A Cape-Wide Celebration of Chamber Music
The 45th annual Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, which takes place in several venues for two weeks this summer, begins on Tuesday, July 30 with a free concert featuring jazz standards by Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie at the Salt Pond Visitor Center in Eastham. But the remaining schedule will take a more traditional turn towards the classical.
This year’s festival features music from the baroque to the classical, the romantic to the contemporary. Chamber music was originally meant to be played in salons and living rooms: small spaces for small gatherings. But this season, there’s room for everyone.
The Borromeo String Quartet returns to the festival for the 34th time to perform pieces by Bach, Mozart, and Sibelius at the Simon Center for the Arts in Falmouth on Thursday, Aug. 1 and a concert featuring works by Beethoven and Schubert in Wellfleet at the First Congregational Church on Friday, Aug. 2.
A fundraising reception at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod in South Yarmouth on Sunday, Aug. 4 will feature the festival’s co-artistic director Jon Nakamatsu and members of the Ying Quartet playing Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quartet No.1. On Monday, Aug. 5, the Ying Quartet will play a concert at the Chatham First Congregational Church titled “Two Romantics,” featuring music by contemporary composer Carter Pann and the Dvorak Piano Quintet. They will also perform string quartets by Haydn and Dvorak at the Cotuit Center for the Arts on Aug. 6.
Tangent Winds, a quintet, makes its festival debut on Friday, Aug. 9 at the First Congregational Church in Wellfleet, playing works by Beethoven, Barber, and Thuille. The festival’s co-artistic director Jon Manasse performs on Monday, Aug. 12 at the Chatham church in a program including works by Vivaldi, Mendelssohn, and contemporary composers.
The Escher String Quartet returns for the fifth time on Tuesday, Aug. 13 for a concert at the Cotuit Center for the Arts featuring pieces by Mozart, Bartok, and Ravel. Along with “the Jons” — Jon Nakamatsu on piano and Jon Manasse on clarinet — they will also perform at the Simon Center in Falmouth on Thursday, Aug. 15 and at the final concert of the festival at the Wellfleet church on Friday, Aug. 16.
The opening concert at the Salt Pond Visitor Center on Tuesday, July 30 is free; tickets for the Aug. 4 benefit begin at $150. General admission tickets for other performances are $40. Student tickets are available for $20, and children under 14 are free. See capecodchambermusic.org for a complete schedule and more information. —Dorothea Samaha
Bringing Robert Frost to Wellfleet
One hundred fifty years after the birth of Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Robert Frost, television and stage actor Gordon Clapp makes the case that much of what the beloved New England writer wrote still resonates today.
“Frost is a calming voice we need right now,” says Clapp, who has played the poet more than 150 times since 2010 in Falmouth playwright A.M. Dolan’s one-man show Robert Frost: This Verse Business. The show will be staged on July 28 and 29 as fundraisers for Wellfleet’s Harbor Stage Company, where Dolan acted in what he says “were some of the best theatrical experiences of my life.”
Clapp, whose credits include 12 seasons on NYPD Blue (for which he won an Emmy), a recurring role on Chicago Fire, and a Tony award nomination for his 2005 role in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway, says he became intrigued by Frost as a high school student. “People always sort of considered him a greeting-card poet, but he was much deeper than that,” Clapp says. “He was more witty and charming than people ever thought but also much more profound.”
The 80-minute one-act play has two parts. The first depicts Frost’s public readings, which he toured nationwide and led to his becoming what Clapp calls “a rock-star poet” on college campuses in the 1950s and 60s. The second part is set at Frost’s Vermont cabin, where talk gets more personal (and vulnerable) and includes the poet’s discussion of family tragedies.
It’s the poetry, though, that keeps bringing Clapp back to this signature role: “I’m still finding new gems everywhere,” he says.
Clapp will perform Robert Frost on Sunday and Monday at the Harbor Stage (15 Kendrick Ave., Wellfleet). Both performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $50 at harborstage.org. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
A Fresh Take on a Traditional Musical Genre
Despite what the name of their ensemble might suggest, the six members of the klezmer band Isle of Klezbos aren’t all lesbians. They aren’t even all Jewish. What they have in common, says band leader and drummer Eve Sicular, is a reverence for klezmer music. Their band name is undeniably silly, but their music-making, says Sicular, “isn’t flippant at all — it’s very real.”
The ensemble’s usual lineup includes a trumpet, flugelhorn, and kudu player, a vocalist, a bassist, a clarinet and saxophone player, a pianist and accordion player, and a drummer. Four of the six — Sicular on drums, Debra Kreisberg on clarinet and alto saxophone, Pam Fleming on trumpet, and Shoko Nagai on piano and accordion — will perform a “quartet special” concert at Wellfleet Preservation Hall on Sunday, July 28, at 5 p.m.
Sicular, who grew up in New York and is Jewish, fell in love with klezmer music when she was in college. As a drummer, she says she appreciates the syncopated rhythms — those forward-moving off beats that give the music its infectious charge. An Ashkenazi Jewish instrumental musical tradition originating in Central and Eastern Europe, klezmer often employs modalities that rarely occur in Western music and scales that signal different worlds of tonality and texture. Sicular says she “love, love, loves” those modes and the pure “danceability” of the rhythms and melodies.
Sicular notes that the “sister sextet” works so well not only because of the quality of the music they make and perform but because the women have a manifest chemistry. Several of the members of the sextet, who are celebrating their 25th anniversary this year, also collaborate to compose and arrange original music for the band.
General admission tickets for the concert are $25. See wellfleetpreservationhall.org for information —Dorothea Samaha
Making Shakespeare Cool Again
As part of its goal to “make Shakespeare cool again,” the Knighthorse Theatre Company will present a month-long run of Much Ado About Nothing at Baker’s Field Pavilion in Wellfleet beginning on Monday, July 29 at 7 p.m.
Playing all 22 characters in the play are husband-and-wife duo Amy McLaughlin Lemerande and Tyrus Lemerande and their children, Declan, 15, and Bridget, 11, who will join them onstage for their first production as a family.
The couple met in 2002 while on tour with the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express, a troupe that later became the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Va. They founded Knighthorse in September 2003 and have been performing in Wellfleet for the last 18 summers. Previous performances include their original show Shakespeare on Demand, Hamlet, and A Winter’s Tale.
The Lemerandes’ productions are unlike the elaborate renditions of Shakespeare plays seen at more storied venues like the Globe Theatre in London. Their retellings are simple, presented on a bare set with minimal props and costumes.
“The stage is unlike anything you have ever seen,” says Tyrus. “It has no dimensions, no boundaries, no limits. We are not constrained by the ‘fourth wall’ because for us it doesn’t even exist.”
After years of performing Shakespeare, Tyrus says he continues to find new meaning in the text. “There are some lines that come from Shakespeare that are more to me than just internet memes, or bumper stickers, or fridge magnets, or T-shirt slogans,” he says. “They really define who I am and who we are as people.”
To make the plays more accessible, the Lemerandes focus on audience participation and involvement. “It’s our belief that everyone should be able to enjoy Shakespeare,” says Tyrus.
Ultimately, however, the couple simply want to provide a collaborative and entertaining experience. “Going to the theater should be like going to Fenway Park,” says Tyrus. “It should be a communal experience filled with cheers, jeers, fears, and tears.”
The free performances of Much Ado About Nothing will continue each Monday through the end of August. See knighthorse.org for information. —Chloe Taft
A Modern Spin on Gilbert and Sullivan
If you’ve seen a classic version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, be prepared for something very different in a new production at Cape Rep Theatre.
Instead of police, this reimagined version has a squad of lifeguards in Cape Cod beach-ready uniforms — along with a rapid-fire-singing Major General from the Coast Guard, a cartoony pirate ship, laptops, and cell phones, because there are pirates on the internet as well as on the high seas.
“We’re approaching the story through a contemporary, fantastical lens,” says director Sarah Elizabeth Wansley. “The comedy comes from the absurdity, so we’ve created a world halfway between Cornwall, England, where the original was set, and Cape Cod. There will be a lot on stage that looks familiar.”
Wansley, who is associate artistic director at Northern Stage in White River Junction, Vt., says that she was skeptical when asked to helm the production because rock musicals are more her style. Wasn’t Gilbert and Sullivan “old and dusty”? Then she watched a video of producer Joseph Papp’s early-1980s Broadway update by the New York Shakespeare Festival and began to see things differently. Along with her directing and design crew and the 15-member cast of New York and local actors, she started to “lean in” on the idea of relocating the show to Cape Cod.
Musical director Scott Storr’s new orchestrations add to the updated feel of the production. “You’ll see cell phones, but we haven’t changed a word of text or lyrics,” Wansley says. “It’s exciting to hear this beautiful, chorally rich music sung with a more contemporary musical-theater sound.”
The overall result is meant to be raucous and accessible for multiple generations without losing what’s made the show popular for 145 years, says Wansley. “It’ll feel young, fresh, and physical — with some good Cape Cod jokes.”
The Pirates of Penzance runs Tuesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through Aug. 25. Tickets are $50 ($25 for 25 and under) at caperep.org. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscol
The Human Cost of Climate Change
Mixed-media artist Ellyn Weiss has been paying especially close attention to the peril climate change has put our world in.
A longtime board member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Weiss is based in Washington, D.C. She also owns a home in Truro, where she has been visiting for 30 years, spending “as much of the year here” as she can. Over the last decade, Weiss has been collaborating with other artists in a series of what she calls “zeitgeist” installations: projects that reflect and examine a particular aspect of current experience. Her most recent collaborations have been with artist Sondra N. Arkin and trace the effects of global warming on the environment and the whole of humanity.
On Sunday, July 28, Weiss will discuss their project “The Human Flood” at the Friends of Truro Meeting House (3 First Parish Lane) in partnership with the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. The multimedia installation, which is currently on view at the American University Museum in Washington, examines how climate change has made the world increasingly uninhabitable for some human beings.
The exhibition includes works on paper, multimedia sculptures, and video montages with accompanying audio. Weiss and Arkin also made use of the American University’s public sculpture garden to create conceptual “refugee camps” for those affected by climate change. (The university requested that the structures be built in such a way that no one could crawl into them “because they didn’t want people to move in,” according to Arkin.)
In one of Weiss’s mixed-media drawings on paper, In Search of Refuge, ethnically ambiguous “ghost” images traveling across an abstract landscape speak to the migrant’s place on the periphery of society.
“This could be you,” said Weiss in a discussion about the exhibition last March. For the artists, the show is ultimately intended “to stress the common humanity of people” and a reminder that what happens in the environment affects all of us.
Admission to the talk is free. See castlehill.org for more information. —Hazel Everett
