Aaron Copland

The just-announced Baltimore Choral Arts Society's 1998-1999 season includes four subscription concerts, two children's events and a benefit concert with jazz legend Dave Brubeck.Subscription prices range from $65 to $92, and single-ticket prices from $10 to $35. Tickets for children's events are $9. For further information and concert times, call 410-523-7070."An American Afternoon." Nov. 8 at Goucher College's Kraushaar Auditorium. Featuring Randall Thompson's "Frostiana" set to Robert Frost's poetry; Aaron Copland's "Old Americana Songs"; local premiere of Alice Parker's "Songstream" set to poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay; and William Schumann's "Carols of Death."

The fate of the Annapolis Symphony's Chamber Orchestra Series, which began this concert season on such a high note in September was tragically thrown into doubt when Sara Watkins, the ASO's resident conductor, died of an aneurysm a few weeks after the first concert.But the series has survived, and, appropriately, the ASO has dedicated the season's second and final Chamber Orchestra concert to the memory of Watkins, the charismatic oboist turned conductor.The orchestra will take the Maryland Hall stage at 8 p.m. Saturday under the direction of Markand Thakar, an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic and associate conductor of the Colorado Symphony.

In addition to the traditional marches and flourishes from a military band, the inaugural ceremony included two remarkable musical interludes. The first was provided by Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, whose dynamic, gospel-inflected delivery of "My County, 'tis of Thee" energized the crowd. It also brought to mind legendary contralto Marian Anderson's 1939 performance of that same patriotic hymn under very different circumstances at the Lincoln Memorial on the opposite end of the National Mall, after she was barred from the then-segregated Constitution Hall.

The South Carroll High School Cavaliers Marching Band will open the county's 1994 competition season tomorrow with the seventh annual South Carroll Classic Tournament of Bands at the high school on West Old Liberty Road in Winfield.Competition will begin at 6:30 p.m. and feature 11 bands. County bands scheduled to compete tomorrow are from North Carroll, Francis Scott Key and Liberty high schools. The Westminster High Owl Marching Band will start competitions next weekend.Under the direction of Brad Collins, this year's South Carroll Cavaliers band consists of 74 marching band members, a 12-member band front and three drum majors.

Occasionally fun and culture coincide. This weekend is one of those times.The Baltimore School for the Arts presents its annual "fund-raising and friend-raising" gala, which showcases the students in this high school for the performing arts, Saturday and Sunday. The music department (chorus and orchestra) will perform a Bach cantata; the theater department, famous monologues.The dance department premieres two works: "Five Beatles Songs," choreographed by John Clifford; and "Thank You" by Broadway tapper Hinton Battle ("Chicago")

High culture has seldom been so charmingly and winningly presented on television as it is during "Disney's Young Musicians PTC Symphony Orchestra," at 8 p.m. tonight on cable's Disney Channel.Music and children have been an unbeatable combination for centuries, from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart down to Michael Jackson when he fronted the Jackson Five. But sometimes you have to spend some money to put them together, as Disney obviously did when it recruited 65 musical prodigies, with an average age of 11, to play this 50-minute concert.

CHRISTOPHER SEAMAN, the British conductor in residence, looked like a German nutcracker doll and conducted the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra like a first-class maestro last night at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. Leading the BSO in Elgar's "Symphony No. 1," the animated red-headed musician showed the same enthusiasm to his adult audience as he shared with the 14,000 charmed school children in seven recent concerts.As Elgar's symphony drifted past 45 minutes and some yawns about 10:15 p.m., Seaman was still up there keeping a brisk tempo, pivoting frequently to face the next playing section, extending his open left hand to soloists, mouthing passages in mock singing, sweeping strings, brass and woodwinds along with his arms and recapturing Elgar's main theme at the end. The orchestra responded well with either sadness or joy fitting the music's changing moods.

Arts aid requests climb, funds shrinkAlthough the Maryland State Arts Council took only a modest $125,000 cut in program funds in the fiscal year 1992 budget Gov. William Donald Schaefer submitted to the General Assembly Feb. 1, requests for aid from arts organizations are up 23 percent, or $600,000, over last year.The state's small and mid-sized arts organizations -- as well as community groups with arts programs -- have requested $3.2 million in state support, up from $2.6 million last year, according to arts council grants officer Charles Camp.

Joaquin Rodrigo's somewhat awkwardly named "Concierto de Aranjuez" for guitar and orchestra is one of the most graceful and attractive concert pieces of this century. It is hard to imagine it played better than it was last night in Meyerhoff Hall by guitarist Manuel Barrueco and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and conductor David Zinman.Barrueco, who teaches at the Peabody Conservatory and who is much admired by connoisseurs of his instrument, played the piece with freedom and idiomatic mastery (the piece's flamenco associations were unmistakably underlined without being overdone)

The centennial of Aaron Copland's birth and the 10th anniversary of his death, both milestones being noted this year, have prompted renewed appreciation for the man and his music. Not that he needs it. Long before he died, Copland was widely acknowledged as a great - perhaps the greatest - American composer. Despite sniping from those who find his works simplistic or disingenuous, Copland's position remains rock-solid. The reasons why could be plainly heard in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's admirable performance of his Symphony No. 3 Friday evening led by resident conductor Daniel Hege.