Collaboration with The Talbot Spy lets film buffs enjoy sneak peaks and discussions with  Festival’s award-winning producers and directors 

The Chesapeake Film Festival (‘CFF”) is thrilled to announce a  dynamic new media partnership with The Talbot Spy! Together, CFF is launching an exclusive  monthly podcast series packed with the latest festival news, behind-the-scenes stories, and in-depth conversations with the creative minds behind this year’s films. Get insider access to  filmmakers, producers, and directors, and don’t miss special appearances by industry standouts  like, Rebekah Louisa Smith, The Pearl Comb, Spirit of Place and When Everything Was Blue, Kimberly Skyrme, Now What?, The Other You and Lives Beyond Motion, Harold Jackson, The  Novelist, Monda Raquel Webb, Mother Knows Best and Francisco Salazar, Colibri. Subscribe to  The Talbot Spy, follow Chesapeake Film Festival on social media, or visit our website  www.chesapeakefilmfestival.com and subscribe to receive news to catch every exciting  episode!  

Early Bird Tickets are now on sale 

Save your seat and save money by purchasing early-bird tickets to the Chesapeake Film  Festival, October 10-12, showcasing over 45 of the finest independent and student films in  historic downtown Easton. Enjoy 17% off the standard $150 ticket price and guarantee yourself  a seat at the Festival’s top screenings at the beautifully renovated Ebenezer Theater, the  Academy Art Museum, and the Talbot County Free Library. Tickets sold out online for the 2024  festival almost a month prior to opening night, so don’t hesitate to reserve your spot today. Click  here for online registration www.chesapeakefilmfestival.com. 

Free Monthly Film Series Continues at the Talbot County Free Library and Oxford  Community Center 

The Chesapeake Film Festival (CFF) and the Talbot County Free Library launched their  collaborative monthly film series in March, celebrating the Library’s 100th Anniversary and  CFF’s 18th Season.  

Coming up next: Wicked on June 21 at 2 PM, followed by Jaws on July 12 at 2 PM,  and Avatar: The Way of Water on Saturday, August 2 at 2 PM—all held at the Talbot County 

Free Library in historic downtown Easton. Part of the Our Bay, Our World, Our Festival series,  these screenings are perfect midweek and weekend cultural escapes, with selections for all ages. 

In addition, a special free screening of Hidden Figures will take place at the Oxford  Community Center on Wednesday, August 6 at 6 PM. This powerful film honors the  contributions of African American women mathematicians at NASA during the space race. 

The series wraps with a free, back-by-popular-demand screening of the American  Masters documentary WYETH on Saturday, September 13 at 2 PM, celebrating the life and  work of American realist painter Andrew Wyeth. 

Upcoming Film Highlights & Key Dates 

• June 21: Wicked —2PM – Talbot County Free Library 
• July 12: Jaws – 2PM — Talbot County Free Library, 2PM 
• August 2: Avatar the Way of Water – 2PM — Talbot County Free Library • August 6: Hidden Figures – 6PM — The Oxford Community Center with panel  discussion  
• September 13: WYETH – 2PM — Talbot County Free Library 
• October 10 to 12 – Chesapeake Film Festival – Ebenezer Theater, Academy Art  Museum and Talbot County Free Library – For Tickets and information visit  www.chesapeakefilmfestival.com 

All June, July, August and September screenings are free and open to the public. No  reservations required.  

CFF programming is brought to you by our generous sponsors the Maryland State Arts Council,  Talbot Arts, Maryland Humanities Council, The Artistic Insights Fund, Richard and Beverly  Tilghman, Talbot County Free Library, The William Lucks Professional Group powered by  Keller Williams Realty, Laser Letters and by generous patrons like you.  

For more information on how to become a sponsor or volunteer or to purchase tickets, please  visit www.chesapeakefilmfestival.com. 

A dynamic season of classical favorites, hidden gems, and intimate chamber performances across the Delmarva Peninsula

Delmarva Peninsula— The Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is proud to unveil its 2025–2026 season, Bold Voices, Eternal Resonance, led by Music Director Michael Repper. With performances spanning Maryland and Delaware, the MSO continues its commitment to delivering world-class orchestral music to the Delmarva region through masterworks concerts, holiday traditions, a celebrated concerto competition, and an expanding chamber ensemble series.

“This season celebrates bold musical voices—some long celebrated, others newly rediscovered—and the timeless resonance of their work,” said Michael Repper, Music Director. “Each program is designed to speak across eras and borders, and we’re excited to bring this music to our audiences with both passion and purpose.”

The season opens in September with Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances, Emilie Mayer’s Symphony No. 1, and Beethoven’s exhilarating Symphony No. 7. In November, guest conductor George Jackson, Music Director of the Amarillo Symphony, leads a compelling program featuring Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Mozart’s Symphony No. 39, and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 1.

The MSO’s cherished Holiday Joy concerts return in December with soloists Kresley Figueroa (soprano) and Jonathan Patton (baritone), bringing festive cheer to audiences in Wye Mills, Lewes, and Ocean City.

The New Year’s Eve Gala Concert on December 31 at Christ Church features soprano Viviana Goodwin and a joyful, celebratory program titled A Toast to the New Year.

In March, the MSO presents the three finalists of the Elizabeth Loker International Concerto Competition (ELICC) in performance with the whole orchestra at Todd Hall at Chesapeake College, continuing its tradition of elevating the next generation of world-class talent.

April’s program, Morning, Afternoon, Night, presents a musical journey through the day, with Haydn’s Symphonies Nos. 6, 7, and 8, paired with evocative modern works including Dobrinka Tabakova’s Dawn, Susan Day’s Afternoon Soliloquy, and Yukiko Nishimura’s Nightfall.

The season concludes in May with violinist Nora Chastain performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 and Dvořák’s Romance, culminating in a performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9.

The MSO’s Ensemble Series continues to grow with four distinct programs performed in Easton, Rehoboth Beach, and—new this season—Ocean Pines. These concerts provide audiences a more personal, close-up musical experience, showcasing the artistry of MSO musicians in chamber music settings.

The series opens in October with a Piano Quartet featuring acclaimed pianist Michael McHale (October 10–12). Holiday Brass follows in December (December 19–21), filling intimate venues with the warmth and power of brass holiday favorites.

In February, the Woodwinds & Strings program (February 6–8) will feature Prokofiev’s Quintet in G Minor, highlighting unique tonal colors and textures.The series concludes in May with an inventive Flute, Violin & Jazz Trio program (May 15–17), anchored by Claude Bolling’s Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio.

Season subscriptions and individual concert tickets are now on sale. To view the full schedule, explore concert programs, and purchase your tickets, visit www.midatlanticsymphony.org.

ABOUT THE MID-ATLANTIC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

The Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is the only professional symphony orchestra serving southern Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore with a full season of programs. The MSO is supported in part by the Maryland State Arts Council, the Talbot County Arts Council, the Worcester County Arts Council, the Sussex County (Delaware) Council, and the Community Foundation of the Eastern Shore, Inc.

A complete schedule of the 2025-2026 season’s Masterworks and Ensembles programs, including venues, times, and other details, is available at www.midatlanticsymphony.org.

Temple B’nai Israel—the Satell Center for Jewish life on the Eastern Shore—is proud to present a conversation with internationally produced playwright Andrea Stolowitz, discussing her play, The Berlin Diaries, and news of an opportunity to see it in Washington later in June.

 Andrea Stolowitz is a three-time winner of the Oregon Book Award in drama. The L.A. Times calls her work “heartbreaking” and the Orange County Register characterizes Andrea’s approach as a “brave refusal to sugarcoat issues and tough decisions.”  She is a member of New Dramatists class of 2026 and a Lacroute Playwright in Residence at the Oregon Jewish Museum Center for Holocaust Education. 

Andrea’s great-grandfather kept a diary after escaping to New York City in 1939 as a German Jew. Stolowitz goes back to Berlin to bring the story of her previously unknown ancestors to light. The record keeps as many secrets as it shares: How do people become verschollen, lost, like library books leaving only the dusty outline? How do you find a home when a family history is scattered like the torn pages of a journal entry released to the wind? How do you remember the past without transmitting the trauma to the next generations? It’s a story that resonates with all who yearn to find out about their origins, ancestors and their history.

Find out what inspired her to write the play, her actual playwriting process and all about “The Berlin Diaries” at the Temple’s June 3rd program, and then please join us when we head down to Washington, D.C. on June 18th to enjoy the Theater J matinee production of The Berlin Diaries.

Andrea’s play The Berlin Diaries was a recipient of the NYFA/NYC Mayor’s Office Award for Women in Theater, Film and TV. The Berlin Diaries was produced in five cities during 2024-25 season, with a final production in Washington, D.C. at Theater J in June, 2025

The program takes place Tuesday, June 3 at 7:00 pm, at the Temple, 7199 Tristan Drive, Easton, with a reception to follow. Admission is free. Please register at: BnaiIsraelEaston.org/event/Stolowitz

Tickets for the June 18 excursion and Theater J performance are limited. For details, registration, and more information go to: BnaiIsraelEaston.org/event/berlin_diaries_field_trip  

 Or call the Temple at 410-822-0553

Pale green and white stitching curls around a trio of beech nuts in a tiny hand-embroidered quilt in Heather Kerley’s exhibit, From Grief to Repair, on view in the Adkins Arboretum Visitor’s Center through June 27. Playful and gently colorful, it’s just one of the many intricate textile artworks and energetic watercolors that she has created as meditations on loss and healing in the natural world. There will be a reception to meet the artist and learn more about her work on Saturday, May 10, from 2 to 4 pm.

Kerley moves easily from painting to embroidery to quilting as she experiments with color, texture and patterning. Her lively series of watercolors, “Re-Kinning,” explores the cycles of birth and death. With spreading washes and casually brushed shapes that suggest bundles of frog’s eggs, seeds, lichens or tiny blossoms, these small paintings are fresh, improvisational studies of the continual changes that characterize life on earth. 

For the past several years, Kerley has twinned her work as an artist with the creation of a wildlife-friendly, native plant garden in her own yard in Bowie, MD. Most of the seeds and nuts stitched into her small “Seed Bank Quilts” were gathered there just as, for thousands of years, farmers and gardeners have saved seeds for the next year’s crop. Lovingly incorporated into the patchwork layers of patterned cloth and embroidery in her tiny quilts, they speak of regeneration and the continuity of natural cycles. 

Kerley’s deep love of nature grew from childhood summers spent camping, canoeing and hiking with her family. Her parents’ involvement in conservation efforts sparked her interest in environmental issues, but although she had an early interest in art, she became a full-time artist focusing on nature just 15 years ago. 

“It was only in the past few years that I became very involved in climate activism and combining my art with my passion for preserving a livable planet,” she said. “This rebounds on my work by inviting the use of found and upcycled materials and overlapping my art practice with my native gardening.” 

The centerpiece of the show is her large quilt, “Mourning Our Kin (23 Extinct)” featuring 23 extinct species including a pair of perky Bachman’s warblers and a Little Marianas fruit bat hanging upside-down from a leafy twig. Taking her impetus from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s 2021 proposed delisting of 23 species from the Endangered Species Act due to extinction, she “drew” these animals and plants in stitches of red thread in the tradition of “redwork” quilts. A form of decorative needlework popular in the late 19th century that often featured nature-related imagery stitched with red thread on white or off-white cloth, redwork was an especially appropriate choice because the color red, a symbol of warning and danger, as well as of life’s blood, directly conveys her alarm at the accelerating decline in biodiversity worldwide.

As a child, Kerley learned to sew and embroider from her grandmother and mother. Her skills are evident throughout the show, including in her outdoor installation of a string of quilted and embroidered “Prayer Flags” with their crisp leaf prints and fragments of paintings on paper or fabric and in several small embroidery hoops filled with multi-colored clusters of embroidery very like the animated forms in her watercolors. In all these works, she evokes a tender attention to the inborn wonder and fragility of the natural world. 

“For me, choosing to use stitching to explore our relationship with nature brings in ideas about mending, repair, connection, and healing,” she explained. “Quilts, especially, can be important and sometimes subversive holders of meaning that disarm rather than harden viewers due to their comforting associations.” 

This show is part of Adkins Arboretum’s ongoing exhibition series of work on natural themes by regional artists. It is on view April 29 through June 27 at the Arboretum Visitor’s Center located at 12610 Eveland Road near Tuckahoe State Park in Ridgely. 

For gallery hours or more information, contact Adkins Arboretum at 410-634-2847, or visit adkinsarboretum.org. 

A 400-acre native garden and preserve, Adkins Arboretum provides exceptional experiences in nature to promote environmental stewardship. 

The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is set to welcome the Antique & Classic Boat Festival and Coastal Arts Fair to its waterfront campus on June 13-15 for a Father’s Day weekend celebration of the history and artistry of timeless vessels and the people who care for them.

Now in its 37th year, the festival, organized by the Chesapeake Bay Chapter of the Antique & Classic Boat Society, offers one of the largest classic boat shows in the Mid-Atlantic region and more fun for the whole family. Highlighting this year’s theme of “Boats in Movies and Television,” a variety of sport boats that have memorably been featured on screen will be on display throughout the weekend.

This edition of the Antique & Classic Boat Festival and Coastal Arts Fair runs from 10am-5pm on Friday and Saturday and 10am-3pm on Sunday. To buy two-day festival tickets in advance and get more information, visit cbmm.org/ACBF.

A Father’s Day weekend tradition, the three-day festival celebrates antique and classic boating with more than 100 cruisers, runabouts and racers representing a wide range of makers and eras spread across CBMM’s 18-acre campus and docks. Boat enthusiasts of all ages will enjoy exploring the unique collection of visiting vessels and meeting their owners.

This year’s highlights include a collection of sport boats made famous by Hollywood, with Glastron Scimitar (“Moonraker”), Chris Craft (“On Golden Pond”), Thunderbird (“Flipper”), and Hacker (“Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”) among the notable examples.

The festival annually showcases wood, fiberglass, and metal vessels in all phases of restoration representing the historic (up to 1918), antique (1919-1942), classic (1943-1975), late classic (1976-1997), and contemporary (any wooden boat built since 1997) classes.

The Antique & Classic Boat Festival is accompanied by a juried Coastal Arts Fair with vendors exhibiting and selling a variety of unique artworks and merchandise that celebrates boating and life on and around the water. The festivities also include a Field of Dreams for those looking to buy, a nautical flea market, and children’s activities.

Food and beverages from several regional vendors will be available for purchase all three days, including a beer truck offering domestic and craft selections.

Throughout the festival in the Van Lennep Auditorium, the local chapter of the Antique & Classic Boat Society will present a series of boating history talks highlighting experts, historians, and authors sharing their knowledge on a range of topics, with many of them exploring this year’s festival theme of vessels featured in movies and TV shows.

The lineup includes a presentation from CBMM’s Chief Historian Pete Lesher titled “Coastal Contraband: Prohibition and Rum Running Off Chesapeake Bay” on Friday at noon and a special talk and tasting with Tilghman Island Seafood’s Nick Hargrove on Sunday at 1pm.

On Sunday from 11am to 3pm on Fogg’s Landing, there will be a special exhibit, “Before and After Boats: Side-By-Side,” featuring unrestored boats next to finished classics of the same type. Restorers will offer advice on how to turn a daunting boat project into a cherished classic.

Two-day tickets for the Antique & Classic Boat Festival and Coastal Arts Fair can be purchased in advance online or at the door. No single-day tickets will be sold to this rain-or-shine event.

Festival admission is set at $22 for adults, $19 for seniors (65+) and students (17+), $10 for active and retired military members, and $9 for children ages 6-to-17, with all children 5-and-younger admitted free.

CBMM members receive discounted pricing for this annual festival and others throughout the year. Adult member tickets are $10, and all children of members (17-and-younger) receive free admission. To support CBMM’s mission as a member and discover all the terrific benefits of membership, visit cbmm.org/memberships or contact Membership Services Coordinator Debbie Ruzicka at 410-745-4991 or [email protected].

Additional free event parking for Saturday’s festivities will be available at St. Michaels Middle/High School, with a complimentary shuttle service to and from CBMM.

For information on how to register a boat, become a vendor, or sign up to sell in the Field of Dreams or nautical flea market, visit chesapeakebayacbs.org.

For safety reasons, non-service dogs must be kept at home during CBMM festivals, including the Antique & Classic Boat Festival and Coastal Arts Fair. Carry-on alcohol from dock or land is prohibited.

The Spy Nights performance with Meredith Davies Hadaway and guest Deidra Greenleaf Allan, initially scheduled for May 7, 2025, has been postponed to a later date yet to be determined.