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. 

Opera soprano Rochelle Bard

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.

Thomas Hart Benton’s study for “Prodigal Son”

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. 

Best-in-Show winner by Michael Iandolo, “The Madness of Plein Air Easton”

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