The Choral Society of the Hamptons gave its spring concert, “Across the Centuries,” to a large and grateful audience this past Sunday, the first Sunday of spring, at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church.  In contrast to its December concert, which featured a seasonally themed program of works by mostly well-known composers, Sunday’s fare, although mostly sacred, was not directly tied to the religious holidays of the season. Furthermore, while two of the works were by composers whose names were likely somewhat familiar to casual concert-goers (although the piece attributed to one is now recognized to have been composed by his even less well-known teacher), another was probably unknown to virtually the entire audience, and the last was by a composer whose name is more likely to be recognized by ethnomusicologists and elementary-school music teachers than a general audience.  

This may not have looked promising on the page, but the singers of the choral society and the instrumentalists who accompanied them under Walter Klauss, the guest conductor, delivered magnificently.

Georg Phillip Telemann (1681-1767) was the godfather of J.S. Bach’s son Carl Phillip Emmanuel and was by far the better-known composer in their lifetimes.  He was also by most accounts one of the most prolific composers in history, and if his well-crafted compositions lack the profundity and spiritual force of J.S. Bach’s, they nonetheless occupy an important and respected place in the repertoire.  The concert began with Telemann’s “Laudes Jehovam, omnes gentes,” a setting of Psalm 17 composed for continuo and two violins, and for this endeavor, the singers were accompanied by the South Fork Chamber Ensemble, with Thomas Bohlert at the church’s organ.  While there were issues of balance between players and singers in the first section, this improved in the second, slower section, where the nicely shaped phrases allowed for a settling in among instrumentalists and singers and the chorus was able to hit full, confident stride in the “Alleluias” of the final section.

It is unlikely that many if any of Sunday’s audience were familiar with either the music or the name of Jean Roger-Ducasse (1873-1954), but it is quite likely that online orders for his music spiked in our area after this concert.  Roger-Ducasse was a student of Gabriel Faure’s, and these three motets, “Regina coeli laetare,” “Crux fidelis,” and “Alma redemptoris Mater,” for organ, soprano solo, and choir, bear a strong resemblance to Fauré’s, “Messe Basse” for organ and treble choir. 

 But where the similarities are unmistakable, the differences are delightful.  Also delightful was the soprano soloist, Emilia Donato, whose vocal abilities, musical intuition, and poise were well beyond her 22 years of age. (The chorus might have learned from Ms. Donato’s ability to consult her score while maintaining connection with both Mr. Klauss and her audience.) The exuberant “Alleluias” that finished he Telemann yielded to exquisitely shaped “Alleluias” below the soloist in the first motet, “Regina coeli laetere.”  The crescendo to the word “crux” in the second motet, “Crux fideles,  was rendered even more effective by the long, carefully measured decrescendo to the word “dulce” (sweet). 

By this point it had become clear that Mr. Klauss had given priority in rehearsal to well-shaped, dynamically controlled phrases, and the care and attention clearly paid off. This was evident once again in the third motet, “Alma Redemptoris Mater,” especially in the final “Amens.” 

Thomas Bohlert’s playing was not only impeccable but showed that he was actually listening and responding to the group he was accompanying when the organ was in an accompanying role.

On the basis of both stylistic considerations and the lack of a copy in his own hand, most music historians agree that the Magnificat long attributed to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736) was actually the work of his teacher, Fran­cesco Durante (1685-1755). While this piece is not terribly challenging vocally or musically, it offers choruses a chance to shine in a substantial, multi-movement work from this period, and it brought back the South Fork Chamber Ensemble to provide a contrast with the chorus/organ sonority of the previous piece, this time in a better balance with the singers from the start. 

It was a relief to hear that, unlike so many performances of the first movement, the strings had been encouraged to think in terms of longer lines, with connected rather than detached eighth-notes in the bass and cello contributing to more of a sense of forward momentum than is sometimes heard. The Magnificat gave a chance for several of the choral society’s members to step forward as soloists, and Susan Vinski Conklin, soprano, and Christine Cadarette, alto, sang a lovely duet in the second movement while Tom White, a tenor, and Richard Louie, a baritone, blended nicely in the “Suscepit Israel.”

For most of the audience, the musical revelation of the afternoon may well have been the “Laudes Organi” of Zoltan Kodaly (1882-1967). In addition to his work as a composer, Kodaly was an ethnomusicologist who collected and transcribed Hungarian folk songs, and he was a music educator who developed a system of instruction that is still very much in use all over the world.   “Laudes Organi” was commissioned for the 1966 convention of the American Guild of Organists and was Kodaly’s last major work. He took the 15 verses of a 12th-century piece praising the glories of the organ (at that time a relatively new instrument) and grouped them into seven sections with an introduction, several interludes, and a postlude for solo organ, which also accompanies the chorus. (In a nice touch, Kodaly set an optional final verse praising Guido d’Arezzo, an 11th-century monk whose familiar system of musical syllables — do, re, mi, fa, sol — was the basis of Kodaly’s own system eight centuries later.)

It was a tribute to all involved — singers, conductor, accompanist, and audience — that this challenging piece in a largely unfamiliar musical style received the warmest applause of the evening. Once again, the attention to dynamics and the shaping of phrases, particularly in the two “Amens” of the final section, were simply thrilling, and if the price of this attention to larger musical concerns was a little less attention to smaller details, such as lining up consonants and clean releases of final notes of phrases, it was a price worth paying. It was of course fitting that the organ gets the final word in this piece praising the virtues of the instrument, but it was also appropriate that Mr. Bohlert was given his due. He is not a flashy, demonstrative player, but he is a consummate musician and his sensitivity and proficiency made possible highly successful performances of challenging and unfamiliar compositions.

Walter Klauss is no stranger to East End concert-goers. Among other things, he is impresario and performer at the Bach and Beyond concert series held at the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor. Nor is he a stranger to the singers of the choral society, which he has guest-conducted on many occasions. Still, it is interesting to hear an ensemble perform under someone other than their usual conductor, somewhat akin to watching a ship respond to the commands of a new captain, one with a different approach to winds, waters, and crew. Nowhere was Mr. Klauss’s command of his vessel more evident than in his navigation of the “Laudes Organi.” His is an experienced and sure hand and he clearly has the teaching skills to help his singers handle the relatively unfamiliar melodic and harmonic syntax of Kodaly’s music.

Although it was evident right from the first piece that the guest conductor had clear ideas about dynamics and how he wanted phrases shaped, and that the group had been rehearsed to these ends, with the exception of a handful of singers, the chorus rarely looked up from their music at their director, even when doing nothing more than holding out a long note at the end of a phrase. This is unfortunate. The members of the choral society have shown themselves to be capable, well-prepared singers, and Mr. Klauss is an experienced director whose gestures and facial expressions are capable of communicating a great deal to a group if they would only allow themselves an occasional glance up from their music. In addition to the loss of communication between singers and conductor, something is also lost between singers and audience when eyes and faces are cast down.

One final thought: There is an under-appreciated art to designing a satisfying concert program. Effectively balancing unity, variety, thematic considerations, and the strengths and weaknesses of the ensemble requires experience, thoughtfulness, and creativity, all of which have been on display in the first two concerts of the choral society’s 2016-2017 season. Even more impressive, though, is the way that the three concert programs of the season have been designed to create a larger, satisfying whole. We began in December with the familiar, Bach, Schutz, and Mozart, were introduced to unfamiliar names and music in March, and are now anticipating a monumental conclusion to the season with the Brahms Requiem on July 8. This is intelligent, artistic programming, and music lovers on the East End are the fortunate beneficiaries.

“Confessions of a Subculturalist,” a spoken-word performance piece by the artist Michael Holman, will bring to life his personal experiences in New York City’s 1980s art and hip-hop scenes, at the Southampton Arts Center tomorrow at 7 p.m.

Film, video, and photography projection will augment the performance, which will cover the formation in 1982 of the New York City Breakers, a celebrated dance crew; Mr. Holman’s creation of “Graffiti Rock,” the first nationally syndicated hip-hop TV show; his founding of the band Gray with the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and his relationship to such art world luminaries as William Burroughs, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Keith Haring.

Tickets to this personal portrait of New York City’s 1980s downtown milieu are $10.

The final program in the Madoo Conservancy’s lecture series “Madoo Talks: House and Garden” features Margie Ruddick, an award-winning landscape architect. Ms. Ruddick will offer a set of principles for a more creative and intuitive approach to landscape design that challenges the belief that natural processes cannot complement high-level landscape strategies.

The talk, “Wild by Design: Strategies for Creating Life-Enhancing Landscapes,” will take place Sunday at noon in the Sagaponack venue’s winter house studio. Tickets are $25, $20 for members. A reception will follow the talk.

From “Wall Street” to “Boiler Room” to “The Big Short,” the world of finance, high and low, continues to provide an endless source of material for filmmakers. The realm of real estate seems neglected by comparison, with the exception of a few films, among them “99 Homes,” about greed at the low end of the market.

“Good Bones,” a new narrative film by Tim Bohn, which was just named best feature at the Fort Myers Film Festival in Florida and will be shown at the East Hampton Library on Saturday afternoon, takes aim at the high end of the residential market in a place that not only resembles East Hampton — it is East Hampton.

Danny O’Brien is a 22-year-old who has decided to spend one last summer working at his family’s failing real estate brokerage, which has been rendered obsolete by cutthroat Hamptons agencies and specifically by Superlative Properties, the preferred brokers of the ultra-rich and famous. While Danny shares his father’s values of community and integrity, he complicates his life by falling for Clare, a beautiful intern at Superlative.

While the uber-wealthy summer people amuse themselves at parties, benefits, and in each others’ bedrooms, the sharks are circling the ultimate prey: the open auction, on Labor Day, of Tilden Point, the last great parcel of virgin land on the East Coast.

According to Mr. Bohn, who both wrote and produced the film, “I shot it in East Hampton after spending many summers there renting with my wife and now family. The story started revolving in my head when Gardiner’s Island was briefly in play for development, and the film really is a love letter to the area and to the people who care for it.”

During 2014 and 2015, the crew shot during reggae night at the Stephen Talkhouse, at the Artists and Writers Softball Game, Nova’s Ark in Bridgehampton, Quail Hill Farm, the Beach Hut at Atlantic Beach in Amagansett, and many other locations. Perhaps most remarkable is that both the Corcoran Group and Main Street Properties opened their doors to Mr. Bohn — literally — even after reading the script.

“I had a friend who put me in touch with Sally Van Erk at Corcoran corporate in Bridgehampton. She read the script, and when we met, I nervously said, ‘You know that “Superlative Properties,” the fictional company that will occupy your space during filming, is sort of the bad guy, right?’ And Sally said, ‘Oh, yes, we read it and thought you should call them “Smarmiest Properties” or some thing! So funny!’ ”

Mr. Bohn used a number of local actors, including the East End theater regular Andrew Botsford, Rod Griffis of Shelter Island and his daughter, Melora, an actress and artist; Nick Gregory of Sag Harbor, Chris Kies of Montauk, and Nicholas Morehead, a journalist and a skipper and officer at the South Ferry Company on Shelter Island. There are cameos by Leif Hope at the softball game, Kelly Bensimon, who sends up her own public image, and others.

Mr. Bohn, who himself plays a small role, will attend Saturday’s 3 p.m. screening, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session. The film is free, and reservations can be made by calling the library at 631-324-0222, extension three.

In the next installment of a concert series that has brought many world-class musicians to the South Fork, the audience will embark on a “Brazilian Voyage” when Nilson Matta, a Grammy-nominated bassist and composer, leads a trio by the same name at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Southampton Arts Center.

Mr. Matta, whose album “30” with his Trio Da Paz was nominated for Best Latin Jazz Album at the 59th annual Grammy Awards, has been called “a powerhouse bass player” by Downbeat magazine. A pioneer in playing Brazilian jazz on an acoustic bass, he has performed or recorded with renowned musicians including João Gilberto, Yo-Yo Ma, Joe Henderson, Paquito D’Rivera, Herbie Mann, and Astrud Gilberto. In addition to Trio Da Paz, he co-founded the African-Brazilian Connection and the Brazilian Trio, and is a director of the Samba Meets Jazz workshops, a weeklong program in Rio de Janeiro, New York City, and Bar Harbor, Maine.

Appearing with Mr. Matta on Saturday will be Maurice Zottarelli, a Brazilian drummer, and the pianist and flutist Oriente Lopez, who is from Cuba. The trio will perform Mr. Matta’s compositions and standards from the Brazilian songbook. 

As it has at previous concerts in the series, Union Cantina will provide food relating to the musical theme. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m.

“I always try to bring into the band virtuoso musicians,” Mr. Matta said last week from Brazil, “people who can play jazz, salsa, and, especially, Brazilian music.” The bassist, who took up the instrument at age 10, listed Brazilian artists including Mr. Gilberto, Hermeto Pascoal, and Antonio Carlos Jobim among his influences, as well as Johann Sebastian Bach and the American jazz musicians Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, and John Coltrane. “I am really excited to bring the Brazilian Voyage Trio and play my acoustic bass for a Southampton audience,” he said. 

“It’s imperative to the success of a live show that we present top-notch performances in various styles under the jazz umbrella,” Claes Brondal, a drummer and live-music promoter who organizes the weekly Jam Session at Bay Burger in Sag Harbor, said last week. “We constantly seek out great musicians via networking and research. Many world-class musicians are more than happy to perform out here on the East End, even in the off-season.”

Mr. Matta, he said, “seemed like an ideal artist to include in our Live From Southampton Arts Center series, since he represents some of the best Brazilian jazz in the U.S.A.” Concerts in the series are recorded for broadcast on WPPB, Peconic Public Broadcasting. 

The series will continue next month with “Jazz y Clave Descarga,” featuring the pianist Hector Martignon, on April 22. On May 20, the series will present “Salsa Meets Hip-Hop and Jazz” featuring Baba Israel, an artist, producer, and educator. The series will wrap on June 20 with the New York-based musicians Peter and Will Anderson. 

Since she began taking photographs almost 40 years ago, Joanna McCarthy has exhibited her work widely, won numerous prizes and awards, and been published in many magazines. However, prior to that career, she led another life in front of the camera as a model with the Wilhelmina and Ford agencies and was photographed by such luminaries as Irving Penn, Hiro, and Saul Leiter. For a number of years, the two careers coincided.

“I was always examining things,” Ms. McCarthy said during a recent visit to her home in Sagaponack. “I was a great observer. Photography was the perfect thing to do. I was seeing images for a couple of years before I got a second-hand camera. I started taking pictures and I loved it. But I didn’t want to be a fashion photographer.”

The transition between the two careers was gradual. As she began to wonder what she was going to do when she was not a model anymore, she studied acting for three years at the Neighborhood Playhouse at the same time as she was establishing herself as a photographer.

“I had a long interview with Sandy Meisner, who was director of the acting department at the Playhouse for many years. He said he thought I could make it as an actress. But as much as I loved modeling, I didn’t want my whole life to be about how I looked. I decided I loved photography more.”

She began to show people her photographs and received encouragement. Outside magazine had a section called Exposure, where they began to publish her work. She also won a number of photography competitions while she was still modeling.

“One of the first things I did was read in a photographer’s newsletter about Image Bank, a stock agency in New York.” Stock agencies maintain a supply of photographs they sell for specific uses such as magazine publication, book covers, and, more recently, websites. The photographer receives a fee each time an image is licensed to a user.

“Image Bank said to drop off my portfolio at 9 and pick it up by 4. At 6 I got a call from the owner, who said he loved my work and wanted me to come onboard. That was my first big break. After about a year I started making very good money.” Image Bank was eventually purchased by Getty Images.

Aside from stock photography, Ms. McCarthy has stayed in the fine art realm. Her website groups photographs into categories: Land, Animal, Man, Journey, and Americana. All of the subjects reflect her meticulous composition and her sensitivity to color. The photographs also testify to her extensive travels.

Her love of landscapes has taken her to many exotic locations in Mexico, Turkey, Estonia, Hawaii, Austria, Kenya, and Myanmar, among others. “I went to India and visited the palaces and festivals you want to see. But I’m more drawn to street photography.”

“I love being in the car, I love exploring. That’s what you have to do, you have to be out there. There’s a lot to see on the East End. The light is beautiful. I’ve done some amazing photographs here.” One of her favorites, “American Porch,” shows a row of old gray rocking chairs on a white front porch in Sag Harbor, the subtle tones overlaid by the bright colors of a huge American flag hanging from the porch roof.

That image is from her “Americana” series. Others range from a derelict red truck to fading signs on old barns to a dusty bison roundup in South Dakota to the Grand Canyon during its monsoon season, when cold air comes down from Canada and warm air up from Mexico to create a dramatic light not seen at any other time of year there.

She first met her husband, the photographer Eric Meola, some 30 years ago. “He wanted to book me for a job, but I was booked for something else.” They got together several years later, and one of the first decisions they made was to take two big trips each year. 

Early on they took an 11,000-mile trip throughout the United States. “We liked taking the time to get away from New York and be together. But we go off separately to shoot.” They have been to seven continents.

She and her husband first rented on Shelter Island for several summers in the 1980s, but when they decided to buy they opted for Sagaponack and found a modern saltbox down the road from their current house, which is on 10 acres they bought as an investment. “We let it sit, but when we sold our place in New York we started building on this land and eventually sold the other place.”

They left New York several years after 9/11, not out of anxiety but because Mr. Meola no longer wanted to do advertising photography, “and both of us had been there since we were kids. I love New York, but I don’t miss living there. I love living out here.” 

Born and raised in Sayville, Ms. McCarthy knew she wanted to model by the age of 16. “My parents brought me to an agency that wanted me to come onboard with them, but my father said, ‘No. Maybe the summer after high school you can give it a try.’ ”

She had a 28-year career that began when she was 18. “At a very young age I went over to Paris and Milan where I did the collections. That gave me the opportunity to work with photographers in the fashion industry more quickly than it would have happened here.” 

She did fashion shows for Ralph Lauren, Calvin Kline, and Saks Fifth Avenue, among many others. She also did editorial work for Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle, and Vogue, and catalog modeling for Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bill Blass, and Oscar de la Renta. 

While her portfolio is vast and varied, she is a perfectionist. “I won’t shoot a bad picture. I was in Paris for five days once, but the light was terrible, it was raining. I only took one shot — but it was a good one.”

Compositions by Bruce Wolosoff, a composer from Shelter Island, will be performed at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton on Saturday afternoon at 2 and at Symphony Space in Manhattan on Monday at 8 p.m.

Mr. Wolosoff’s short piano piece “The Celestial Body” will be performed in East Hampton as part of a program that will also include music by Debussy, Chopin, and Gershwin. The piece will be performed by Tanya Gabrielian, one of Guild Hall’s artists-in-residence, who — click for link — will be very busy this weekend.

In New York, the Eroica Trio will perform Mr. Wolosoff’s “The Loom,” which was inspired by the watercolors of Eric Fischl and which will be accompanied by projected images of Mr. Fischl’s work. 

Mr. Wolosoff’s catalog includes works for ballet, opera, chamber, and solo instruments, which have been performed internationally.

The Parrish Art Museum will mark five years at its current site in Water Mill this fall, and is already in a celebratory frame of mind. The museum, designed by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog and de Meuron and completed in 2012, has launched a show looking back on 70 of the 300 works it has acquired since then.

“Parrish Perspectives: New Works in Context,” which is on view only briefly (it will close April 23), features works from a variety of mediums, among them paintings, sculpture, and works on paper. They range from 1925 to 2016, a broad scope for such a microcosm.

A series of concentrated exhibitions offered by the museum over the past few springs, “Parrish Perspectives” often responds to recent events or ideas related to art or the creative process. “New Works in Context” is organized into four themes: “Representing Abstraction,” “Humor and Irony,” “Horizon Lines,” and “Face to Face.”

“Representing Abstraction,” according to the museum, “reveals the ways in which artists explore how the physical and philosophical universe is perceived.” It examines several different approaches to abstraction, with works inspired by nature, geometric patterns, and photography. 

“Humor and Irony,” according to its organizers, “conveys dry wit, absurdity, dark humor, and the dichotomy that can exist in a single work.” Whimsical figures, satire, and visual puns are on offer. 

The genre of “Face to Face” is portraiture — how portraits can vary from recognizable figures to more abstracted compositions, and by using symbols exclusively to refer to a subject. 

“Horizon Lines,” one of the most basic of artistic drawing devices, becomes a reflection on its employment in all mediums. It is explored “as a quick study of the sea and the sky, a detailed imagining of the intersection of man and nature, or a long engagement with the notion of photographic documentation.”

The works on view are both recognizable by their previous inclusion in permanent-collection shows and also refreshingly new. The exhibition’s aim is to give viewers insight into the decisions made in forming and adding to a collection, and how artworks respond to each other in various contexts. 

In Process @ the Watermill Center, a periodic invitation to the community to engage with its resident artists, will present a performance by Physical Plastic, a Los Angeles-based theater project of Kestrel Leah and Yiannis Christofides, on Saturday between 2 and 4 p.m. 

While at the center, the duo is creating a stage performance based on security alarms. They are using the resources there to reveal the structure of the performance, create a full choreography score, and finalize design elements.

Mr. Christofides is a composer, sound artist, and sound designer from Cyprus whose work investigates the experience of space through the use of field recordings. Ms. Leah is a British actor and director working in both theater and film.

The center will also offer tours of the facility from 1 to 2 p.m. and an exhibition of works on paper by William Stewart, also from 2 to 4. All programs are free, but advance reservations are required.

“Community for the Retreat: A Night at Stephen Talkhouse” will bring G.E. Smith and Taylor Barton to the Amagansett club for an evening of rock ’n’ roll next Thursday at 7 p.m. D.J. Jack Luber will follow the live performance.

Advance tickets are $30 at the Retreat’s website, $40 at the door. Hamptons Foodie will donate refreshments; Blumenfeld and Fleming has contributed the graphic design.

The Retreat provides services to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault on eastern Long Island with education programs and support in Nassau and Suffolk Counties.