Bso

Not everybody is watching football games on Sunday afternoon. Thank goodness that's the case for the classical music series Sundays at Three, which, true to its name, stands a sporting chance of attracting a nonsporting audience for its season-opening concert on Sunday, Oct. 28 at 3 p.m. at Christ Episcopal Church, in Columbia. The three performers on this concert are Bo Li, who is acting assistant principal cellist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; Kuei-l Wu, who teaches piano at Howard Community College; and violinist Ronald Mutchnik, who is artistic director of the Sundays at Three series.

A report last week that the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is anticipating a deficit of $750,000 or more for the fiscal year that began in September is a reminder that the effects of the 2008 recession are still reverberating through the state's nonprofit arts community. The BSO, like arts groups across the state, was hit hard by the economic downturn, which triggered a drop in ticket sales, private and corporate contributions and state and local government grants. Despite having managed to balance its budget over the past several years by slashing staff, freezing hiring and cutting back in ways large and small, the orchestra still isn't out of the woods yet. Only two years ago, the BSO was forced to cut musicians' pay and benefits by 17 percent to balance the books, and that was after performers had already agreed to forgo raises totaling about $1 million in 2009.

Appropriately, given the prominent TV references, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra opens its 2012-2013 SuperPops season this weekend with a rerun — a program called "The Golden Age of Black and White. " This celebration of 1950s television and more first "aired" in 2006 and proved to be a vibrant, smoothly crafted example of the productions created by the Symphonic Pops Consortium, founded in Indianapolis by BSO principal pops conductor Jack Everly. The show's return promises an equally refreshing dip into the past.

Leonard Bernstein, the brilliant American conductor and composer, did not just wear his heart on his sleeve. All his worries were clearly exposed as well. This comes through in many of his compositions, where there's a palpable sense of struggle - between light and dark, conviction and doubt, tonality and dissonance. His Symphony No. 3, the "Kaddish," composed in 1963 and dedicated to the "beloved memory" of John F. Kennedy, is a major case in point. Another is "Mass," the astounding theater piece Bernstein wrote for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971.

Dennis C. Kain, longtime Baltimore Symphony Orchestra principal timpanist, whose career spanned more than four decades, died Saturday of colon cancer at his Hamilton home. He was 73. "Dennis was not only a wonderful musician and timpanist, but also a beloved member of the BSO family," said Marin Alsop, the orchestra's music director. "His love of music and his fellow musicians always shone through, and he tackled life and music with a positive, open and inspiring attitude," said Ms. Alsop.

Baltimore figures substantially in "Arts and the Mind," a two-hour documentary airing on PBS stations around the country. There is a good amount of airtime for OrchKids, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's ambitious music education program launched by music director Marin Alsop and now offered in four inner-city schools. Also getting attention is Dr. Charles Limb, the surgeon and neuroscientist (not to mention jazz sax player) at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His studies into the creative process include putting a hip-hop performer under a brain scanner.

With a giant flag of 15 stars and stripes as a backdrop inside Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, a celebratory concert Sunday night drew a packed house to cap the weekend's commemoration of the War of 1812 bicentennial. As if to underline that there are no hard feelings left over from that conflict between the Americans and the British, members of the Royal Marine Band were positioned outside the hall to entertain arriving concertgoers. Inside, this Star-Spangled Sailabration event featured the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the United States Navy Band Sea Chanters Chorus and Gov.Martin O'Malley's Celtic band, O'Malley's March.

There are unexpected perks that can come with receiving a Pulitzer Prize, as composer Kevin Puts discovered last Tuesday. "It was 'Kevin Puts Day' here," he said by phone from his home in Yonkers, N.Y. "There was a nice ceremony with the mayor. I got a plaque. I never had a day named after me. " Puts, a Peabody Institute faculty member since 2006, won the Pulitzer for "Silent Night," an opera about the unauthorized Christmas truce in the midst of World War I, when troops from both sides of the trenches emerged to celebrate Christmas together before the killing resumed.

"It was a compulsion. I had no other choice," Katherine Needleman said regarding what lead her down the path to a career in music. "I would've been a pianist except my technique was too limited. " Though she's experimented with many other instruments, Needleman, 34, who moved from Iowa to Ellicott City when she was 7 and now lives in Dickeyville, finally settled on the oboe while at college and has been the principal oboist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra since 2003. Since that time, she was been a part of nearly all BSO performances and is especially looking forward to playing the Strauss Concerto next season.

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.