Bso

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will hold its annual Celebration Gala fundraiser Sat., Sept. 10, 6:30 p.m., at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. The event will offer patrons an evening of entertainment and fine dining and a concert (at 8:30 p.m.) will feature conductor Marin Alsop and renowned violinist Hilary Hahn. Tickets run $50 and $75 for the concert. Call 410-783-8054. Ukraine festivities Baltimore City's Showcase of Nations annual Ukrainian Festival will take place Saturday and Sunday, Sept.

Artist and muralist Pat O'Brien confronts a bare room as she would an engineering project. She takes measurements, makes scale drawings, and plans precisely the colors, fabrics and furnishings she will employ. It all makes perfect sense for the former electrical engineer who used to design systems for military aircraft when she worked at AAI Corp. in Cockeysville. O'Brien's artistic talent will be on display at the Baltimore Symphony Associates decorators' show house, which opens Sunday, April 29. Hers will be the first interior space visitors encounter as they tour the Eck House in Baltimore County's Cromwell Valley Park.

T he Baltimore Symphony Orchestra put the best possible face on a dire situation when it announced Thursday that it had reached an agreement with the musicians that will allow it to continue as one of only 17 U.S. orchestras that perform 52 weeks a year. The good news of the BSO's survival, however, was tempered by the fact that it was able to avert catastrophe only after the players agreed to accept a 17 percent cut in pay and benefits, a sacrifice that virtually wiped out all the gains they had made during the last decade.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will be jetting to the West Coast this week for a six-day, three-city tour - its first extended outing since Marin Alsop was named music director five years ago. The tour, which begins Wednesday, opens with a concert in Orange County, Calif., and concludes with one in Eugene, Ore. Between those performances will be a three-day residency at the University of California at Berkeley. "Artistically, it's great for the orchestra, because we get to play in a different hall every day," said Alsop.

The last time Itzhak Perlman appeared with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, a decade ago, he brought only his violin. For his return this weekend, he's bringing along a baton, too. It's not uncommon for soloists to feel the lure of the podium, but Perlman, one of the most popular violinists in the world, landed there more by chance. "The conducting bug never bit me," Perlman, 64, says. "My wife [Toby] started the Perlman Music Program for talented young string players 15 years ago. She told me one day, 'They need a coach.

What's wrong with this picture? An organization that really does something gets a 16.6 percent reduction in pay, gets to go without any pay raises, and it's pay in 2012-2013, will be the same as it was in 2001 ("BSO salaries hit sour note once again," March 26). Beside this picture is the Maryland political landscape, from the governor down to the county councilmen. How is their pay doing? How many freezes, reductions, etc., have they seen? Oh, yes, I forgot about the delegates who make as much as the symphony members for a part time job, during which they accomplish nothing to justify this largess!

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra doesn't always generate hot sellers for its annual summer season, but it sure has a cool concert this year, surely one of the coolest programs in decades. Marin Alsop, the BSO's intrepid music director, will lead the ensemble in examining two sides of an intriguing coin — orchestral works written by a Baltimore-born rock star, Frank Zappa; and a symphony written by a Baltimore-born composer, Philip Glass, inspired by the rock songs of David Bowie and Brian Eno. That would be cool enough, but Friday's performance at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall also features Baltimore beatboxer Shodekeh.

"As a kid, I always wanted to go to the circus," says Marin Alsop. "I was obsessed with the circus. Maybe that's why I became a conductor." Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, gets to relive that obsession with a month of programs, starting this weekend, that celebrate the circus world in one way or another. Although given the marketing tag "BSO Under the Big Top," the venture isn't so much about clowns and acrobats as it is about following a connective thread.

The Ravens aren't Baltimore's only team worth talking about on a Monday morning. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra played an impressive away game (so to speak) Saturday night at Carnegie Hall, scoring extra points with some super-sized Beethoven, and then tackled a gospel version of Handel's "Messiah" Sunday afternoon. The BSO's previous two appearances at Carnegie guaranteed attention. In early 2008, the ensemble gave its first performance there since music director Marin Alsop made history as the first woman to lead a full-time, big-budgeted American orchestra.

Some of the loudest, most propulsive sounds to be heard outside of an Ozzfest arena show hit unsuspecting Baltimore Symphony Orchestra audiences last year during a circus-theme program devised by music director Marin Alsop. One of the thrashing works played on that occasion, to memorable effect, was a 2002 piece called "Screamer! — A Three-Ring Blur for Orchestra," by David T. Little. "David is a real talent whose work has deservedly gained wide-spread recognition in recent years," Alsop said.

It is possible to quibble with the idea of cramming three blockbuster works into a single program, but the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra carries it off. Ravel's "Bolero," that brilliant study in rhythmic and melodic reiteration, not to mention crescendo, is more likely to serve as a concert finale than a curtain-raiser for Tchaikovsky's barnstorming Piano Concerto No. 1. But here they are, back to back. And after two of classical music's greatest hits, why not one more? Well, at least one of classical music's greatest minutes — the introductory passage of Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra," now more commonly identified as the theme from the sci-fi classic "2001.

The classical music world, ever on the hunt for bright young stars with box office snap, still has some reliably surefire veterans. One of them is Itzhak Perlman, the most popular, widely recognized violinist since Heifetz. Tickets for Perlman's guest stint as soloist and conductor with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra have been scarce for some time, even though, as was the case at his 2010 guest stint with the ensemble, Perlman is doing minimal fiddling. People still want to experience his musicianship, still want to let him know how much he means to them.

Another pops program devoted to George Gershwin? Why not? This weekend's Gershwin feast being presented on the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's SuperPops series will hardly be the last. Nearly 75 years after his death at the age of 39, the composer's hold on the public has never loosened. He was the epitome of Jazz Age creativity and sophistication, with an unfailing gift for melody and rhythmic vitality. "It's a challenge to choose a program," said BSO principal pops conductor Jack Everly, "because the repertoire, for all the brief time Gershwin had on this Earth, is of such high quality.

Composer Bob Christianson is nothing if not versatile. He wrote a lot of pulsating music that accompanied episodes about several, um, energetic women in New York on the HBO series "Sex and the City. " He has provided themes for Travel Channel's "Mysteries of the Museum" and "Inside the Grand Canyon," and the Military Channel's "The Day After D-Day," to name a few more. His credits also include themes for sports programs and promos on ABC and ESPN. "Which is funny," Christianson said, "because I am not a sports person.

A bevy of Santas will not tap-dance their way into Rockette-style formations onstage to help the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra celebrate the Christmas season this year. That cute tradition, and the rest of the Holiday Spectacular presented by the BSO since 2005, is on a hiatus prompted by a decline in ticket sales and audience surveys reflecting a desire for a change. That change arrives this week with Holiday Cirque de la Symphonie. Aerialists, contortionists, jugglers, hula-hoopsters and a couple of strongmen will be deployed to the strains of "O Holy Night," "Sleigh Ride" and more.

At the age of 16, a French villager named Jeanne d'Arc responded to what she said were the voices of saints, exhorting her to take up arms against English invaders. Dressed in male clothing, she led troops to victory in battle after battle before being captured when she was 19. Jeanne heard voices again soon enough, but these were decidedly human ones, some mocking her and others praying for her as she slowly burned to death at the stake during a brutal execution carried out 580 years ago. This week, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presents its first performance of a 1938 oratorio commemorating the woman whose faith, vision and bravery would eventually earn her sainthood.

It is possible to quibble with the idea of cramming three blockbuster works into a single program, but the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra carries it off. Ravel's "Bolero," that brilliant study in rhythmic and melodic reiteration, not to mention crescendo, is more likely to serve as a concert finale than a curtain-raiser for Tchaikovsky's barnstorming Piano Concerto No. 1. But here they are, back to back. And after two of classical music's greatest hits, why not one more? Well, at least one of classical music's greatest minutes — the introductory passage of Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra," now more commonly identified as the theme from the sci-fi classic "2001.

These are heady times for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.Last Wednesday, the orchestra won two Grammys for its collaboration with cellist Yo-Yo Ma on "The New York Album," a recording of concertos by Bela Bartok, Ernest Bloch and Stephen Albert. The orchestra won a Grammy four years ago for another recording with Mr. Ma, and Music Director David Zinman has collected another couple of Grammys for his work with other orchestras.Bravos are in order. If the BSO and Maestro Zinman keep it up, this could become a regular thing.

Blond and boyishly handsome, Vasily Petrenko might be mistaken for a gymnast, or perhaps a player of his favorite sport, soccer. But when the 35-year-old Russian conductor steps onto a podium, there's no doubt about his true calling. In 2009, Petrenko made a striking debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in an all-Russian program that included the most arresting Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich performances since Yuri Temirkanov stepped down as that ensemble's music director a few years earlier.

In addition to such things as new recording contracts and a nationally recognized education program, Marin Alsop's influence as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra can be seen in the programming each season. She typically weaves connective threads through concert repertoire. For 2011-2012, that thread involves commemorating extraordinary women, including Joan of Arc in November. This weekend, Harriet Tubman is the focus, via the premiere of a work by James Lee III, a Morgan State University professor whose finely crafted music has been gaining increased exposure nationally.