Sunday’s matinee Interlude concert, billed as “Chamber Music Reimagined,” featured two alumni players from Chesapeake Music’s annual International Chamber Competition for Young Professionals. Ensemble 132, a collective of 11 musicians, of whom five performed before a packed house at the Ebenezer Theatre in Easton, featured two members of Trio St. Bernard – cellist Zachary Mowitz and pianist Sahun Sam Hong – who won the competition in 2018. 

“We’ve been returning every year since,” Mowitz said, addressing the audience between the opening Piano Trio in A Major by Haydn and Hong’s arrangement for piano quartet of Robert Schumann’s “Carnaval,” plus the concert finale, Stravinsky’s challenging “Petrouchka” ballet.

Haydn was the most prolific composer of the 18th- to 19th-century classical period, with a prodigious 106 symphonies that won him the unofficial title of “Father of the Symphony.” But he also earned the nickname “Father of the String Quartet” and that of piano trios (he wrote 45 of the latter.) As a mentor to Mozart, Haydn composed fewer quartets and trios after his genius student surpassed him in that art form. His Trio in A Major, performed by Hong and Mowitz with violinist Stephanie Zyzak, opens with a cheerful allegro moderato that flows irresistibly in what seems so easy for this threesome. The middle movement andante is more subdued as the strings weep as if haunted by regrets. But the allegro finale recovers from this brief despair with chirping syncopations that lead to a happy ending.

Schumann’s “Carnaval,” subtitled “21 Little Scenes on Four Notes,” was composed in the 1830s for solo piano, which Hong deftly arranged instead for Ensemble 132’s piano quartet. I lost count of the 21 sections of the piece, as many are not marked by a discernible pause. An assertive opening inspired by variations on a Schubert theme yields to refrains from the strings – now including violist Luther Warren – responding to the pianist’s insistent calls to attention ranging from near whispers of notes to a playful romp before surrendering to a romantic finish with happy/sad solo diversions for each instrument.

After intermission, the program moves into the 20th century with African-American composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s String Quartet No. 1 (“Calvary”), now including violinist Abi Fayette in the first chair for the concert’s Act II. Named for Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the black Romantic-era composer from Britain, Perkinson’s wide-ranging career is reflected in his interests in jazz, working as a pianist, as well as film scores and pop arrangements for Marvin Gaye and Harry Belafonte. His classical works are marked by a contemporary sound that anticipated modern trends with blues, spirituals, and jazz influences fused with Baroque inspirations.

His musically abstract sensibility and emotional complexity are most often led assertively in each change in mood by violinist Fayette on pianist Hong’s cue. The second movement adagio, opens with plucking notes to Warren’s brief viola solo just before violins and cello amplify melancholic passages to a pizzicato heartbeat. The third movement rondo, opens with bold dual violin statements joined in by lower strings, providing a train-like undercurrent culminating in a decisive unison conclusion.

While pianist Hong also arranged the solo piano piece (Schumann’s) for a quartet, scaling up from a full-orchestra ballet presents far more obstacles – no brass or woodwinds, not to mention dancers. It helps listeners of this rearrangement to know a little about the plot of “Petrouchka.”

The first of the four Tableaux of Stravinsky’s ballet set in Russia opens with the piano and first violin together preceding the other three string players who make their separate entrances into what we must leave to our imagination – the Shrovetide Fairgrounds of St. Petersburg. Jaunty dance numbers based on Russian folk tunes are introduced by a single piano note or two. The chamber quintet’s performance palette paints a celebratory picture that unfolds the story of three puppets brought to life by a magician. (We get the jaunty dance numbers played robustly by the ensemble). As for living, breathing puppets, my only experience is “Pinocchio.” But that’s another story.

The next two tableaux take place, first in the room of Petrouchka, who has fallen in love with the lovely former puppet, Ballerina. You can hear Petrouchka’s heart pounding to a pizzicato beat. But the music turns downbeat as the scene shifts to The Moor’s room, where Ballerina has fled Petrouchka’s entreaties in favor of his rival’s.

In the final tableau, nightfall descends on the Shrovetide Fair, where Petrouchka’s jealous rage leads – spoiler alert! – to his murder. The cacophony of his demise is captured in folk minuets that break up with mad atonal intensity into mind games of deranged humiliation that costs puppet Petrouchka his life mere hours after he first drew breath – about a half hour in concert time. (And to think: Pinocchio only sprouted a really long nose.)

Even without a plot outline to guide us, Ensemble 132’s performance of this impossibly complex reduction of full orchestra instrumentation to that of five feverishly skilled musicians is a remarkable achievement both for the players and their fellow pianist/arranger. Maybe they should try it in the future with a silent video backdrop of vintage scenes from the ballet. 

CHESAPEAKE MUSIC INTERLUDE CONCERT

Ensemble 132 performed at Ebenezer Theatre, Easton, on Sunday, March 10. The next Chesapeake Music event is its annual International Chamber Music Competition, April 13-14, at the Ebenezer. chesapeakemusic.org

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

For a few hours on Thursday night, the Avalon Theatre’s Stolz Listening Room felt like Nashville’s venerable Bluebird Café. Alaina Stacey and Madeleine Kelson, two singer/songwriters, childhood friends from Chicago now living and working in Nashville, brought a Bluebird-style “song swap” to the Avalon Theatre’s cozy Slotz Listening Room. 

A “song swap” — songwriters taking turns sharing their songs — works best when the songs are compelling, and the performers share a musical style (but are not so similar that their songs blend together).  That was certainly the case with Stacey and Kelson. They have both been writing songs since they were in High School (and before), and one of the joys of the concert was seeing how their songwriting has progressed. Their newest work is by far their strongest.

Stacey has a way of singing about unrequited love without being maudlin or weepy. She, for example, told the audience all about her first, high-school, love, someone who was never too interested in her: “I’m gonna get over you/I’m gonna say that we’re through/I’m going to go on my way/but not today.”  The catchy I Would, begins memorably: “I don’t’ remember how it started/but it ended with your stuff in boxes.”  I Would has all the makings of hit – powerful lyrics, a memorable chorus, and a strong vocal performance.

Some of Stacey’s songs were a bit more explicit about her mood, such as Love Me Like It’s Nothing (“It doesn’t have to be forever/call it whatever/take it night by night.  If it’s you and me together/call it whatever/’long as it’s you and me tonight”) or her opener, Jonesing, about how much she longs for a certain guy.  In the standout “If I Were a Song,” Stacey reaches out to an old lover, asking, “Would you put me back on/if I were a song?”

Stacey’s offerings were not all love songs. She sang about planning her own funeral (“Thank you for making my life/truly/a wild thing of beauty”), and about trying to protect a girl who she knew of only from a bit of graffiti in a club (“dangerous isn’t all it’s cracked up to be”). Take Care of The Baby is tearjerker about her (not much) younger brother, one of the loveliest songs I have heard about the bond between siblings (“Mama tried to separate us/but she always did underestimate us”).

Kelson’s rich, smokey voice brought a warm authority to many of her songs. Where the Spirit Meets the Muscle, the title of her latest EP (and perhaps a nod to Where the Spirit Means the Bone by one of her clearest influences, Lucinda Willaims) is a powerful example.    “She loves me like I’m worth all of the trouble,” she sings, conveying a powerful bond with her fiancée .  One of her newest songs, Pretty Wings, shows how much her songwriting has matured: “I was a kite/going wherever the wind blows/it felt like freedom/till I saw the rope.”  It’s no wonder Kelson chose Pretty Wings for her entry into NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert competition.  

Her take on the John Prine standard Angel from Montgomery highlighted the winning weariness that often seems to creep into Kelson’s own songs. That sweet, melancholy tone was also evident on Only One to Blame, which Kelson, rightly, introduced by saying, “this is the saddest of my many sad songs” and on Hard Wired (For Letting Go), about the challenge of making a life in music, being on the road, and missing home.

Kelson put down her guitar and moved to keyboards for a few songs, most memorably, Make You Proud, a complex and moving song about her mother and the various debts Kelson owes her (“Do you hold your breath, so that I can keep on breathing?”).

After an evening of songs that were on the sad end of the emotional spectrum, Kelson and Stacey encored by joining together on a song dating back to Kelson’s time singing with her sister (as The Kelson Twins), a light-hearted tune about a friend of theirs who refused to take no for answer from a guy, Honey Let That Poor Boy Be.  It was the perfect way to end a great show. 

The show at the Avalon was the last show of Kelson and Stacey’s joint tour. But it is a terrific time to explore their music.  Kelson just released her latest EP, WHERE THE SPIRIT MEETS THE MUSCLE, last month. In May, Stacey will release DAY, the middle of a trio of EP’s (DAWN, DAY, DUSK) which, she explains, “reflect different sonic and emotional moments in my life.”  

Alejandro Gomez

Three of the best young classical musicians in the world will be performing as finalists in the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s Elizabeth Loker International Concerto Competition on Sunday, March 24, at 3 PM at the Todd Performing Arts Center at Chesapeake College. They emerged in two rounds of judging of 155 musicians ages 12 to 25 from Maryland, Delaware and 22 states, as well as China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Israel and Canada.

Sophia Geng, Rebekah Hou and Alejandro Gomez Pareja will be performing in competition, backed by the entire Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the youngest conductor to ever win a Grammy-award for Best Orchestral performance, Michael Repper.  Most other major competitions worldwide are performed only with piano accompaniment.  This unique opportunity to perform with a leading professional symphony orchestra has attracted record entries worldwide, competing for major cash prizes and global honors.

Sophia Geng is a junior at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. She started studying violin at age 5, and also studies at the New England Conservatory of Music Preparatory School.  She is in the piano trio program in the Chamber Intensive Performance Seminar and plays in the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra as a first violinist.  Earlier, she was a scholarship holder at the Phil and Eli Taylor Academy for Young Artists, and made her European Orchestral debut with the London City Philharmonic after winning the London International Concerto Competition.  She will perform Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 35.

Alejandro Gomez Pareja of Madrid, Spain began playing cello at the tender age of four.  He has performed as a soloist with the National Youth Symphony of Catalonia, Andres Segovia Chamber Orchestra and Dreamers Orchestra.  In 2022, he performed with Orquesta Sinfonia de Barcelona, National de Catalunya and Orchestra de Caen.  An undergraduate student at Escuela Reina Sofia in Madrid, he is a second-place winner of the Pablo Casals International Chamber Competition. He will perform Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1.

Rebekah Hou is currently pursuing a master’s degree in harp performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music. A graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy and the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM), Rebekah was a prizewinner at the 2013 CIM Concerto Competition and received the Anne Adams Award from the American Harp Society’s National Foundation Competition in 2022.  She has appeared as principal harpist with the Akron Symphony, Firelands Symphony and Mansfield Symphony, and received fellowships from Round Top Orchestral Institute, Chautauqua Festival, Interlochen Arts Camp’s World Youth Symphony Orchestra and Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra of the United States. She will perform Albert Ginastera’s Concerto for Harp and Orchestra, Opus 25.

Michael Repper, now in his second year as music director of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, Delmarva Peninsula’s only fully professional classical orchestra, is excited – and for good reason – about the third annual Elizabeth Loker International Concerto Competition, which brings to the concert stage for the first time three finalists competing for top prize with performances of concertos each has chosen with the full orchestra accompanying them as soloists.

While this is not unique among all classical music competitive events, for the most part, only those known worldwide, such as the Van Cliburn competition named for the American who famously won the 1958 Tchaikovsky International Competition in the USSR back then, conclude with a play-off finale among three finalists – though in the case of the Van Cliburn, they’re all pianists.

Previously, this third annual MSO competition had three finalists playing their concertos with piano accompaniment. Only the winner of that trio got to perform with the full orchestra as part of the prize.

One-hundred-fifty-five applicants from 22 states and 12 countries entered this year’s competition. Through judging by a team of MSO musicians of blind recordings by each of the young soloists, ages 12 to 25, the field was narrowed to 20 semifinalists, of which Repper himself selected the final three. A panel of regional judges will decide who among the finalists will receive cash prizes of $5,000, $2,500 and $1,000 for first-, second- and third place, respectively. There’s also a $500 audience-choice prize.

They will present a diverse program. Cellist Alejandro Gomez Pareha of Madrid, Spain, performs Shostakovich’s challenging Cello Concerto No. 1; violinist Sophia Geng of Andover, Massachusetts, plays Tchaikovsky’s popular Violin Concerto in D Major, and harpist Rebekah Hou of Cleveland performs a harp concerto, a rarity for that instrument, by Alberto Ginastera.

Aside from his considerable skills as a conductor, Repper brings a wealth of experience working with young musicians. Among the accolades he’s earned is that of the 2023 Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance shared with the New York Youth Orchestra, winning the prize over the Berlin Philharmoniker, plus renowned Oscar-winning composer John Williams and Gustavo Dudamel of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, soon to be music director of the New York Philharmonic. Repper’s  student-musicians chose the pieces on their recorded album – all by African-American women composers. (COVID prevented a live performance.)

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

The winner and runners-up will be announced on stage at the concert, March 24 at Chesapeake College’s Todd Performing Arts Center in Wye Mills.

This video is approximately seven minutes in length. For more infomraiton about the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra please go here.

In a week or so, the Spy will once again be collaborating with the Avalon Foundation on our evening program entitled Spy Nights. On the 28th, we will be taking over the Stolz Listening Room in downtown Easton for a remarkable evening of poetry with a special performance of the Word Girls.

Made up of three gifted poets—Meredith Davies Hadaway, Erin Murphy, and Amanda Newell—with strong local ties to Chestertown, Gunston School, and Washington College. They’re all set to captivate audiences with original verses that span environmental, societal, and deeply personal themes.

Our last teaser is with Amanda Newell. With strong roots in the Eastern Shore, including a long tenure teaching at the Gunston School, Amanda Newell is now an associate editor for the contemporary poetry journal “Plume”. Her poem, “A Woman from the Infant Mortality Review Board Calls” won the 2015 Patricia Dobler Poetry Prize.

This video is approximately one minute in length.

WORD GIRLS
Stoltz Listening Room
Doors: 5:30pm / Talk: 6:00pm
WED 2/28 6:00PM

All proceeds go directly to support the arts on the Mid-Shore by the Spy and the Avalon Foundation. Tickets can be purchased here.

Something magical (and spiritual) is happening this weekend. On Sunday, February 18, from 1–3 pm, the Water’s Edge Museum in Oxford, Maryland, will host Deanna Mitchell for a special presentation and conversation about the history and evolution of African American spirituals.

Deanna Mitchell

“I come from a musical background, grew up singing in church, and was naturally drawn to spirituals,” said Mitchell, who has served as the Superintendent of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park for the past six years. “I have totally embraced the history of spirituals and the connection that Harriet Tubman had with this music. So it made perfect sense for me when I was selected for this position that I dove into that aspect of her life.” 

Mitchell is deeply aware of the broader scope and significance of spirituals during slavery when they served as more than just melodies of worship. “For free blacks, spirituals were a source of connection, community, and faith. But beyond that, they also encoded hidden messages to coordinate opportunities for escape and freedom. Mitchell shared an example of a spiritual, “Go Down Moses,” which Tubman would sing upon her return to signal her return and readiness to give assistance: “Go down Moses, Way Down on Egypt land, tell old Pharaoh to let my people go.”

Over time, spirituals have continued to evolve, influencing various genres of music right into modern times. “We can see spirituals transform into what we know as blues,” said Mitchell. “And then eventually into gospel music. You can hear where that music is coming from and what it’s based on. The root of those gospel and blues songs are our spirituals. Elvis Presley was a country singer, but he understood the significance of those Negro songs, what they meant and how people embraced them.” 

Her upcoming talk at the Water’s Edge Museum will dive deeper into this history and evolution. It will be set against the backdrop of visual artist Ruth Starr Rose (1887-1965), whose paintings captured African American life in Maryland in the 1930s and 40s. There will also be singing. “We’re going to learn about how spirituals and sorrow songs and chants and field hollers (songs sung by enslaved workers) all embraced these aspects of music and how it contributed to their lives, whether it be their work, whether it be their family time, whether it be their spiritual time. I will end it where we are today and how we now interpret spirituals. So it’s going to be an engaging opportunity for everyone.” 

Mitchell envisions the event as an “unplugged, informal conversation” rather than a structured presentation. It builds upon her efforts to champion Harriet Tubman’s legacy across the Eastern Shore and forge connections between cultural institutions.

That mission resonated with the founder of the Water’s Edge Museum, Barbara Paca, who approached Mitchell about collaborating. “It was so organic. Barbara attended a program in 2022 that was held at the park, where I was a speaker. After the event, she came over, introduced herself, and said: ‘We have got to talk,'” Mitchell said.

There was an immediate realization that the two shared common goals. “Barbara and the Water’s Edge Museum are doing something important in how we build our communities and interlock with each other.”

Whether listeners are familiar with spirituals or learning their origins for the first time, Mitchell hopes they walk away with a deeper appreciation for this music and its role in history. Mitchell herself continues working to share that story. She recently brought on board Andrea Garcia, a Chesapeake Gateways Ambassador whose focus will be to build out the park’s educational component to a wider and broader audience. “We’re looking to have the students think and understand the different types of musical instruments that were used in Africa, along with the different types of dancing. The full gamut.”

After 37 years serving in federal agencies, Mitchell said her current calling feels more purposeful than ever as she builds these connections and partnerships. She wants to ensure Caroline, Talbot, and Dorchester counties are “all in this together” when it comes to uplifting Harriet Tubman’s legacy. 

And this Sunday afternoon, there will be an extraordinary opportunity to be part of a journey through the rich history of spirituals. It promises to be an enlightening and soul-stirring exploration of the music that has woven through the fabric of African American history.

Something special is happening at the Water’s Edge Museum. And Deanna Mitchell can’t wait to have you be a part of it.

—–

Spirituals in African American History
Sunday, February 18, 2024, 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm
101 Mill Street, Oxford, MD
Admission is free

Janet Fanto is an artist who is a collector of wonderful things as well as a former antique dealer.

The antique dealer part is important because that business gave her access to many pieces of her collection – pieces that were given new lives in her mixed media art in addition to pieces used to create her fascinating home.

Fanto first came to the Eastern Shore after a show in D.C. to visit with a friend.  What she remembers about that night is, “The ducks were noisy!” And that was her introduction to the mid-shore.

Between 1995 and 2008, Fanto had an antique shop in Easton as well as selling on the road.  With the economic downturn, she closed up shop but continued selling her antiques on the road in places like Texas, Chicago, Nashville, Miami, and Jacksonville.  Then gas prices went up, and prices for antiques went down, so she left the road and settled into her Cambridge home, bringing much of her collection with her.

Fanto’s art journey is engrossing!  Prior to attending the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC), majoring in ceramics, where she didn’t finish her degree, she spent a year in Vienna, Austria. Next, she wound up in Mexico for six years because she wanted to do independent study, still under the auspices of CCAC.  During her time there, she exhibited her detailed pencil drawings in Mexico City.  Then there was a stint at a Manhattan, New York, gallery doing drawing restorations, after which she was off again, this time to London and then back to Vienna to study painting at the Academy for Art.  At the time, the Academy was free for anyone.  She stayed in Austria for about 6 years.

At the Academy for Art, Fanto studied oil painting, taking all her classes in German, “The only class I needed help with was physics.”  The degree she obtained from the Academy is equivalent to a Master of Arts in U.S. schools.

Drawn back to Manhattan by her cousin, a major influence in her life, Fanto was introduced to antiquing.  Here she learned the art of selling on the road with no shop as home base, which later stood her in good stead as noted above..

Now in Cambridge, Fanto had her own studio above Joy Staniforth’s Joie de Vivre gallery for a while. “When I went to my studio, I could sit and work for hours at a time.  This period was conducive to my discovering my inclination toward mixed media.”

The day we spoke, Fanto was wearing one of her own creations,  a necklace with a pipe tobacco tamp, a wax seal that dated between 1800 and 1820 with two beehives on it, and a dog whistle.  “I take things where I find them, “she says, “including in the woods. “

Fanto’s home is like walking into a museum.  The walls are crowded floor to ceiling, in an array fit for any decorator magazine, with the art of all media.  Because of her own proclivity for detailed pencil drawings, her collection includes Paul Antragne, a French artist who lived in Mexico, as well as framed originals of her own very detailed pencil work.  Her taste is eclectic, running from outsider art to traditional art.

Janet Fanto

After the walls come the stationery mixed media pieces that line her many bookshelves, cabinets, and corners. As eclectic as her necklace, these assemblages pull together feathers, sometimes nestled into crystal holders, seashells and seaweed, small skulls, diminutive antique figurines, and rocks from crystal to turquoise.  There are interesting twisted branches set in Mexican pueblo-type pottery and underwater scenes under glass domes.  Four-foot dried seedpods sit in a wicker basket complemented by an old stool with decorative metal twists.  Scattered everywhere are more seashells, barnacles, and rocks of every sort, complimented by even more statues, and all of this lives with other antiques that she has kept to live with.

The only time Fanto shows her work is during The Dorchester Art Center’s members show and annual show “to thank members for their support and to showcase their best original work,” usually in June. In 2023, artists could enter up to four pieces of their work.

At the 2023 Members show, among several other mixed media pieces, Fanto showed a work made from the frame of an old clock with the guts removed.  An antique, the back shows what Fanto identifies as oriental markings.  The inside gathers together her repeating motifs of stone and shell, feather, and figurine.  Back home again, the piece sits next to a work that looks like a miniature Roman temple, topped with crystals.

All of the above is showcased in just the living area, with much, much more to be found in the rest of the rooms on the first floor.

Surrounded by 25-year-old trees and plantings, Fanto’s house, including the interior, is a work of art itself. She has used a life’s passion to create a serene, vibrant, and welcoming home that displays at every glance her artist’s eye.

Tammy Vitale has spent many years of her life regularly visiting the Eastern Shore and moved to Cambridge in 2023. An artist herself, she has fallen in love with all the facets of art available in Cambridge/Dorchester County and wants the rest of the world to get to know and love the arts and artists of this area as much as she does.