David Faleris

As the 2024 Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival concludes, Chesapeake Music is pleased to announce the appointment of David Faleris of Newburyport, Massachusetts as its new full-time Executive Director.

Most recently, Faleris has served as Deputy Director of Newburyport Art Association. Before that, he was the Senior Recruitment & Admissions Officer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, UK. As a seasoned arts administrator, he has over 15 years of diverse experience with renowned institutions across three countries, including working as a program administrator for Tanglewood Institute at Boston University.

Barry Koh, President of Chesapeake Music Board of Directors, states, “We are very excited to welcome David as the new and first full-time Executive Director of Chesapeake Music.  He brings the artistic sensitivity of a musician and composer, and a deep knowledge of modern communication systems, social media, and digital management programs.  David is sure to bring fresh ideas that will lead us to new programming, presentations, and performances.”

Faleris holds a Master of Music in Scoring for Film/TV/Video Games from Berklee College of Music in Valencia, Spain, and a Master of Music in Trombone Performance from Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University. He holds a bachelor’s degree in music with a minor in computer science from Boston College.

“I think that Chesapeake Music is in a unique position, with its current tools, artistic directors, volunteers, board members, generous supporters, and its rich history,” says Faleris.  “to not only turn the page to a new chapter for itself but also to explore how it might make a positive impact on the future of classical music as a whole”.

He continues, “Collaboration will be quite fundamental to the future of the performing arts. Working in an interdisciplinary fashion can unlock different aspects of artistry, allowing artists to heighten ambitions for their own projects while finding new ways to communicate their ideas. In addition, embracing technology will be essential, not just for music and musicians, but even more for nonprofits as they figure out how to leverage new tools. People are expecting more to be done with fewer resources. We have to adapt to that. It is also a key to attracting the next generation of artists who will continue to take things forward.”

Faleris is looking forward to returning to Maryland, his home state, in early July and to becoming part of the fabric of the Eastern Shore community.

Based in Easton, Maryland, Chesapeake Music is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to bring renowned jazz and classical musicians to delight, engage and surprise today’s audiences, and educate, inspire, and develop tomorrow’s. They have been doing it for more than 35 years! To learn more about Chesapeake Music, visit their website at https://chesapeakemusic.org/.

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In an upcoming Spy interview with Greg Zimmerman about the future of the site where the Talbot County Health Department is currently is located, he send along to us a remarkable painting of the same spot but almost 100 years earlier. It now hangs in the Maryland Room at the TAlbot County Free Library in Easton.

Sadly, no one at the Library, Talbot County Historical Society, nor the few art experts the Spy contacted over the last few weeks have any additional information about the artist or other circumstances related to this rare view of life on the Hill.

We would welcome any and call tips from the Spy readership to solve this puzzle.

Cellist Sterling Elliott

“Perfect intonation, style, and total involvement.”

“His discernible love for the music won over the audience.”

Praised for his musicality, sensitivity, dexterity, and performing ease by audiences and critics alike, the 25-year-old American cellist Sterling Elliott will be featured in three concerts at the 2024 Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival held at the Academy Art Museum. in Easton, Maryland. A child prodigy, Elliott began playing the cello at the age of three. He made his orchestral concerto debut at the age of seven and has since received numerous prestigious awards and performed with the world’s leading symphony orchestras. A graduate of The Juilliard School in New York City, he currently is pursuing an Artist Diploma at Juilliard under the direction of renowned cellists Joel Krosnick and Clara Kim.

Chesapeake Music audience members will remember Sterling Elliott’s exciting recital with pianist Elliot Wuu in 2022. The two musicians will be reunited at this year’s Festival performing Claude Debussy’s famous Rêverie in an arrangement for cello and piano (Saturday, June 15). Sterling Elliott will also perform Brahms’ beautiful and majestic first piano trio (with Sahun Sam Hong and Max Tan on Thursday, June 13). He will take the demanding, virtuosic first cello part in Luigi Boccherini’s String Quintet in A Major (with Catherine Cho, Max Tan, DanielPhillips, and Marcy Rosen on Friday, June 14). The last opportunity to enjoy Elliott’s stellar stage presence and joyous musicianship will be at the Festival Finale on Saturday, June 15, where, in addition to Debussy’s Rêverie, he will perform Arthur Foote’s A Night Piece and Scherzo for Flute and String Quartet (with Tara Helen O’Connor,Daniel Phillips, Max Tan, and Catherine Cho).

Asked what he envisioned his future as a classical musician to be, Elliott replied: “My goal as an artist has always been to simply share my passion with audiences across the globe. However, as my career develops and I can expand further on the idea of my role as an artist in society, I would like my ultimate goal in music to be focused on furthering music’s reach in all communities.” To that end, he takes seriously his standing in the classical music world as a Black role model. “Along with performing in concert halls, I frequent smaller communities and educational settings in which my position as a role model and an inspiring figure becomes clearly evident to other people of color.” “It brings me great satisfaction to be at a point in my career where I have the freedom to open up my agenda to several artistic engagements in under-resourced communities which might have a little budget for public music education, let alone a traveling guest artist.” In recognition of this commitment and of his astounding success as a classical musician, in March 2024 Sterling was awarded the highly coveted Sphinx Medal of Excellence and a $50,000 career grant, the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization – a non-profit dedicated to the development of young Black and Latino classical musicians. The award was presented in recognition of Sterling’s artistic excellence, his outstanding work ethic, and his ongoing commitment to leadership and his community.

And when he is back home, he loves working on, and building cars. “That’s what I love to do – be in the garage all day.”  In Easton, his love for his art, his total involvement with his music, will win over the audience.

For program information and to purchase tickets, go to https://chesapeakemusic.org/festival/.

Cellist Amit Peled

A remarkable evening of music and reflection opened appropriately with what amounts to a prayer.

The lyrics to the hymn inspired by Sibelius’ tone poem “Finlandia,” performed by the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Thursday night in Easton, came instantly to mind with the first notes of the beloved middle movement of this piece about peace.

“My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine
But other lands have sunlight, too, and clover
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations
A song of peace for their land and for mine.”

In a concert anchored by the performative genius of an Israeli-American cellist, peace inevitably came to mind there as well. But it was principally the music that spoke to appreciative listeners in Saints Peter and Paul High School’s auditorium. “Finlandia” is a 19th-century musical commentary on the Russian Empire’s oppression, continued under the Soviet Union, of neighboring Finland – now a member of NATO in defensive response to war-criminal misdeeds by Vladimir the Terrible.

The eight-minute “Finlandia” was but an appetizer for much more to savor and to mull over on the drive home from this rewarding concert.

Next up was an until-recently undiscovered masterwork by Florence Price, the first African-American woman composer to have her symphony (No. 1 in E Minor) performed by a major U.S. orchestra. Her three-movement “Ethiopia’s Shadow in America” breaks the era of slavery into “The Journey” from homeland captivity to being chained and shipped into a life as two-legged chattel, followed by “Struggle and Resistance,” which captures the loss of liberty and far worse before morphing into a resolve to overcome. Then, finally, it moves to a hopeful “Celebration of Heritage,’ in an emancipation nation clinging to racist hangovers.

Price’s “Ethiopia’s Shadow” was recorded on the New York Youth Symphony album that won the musicians and Michael Repper, now music director of the MSO, 2023’s Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance. The three movements – capture, slavery and emancipation – are marked by what-will-come-next trepidation in the first instance. The second connotes both resignation to hardships – somber notes of lost humanity and a resilience that comes from somewhere within as the higher strings and woodwinds strike a tone of getting ahead rather than getting even. Finally, a lilting passage introduced in a clarinet solo by Wendy Hatton suggests a brighter future in which dancing is one of freedom’s rewards.

Post-intermission, Repper ceded his usual role of introducing the final piece on the program to the soloist who plays most of the notes in Dvorak’s Cello Concerto widely acclaimed as the best ever written. Turns out that Amit Peled, a cello professor at Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory, whose professorship hardly begins to encapsulate his accomplishments as an artist, loves to tell stories about the pieces he plays. The dramatic effect was so profound that I could not possibly take in the concerto without references Peled made spinning in my head as the wordless magic of his playing or Dvorak’s genius in composing it – probably both – influenced my perception of the music and musicianship.

According to Peled, Dvorak was hopelessly in love with a lass named Josephine who, like himself, was a Czech native. He offered his hand to her. But Josephine’s father insisted that he marry his older daughter instead. Meanwhile, Dvorak had accepted the challenge of writing a cello concerto, which he previously thought all but impossible. After writing a promising first movement, he decided to sail to Europe and his homeland to visit Josephine, who he heard was sick. En route, he wrote a second movement, inspired by the prospect of seeing her again, and then wrote a third upon his visit. But on his return voyage, he learned that Josephine had died. He tore up the third movement and the astonishing one we hear today of which Peled tipped us all with a musical spoiler by playing the note he cues just before a dying response from Josephine – in this case delivered by concertmaster/first violin Kim McCollum.

Aside from his storytelling, Peled’s utter mastery of this complex and athletically challenging concerto was spellbinding. An introspective opening quickly eclipsed by a bold orchestral statement featuring horns and woodwinds establish a grand entrance for the soloist, who shows who’s in charge with higher-register notes than you’d expect from a cello, played with violin dexterity mixed with cello/bass authority. While full orchestral outbursts periodically gave Peled a chance to catch his breath and rest his bow arm, he showed a knack for coming in just on the heels of a supporting instrumental phrase, such as by Dana Newcomb on oboe. You’d think the cello and oboe were one.

In the final movement, Josephine’s death note follows Peled’s lead, punctuated by a gentle pluck of a single string. Sprightly folk melodies of their shared Czech roots ease any maudlin preoccupations with death to instill a celebration instead of life.

The performance is indeed a celebration of life as interpreted through music.

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra

Spring concert series: Thursday, April 4, Saints Peter and Paul High School, Easton. Also, 3 p.m. Saturday, April 6, Epworth United Methodist Church, Rehoboth Beach, and 3 p.m. Sunday, April 7, Community Church, Ocean Pines.

midantlanticsymphony.org

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

The Bay to Ocean Writers Conference, one of our region’s most popular and anticipated literary events, is being held this Saturday, March 9, at Chesapeake College in Wye Mills and there are just a handful of tickets still available.

Hosted by the Eastern Shore Writers’ Association, this 27^th annual edition of the BTO conference will continue the organization’s tradition of providing attending writers of every genre and level of experience first rate educational experiences and a chance to socialize with likeminded logophiles and storytellers.

Katie Aiken Ritter, an Eastern Shore novelist, editor, and mentor, believes that BTO allows for the rare occasion to “be with one’s clan. Not blood relatives, no – but it’s a clan of people in love with books and storytelling, people enthralled with that solitary art of word wrangling coming together.”

The day’s schedule offers thirty-two different 50-minute workshops and classes over six tracks – Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Craft and Editing, Publishing and Marketing, and Specialty sessions – to choose from and are designed to help attendees hone their craft while interacting with exceptional session presenters.

Founded in 1985, the Eastern Shore Writers Association, or ESWA, is a “nonprofit, all-volunteer organization supporting writers, other writers’ groups, and the literary arts across the Delmarva Peninsula and the Eastern Shore.” Made up of authors and members of the support systems that authors need, part of the group’s ongoing mandate is to “provide opportunities for members to share (their) experiences with other writers about every facet of converting ideas, feelings, hopes, dreams, and opinions to the printed word.”

Regarding BTO, conference chair and ESWA Executive Director Tara A. Elliot says that what this gathering gives to working and aspiring authors is something that can’t be found anywhere else: “unique, substantive, in-depth seminars given by some of the most knowledgeable and skilled presenters…in this beautiful area we all love.”

Michele Chynoweth and John DeDakis

The Eastern Shore and the Delmarva region have always been places that inspire creative types – writers and artists and musicians and their ilk – and even going back to early ESWA pre-BTO conference efforts in the 1980s it was noted that our area has contributed much to the American literary scene including works from Frederick Douglass, John Barth, James Michener, William Warner, Douglass Wallop, and Lucille Fletcher. Organizers have dedicated the 2024 Bay to Ocean Conference to Gilbert Byron, “the Thoreau of the Chesapeake.”

The first BTO was held in February 1998 at Easton’s Avalon Theatre. Program coordinators were aiming to start “a spirited dialogue about the merits of this area’s prodigious volume of regional literature,” an ideal that has evolved into a more encompassing and inclusive approach to planning the event in the succeeding decades. Presenters at that first event included the esteemed environmentalist, author, and longtime Baltimore Sun columnist, Tom Horton, the historian and writer Eric Mills, and Helen Chappell, a well-known journalist and author of many books and stories including The Oysterback Tales and the Eastern Shore-based Sam and Hollis mystery series. Speaking in character on the history and culture of the Eastern Shore, Talbot County’s David Foster made an appearance as Maryland’s iconically acerbic H.L. Mencken. After a break for dinner there was a performance of Chesapeake Bay-centered songs and tales with performers including Rock Hall’s Tom McHugh. The day’s keynote speech was given by Jonathan Yardley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic for The Washington Post.

The keynote speaker at this weekend’s 27th annual event will be Maryland’s award-winning Poet Laureate Grace Cavalieri. Cavalieri, the longtime host of public radio’s “The Poet and the Poem,” recently published her twenty sixth book, The Long Game, Poems Selected and New and is also an accomplished playwright. Tara Elliot is excited to share Cavalieri, one of her heroes, with attendees and says the 92-year old headliner is “the most energetic, inspiring speaker I’ve ever heard. She’s a living dynamo and she’ll be bringing her experience and uplifting message to share with attending writers.”

This year’s returning instructors include the Spy-contributing columnist, short story writer, and essayist Laura J. Oliver, poet Nancy Mitchell, and the novelist, editor, and writing coach John Dedakis. Author, editor, book reviewer for the New York Journal of Books, and this year’s ESWA Legacy Award winner, Judy Reveal, will also be among the encore presenters at this year’s conference. As always, there are also a number of new faculty participants scheduled to teach classes and lead workshops.

The award-winning poet and novelist Pat Valdata, who, along with David Healy, the author of nearly 30 novels and nonfiction books, will be leading a class on using history and family stories as a writing tool, says that BTO is a “friendly, low stress conference where it is easy to meet other writers in a congenial atmosphere.”

Robert Whitehill, past presenter, screenwriter, and author of the bestselling Shore-centric Ben Blackshaw thriller series of books is impressed by the “depth and breadth of knowledge” from BTO instructors as well as the ambitions of the attendees looking to be inspired and to improve their writing skills.

Jean Burgess, who has a new novel, The Summer She Found Her Voice, coming out in the spring has attended the conference as both a student and a speaker says that what stands out for her is the excellent balance BTO provides between “interesting, diverse presentations and networking with fellow writers.”

Tara Elliot says that paying close attention to the million little moving parts of the conference is what make for a successful BTO. Her committee’s strong partnerships with ESWA, Chesapeake College, loyal volunteers, local educators, and supporting business people like Kathy Harig from Oxford’s Mystery Loves Company who will be selling the books of conference presenters throughout the day all contribute to staging a literary event that “tries to exceed expectations at every opportunity.”

Tickets can still be purchased at the Bay to Ocean Writers Conference link at https://www.easternshorewriters.org/.

There aren’t many left so don’t delay.

Brent Lewis is a native Chesapeake Bay Eastern Shoreman. He has published two nonfiction books about the region, “Remembering Kent Island: Stories from the Chesapeake” and a “History of the Kent Island Volunteer Fire Department.” His most recent book, “Stardust By The Bushel: Hollywood On The Chesapeake Bay’s Eastern Shore”won a 2023 Independent Publishers award. His first novel, Bloody Point 1976, won an Honorable Mention Award at the 2015 Hollywood Book Festival. He and his wife Peggy live in Centreville, Maryland.