Opening night of the 21st Plein Air Easton Festival on Friday, July 11, marks a holiday on the calendar for local art galleries. Much like the Waterfowl Festival in November, it will be a working holiday to accommodate all the fine-art browsers who will be checking them out during Plein Air week.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Easton had just a couple of framing shops for photographs and copies of paintings, but not a single art gallery until one opened in 1997. You could say the Troika Art Gallery – named for its trio of founders – belongs to the Millennial generation among galleries. Now, in 2025, it is no exaggeration to say that Easton has become an art destination. There are now seven art galleries downtown and another inside a marketplace a few blocks east on Dover Road.

All of them have been gearing up for Plein Air 21. 

The Troika is observing the occasion with its sixth annual “Fabulous Forgeries” exhibit. Member artists of the Troika paint replications of venerable masterpieces with tiny photo copies of the originals next to the “forgeries.” Cash awards go to the top three artists and an honorable mention chosen by a Troika-selected jurist. There’s also a popular-choice prize. But most prominent as you enter the gallery are the large- to medium-scale oils by featured artist Louis Escobedo, ranging from a wintry “Glider,” a bird in flight over a gleaming stream, to what almost qualifies as a “Fabulous Forgery” of a Degas ballerina. Escobedo calls his version “Some Paint and Blue.” 

Jill Basham’s “Under the Tuscan Moon” at Trippe Gallery

Further along Harrison Street, past the Tidewater Inn on the right, is the next oldest downtown art gallery, celebrating Plein Air 21 with two popular opening-night features of the past four years. One is “Variations 4.0: 1 Photograph, 14 Paintings” with 14 Trippe Gallery member artists painting their interpretation of a black-and-white image of an Eastern Shore scene. Cash prizes go to the winning entries. There’s also a challenge for Trippe visitors on opening night: Match the artist – several of whom are entered in the Plein Air competition – to the unsigned painting. 

Carole Boggemann Peirson’s “A Gorgeous Glimpse” at Zebra Gallery

Heading back toward the Avalon Theater – the Foundation sponsors Plein Air Easton – the Zebra Gallery features paintings by Carole Boggemann Peirson, a Dutch-born artist known for her East Coast landscapes, including “A Gorgeous Glimpse,” an oil depicting snow-swept beach dunes with a distant water view. There’s also a flight of fancy with kids riding an airborne turtle in Gabriel Lehman’s “What If?” acrylic, guarded by a pair of basswood giraffes sculpted by Joseph Cotler. 

Just around the corner on Dover, stop by Spiralis Gallery, which formerly cohabited the space that is now the Zebra’s alone. It was an amicable “divorce,” apparently, as both appear to be succeeding separately. The current “Lost and Found” exhibit of “bricolage recuperative art” features brightly colored and imaginative acrylic abstracts by Alma Roberts. On your way to the Spiralis, don’t overlook the TRA Gallery of Talbot resident artists who are not represented by any local gallery. The July show displays paintings by Nancy Lee Davis, Kathy Kopec and Mary Yancey evoking emotional memory scenes, contemporary impressionism and such representational land- and seascapes as “At the River’s Edge.”

Two more galleries beckon in opposite directions – artistically and geographically. Turn right or left on Washington Street. Turning right toward Goldsborough, you’ll encounter some Asian-influenced art at Studio B, where its owner, Betty Huang, was far away – painting in Taiwan when we visited last week. Works on view during Plein Air range from Hiu Lai Chong’s “St. Michaels Harbor” oil painting of sailboats docked at sunset, to “Room With a View,” painted with a sense of humor by Charles Newman in his depiction of a cluttered room with a distant “view”out a tiny window. There might also be a new painting by Huang upon her return from Taiwan.

Joanne Prager’s Archival Giclee print No. 15 at Zach Gallery

Taking a left on Washington, you’ll wind up your downtown tour with the most recently opened  Easton gallery. The Zach of the Prager Family Center for the Arts has extended its current gallery exhibit through July 19, which takes it through Plein Air 21. “Eastern Shore Light” marks the first show by Joanne Prager of her photographic prints of captivating landscape and waterview scenes through the year-round seasons between 2021 and 2024. Some would qualify as plein air except that they are not painted. (And, yes, Joanne Prager is married to Paul.)

For one final gallery stop, you might prefer to drive – unless you’re not thoroughly exhausted by that time. (The Market at Dover Street has free parking.) Inside, you can just browse the market or ask for directions to the gallery now filled with color drawings by members of the Botanical Art League of the Eastern Shore. Works on paper by five botanical artists are featured – most of them by the league coordinator Anne Harding. As with most, if not all galleries mentioned above, there’s a meet-the-artists reception – 5 to 7 or 8 p.m. Friday evening, opening night of Plein Air 21 – with light refreshments, including wine and cheese or whatever.

All of that should whet your appetite for the festival to come, including a nocturne paint-in by Plein Air artists following a free opening-night block party on Friday with a live performance of  a radio-style play, “Picture This,” on cordoned-off block Harrison Street. 

THE GALLERIES OF EASTON

Troika Art Gallery, 9 S. Harrison St., troikagallery.com; The Trippe Gallery, 23 N. Harrison St., thetrippegallery.com; The Zebra Gallery, 9 N. Harrison St., thezebragallery.com; Spiralis Gallery, 35 W. Dover St. spiralisgallery.com; TRA Gallery, 41 W. Dover St., talbotarts.org/resources-1; Studio B Fine Art Gallery,  7-B Goldsborough St., stuidiobartgallery.com; Zach Gallery, 17 S. Washington St., zachgalleryeaston.com; The Market at Dover Station Le Galleria, 500 Dover Rd., doverstation.com

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

Ordinarily, the closest you can get to world-class opera in Easton – or anywhere on the Eastern Shore – is taking in a Metropolitan Opera live simulcast Saturday matinee at the Avalon Theater. But on this Independence Day weekend, one of the hottest young American tenors will be in concert, solo at the Ebenezer Theater as part of the Gabriela Montero at Prager concert season. 

Michael Fabiano

Michael Fabiano, sometimes referred to as the high-flying tenor superstar, is not just because he’s performed in leading roles at opera houses all over the world. In his free time, Fabiano chills by flying small aircraft in or around New York City, near his native Montclair, New Jersey. 

Among the many classic arias he has performed in his more mature post-2016 career – Fabiano turned 41 in May – are from his debut with the Royal Danish Opera in Verdi’s “Requiem” and the title role of Faust with the Houston Grand Opera. He’s also performed several roles with the Metropolitan Opera, including Rodolfo in “La Boheme” and Alfredo in “La Traviata,” as well as his highly acclaimed interpretation of Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” at the Royal  Opera Covent Garden. 

  These are among many pieces he may perform in his solo debut at the Ebenezer on Saturday night. Or he might polish up on the role of the Duke in Verdi’s “Rigoletto” from his 2018 Los Angeles Opera debut. 

  In a recent interview with Opera World, Fabiano reserved his highest praise for Verdi as, perhaps, his favorite composer. Responding to a recent review that called him a “True Verdi Tenor,” Fabiano said that Verdi’s operas are “medicine for the voice.” Speaking as if Verdiwas still alive and writing music, he added: “He’s a centralizing composer for a large-voiced tenor” – implicitly referring to himself. 

Earlier in his career, Fabiano won both the prestigious Beverly Sills and Richard Tucker awards, the first singer to have achieved that double feat in the same year, 2014.

Pianist Bryan Wagorn will accompany Fabiano for the Easton recital. Gabriela Montero, a Venezuelan-born keyboardist, is the namesake host of the series.

***

Coming up later this month on the classical music calendar, The Birch Trio’s “Time Travels” will take you as far back as Haydn – with 100-plus symphonies to his credit as well as myriad chamber concertos – on up to contemporary composers James Cohn, Valerie Coleman and others, with a nod in between toward Romantic classical pieces.

The Birch Trio

The trio of music professionals – all residing on the Easton Shore – comprises Ashley Watkins on flute, Nevin Dawson on violin and viola, and Denise Nathanson on cello. Together, they’ll perform in concert on July 19 at the Dorchester Center for the Arts in Cambridge and on the 20th at Easton’s Christ Church.

TENOR MICHAEL FABIANO & A SHORE TRIO

Solo performance in the Gabriela Montero at Prager concert series, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Ebenezer Theater of the Prager Family Center for the Arts, Easton. Piano accompaniment by Bryan Wagorn. bluepoint.hospitality.com 

The Birch Trio, 7 p.m. Saturday, July 19, Dorchester Center for the Arts, Cambridge, and 4 p.m. Sunday, Christ Church, Easton. dorcchesterarts.org, eventbrite.com

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

It’s hard to say whether the current musicians who play under the celebrated banner of the Juilliard String Quartet are more in demand as virtuoso ensemble players or as elite teachers on the strings and chamber music faculties of their namesake Juilliard School.

Violinist/violist Catherine Cho, co-artistic director of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival along with cellist Marcy Rosen, has been a member of Juilliard’s faculty since 1996, currently teaching in the school’s Chamber Music Community Engagement Seminar. So it was no stretch for her to recruit the Juilliard Fab Four – violinists Areta Zhulla and Ronald Copes, violist Molly Carr and cellist Astrid Schween – as guest artists for the 40th anniversary Chesapeake festival, concluding this week at the Ebenezer Theater.

Week 2 of the festival opened Thursday night with Mendelssohn’s String Quintet No. 1 in A Major performed with Cho on violin with a fellow Chesapeake Music regular, violist Daniel Phillips, along with three of the four Juilliard players – violinist Zhulla, violist Carr and cellist Scheen. If the five-string piece strikes you as exuberantly youthful, consider that Mendelssohn was not quite 20 when he composed it and completed a revision at 24. (His prolific career was cut short by premature death at age 38.)

Even with a melancholic opening, a quintet of strings can establish a vigorous chamber presence, which this one did with relish. A solo theme lyrically played by violinist Zhulla surrenders to a contrapuntal conversation involving all five strings punctuated by an energetically impatient staccato motif. The second movement, an intermezzo, suggests a hymn-like awakening that leads to a restless range of melodies ending with a lone pluck. The third movement scherzo introduces busy viola turns of phrasing by Carr and Phillips overtaken at a mercurial pace by all strings on hand and Schween’s declarative cello statement that sounds like authority or maybe a bit of rebellion. The final movement solves all that with confident notes by all five players, each striving for attention like a youngster eager to grow up.

Tara Helen O’Connor

Next up was Louise Farrenc’s Trio in E Minor for Flute, Cello and Piano with longtime Chesapeake Music regular Tara Helen O’Connor and festival co-artistic director Rosen, on flute and cello respectively, accompanied by pianist Wynona Wang.

Farrenc was quite the exception among female 19th-century musicians or composers who gained any attention at all. In 1843, she won the position of professor of piano at the Paris Conservatory, the only woman to do so in all that century – in part because she held the position for 30 years. She also, perhaps an even greater achievement, was to be recognized as a celebrated composer. Only American Amy Beach a few generations later came close to matching Farrenc’s success as a woman in classical music. Perhaps that’s why her 1861-62 trio is so ebulliently cheerful. Farenc was particularly prolific as a composer of chamber music. Her final piece – the one for flute, cello and piano – had very few precedents back then and even now.

An assertive series of chords, principally played by flutist O’Connor, launches the first movement before introducing the minor-key theme shared by flute and cello, the latter played by Rosen, both with the aplomb of musicians who have performed together for decades. Together the three instruments play multiple roles as the cello doubles the piano’s bass line while Wang skillfully accompanies the flute in its upper register with her right-hand on the keyboard, leading to a sweepingly lyrical first movement denouement. The second movement feels as if someone in the trio would break out in song at any moment amid harmonic turns from dark to light, while the third movement scherzo offers with its return to the opening theme a chance for the players and audience alike to relax and sort of dance to the music in their seats. In the finale, Farenc’s lyricism sparkles with bright tones and light-hearted flavors that close out with an E-major boom of celebratory musical fireworks.

Following intermission, the Juilliard guest ensemble performed Bedrich Smetana’s concert headliner “From My Life,” also known as the String Quartet No. 1 in E-Minor. Molly Carr, in previewing for the audience the four movements of “From My Life,” said her instrument has been described as the “heart-renderer of doom.” Perhaps. But in this case it is Smetana’s own life story as represented in his famous string quartet that is heart-rending. Smetana himself called the first movement of his autobiographical piece a romantically inspired portrait of his youthful dream to be a great artist along with a darker foreboding of the then-unknown future.

The Juilliard violist who introduced the piece also opens it with a prominent solo soon supported as the other three players join in before a dramatic solo by Areta Zhulla in the first violin chair. The second movement, recalling his love of dance, is sketched out as a Czech polka that moves from the innocence of a 6-year-old to a party animal followed by a bit of swooning undercurrent on cello by Astrid Schween and concluding with hints of a troubled future, played on viola, of course. A romantic cello solo ushers in the third movement ode to the love of Smetana’s life, his wife. Sweepingly off-their-feet expressions of endearment are portrayed instrumentally, especially in the perfect syncopation of violinists Zhulla and Ronald Copes. The final movement opens with a joyful remembrance of his sheer joy for dance. But it all comes to a literally screeching halt as the sudden high-pitch E note reminds him of his loss of hearing two years before composing this masterpiece. The note reminded Smetana of his tinnitus, a ringing of the ears, that presaged his deterioration. Other somber viola notes of loss and regrets – syphilis ultimately caused his deafness – ends the piece with a single pluck of a single string.

There’s still more to come, with two nights of Chesapeake chamber concerts, Friday and Saturday, including more from the Juilliard String Quartet.

A sylvan serenade including actual songbirds tweeting, unrehearsed, with the human players who led a “Forest Music” concert spread out along a trail at Ridgely’s Adkins Arboretum. The musicians, participants in the National Music Festival in Chestertown through Saturday night, performed in a multi-disciplinary artistic event that also introduced 12 new outdoor sculptures by mid-Atlantic artists. Together they created a “Sensory Sensation” matinee on Thursday.

Melissa Burley’s “Optimistic Dwellings”

Crossing a pedestrian bridge near the start of a woodland trail, we were greeted by a pair of string solos performed by Peijun Xu and Harmony Grace, both “apprentices” – student performers in the annual festival based at Washington College. Xu played the Bach Suite No. 3 written for cello but played here on viola. A complex and demanding piece but easy to listen to with its vibrantly shifting tempos and key signatures, the suite was performed with a confident rigor by this accomplished apprentice. Grace followed with her violin solo interpretation of a Meditation from the opera Thais by Massenet. More subdued in tempo than the Bach suite, as you would expect for a meditation, Grace played it with a dignified solemnity in an operatically tragic and romantic vein.

We next encountered a set of familiar duets performed by mentors to the festival apprentices: Jennifer Parker Harley on flute and Jared Hauser, delivering lively selections from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” deftly rearranged for oboe instead of the clarinet as originally composed. Taking a left off the main trail, we heard the unmistakable percussive notes of a xylophone thumped by an apprentice, Matthew Kerlach. He played new improvisations by a contemporary composer, Tyler Klein, a friend of the performer.

It was a long walk between musicians on the trails – and for good reason. The players were stationed at sufficient distances that you could barely, if at all, hear music emanating from one station to the next. In between, you could, and still can through September, 12 site-specific sculptures under the heading of “Artists in Dialogue with Landscape.” Among those we took in along the way was Melissa Burley’s “Optimistic Dwellings,” comprised of rocks covered on top with moss and pine twigs. Further on we puzzled over the title of Chris Combs’ “Board/Bits,” a series of bars on a wooden slab marking time incrementally in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and years. Another puzzler, mostly because it’s hard to distinguish one type of object from another, is Mark Robarge’s “Memory Returned Like Spring,” which challenges you to identify manmade objects apart from ones created by nature.

Meanwhile, you still have a couple of days to enjoy live music by mentors and apprentices alike in the final two days of the National Music Festival.

Chesapeake and National Music Fests
Week 2 opener: “From My Life” concert featuring the Juilliard String Quartet, Thursday night, Ebenezer Theater in Easton.
Upcoming: “Quartets Old and New,” Friday, June 13, and “Festival Finale,” Saturday, June 14, both at 7:30 p.m. chesapeakemusic.org

“Forest Music”: National Music Festival musicians, Thursday, Adkins Arboretum, Ridgely.
Upcoming: 3:30 p.m., Friday, June 13, Festival Brass Ensemble, Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Chestertown; 7:30 p.m. Friday, Festival Symphony Orchestra, Brahms Symphony No. 1 and more. “My Harps Will Go On,” Eric Sabatino, and “Friends of Camilo Carrara,” 2 p.m. Saturday, June 14, Hotchkiss Recital Hall, and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Festival Symphony Orchestra finale, Stravinsky’s “Consecration of Spring,” a Mahler allegro and more, Washington College. nationalmusic.us

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