follows with Darlene Taylor’s “Mother: Archive Files” Numbers 1-8 –  silhouette facial profiles of women sewn onto lacy “canvases.” But before you leave the cozy Spiralis Gallery just down the hall from the museum’s main entrance, pause long enough and step back a bit to take in the implied forward motion of what celebrated African-American painter Jacob Lawrence self-referenced as “dynamic cubism.” The stark angular imagery of his 1997 “Forward Together” screenprint more than suggests liberation under the fearless leadership of Harriet Tubman, her hands splayed as paired deliverance flags to her fugitive refugees.
Elizabeth Catlett’s “Young Douglass” 2004 linocut portrait of the former Talbot County slave known then as Freddie, directs us into the adjoining gallery of text and images from “Kin: Rooted in Hope,” a young adult book by Carole and Jeffery Weatherford further embracing the liberation-from-slavery theme.
Speaking of Frederick Douglass, who I once said “was my neighbor” because he was held a slave on a several thousand-acre plantation, portions of which were less than a mile from where I grew up on a Dutchman’s Lane farm: Then and again President Trump, one month into his first term, clearly had no clue of who Frederick Douglass was or when he lived and died. “I hear he’s done some good things,” Trump said of the self-taught, self-liberated onetime slave. In the gallery replete with black-and-white images of Douglass and contemporaries, including Daniel Lloyd, 1812-1875, son of the slave-holding governor of Maryland and an Eastern Shore aristocrat, Edward Lloyd V, who writes in Douglass’ voice: “Before Paul Revere warned of the British invasion and Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, my freedom was already hostage.” Among the slaves who were once Edward Lloyd’s property was “Freddie,” soon to become Frederick, the spokesman and champion for the oppressed and the enslaved.
***
To round out your visit to the museum, take a few minutes and one flight upstairs to the hallway gallery for the 10 colorfully beaded fabric scenes of “Haitian Drapo: The Art of Mireille Delice.”  Be sure to check out the twin mermaids and the ceremonial leaf-gathering known as “pile fey.” And then just imagine the skill and patience it takes to create such detailed fantasies sewing beads as opposed to applying paint strokes. I have zero talent in either discipline, but I appreciate both as fine art.
***
Getting back to photorealism, after you’ve taken in the Richard Estes exhibit, consider the guided tours of Easton’s “urban” landmarks scheduled for May 25, June 29 and July 27. Rediscover the town many of us call home. In retirement, my wife Liz and I looked all over the New York to Mid-Atlantic region, and aside from urban explorations that involved high parking fees for two cars, we found lots of attractive “developments” with a strip mall around the corner – even some with a supermarket. But we longed for an authentic town to call home. Well, there’s not much inauthentic about Easton. Take a walk to appreciate what we have here, not to mention lovely neighboring burgs such as St. Michaels and Oxford. Welcome to what my mother once called “God’s country.” I don’t know about God, but this place is – as my favorite sports announcer from the past, Chuck Thompson, once or a thousand times called it – “The land of pleasant living.” May it be so – summer beach traffic notwithstanding.
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.
‘RICHARD ESTES: URBAN LANDSCAPES’
Academy Art Museum, 106 South St., Easton, through Aug. 3. Also, “Kin: Rooted in Hope” and a complementary archival exhibit, through June 29, plus “Haitian Drapo: The Art of Mireille Delice,” through June 22; academyartmuseum.org

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

Filed Under: 3 Top Story

Spy Theater Review: ‘Man From Earth’ visits Oxford by Steve Parks

April 19, 2025 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

Share

To understand where a play entitled “The Man From Earth” comes from – aren’t we all men and women, etc. from Earth? – look to the author of the book on which the screenplay and subsequent stage drama was drawn as source material.

The play evolved in stages from the mind of Jerome Bixby who wrote the novel and screenplay for the cult film of the same title on his deathbed in 1998, dictating it to his son. Bixby was a short-story author who gained notoriety as the writer of a 1961 “Twilight Zone” episode, “The Good Life,” later inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He followed that up with four episodes for the “Star Trek” TV series, including one – “Requiem for Methuselah” – which inspired “The Man From Earth” and the subsequent posthumous stage drama adapted by Richard Schenkman.
The premise of the story is simple enough: John Oldman, whose surname serves as a pun for what is about to transpire, is a popular university professor leaving his tenured position behind to “move on.” His colleagues are shocked. They gather at his residence where he’s packing up to leave to who knows where.
Greg Allis as John is at once professorially erudite and personally engaging enough to hold our attention as well as that of his fellow professors. But his reason for moving on becomes preposterously evident near the outset – so much so that it’s quite a stretch that any of these scholars, with one or two exceptions, seem to take him seriously.
John claims that he moves on every 10 years or so in order to avoid questions about why he never appears to age beyond 35. Which is remarkable in that he claims to be roughly 14,000 years old. While he does not say he’s met every famous person in that eons of time – Van Gogh is suggested by a self-portrait he owns – does admit to encountering the first Budda of that religion and, along the way, Moses. Stretching his claim to its very limits, as one of his religiously devout colleagues presses him, he not only says met Jesus but that he was the one on the cross. Never mind how he survived another 2,000 years.
Not all his colleagues are as gullible as Sandy, played devotedly by Cavin Alexandra Moore, whose excuse is that she’s in love with John. Mary Ann Emerson as Edith, an art historian, considers John’s claims of almost-eternal life more a sacrilege than an impossibility, even though he does admit that dinosaurs were way before his time. Art, an archaeologist and John’s most vociferous doubter, is played with the zeal of true-felt outrage by Chris Agharabi.
Others among the “faculty” of players are more malleable. How could they possibly believe this tallest of tall tales? Dan, an anthropologist played boisterously by Zack Schlag, seems to be an unlikely convert, except that he exhibits a genuine affection for John and wants to believe him. Madeline Megahan as Harriet the biologist, straddles the fence with impertinent wisecracks here and there on either side of the question at hand.
Corrie James, as a senior psychologist, shows up late in the farewell “party” – there are drinks involved – ostensibly to evaluate the state of mind, sane or otherwise, of John Oldman, the ageless wonder. Her presence introduces the only physically dramatic sequence in the heretofore verbose exchange of ideas surrounding a fantastical premise.
The in-the-round staging of this play – the first in decades for Tred Avon Players, according to Storm, its director, suited the story impressively. Any of us who have ever moved to another location or station in life can relate to the pile of boxes and bare furnishings at the end, as rendered by set designer Laura Nichols.
While elitism is certainly out of favor in the current political climate, it is refreshing to hear thoughtful exchanges of historical and cultural references to what and where we are today. The implied wisdom of a 14,000-year-old man, however make-believe it may be, should not be dismissed as mere parody.
It’s art. Not politics.
Steve Parks is a retired New York journalist now living happily in Easton.
‘THE MAN FROM EARTH’
7:30 p.m. Friday, April 18; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 19; 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 25-26 and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 27, Oxford Community Center. Go hee for tickets http://www.tredavonplayers.org/

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

Filed Under: 1A Arts Lead

Spy Theater Review: ‘Never the Sinner,’ Leopold and Loeb by Steve Parks

March 15, 2025 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

Share

Max Brennan as Loeb and Roegan Bell as Leopold

If a whodunnit is your murder-mystery cup of tea, “Never the Sinner” may not be up your alley. But if the psychology of a pair or murderous lovers who kill a teenage boy just for the thrill of it – for sport if you will – will always beg the question: “Why?”
The senseless murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks by a pair of intellectual and amoral snobs – “supermen” they thought of themselves – Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold Jr. – shocked and appalled the nation just over 100 years ago. It was widely considered the “Crime of the Century” in 1924. Today, I fear, we are beyond being shocked by anything or anyone. Which makes an excellent argument for why now – why now does this 1985 play by John Logan seem so strikingly relevant? As directed by E.T. Wilford for The Factory Arts Project at the Waterfowl building in Easton, “Never the Sinner,” makes us wonder how some people – men mostly – with power and sheer chutzpah get away with anything. Not that Loeb and Leopold got off scot free for murder. But they did not hang as public fury and a zealous prosecutor demanded.
 The sinister pair, played by Max Brennan as Loeb and Roegan Bell as Leopold, are almost sympathetically charming, aside from their hideous crime and “supermen” arrogance that seems to absolve them of any sense of guilt. The other two principals in this true-story drama are the opposing counsels, prosecutor Robert Crowe, played with convincingly judgmental outrage by Alex Greenlee, and Ray Nissen as the famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow, takes on the bold strategy of pleading his clients guilty at the outset of the trial with a daring strategy of sparing them the noose. The legal back-and-forth between the two makes for a morality play on its own merits quite aside from the guilty clients.

As Loeb, the one who actually struck the murderous blows on the defenseless teen, Brennan effusively appears to lack any sense of remorse, while Bell as the more introspective Leopold tries to hide his regrets, perhaps even from himself. As gay lovers, their homosexuality is underplayed except near the end of the trial and the verdict that is never revealed.  Only then does their affection for each other become vividly apparent.

Their dress-alike earth-tone suits chosen by producer/costumer Cecile Storm and matching bright red tennis shoes set them apart from the rest of the cast, although each player also wears tennis shoes of more muted tones – even Clarence Darrow.

The set and lighting design by director Wilford is a rather busy shuffling of chairs and tables between scenes on a slightly raised stage on the floor of the huge Waterfowl space with seating on three sides, making for a relatively intimate setting. Depending on where you were seated, especially front and center as I was, the too-bright lighting was at times quite distracting – a condition that can easily be corrected in upcoming performances this weekend.
Loeb and Leopold were only about five or six years older than their victim – a fact that Darrow deployed in his argument for leniency by calling them “kids.” As a juror, I’m not sure I would’ve fallen for that, even though in general, I don’t favor the death penalty.
‘NEVER THE SINNER’ 
By John Logan, performed by The Factory at the Waterfowl building in downtown Easton through Sunday, March 16. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday. thefactoryartsproject.org
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.

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

Filed Under: Spy Highlights

Spy Music Review: An Ascendent Interlude Concert by Steve Parks

February 18, 2025 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

Share
“The Lark” not only ascended but soared to the top of the program of Chesapeake Music’s Interlude matinee concert at the Ebenezer Theater Sunday, starring violinist Stella Chen and pianist Janice Carissa whose youthful exuberance was surpassed only by their extraordinary talent and technical virtuosity.
Until just the night before, the concert was to be led off with Eugene Ysaye’s Sonata for Solo Violin. But for whatever reason – perhaps that the opening number should better reflect the skills of each musician or that there should be one more familiar piece on a program of boldly challenging works rarely performed in concert (not a bad thing at all) – the players settled on English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams’ romantic “The Lark Ascending,” inspired by a late 19th century poem by George Meredith. The piece opens with a quivering violin trill of a bird taking flight, accompanied by a weepingly tender piano suggestion of the lark’s song before settling into a confidently soaring melodic flyover.
A world premiere performance of American composer Robert Paterson’s Adagio for Solo Violin, written in 2021 as a birthday gift for his violinist friend Adam Abeshouse, opens with a quite modern – call it post-post modern – approach with dissonance and sudden shifts in tempo and attitude from folky to furious. Chen handles it all deftly. Then, almost admittedly in her remarks, Chen shows off her technical acuity and dexterity on Rachmaninoff’s notoriously difficult Prelude in G Minor, Op. 23, No. 5, attacking the strings throughout with astonishing speed. Fortunately, it’s a relatively short piece or her right arm may have gone numb.
Robert Schumann’s Bunte Blatter (English translation from German to English is Colorful Clouds), including all 10 short pieces written or rewritten late in his life and career when he resided in a sanatorium where he died at age 46 after periodic bouts with mental illness. The frenetic switches from short to short in Colorful Clouds, most of them artfully introduced by pianist Carissa, reflect a man of myriad moods and personalities. The pieces go from placidly melodic to rambunctious and a bit of a rumble to a lullaby for the sleepless and onto a galloping finale.
With barely a pause, Chen and Carissa switch the musical script to something completely different in Bach’s tender Prelude and Fugue in B Flat Minor with its somber opening which morphs into a declarative statement of resolve for an emotional soft landing.
Following intermission, Cesar Franck’s Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano, from its reflective opening allegretto to its stormy allegro and beyond, offers the finest melding on the program of piano and violin parts complementing each other. Musically, the players don’t seem to be arguing with each other over whatever it is that torments them so much as agreeing on a source of their consternation. Never quite resolved, the fourth movement allegretto comes to a torridly satisfying finish nevertheless.
Again without pause, after the second of two standing ovations during the Franck sonata, Chen and Carissa launched into the finale to the concert with Ravel’s equally torrid Tzigane, which translates in English as “gypsy.” Described by the French composer as a “Hungarian rhapsody,” his single-movement piece builds from concern to impatience reflected in a feverish succession of exchanges by Carissa and Chen in tonalities, staccato notes and trills. It’s never clear to me within the context of the piece whether the implied agitation is on the part of gypsies or about their presence that historically reflects much of the current antipathy toward immigrants. Whatever. Within this musical statement the issue is never resolved. No fault of the composer nor certainly these stellar musicians who earned still another standing ovation. Bravo.

Violinist Stella Chen and pianist Janice Carissa perform a program of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Rachmaninoff, Robert Schumann, Caesar Franck, and Ravel, plus a world premiere by Robert Paterson. Sunday, Feb. 16 at Ebenezer Theater in downtown Easton. For upcoming Interlude concerts: chesapeakemusic.org
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic now living in Easton.

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

Filed Under: 6 Arts Notes

Elizabethan and chamber music virtuosity by Steve Parks

February 5, 2025 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

Share
The Baltimore Consort performs a trio of concerts on or near Valentine’s Day – two of them on the Eastern Shore and one in Columbia. The subject is romance,  some of it drawn from the consort’s most recent album, “The Food of Love: Songs, Dances, and Fancies for Shakespeare.” That’s because the consort musicians are all about playing music using period instruments of Will Shakespeare’s time and before.

The musicians, time-traveling virtuosos, are as extraordinary as their instruments, from the treble viol, a forerunner to the violin described as “sultry,” or the “ethereal” flute, a recorder, as well as the “noble” lute, “cheerful” cittern and “stately” bass viol, a forerunner to the cello.

Shakespeare did not write musicals as we know them in the Broadway or West End form, closer now to his English roots. But incidental music, most often played and not sung, was very much a part of Elizabethan theater. Unlike in Shakespeare’s time, women are allowed – no, encouraged, to play in this 21st-century consort format – unlike in the Oscar-winning film “Shakespeare in Love,” starring Gwyneth Paltrow as the forbidden female Juliet.

Before the Baltimore Consort embarks on a California tour in March, it will perform at 8 p.m. Feb. 14 at Howard Community College’s Smith Theater in Columbia, 2 p.m. Feb. 15 at the Avalon Theatre in Easton, and 4 p.m. Feb. 16 at The Mainstay in Rock Hall.

The instruments of the period include some made from maple, boxwood, snakewood, sheep’s gut, horse’s tail, crow’s quill, elephant’s tusk, ram’s horn, and shells of tortoises – as if, according to Baltimore Consort’s website, composed from a sorcerer’s potion. Credentials, however, of these musicians who play such period instruments are exemplary.

Besides the Baltimore Consort, Mary Anne Ballard performs with Galileo’s Daughters, drawing on music from the then-controversial astronomer’s lifetime in Italy, a contemporary of the Bard, and with Mr. Jefferson’s Musicians, creating “Soundscapes of Jefferson’s America” at Monticello in the 18th and early 19th century.
Mark Cudek chairs the Peabody Conservatory’s Historic Performance Department of Johns Hopkins University, and is founder of Peabody’s Renaissance Ensemble. Larry Lipkis is composer-in-residence and director of Early Music at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and music director for the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival.
Ronn McFarlane has recorded 40-plus  CDs, including solo collections, duets, music for flute and lute, Elizabethan music and poetry, lute tunes written by Vivaldi, as well as Baltimore Consort albums. A founding member of the Baltimore Consort, Mindy Rosenfeld plays historic and modern flutes, recorders, whistles, bagpipe and early harp.
In addition, two vocalists sing with the consort. José Lemos is known for his concert and opera performances since receiving first prize in Belgium’s 2003 International Baroque Singing Competition. Danielle Svonavec, a 1999 University of Notre Dame graduate, became a soprano soloist for the Baltimore Consort during its nine-concert Christmas tour that year. Since then, she has also toured with the Smithsonian Chamber Players and now serves as cantor for the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Notre Dame at her Indiana alma mater.
It’s a sure bet that the Baltimore Consort playlist will not be that of your usual classical concert fare.
***
The good news here is that if you want to take in both the Baltimore Consort and the latest Chesapeake Music Interlude concert, featuring up-and-coming candidates for classical music super-stardom, you can see them both. But only if you see the consort in Columbia on Valentine’s Day or at the Avalon in Easton the day after. The Chesapeake Music recital overlaps with The Mainstay’s Rock Hall consort performance on Feb. 16, itself a fine venue for this event.Violinist Stella Chen won first prize in the 2019 Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition – named for the Dutch queen, not the late queen of the United Kingdom. And in 2020 Chen won an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award. Pianist Janice Carissa, who will be accompanying Chen, is a Gilmore Young Artist once-in-four-year award winner and a Salon de Virtuosi prize grantee who debuted with the Philadelphia Orchestra at age 16.

Together they will perform a challenging program starting with Sonata for Solo Violin, Op. 27. No. 5, by Belgian violinist and composer Eugene Ysaye (1858-1931), followed by a modern piece, Adagio for Solo Violin, written by Robert Paterson, born in 1970. Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G minor, Op. 23, No. 5, Robert Schumann’s Selections From Bunte Blatter, Op. 99 and Bach’s immortal Prelude and Fugue in B-flat minor brings the duo to a well-earned break. After intermission, Cesar Franke’s Sonata in A major for Violin and “Tzigane,” described by its French composer Ravel as a “virtuoso piece in the style of a Hungarian rhapsody,”wraps up the program.

Quite the chamber classical-music duet smorgasbord.|

Baltimore Consort Period-Instrument  Concerts
8 p.m. Feb. 14, Howard Community College’s Smith Theater in Columbia, 2 p.m. Feb. 15, Avalon Theatre in Easton, and 4 p.m. Feb. 16 at The Mainstay in Rock Hall. baltimorecosort.com
Chesapeake Music Interlude Chamber Concert
2 p.m. Feb. 16, Ebenezer Theatre, Easton. chesapeakemusic.org

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

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

Filed Under: 1A Arts Lead

MSO International Concerto Competition and more by Steve Parks

February 1, 2025 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

Share
The trio of finalists in the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s annual Elizabeth Loker International Concerto Competition have been chosen to play in concert with the full orchestra to be judged for first, second and third places. The concert will be held at Chesapeake College’s Todd Hall for the Performing Arts on the Wye Mills campus at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 23.

“I am deeply excited to work with these extraordinary young musicians,” said Michael Repper, music director of the MSO who will be conducting them along with the orchestra for the finalist concert. “The energy and talent they bring to the stage will be a powerful reminder of the next generation of classical musicians.”The finalists competing for top honors are bassoonist Christopher Chung of New York City, who will perform Villa-Lobos’ Ciranda das Sete Notas; pianist Jonah Kwek of Singapore, performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23, and Britton-Rene Alyssa Collins, also of New York, playing Concerto for Marimba, her instrument, by Sergei Golovko.

Although there are cash prizes in the competition, the real top prize goes to each of the finalists, no matter their order of finish: Each one gets to play as a soloist accompanied by a full and fully professional symphony orchestra. Many of the applicants, from 27 states and at least nine countries, have never experienced that opportunity before. In most competitions, the finalists compete accompanied only by a pianist. But the cash prizes are worth competing for as well: $5,000 for first place, $2,500 for second, $1,000 for third and $500 for audience-choice favorite.

Christopher Chung and Jonah Kwek

As for the contestants, Christopher Chung is a Juilliard School student who has performed with such distinguished ensembles as the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra. As a bassoonist, he is known for his collaboration with Sonarsix, a woodwind quintet, and contributions to the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices, which promotes performances by composers whose careers and lives were cut short by Hitler’s Nazi regime

Jonah Kwek is a graduate of Singapore’s Yong Siew Toh Conservatory now studying for a master of music at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Already he has become a frequent soloist or contributing pianist on worldwide gigs. He also won the MNTA (Music Teachers National Association) Stecher and Horowitz Award for two-piano competition with a keyboard partner.

Britton-Rene Alyssa Collins

Britton-Rene Alyssa Collins, a percussion virtuoso on marimba – similar to a xylophone – earned a prestigious Princeton University Hodder Fellowship and has performed at Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall among other top global venues. She says part of her mission as a musician is to promote percussion as a means of celebrating black culture and identity.

The MSO competition is named for the former Washington Post executive who helped bring the newspaper into the digital age. In retirement, Elizabeth Loker moved to Royal Oak and became a symphony board member and supporter before her death of cancer at 67 in 2015.

                                                            ***
You don’t have to wait until March to hear some of the Mid-Atlantic Sumphony’s finest musicians. As part of its Ensemble Series of chamber concerts, Kimberly McCollum, violinist and concertmaster of the MSO, leads a string quartet that includes first or second-chair musicians  including violinist Celaya Kirchner, violist Yuri Tomenko and cellist Katie McCarthy. Together they will play Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 3 in F major and Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 6 in F minor at 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8 at Epworth United Methodist Church in Reboboth Beach and at 4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9 at the Academy Art Museum in Easton.
Mid-Atlantic Symphony Concerts
Ensemble Series String Quartet, 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8, Epworth United Methodist Church, Rehoboth Beach; 4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9, Academy Art Museum, Easton.
Elizabeth Loker International Concerto Competition, 3 p.m. Sunday, March 23, Todd Hall for Performing Arts, Wye Mills. midatlanticsymphony,org
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic and editor now living in Easton.

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

Filed Under: 1A Arts Lead

Cars as movie co-stars and museum artworks by Steve Parks

January 18, 2025 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

Share
And just when you thought drive-ins were a thing of the past – particularly in the dead of winter –  Easton’s Academy Art Museum launches a monthly Drive-In Film Series in conjunction with its current “Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection” exhibition running through April 13.
Cars play significant roles in each of the movies in the four-part series starting with the 1924 French silent picture “L’Ihumaine,” directed by Marcel L’Herbier, which predate even a few of the classic Grand Prix race cars and sleek roadsters parked for showroom viewing in the museum’s two main galleries. The 1922 Rolland-Pilain Two-Litre Grand Prix racer acts as a motorized French Formalist prop in the film that kicks off the series on Tuesday, Jan. 21.
French Formalism was the dominant response to Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art until the 1960s. The Formalist movement focused on the structure and visual aspects of a work rather than its content, including in this case, performance, too. The subtitle of the original release of “L’Inhumaine” was histoire feerique, which translates as “story of enchantment.” In its time, the film was a controversial avant-garde collaboration of leading practitioners in experimental decorative arts, architecture, engineering and music. Opening night in Paris reportedly drew an audience of such icons as Pablo Picasso, Erik Satie, May Ray, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and the Prince of Monaco. Some adored it. Many more hated it. But the film received better receptions when re-released in 1968 and shown again in 1975 at the 50th anniversary of the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in Paris and in 1987 at the Cannes Film Festival. Finally, a 2015 restoration featured a new musical accompaniment score by Aidje Tafial. The original score by Darius Milhaud was lost over time.
The Roaring ’20s Grand Prix racers on display at the museum during the run of this film series were designed by Italian mechanical artists Ettore Bugatti and his son Jean. Like the French Rolland-Pilain race-car, they are also hand-cranked from the front, dating them as authentic automobile antiques.
The cinematic journey of the series traces the evolution of the automobile from early Grand Prix classic cars to the harrowing high-speed chases of “The French Connection.” Other films in the series include the first film-noir movie directed by a woman, “The Hitch-Hiker,” released in 1953. Ida Lupino, herself a star in several film-noir narratives featuring her either as villain or victim, directed this true-story tale based on a 1950 killing spree by Billy Cook who held two friends hostage during his murderous driving trip to Mexico. Co-starring Edmond O’Brien, William Talman and Frank Lovejoy, it was selected in 1998 for preservation by the U.S. National Film Registry as “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant.”
“The French Connection,” the highest profile feature in the series, won the 1971 Oscar for Best Picture and the Best Actor prize for Gene Hackman, it tells the semi-fictional tale of New York Police Department detectives led by Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Hackman) in hot pursuit of French heroin smuggler Alain Charnier. It conspicuously intensifies high-speed chases framed beneath tight above-ground commuter train tracks. No margin for steering error.
The final film in the series introduces another four-wheel co-star known as the “Bluesmobile,” a battered former police car. Blues singer and petty crook Joliet (John Belushi) is released from prison and picked up by his brother Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) who demonstrates his driving skills by running the light on a raised drawbridge and leaping the gap. Their supposedly altruistic mission is to save a Catholic orphanage from being shut down by paying their $5,000 property tax bill. Aretha Franklin, it should be noted, soars even higher than the airborne Bluesmobile.
Film passes for the “Drive-In and Unraveling Narratives” series are available for $25 for museum members and $35 for non-members. A pass includes access to all four films with free popcorn at beer or non-alcoholic beverages for members and $5 for non-members.
Drive-In Monthly Film Series
Jan. 21: “L’Inhumaine” (1924)
Feb. 18: “The Hitch-Hiker” (1953)
March 18: “The French Connection” (1971)
April 8: “The Blues Brothers” (1980)
Admission to the series: $25 for museum members or $5 for individual films, $35 non-members, $10 per film. The movies, all on Tuesday nights, start at 7 in the Academy of Art auditorium, 106 South St., Easton; academyartmuseum.org
Steve Parks is a retired New York arts writer and editor now living in Easton.

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

Filed Under: 1A Arts Lead

Presidential pasts and an impending future by Steve Parks

January 17, 2025 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

Share
Former president and now president-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated again – this time to a non-consecutive second term. (The first since Grover Cleveland, elected in 1885 and 1893.) Although I was disappointed, to say the least, about his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in November, it is clear that Trump was elected fair and square by millions of Americans I disagree with regarding his fitness for office.
Despite my severe doubts based on his first-term presidency – two impeachments resulting in party-line acquittals and four felony charges: two blocked by judicial stall tactics, another by a prosecutor’s personal indiscretion, plus one conviction with no penalties allowed – I had no choice but to respect the results and give the winner the benefit of aforementioned doubts. I say “no choice” because without evidence of anything but a straight-up electoral Trump victory meant to me – as it should to any American who believes in democracy – that he is our once and now-again president. Others I respect on the losing side upheld that rightful interpretation of constitutional law. Harris conceded the next morning. And she fulfilled her constitutional duty as vice president and president of the Senate to confirm the electoral count on Jan. 6. Remember that date, anyone? Hakeem Jeffries, minority leader of the House of Representatives, gaveled his announcement of the final count to the applause of mostly the winning side. Nothing wrong with that. But compare this entirely peaceful transfer of power to that of the MAGA mob, egged on by Trump, on the same date four years ago.
Still, Trump is about to be our next president. And he was among a rich and rare assemblage of colleagues on another historic day just last week. Trump and three other former presidents, plus President Joe Biden, sat together as a far more exclusive club than the “Saturday Night Live” five-timer host club. But it was the centenarian of the hour, 39th President Jimmy Carter, whose funeral stood as a still-living memorial to the great man in the flag-draped casket – a fallible human of unassailable character, decency, integrity and the belief I have now and always did that Jimmy Carter never lied to us. All the eulogies were authentically moving and real. No embellishment necessary. One of my favorites was the bipartisan tribute read by Gerald Ford’s son Steven because these former presidential election rivals and best friends for the rest of their lives, agreed to write each other’s eulogies. Carter outlasted Ford by 18 years.
I can apply none of those accolades to the man about to take his second oath of office I doubt he will keep for a minute. I say that because I’m certain he will never take the step that could redeem himself and his idolaters: Tell the truth about the 2020 election. Are we to just pretend that he’s not the one who tried to “steal” an election? – campaigning before and after the votes were counted that it was “rigged.” It’s an impossible feat considering all the states, counties, and municipalities, not to mention the thousands of precincts you’d have to line up to pull off a stolen national election. And never mind there is zero evidence of such a widespread possibility in 2020. If Donald could bring himself to announce, or at least imply, at his inauguration in front of the president who once defeated him that, yes, Biden won that election, just as he – Trump – won this one, he could obliterate the fact-free obsession that has divided America for more than five years. Confession is good for the soul and would be for the country he now leads. Again. But Trump will never do that.
Too bad for all of us on either side of his contagious lie. You won in 2024, Mr. Trump. Mr. President. And no one seriously challenges that. Why would you contribute to keeping the country divided against itself as you did when you lacked the simple courtesy of attending Biden’s inauguration? Sore loser, for sure. Why would you now be a sore winner as well? Just to get even? Surely, you can’t expect to run again. Make the best of this term for yourself, your legacy, and for all the rest of us.
Jimmy could be watching you, Donald. But you don’t seem to care. You think Carter was a loser. But so were you in 2020. Be a man and admit it. Put an end to all the personal strife you brought upon yourself as a result. And all of us fellow Americans, too. Then get on with being the best president you can be for a more united USA.
Make America Grateful Again – grateful to be who we are when we’re all working together.
Steve Parks is a retired journalist now living in Easton.

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

Filed Under: Opinion

Next Page »

Copyright © 2025

Affiliated News

  • The Cambridge Spy
  • The Talbot Spy

Sections

  • Arts
  • Culture
  • Ecosystem
  • Education
  • Health
  • Local Life and Culture
  • Spy Senior Nation

Spy Community Media

  • About
  • Subscribe
  • Contact Us
  • Advertising & Underwriting

Copyright © 2025 · Spy Community Media Child Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in