Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

How do you speak about the unspeakable? That was the creative challenge composer Aaron Jay Kernis faced in 1995 when he searched for the right musical language for Lament and Prayer, a piece marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust. It's one of two Kernis pieces the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, led by music director Marin Alsop, will perform this week. Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 is also on the program. Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Performs at 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Music Center at Strathmore.

Mozart had a very earthy side, as any perusal of his unabridged letters will reveal, but his music invariably touches the sky. Sibelius was pretty much a down-to-earth guy, too, and that's where his music stays, with the feel of soil and rock in it. The latest Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program contrasts the heavenly beauty of form and melody in Mozart with the craggy topography and shadowed emotions in Sibelius. Putting each composer into perspective is Gunther Herbig, a seasoned conductor who can be counted on for calm command and a firm sense of style.

WHAT THEY'RE SAYING TODAY'S SUN COLUMNISTS Lost in mainstream shuffle As part of Black Music Month, pop music critic Rashod D. Ollison spotlights some under-the-radar musicians whose passionate artistry may not have made it mainstream. Live baltimoresun.com/live Lessons from Dad Father's Day is coming up, and Dan Rodricks is seeking responses from readers who have thoughts on the following theme: "Things I learned from my father." Maryland baltimoresun.com/rodricks OTHER VOICES Mike Himowitz on a new Mac browserBusiness David Zeiler on Apple's market strategyBusiness Rick Maese on the U.S. OpenSports David Steele on the OriolesSports 5 THINGS TO DO TODAY BALTIMORE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA -- Maestra Marin Alsop conducts a program of Brahms, with Jonathan Carney on violin.

Two films by the late Don Dohler, Baltimore's own impresario of low-budget horror, will be shown at 7 p.m. tomorrow at the Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave. in Highlandtown. The Alien Factor (1978), his first film, offers a look at what might happen if a spaceship bound for an intergalactic zoo crashed in a small town, while 2006's Dead Hunt finds 10 movie reviewers attending a horror-film convention beset by deadly traps. Showtime is 7 p.m., and tickets are $15 ($12 for alliance members)

Ben Jaffe pursed his lips and whistled - a short, melodious bird call of a sound. As he did, he was reminded of how much he has lost. "There are certain things that, if you aren't from New Orleans, you have no idea what they mean," says Jaffe, artistic director of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which performs this weekend with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. If You Go Mardi Gras Celebration with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and vocalist Banu Gibson.

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN people cram into three rows of chairs lining the long wall of the rehearsal room at Grace United Methodist Church, for all the world like birds on a wire. But these particular birds have been singing hard for three hours, and their feathers are a bit askew in the heat. A middle-aged man standing on a small, raised stage goes into a half crouch and raises his baton, and members of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society launch into one of the gentler sections of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.

The Mahler Symphony No.1 is one of the most ambitious and impressive first symphonies in music history. It employs a massive orchestra and the variety of thematic material is awesome. Unfortunately Daniel Hege and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra did not meet its challenges. There were many fine touches in all four movements but the magic of the music was always just beyond the BSO's grasp.The first movement did have a promising start. The opening high string chords were wonderfully atmospheric.

For the fourth year in a row Saturday, Anne Arundel County and the county's Cultural Arts Foundation will sponsor a Star-Spangled Celebration for Independence Day featuring the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.Local talent will be showcased before the orchestra performs at Anne Arundel Community College's Siegert Field.Crabtowne Big Band, an 18-piece swing band, will lead off the entertainment, playing the music of Duke Ellington and Count Basie and contemporary pop tunes starting at 5: 30 p.m.Formed in 1981 in Anne Arundel County, Crabtowne Big Band has been entertaining local ballroom dancers ever since -- currently every Wednesday at Surfside 7 in Edgewater.

EACH of its past two music directors, Sergiu Comissiona and David Zinman, raised the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra to the next level. No less is expected of Yuri Temirkanov, who has just conducted his first series of concerts here since he was named to the job.Audience expectation was high, and met. One sign of something special, for those with eagle eyes, was the distinguished soloist for the Barber violin concerto, Pamela Frank. After intermission, she sneaked into the last row of second violins to play the Beethoven Seventh Symphony.

MeadeFest '99Enjoy carnival rides and games, magic and puppet shows, roaming clowns, music ranging from rock to jazz to patriotic, a military car show, the Marine Silent Drill Team and plenty of food this weekend at the annual MeadeFest on McGlachlin Field, Mapes Road and Llewellyn Avenue, Fort Meade. A 5-kilometer fun-run/walk is scheduled for 8 a.m. Saturday, and the three-day festival closes with fireworks Sunday evening. Hours are noon to 11 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday and noon to midnight Sunday.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's annual gala has retained its status as the kickoff event to Baltimore's social season - and the party to see and be seen at. Hundreds of formally dressed folks swirled under a tent just outside Meyerhoff Symphony Hall to enjoy cocktails, a vast dinner buffet and lots of catching up before heading into the hall for a concert by the BSO featuring pianist Lang Lang. "It's fabulous as always. This is always my favorite event," said Susie Schapiro, Ed-Psych Solutions director, at the gala with her fiance, David Nevins, Nevins & Associates president.

COMICS Baltimore Comic-Con: Call it what you want (nerd Christmas, nerd prom or even geek heaven), it's coming to the Inner Harbor next weekend. Millions of back issues, thousands of fans and dozens of top comic book artists and writers (including George Perez and Tim Sale) will be invading the floor of the Baltimore Convention Center. Starts 10 a.m. Saturday. Web: comicon.com/baltimore TV 'The Next Iron Chef 2009': The Food Network's cheeky answer to "Top Chef" is back, giving another upstart cook a chance to join the ranks of Mario Batali and Masaharu Morimoto.

There's a gentleman who frequents Centerstage events in Baltimore and always wears a bright red "Arts Advocate" button. A year ago at a show there, I introduced myself to him by admiring it. I asked him if I qualified as an arts advocate, having driven my three children to assorted music and dance lessons over the past decade? He gave me the button. These days I wear it to bed and dream of a Maryland where the future of the arts is not in jeopardy. I have intensely personal reasons for my commitment to the arts.

Ideally, concertgoers in this country would know and love at least two big, hearty all-American symphonies - I'd vote for No. 2 by Charles Ives and No. 3 by Aaron Copland - as deeply as they embrace European classics. But that's not likely to happen if our orchestras don't make more room for them. Although the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra enjoys a solid reputation for its support of American music, it has programmed Copland's Third only four times in the past four decades and has never played Ives' Second.

You know what they say: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. A certain amount of skepticism was natural when word came a few weeks ago that a new ensemble, the DC Philharmonic Orchestra, was being formed by a 30-year-old conductor, John Baltimore. And that its debut, scheduled for this week at the Music Center at Strathmore, would be with a well-packed program capped by Mahler's huge Resurrection Symphony, featuring the Heritage Signature Chorale and two stellar singers, soprano Harolyn Blackwell and mezzo Denyce Graves.

Laura Ruas expected a busy spring in Baltimore. The double bass player, one of the region's many freelance musicians, would typically have a calendar well-filled with performances for several orchestras. One by one, engagements vanished from her schedule. "It's always a patchwork, sewing these things together to make a living," Ruas says. "Now I'm wondering what's going to be gone forever in Baltimore, and what's going to come back?" Ruas is part of a community of freelancers that has been rattled by the recession's toll on musical activity here - canceled and postponed concerts and, most severe, the loss of a major institution that had provided reliable jobs for dozens of instrumentalists and choristers.

Jonathan Leshnoff's Violin Concerto struck me as a major addition to the repertoire when I first heard it in 2006. I'm even more convinced of that quality, having revisited the work on an all-Leshnoff CD from the Naxos label that features violinist Charles Wetherbee and the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Markand Thakar. Leshnoff, a Towson University faculty member whose international career has been developing rapidly, found inspiration for the concerto in a chilling tale he heard from a Holocaust survivor - how inmates, forced by SS guards to sing Nazi propaganda songs, subtly wove prayers into the music.

Bernard W. Rubenstein, a retired Baltimore labor lawyer who was a partner in the firm of Abato, Rubenstein and Abato, died March 11 of heart failure at his winter home in Stuart, Fla. He was 88. Mr. Rubenstein was born in Philadelphia and moved with his family to a Reservoir Hill home in 1924. He was a 1937 graduate of City College and earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the Johns Hopkins University in 1940. From 1942 to 1946, he served as an Army staff sergeant in the Aleutian Islands.

Every week seems to brings bad news in the arts community, local and global, so it's worth taking a deep breath and a close look at all the positive stuff still happening. Consider the next several days on our music calendar, for example, which offer quite a richness of variety. Not bad for such a bleak time. * Claudio Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea from 1643 is not history's first opera, but one of the most important, thanks to the quality of the libretto - a mix of politics, sex and violence set in ancient Rome, but perennially relevant to any era - and the beauty of the score.

Mr. Happy Feet himself - Savion Glover - brings his virtuoso brand of tap to Maryland this weekend for three performances as part of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's Symphony With a Twist. The orchestra will play solo for the first half of the program. After intermission, Glover will bring his size 12 1/2 shoes and flying dreads to four songs, varying in style from Latin to big band to Afro-Caribbean, and finally, to a Duke Ellington selection that fuses jazz and classical themes. You'll be dancing to quite an eclectic program.