Stop. Look. Listen.

Plans are revealed, Venturi weighs in; in “The Art of the Steal,” a documentary takes a side.

A good principle for First-Fridayists: try to go somewhere you haven’t been before. There’s usually something new, like the Painted Desert Gallery, 227 North Duke Street. It’s a gallery with a southwestern flavor, now showing “Cancer in Death Valley,” photography and journal entries by David Nutter.  Also on display are some paper and photo collages by Carol Emerson, a therapist who has established the gallery in her office space. Gallery hours are not yet established — it’s a working office, after all — but the gallery will be open on First Fridays. Check the gallery’s Web site for future hours. Also involved in the gallery, according to the site, are painter Rose Principe and photographer/multi-media artist A.J. Nutter. (Left: interior of the Painted Desert Gallery during First Friday.)

Just across the street, next to Queue Studio, 218 N. Duke St., Lucky No. 13 Tattoo Studio and Gallery, 216 N. Duke St., is also offering space for art, displaying art by Carla Kennard. And, down the street, the Lancaster County Library was celebrating its first year of family-oriented First Friday programs with music by Chromatica, shown here performing Heart’s “Straight On.”

Some familiar faces will be joining the Fry Street Quartet at the Market Square Concerts’ Summermusic Festival 2009 starting this week, including Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra Conductor and pianist Stuart Malina, HSO concertmaster Odin Rathnam and pianist Michael Sheppard, who appeared in the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra’s spring chamber music series here. Also slated to perform are oboist Gerard Reuter and bassist Donovan Stokes.

Here’s the lineup.

Wednesday, July 22: String Quartet Op. 18 No. 5 by Beethoven, the Schubert Variations by Leone Sinigaglia and Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet. The concert begins at 6 p.m. in Market Square Church, 2nd and Chestnut sts. in Harrisburg.

Saturday, July 25: String Quartet Op. 18 No. 4 by Beethoven, Rhapsodies for Piano and Oboe by Charles Loeffler and the Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet by Ernest Chausson. The concert begins at 8 p.m. at Glen Allen Mill in Mechanicsburg, which is located on the Yellow Breeches Creek on McCormick Road between Lisburn and Bowmansdale. Concertgoers are invited to picnic on the grounds beginning at 6 p.m.

Sunday, July 26: the Oboe d’Amore Concerto by J.S. Bach, String Quartet OP. 18 No. 2 by Beethoven and Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet. This concert will take place at 4 p.m. at Glen Allen Mill, and this time people can picnic after the concert.
For more information check the Market Square Concerts Web site (and, for details about the music, the blog by Dick Strawser on that site) or call 221-9599.

Luke D. Yocum, a native of Central Pennsylvania, has been to New York City and back, and now has a show at the Infantree Gallery, “Unchained and Melting Down.” While in New York City, he gained recognition as a street artist, selling small-format paintings on paper from clotheslines and tables in the Lower East Side and Chelsea areas. His (mostly) large paintings in this show the lively brushstrokes, cryptic and not-so-cryptic messages, trenchant commentary and the vibrant color of the street. They’re almost audible with crackling energy, like a radio constantly retuning from station to station. “Flu of Pig” (55″ by 104″) takes on media hysteria over swine flu, while “Made in Japan” deals with memories and “Nodes in the Lung” a friend’s illness. (In the photograph at left, Yocum is shown with “Made in Japan” and “Toe Foo;” at right, “Toe Foo.”) The Infantree Gallery, on the fourth floor of 21 N. Prince St. is open by appointment; for details check here. The show runs until Aug. 1. Call the gallery, make the trip. It’s worth it.

The second set of concerts in Allegro’s summer series take place at 2 and 7:30 p.m. this Saturday, July 12 at F&M’s Barshinger Center and that’s good news for music lovers. (I know it’s really called Allegro: The Chamber Orchestra of Lancaster, but I feel like we know each other well enough to be on a first-name basis). This outfit just goes from strength to strength, as their first concert on June 13 showed. The program featured works by Mozart (the Overture to “Cosi fan Tutte”), Bach (the Orchestral Suite No. 4 in D Major) and the “Don Quixote” Suite by Telemann, a work with which I was totally unfamiliar. Another new work on the program was composer Ralph Lehman’s “Conversations,” a work for two flutes and ensemble that was dedicated to long-time Allegro member Vicki Hill. It was a tonal and somewhat romantic work with shadows of jazz, a hint of exoticism and an extended portion using a 13th-century chant as its melodic base. The two flute parts (there were also significant roles for the other wind instruments) did not quite balance each other — perhaps a subtle comment from the composer? But that’s the way real conversations go. But the real standout performance of the evening was Serge Prokofiev’s difficult “Classical” Symphony No. 1 – precise and balanced in the way the Flying Wallendas were precise and balanced. Rhythms were crisp, the right notes were hit and every cool, effervescent mood of the piece was captured. Every time I go to one of their performances I’m surprised, delighted and glad I went. Saturday’s performance centers around “World Travelers:” The Austrian Mozart offers a “Paris” Symphony, the German Mendelssohn writes the “Italian” Symphony and the Italian Vivaldi dedicates a concerto to Dresden, Germany.

Allegro is not only offering CDs of its performances, it’s offering all 10 of the CDs on a flash drive. Finally, if you missed the “Greatest Hits” giveaway, just check the Web site for a free download.

… and onto the corner of Chestnut and Prince streets for First Friday.

There will be plenty of works by local and international artists at the Art of Giving benefit auction for HOPE International at the Mulberry Art Studios 6-9:30 p.m. Thursday, July 9, but there will also be a presentation by filmmaker Nic McLean and live music by Jessica McLean. If you didn’t make it to the First Friday preview, you can check out the art here and even make a bid.

Like many concertgoers, I’ve heard a lot of music but I don’t always recognize what I hear. It’s not usually an issue. Concerts have programs, radio stations now have playlists you can look up online. But encores are not always announced, and this was the case at last Friday’s Lancaster Symphony Orchestra concert. The pianist Santiago Rodriguez, who had just finished playing the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 1, after several trips back and forth from the wings as the standing crowd applauded, was relieved of his bouquet of flowers (do soloists ever get anything else? A book? A tennis racket? A gift card?) and gently nudged toward the piano bench by conductor Stephen Gunzenhauser. Rodriguez proceeded to play a gentle and ravishing piece of music — but I didn’t recognize it. After the concert I rushed off to write my review, forgetting to ask anyone what the piece of music was. And a few days later, someone e-mailed a question — what was that beautiful piece of music? So I emailed the maestro who emailed me right back. Friday’s encore turned out to be the Brahms Intermezzo op. 118, No. 2 — the very same piece Bright Sheng arranged for his orchestral piece “Black Swan,” which opened the concert. Blush! Gunzenhauser also added that on Saturday, Rodriguez played a piece for his 5-year-old daughter’s birthday and on Sunday, one of the “Goyescas” by Enrique Granados.

My review of the concert can be found here.

I was going to write a little bit about the artist Constantine Kermes, who died Tuesday, May 19, but this photograph, taken in 2007 by Laura Knowles — the artist Constantine Kermes standing in a forest of color — says more than I can say. It seemed that his artistic journey would never end, that the well of inspiration would never dry up. The retrospective exhibit at the Lancaster Museum of Art, “I Hear America Singing II,” closes Sunday. If you haven’t had a chance to stop by, you should take the opportunity. It’s about 50 years worth of work showing a startling artistic progression — from figurative to abstract work, from somber colors to skies and fields bathed in magenta and marigold — but also some underlying unities. The strong vertical, elongated images from icons become Amish portraits. An early work of a funeral presages the abstract direction of his later works. And the bright colors so prominent in his work these past few years appear in quite a few of the illustrations and paintings of the county’s plain folk.

Snapshots from around downtown Lancaster: Kinetic garden sculptures (left) by Lee Coulter, LivingLight Gallery, 150 N. Prince St. Woodcut of Flannery O’Connor (right) by Barry Moser, Lancaster Museum of Art, 135 N. Lime St. Kris Harzinski tapes it up (below left) at the Infantree, 4th floor, 21 N. Prince St. See you at ArtWalk!