Columbia Orchestra

Next season promises to be a good one for contemporary American music in Baltimore. With Marin Alsop as its new music director, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will perform nearly a dozen pieces by living American composers, as well as 20th-century masterworks by Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington and George Gershwin. But local enthusiasts of new and recent American works need not wait for Alsop's arrival to hear the indigenous music of our time. At 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at Jim Rouse Theatre, music director Jason Love and the Columbia Orchestra will close out their season with "A New World," a program featuring music by three Americans and one famous European visitor.

It will be a "Mostly Mozart" Saturday night at Smith Theatre, courtesy of the Columbia Orchestra.Conductor Catherine L. Ferguson will take the stage at 8 to conduct Mozart's Overture to "Don Giovanni," the sparkling A-major Piano Concerto, K.414, and the Flute Concerto in G. Rounding out the program will be Felix Mendelssohn's "Reformation" Symphony."

Catherine L. Ferguson has negotiated many milestones in her life. She's earned master's degrees in violin performance and conducting, and has led the Columbia Orchestra for the past nine years.But after turning 40 this year, Ferguson wants to try something new.So she's leaving the 70-piece orchestra after this season's final performance Saturday at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre in Columbia.Conducting "takes a lot of energy," Ferguson acknowledged. "Having turned 40 recently, there were things that I haven't done with my life that I don't want to look back on and wish I'd just tried it. There are so many things left for me to explore."

Any concert featuring Beethoven's 3rd "Leonore" Overture, Gustav Mahler's "Kindertotenlieder," Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring" and the Fifth Symphony of Jean Sibelius is a special event on its own merits.The Columbia Orchestra's final concert of the season at 8 p.m. Saturday at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre takes on a significance that goes beyond even this celestial repertoire. It will be Catherine L. Ferguson's last as music director.After nine years at the ensemble's helm, she leaves to do further graduate study.

What do an old castle, an ox cart, unhatched chicks, a bustling French marketplace, two Jewish people, and a grand design for a never-built czarist monument have in common?Classical music aficionados can answer that one easily.These are just some of the scenes captured in the paintings and drawings of Russian artist Victor Hartmann -- images that would inspire the artist's friend Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881)to compose the most famous museum stroll in the history of music.Linked by a catchy "Promenade" theme that depicts an art-lover determinedly on the move, Mussorgsky's suite of 10 piano pieces inspired by Hartmann's art became "Pictures at an Exhibition," a work still considered one of the great romantic showpieces composed for the keyboard.

Anyone who thinks drug-induced musical dreams are exclusive to 1960s rock-'n'-rollers doesn't know classical music very well.For sitting at the core of the symphonic repertoire is Hector Berlioz's immensely colorful "Symphonie Fantastique," the five-movement tale of a fixated lover and his opium-inspired dream gone bad.With its hair-raising "March to the Scaffold" and a phantasmagoric "Witches Sabbath" punctuated by the sounds of demons, sorcerers and...

Fourteen-year-old Catherine Ferguson was enraged by the way the dawdling conductor of her junior high school band was more interested in hearing his own voice than improving the talents of the young musicians."

BILL PINDELL, known fondly as "the mayor of Glenwood," passed away last fall.A gentleman of distinction, he made many friends in his years of devotion to the community.Service, through the Glenwood Lions Club, was one of Pindell's passions.He raised money, organized community events and supported efforts to help those with sight and hearing difficulties.To honor his memory and his years of service, the Glenwood Lions Club has established the Bill Pindell Community Service Award.Members of the club invite you to nominate someone who has served Western Howard County to receive this honor.

There had to have been an easier way.In an Ellicott City production of Handel's "Messiah," the orchestra and soloists showed up only an hour before showtime, and the chorus straggled in much later. And many of them didn't even bring their music with them.It could have been a disastrous affair, but -- oddly -- it was all by design.At the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' 13th annual "Messiah" Sing-In on Sunday night, the element of surprise was as important as the flute and violin -- or the composition's "Hallelujah!"

There had to have been an easier way.In an Ellicott City production of Handel's "Messiah," the orchestra and soloists showed up only an hour before showtime, and the chorus straggled in much later. And many of them didn't even bring their music with them.It could have been a disastrous affair, but -- oddly -- it was all by design.At the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' 13th annual "Messiah" Sing-In on Sunday night, the element of surprise was as important as the flute and violin -- or the composition's "Hallelujah!"

Auditions * The Columbia Orchestra will hold auditions 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. today and 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday at Christ Episcopal Church, 6800 Oakland Mills Road. Call 410-465-8777, ext. 4, or e-mail join@columbiaorchestra.org. * Silhouette Stages (formerly Shadow Block Productions) will hold auditions for a cast of 18 to 30 actors, singers and dancers ages 16 and older, for its production of "Sugar," a Broadway musical based on the screenplay of the film "Some Like it Hot." The play is about two musicians who are witnesses to a murder and are forced to hide from the bad guys by disguising themselves as women and joining an all-female orchestra.

Orchestra, firm form partnership Baltimore Washington Financial Advisors, a Columbia-based fee-only service, has entered a partnership with the Columbia Orchestra to help extend the orchestra's contacts and support in the local business community. "Fee-only" compensation means advisers do not accept commissions or other compensation related to products they recommend. Bob Cassel, principal of BWFA, will sit on the Columbia Orchestra's eight-person board. Cassel holds a doctorate of music arts from Catholic University of America in Washington.

Spirituality, arts retreat planned As part of a community arts project sponsored by the Columbia Orchestra, Thomas Kight, founder of the Zen Community of Columbia, will present "Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives: A Spirituality & Arts Retreat" from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. tomorrow at the Bon Secours Spiritual Center in Marriottsville. The retreat, which will focus on the vision of universal brotherhood expressed in Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 (Choral), will include meditation and a chance to participate in making and responding to photographs, poetry and music, and singing a choral piece in harmony.

Members of the Columbia Orchestra will present a free chamber music concert at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at Christ Episcopal Church, 6800 Oakland Mills Road, in Columbia. The program will feature a Beethoven sextet for horns and strings, string quartets by William Grant Still and Hugo Cole, and more. The Classical Encounters String Quartet - Columbia Orchestra violinists Robin Strempek and Marlene Browne, violist Chris Gosper and cellist Carolyn Ginnever - will perform two rarely heard string quartets by Cole, a British composer and music critic.

The Columbia Festival of the Arts has built a reputation for bringing new acts to familiar Columbia venues. This year, the organizers are presenting some familiar groups in new ways to celebrate the event's 20th anniversary. The festival is pairing renowned fiddler, violinist and composer Mark O'Connor with the Columbia Orchestra on Sunday, and the Columbia Pro Cantare will join the Minnesota Dance Theatre's performance of Carmina Burana on June 15. The festival has long offered opportunities to local performing groups and visual artists, particularly at the free LakeFest event, in workshops and at smaller venues.

Next season promises to be a good one for contemporary American music in Baltimore. With Marin Alsop as its new music director, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will perform nearly a dozen pieces by living American composers, as well as 20th-century masterworks by Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington and George Gershwin. But local enthusiasts of new and recent American works need not wait for Alsop's arrival to hear the indigenous music of our time. At 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at Jim Rouse Theatre, music director Jason Love and the Columbia Orchestra will close out their season with "A New World," a program featuring music by three Americans and one famous European visitor.

In honor of its 20th anniversary - and its hometown's 40th birthday - the Columbia Festival of the Arts has announced a schedule that includes something old, something new, something local and some blues. In choosing the festival acts that will appear between June 6 and June 23, "we really wanted to celebrate and embrace the arts groups in Howard County and Columbia ... and to bring back some of the acts that helped make the festival what it is today," said John Duncan, program coordinator.

Music is dangerous! Some individuals think that lyrics can brainwash people. Some individuals think that rock 'n' roll (and other kinds of pop music) can lead teenagers astray. The idea that music, or words or art can be subversive is hardly new -- the Greeks forbid the playing of music in certain modes (keys) to anyone other than military men. At 7:30 p.m. June 3 , the Columbia Orchestra, in its last concert of the season, will perform a program with the theme "Clear and Present Danger," presenting two pieces whose subtexts reflect their cultures and transcend them: Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25 and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10. The concert will be held at Jim Rouse Theatre at Wilde Lake High School in Columbia.

The two winners of the Columbia Orchestra's 2006 Young Artist Competition will join the Columbia Orchestra at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow for a concert loaded with energy. The youthful exuberance of the two soloists will be perfectly matched by the enthusiasm of the musicians of the Columbia Orchestra. The Columbia Orchestra is a volunteer adult community orchestra whose conductor and music director, Jason Love, is an inspiring and a knowledgeable musician. Love was educated at the Peabody Conservatory, studying cello and conducting, and is a member of the faculty at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Romance and excitement are included in the price of your ticket at the Arabian Nights concert of the Columbia Orchestra at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at Jim Rouse Theatre at Wilde Lake High School in Columbia., The two pieces on the program -- Rimsky-Korsakov's popular Scheherazade and Tan Dun's Paper Concerto for Paper Percussion and Orchestra -- share the ability to create a variety of moods, and, to a certain extent, share the moods they create. Scheherazade, based on the tales of the Arabian Nights, is the story of a very clever young woman who becomes the wife of a powerful sultan.