From June 1-14, Chestertown’s renowned National Music Festival will bring together almost 30 esteemed mentors and 100 promising apprentices, presenting over 30 events, ranging from majestic symphonies to intimate chamber music, pre-concert talks, and master classes, plus dozens of free open rehearsals. Mentors are professional musicians who teach and perform all over the country and the world; apprentices are young professional musicians on the cusp of their careers. Festival musicians come to Chestertown each season from about a dozen countries and 30 US states.

This year’s mentors will include Yoshiaki Horiguchi (bass) and Diana Loomer (percussion), who are both alumni of the Festival, and several mentors who have been with the Festival since its inception in 2011: Dana Goode (violin), Jared Hauser (oboe), Jeff Keesecker (bassoon), Tom Parchman (clarinet), and Jennifer Parker-Harley (flute).

On Friday, June 6, National Music Festival Artistic Director and co-founder Richard Rosenberg conducts the Festival Symphony Orchestra in a program of movie music, starting with Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which was famously used in the Walt Disney movie Fantasia. Violin mentor Emma McGrath, who travels from Hobart, Tasmania for her second season with the National Music Festival, will be the soloist in Korngold’s sumptuous Violin Concerto, which incorporates music from several of his film scores for Errol Flynn “swashbucklers,” including The Prince and the Pauper, Anthony Adverse, and more. The second half of the program features exhilarating music from the Star Wars movies by the legendary John Williams.

Several mentors and two apprentices will be featured as concerto soloists during the Festival. Saxophonist Laura Ramsay, a student at the University of Michigan, was selected through a highly competitive application process to attend the Festival as a saxophone apprentice and will perform on June 7 as the soloist in Jaques Ibert’s jazzy and tuneful 1930s Concertino da Camera.

Also on the June 7 concert is Frank Martin’s Concerto for Seven Wind Instruments. Trumpet apprentice Brandon Hebert of Louisiana has been awarded the opportunity to perform as a soloist alongside mentors Jennifer Parker-Harley (flute), Jared Hauser (oboe), Thomas Parchman (clarinet), Jeffrey Keesecker (bassoon), Michelle Stebleton (horn), and Michael Kris (trombone).

The guest conductor for the June 7 orchestra program will Matthew Kraemer, who serves as Music Director of the Louisiana Philharmonic in New Orleans, as well as the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra.

Concert schedules, tickets, and Festival Passes are available on the Festival’s website, nationalmusic.us.

Highlights of the much-anticipated 13th season include:

• Music from the cinema, including John William’s riveting score from three Star Wars flicks, as well as a short, long-lost 1907 Pathé film about a jilted pig in a tuxedo;
• Monumental symphonic works, including Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Brahms’ Symphony 1, and Hindemith’s Symphonie: Mathis der Maler;
• Concerto performances featuring mentors and apprentices; in addition to those mentioned above, on June 13, mentors Elizabeth Adams (violin), Joseph Gotoff (cello), and Minji Nam (piano) will be the soloists for Beethoven’s lighthearted Triple Concerto on June 13;
• Chamber music by Haydn, Korngold, Milhaud, and Stravinsky (his 1920 “Ragtime”), among others;
• A free Family Concert featuring woodwind instruments and followed by an Instrument Petting Zoo;
• Forest Music, a unique performance art event in collaboration with Adkins Arboretum (tickets available at adkinsarboretum.org).

“Whatever your musical palate, we have events you will love,” said Festival Artistic Director Richard Rosenberg. “In addition to our huge flagship orchestra concerts, try our free ‘Lunchtime Chamber Bites,’ our special Family Concert, or our Market Music in Fountain Park and enjoy!”

Asher greeting NMF
Lunchtime Chamber Bites are short, free concerts featuring performances and discussion with the artists. The Family Concert and Market Music concerts are also free, as are several other events. All rehearsals are free and open to the public; families with children are especially welcome at rehearsals! Attending open rehearsals is a wonderful way to introduce young children, (and even their grandparents) to concert music.

Venues for concerts and rehearsals range from local churches to Washington College to the Kent Cultural Alliance’s Raimond Cultural Center, and more. Concert and rehearsal schedules are available on the Festival’s website, nationalmusic.us.

For our talented, competitively selected apprentices, the National Music Festival advances the lives and careers of these promising musicians by providing access to world-class mentors and performance opportunities. Apprentices attend the Festival on scholarship, completely free of charge. The Festival is truly a community effort: Chestertown area residents open their homes as host families for apprentices and mentors, Emmanuel Church in downtown Chestertown provides free lunches for the musicians each weekday, and many local restaurants offer discounts to musicians. A few more host families are still needed; please email info@na’onalmusic.us for more information.

Visit the Festival’s website for the complete 2025 Festival concert schedule and repertoire and to purchase tickets or Festival Passes: nationalmusic.us. A number of concerts are free, as are all rehearsals.

The National Music Festival is supported in part by the Maryland State Arts Council (msac.org), Kent Cultural Alliance (kentculture.org), Mid-Shore Community Foundation (mscf.org), The Peoples Bank (pbkc.com), and by tax-deductible contributions from music lovers. For more information about the Festival, visit the website at nationalmusic.us or contact [email protected] or (443)480-0221.

Filmmaker, author, artist, and cultural icon John Waters has spent more than five decades daring people to look at what they usually turn away from. Known for cult classics like Pink Flamingos, Polyester, and Hairspray, Waters made a career out of unsettling, challenging, and, ultimately, delighting audiences. On May 9, he brings his latest one-man show, The Naked Truth, to the Avalon Theatre in Easton.

As Waters describes it, the show is part stand-up, part cultural commentary, part confessional — and entirely new. “I rewrite it completely once every year,” he said. “It’s about everything — politics, fashion, movies, music, how to get on your parents’ nerves. All sorts of things.”

This year’s version salutes the “gender guerrilla generation” and the rapidly changing landscape of identity and sexuality. “It’s amazing how things have changed so quickly; it even startles me,” he said. “There is a whole new world out there. At the end of a date, you used to ask for a good night kiss. Now I read the young people strangle each other.”

Even for someone who made a name by pushing boundaries, the pace of social change today can feel dizzying. “There’s a whole new set of rules — and no trigger warnings anymore, because who are you going complain to?” he said.

But Waters made clear that The Naked Truth isn’t about shock for shock’s sake. “It’s easy to shock,” he said. “It’s much harder to surprise people and make them laugh. That’s what I do. All comedy is political. It’s protection. It’s how you fight back. It’s how you position yourself. Even fashion is political.” He added, “I’m not self-righteous. I make fun of the rules I live by.”

For some ticket holders at the Avalon show, there will also be a special stick-around for a post-show opportunity to take a selfie with the star and a “group therapy” session. As Waters explains, the therapy will be precisely what you might expect — and nothing like the real thing. “We have no shame here. We share different things,” he said. “Things they might not have been able to say in a regular Q&A. There are different neuroses and attractions, but they figure if anybody can understand, it’s me. And they’re generally right.”

When asked, Waters admitted he’s never attended real group therapy. “I always thought they’d tell others what I told them,” he said. “At my show’s group therapy, nothing is off limits. We say things you’re not supposed to say.” He added, “I’m the psychiatrist. I’m the defense lawyer. They’re the patients. They’re the filthiest people alive, not me.”

That perspective fits Waters’ lifelong fascination with outsiders — although, he said, even that definition has shifted. “I’m through with being an outsider. I want to be an insider now,” he said. “Everybody wants to be an outsider today. Instead, I want to screw things up from the inside — in a positive way.”

It’s an unexpected, if fitting, turn for someone whose early work was once banned, condemned, and reviled. Today, Waters is celebrated by some institutions that once shunned him. “I’m so respectable, I could puke,” he said. “Who would have ever thought the Academy Award museum would give me a 12-room show? Not to mention all these awards I’m getting — the Writers Guild Award, an editing award. It’s amazing to me.” 

It’s so amazing that Waters said he’s now addicted to receiving awards. “I miss the day when I was condemned by the Catholic Church, and they gave me all the bad reviews that I used in the ads,” he said. “Same movies, but people just take them a different way.”

Through all the shifts in reputation and audience, Waters said the core of his creative life remains the same. “I’ve written all my movies. I write my stand-up shows. I write books. I photograph,” he said. “Basically, though, I’m a writer. So, every day, Monday to Friday, I get up, think up weird things, and write between 8 am and noon. In the afternoon, I sell it. That’s what I do for a living.”

His latest novel, Liarmouth, came out of that same discipline. “I’m always in airports because I tour all the time,” he said. “So I wrote about a woman who steals suitcases. No, I never saw it happen — but it’s easy to do. And if you get caught, you pretend you picked up the wrong one.”

As for new undertakings, Waters says he constantly collects new material, jotting down ideas and observations in what he calls different “cubby holes” for future projects. “I’m never bored. I don’t understand how anybody can be bored. Just go watch people. There’s no reason to be bored. You only get one life. Pay attention.”

That attitude extends to how he stays plugged into contemporary culture. “I have youth spies that tell me new stuff that’s going on,” he said. “I hate people my age who say, ‘It was much better back in the day.’ No — it wasn’t. You’re just an old fart. They’re having just as much fun now. You’ve got to figure out what that fun is.”

Waters speaks about aging with the same defiance he once reserved for battling censors and critics. “Old chickens make good soup,” he said. (I had to remove the comment that followed this, but in true Waters fashion, you can probably guess it wasn’t Hallmark card material.)

Then again, if material ever runs short, Waters joked, there’s always hospice humor.
“Old queens, wrinkle queens — we’re all still telling stories.”

Asked if Baltimore continues to be a muse even though his fame has grown beyond his native home, Waters said. “Baltimore’s still my favorite city. It’s still the coolest city because it’s cheap — you can still have Bohemia there,” he said. “I think I give Baltimore pride. We humanize the city. We make it popular, he said, crediting other Baltimore storytellers, from Barry Levinson to The Wire creators, with continuing to frame the city through the lives of its citizens. “We all made it about the peculiar people,” he said. “That’s why people connect to it.”

With a body of work that has been dissected by critics, celebrated by institutions, and embraced by younger generations, I asked if he ever felt misunderstood. “No,” he said. I’ve been understood right from the beginning,” And as for misgivings, he said there was only one. “The only regret I have is smoking. I haven’t had a cigarette in 8,149 days. I write it down every day.”

This ability to track regrets while continuing to push limits is at the core of who Waters is. Asked if there was anything he turns away from, he didn’t hesitate. “Sure — racism, stupidity, homophobia, transphobia,” he said. “But at the same time, I try to figure out what causes that and make that person laugh so they’ll listen and maybe change their mind.”

For first-timers attending The Naked Truth, Waters offered a simple piece of advice:
“Don’t call the police,” he said. Still, he said most audiences know exactly what they’re getting into. “I do ask, ‘Are you on a first date? Good luck.’ It will either resolve in marriage, or it will be the worst date ever.” For me 45 years ago, it resolved in marriage. Thanks, John.

John Waters brings The Naked Truth to the Avalon Theatre on May 9. Tickets are available at avalonfoundation.org. And for those attending the post-show group therapy passes, bring your camera– and maybe an issue or two.

Over the last few years, Meredith Davies Hadaway has increasingly been seen as the region’s foremost eco-poet as she draws on her time on the Eastern Shore and her love for the Chester River.

That is why Hadaway will be headlining the upcoming Spy Night at the Avalon on May 7th.  She will read from her new book, Among the Many Disappearing Things, a collection of poems that commemorate both the beauty and the fragility of Eastern Shore life and landscapes.

She will be joined by special guest, poet Deidra Greenleaf Allan.

Here is a sample of her work.

This video is approximately one minute in length. For tickets, please go here.

Spy Nights with Meredith Davies Hadaway
with Guest Deidra Greenleaf Allan
Stoltz Listening Room
Doors: 5:30pm / Event: 6:00pm
May 7, 2025

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On Sunday afternoon, at The Ebenezer Theater in Easton, the Hesper Quartet, a Korean-American string quartet based in New York City, charmed the audience with the music of Benjamin Britten and Bedřich Smetana. The quartet was then joined by Chinese pianist Ying Li for a piano quintet by Dmitri Shostakovich. The result: technical mastery, inspirational interpretation, and flawless execution. The concert was held in memory of Anne Moran, who served on the Board of Chesapeake Music and co-chaired the organization’s International Chamber Music Competition.

Last year, the Hesper Quartet swept Silver Medals at the Chesapeake International Music Competition, Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, Lyon International String Quartet Competition, and the Yellow Springs Chamber Music Competition. And just last weekend, the Quartet won first prize at the St. Paul Chamber Music Competition.

Yi Ling was the First Prize winner of the 2021 Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions, as well as the recipient of the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival Prize and the Tri-1 Noon Recitals Prize, in addition to a host of other awards. 

The Hesper Quartet played Britten’s Three Divertimenti for String Quartet, which Britten wrote in his early 20s and created to represent character portraits of various school friends, sometimes referred to as Go play, boy, play.

The second piece was Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1 (“From My Life”) which is a four-movement autobiographical piece which includes memories of his youth, some nationalistic references, a tribute to his wife, and the final movement which correlates with his declining health and the reckoning of his mortality. Its notable features include a prominent viola solo in the first movement and a sustained harmonic E by the first violinist in the last movement. 

The Shostakovich Piano Quintet in G Minor consists of five movements—a Prelude, Fugue, Scherzo, Intermezzo, and Finale. The Quartet captured the essence of much of Shostakovich’s music, which is characterized by emotion, sharp contrasts, and technical complexity. 

The Hesper Quartet and pianist Ying Li did more than justice to each of these pieces and received a well-deserved standing ovation for their artistry and interpretations. 

Next up on the Chesapeake Music calendar is the much-awaited Chamber Music Festival, which offers six concerts from June 6 through 14, including some with the world-renowned Juilliard Quartet. Subscriptions and individual tickets for the Festival are available on ChesapeakeMusic.org. 

Editor’s note: The Spy has proudly supported the Chesapeake Film Festival since 2010. Over the past fifteen years, we’ve explored various ways to share with our Mid-Shore readers just how fortunate we are to have a festival that consistently delivers thoughtful, engaging, and artistically rich programming.

This year, we’re expanding that commitment by co-producing a monthly podcast with CFF executive director Cid Walker Collins and her devoted team of volunteers. The series will feature in-depth conversations about the films being presented throughout the year, offering listeners a behind-the-scenes look at the creative forces behind them.

Cid will be joined by Irene Magafan, the festival’s new board president, as well as guest hosts who will interview filmmakers, writers, and actors about the art and craft of cinema. These discussions will offer both artistic insight and cultural context, underscoring the value of experiencing these screenings in our own community.

In this first episode of Chesapeake Screen, Cid speaks with Irene Magafan about her work as a filmmaker, her deep passion for cinema, and how her vision aligns with the Chesapeake Film Festival’s enduring mission.

This podcast is approximately ten minutes in length.  For more information and ticket sales, please go here.

Upcoming CFF – Talbot County Free Library partnership screenings: 

• April 30: River — In honor of Earth Day, experience this breathtaking documentary narrated by Willem Dafoe, exploring the vital role of rivers in our ecosystem and culture.

• May 21: Conclave — Dive into the intrigue of this Oscar-nominated film starring Ralph Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini, a gripping narrative of power and secrecy.

• June 21: Wicked — Get ready for a wild and wonderful cinematic journey with this theatrical masterpiece starring Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, and Jeff Goldblum.

Long Reach Farm by Larry Horowitz

What if the earth could sing—and we stopped to listen?

That’s the idea behind Earth Music, a new exhibit opening April 4 at Spiralis Gallery in Easton. It combines the work of Dane Tilghman and Larry Horowitz—two painters with very different styles and backgrounds but with something in common—a shared connection to land, memory, and story.

Tilghman’s paintings often focus on the African American experience, pulling from the visual language of the Harlem Renaissance, blues and jazz, and old black-and-white photos. Horowitz paints landscapes—vivid, textured, and full of feeling. Spiralis Gallery owner Gail Patterson saw a kind of thread running through their work: not the same stories, but the same quiet force.

“I think the show—Earth Music—speaks volumes about how and what the earth could tell us if we listened,” said Patterson. “Joys and sorrows, beauty and horrors, history both known and silent, from both of their perspectives and brushes.”

When asked what Earth Music meant to him, Tilghman said. “I believe the earth definitely has a rhythm. “It’s a spiritual rhythm, I believe, also a very cultural rhythm, for sure.”

Horowitz came at it from another angle but landed in a similar place. “I’m very sensitive to the tides, the wind, the earth, nature, animals, birds—everything influences me when I’m out there and doing my painting,” he said. “So for me, ‘rhythm of the land’ is sort of my mantra. You might say it’s what I’m after when I paint.”

Patterson called the pairing “serendipitous… kind of ‘spiralis’-like,”—referring to the gallery’s name and the idea of things moving in a spiral formation. “Sometimes we’re close, and sometimes we collide in ways we don’t see,” she said.

That concept is alive in this exhibit and the artists, but, as Tilghman noted, both are rooted in something deeper. “I’m painting people,” he said. “Larry’s painting landscapes. But those people—I’m sure, have passed through those same landscapes. That’s the bridge, right there. I’m working from old black-and-white photos, and a lot of those folks are long gone. But they were there.”

Horowitz looked at it from the painter’s side. “A painting is made up of wooden stretchers, bars, linen canvas, hemp paint—all inanimate objects,” he said. “We take these physical things, and we manipulate them with shapes, tones, colors, and we make this inanimate art have a heartbeat. It becomes something much greater than the sum of its parts. And I think that’s what connects both of us.”

3 Boys and a Wagon Dane by Dane Tilghman

For Patterson, it wasn’t about finding two artists who do the same thing—it was about finding two who evoke the same response. “There was a commonality in the work for me as a collector and as a gallerist,” she said. “Both Dane and Larry’s work are highly evocative for me. I look at the landscapes Larry paints, and I can close my eyes and imagine the light changing, the leaves falling, and the breeze. I can feel who and what might have passed—person, raccoon, deer—through that landscape. Who might have been on that boat?”

Of one of Tilghman’s pieces, the Oyster Tonger, she said. “I look at him and wonder: is he out there because he wants to be, or because he has to be?”

“There’s a story in both of their work,” she said of the artists. “That’s what pulled me in.”

Horowitz talked about how painting, for him, isn’t just about a moment—it’s about the accumulation of moments. “I think of the Impressionists,” he said. “They tried to go after a moment in time. I paint the passage of time. While the painting is being painted—let’s say en plein air—the sky changes. A bird flies by. Someone walks into my picture plane. I put them in. Dane also is painting, in a way, the passage of time.”

Tilghman agreed that his work often highlights people history tends to overlook. “My philosophy is that these particular people might not be important in life now, but they were important to somebody,” he said. “So I want to honor their existence on earth.”

That presence shows in the work and in Patterson’s description of Tilghman’s Two in a Field. “It has almost a vague impressionist quality. It’s not exactly strictly figurative, like photographic. On the first pass, I think, my Lord, this is just beautiful. The colors speak to me,” she said. “And then I look deeper, and I realize it’s two Black Americans in times of enslavement, picking cotton with the cotton sacks trailing out behind them. I had to pause when I looked at that piece because it made me think—why was I experiencing such a beautiful feeling from something that was such a horror for our country?”

But that’s what makes interesting art, she said—the fact that it is story-driven, for instance, in Horowitz’s painting South Carolina Sunrise. “There are boats. And I wonder—did they just go out? Are they coming back? Who’s on board? What’s the story?”

Horowitz agreed. A painting is almost like an onion,” he said. “You look at it, and you might get that first facial reaction. Hopefully you fall in love—you separate yourself from the distresses of life. But then you bring it home, or you go back to look at it again in the museum or the gallery, and your mood changes. The world changes. We keep peeling those layers of the onion off.”

He added, “And I think it’s very true in Dane’s work, especially. Yes, he’s painting something from the past. Someone might see it as beautiful, decorative shapes and colors. But there’s just so much to it. There’s so much that Dane has put into it and so much that the viewer can bring to it. It’s not what you put in a painting—it’s what you leave out that’s so important.”

Tilghman said he hopes his paintings keep telling their own story long after they’re hung on a wall. “It should make me smile,” he said. “So it’s an eternal piece.”

Earth Music, then, is about stories. Not just art you look at, but art that asks you to stop—and listen.

The show opens with a meet-the-artists reception on April 4 and 5, from 5 to 7 p.m., at Spiralis Gallery in Easton. It runs through the end of April. Spiralis is located at 35 Dover St in Easton.

Tred Avon Players (TAP) continues its 2025 season with The Man From Earth, a thought-provoking sci-fi drama by Richard Schenkman. Based on the book by Jerome Bixby and directed by Cecile Storm, the production runs from April 17 to 27 at the Oxford Community Center. Season passes and individual show tickets are available at www.tredavonplayers.org.

Hailed as one of the most intelligent science fiction stories ever written, The Man From Earth follows John Oldman, a retiring professor who stuns his colleagues with an extraordinary secret that challenges history, mortality, and the unknown. What begins as an impromptu farewell gathering quickly spirals into a gripping intellectual and emotional battle as his friends struggle to separate fact from fantasy.

The Spy talked to Cece last week about the play and the fun of putting Sci-Fi on the stage.

This video is approximately three minutes in length.

The cast includes Greg Allis (John), Maddie Megahan (Harriet), Mary Ann Emerson (Edith), Zack Schlag (Dan), Cavin Moore (Sandy), Chris Agharabi (Art), Jenny Weske (Linda), and Corrie James(Lily).

Special Easter Weekend Performance Schedule

The Man From Earth opens on Thursday, April 17, and runs for seven performances through Sunday, April 27. Due to Easter Sunday falling on opening weekend, TAP will offer two performances on Saturday, April 19, at 2:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. instead of a Sunday matinee. This adjustment allows cast, crew, and audience members to enjoy the holiday with family and friends.

Tickets & Show Information

Tickets are $25 for adults and $15 for students (fees included). Preview Night (April 17) and matinees sell out quickly! Tickets are available online at www.tredavonplayers.org or at the door before each performance (while seats last).