Columbia Orchestra

The Columbia Orchestra will begin its 17th season at 8 p.m. Saturday at Smith Theatre in Howard Community College.The concert will feature a performance of Sir William Walton's Prelude for Orchestra ("Granada"); Gordon Jacob's Viola Concerto No. 1 featuring soloist Julius Wirth; and Beethoven's Symphony No. 3.Admission is $7, or $5 for students and seniors.Information: 313-9735.Police logDorsey's Search: 4900-5600 block of Columbia Road: Two cars reported stolen from Baltimore -- a gold-colored 1990 Dodge Dynasty and a white 1992 Chevrolet LeBaron -- were found abandoned Oct. 16, police said.

I heard the Columbia Orchestra for the first time Saturday evening when the ensemble opened its 22nd season -- its first under music director Jason Love -- with Verdi's overture to "Nabucco," Beethoven's First Piano Concerto, and the Ravel orchestration of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." The overwhelming impression is that Columbia hired the right guy. Love has the musicians playing not only with verve and passion, but with the awareness to enter into the emotional core of the works they perform.

Jason Love and his Columbia Orchestra concluded the ensemble's 25th anniversary season at the Jim Rouse Theatre on Saturday evening by staring down the turbulent 5th Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich. And true to form, neither Love nor his players flinched. Shostakovich spent most of his artistic life being bullied and harassed by the Soviet government, which perceived the moody ambiguity of his music as a threat to the dictum that "scientific socialism" would produce nothing but smiles of gratitude in Stalin's Communist paradise.

In the first concert of its 25th anniversary season, the Columbia Orchestra killed a snake, ambled through the eastern European countryside on a tour arranged by Czech composer Antonin Dvorak and welcomed a distinguished hometown soloist to Jim Rouse Theatre. Conductor Jason Love began this milestone season Saturday with Silvestre Revueltas' "Sensemaya," a rhythmically complex, seven-minute work inspired by Afro-Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen's poem about the ritualized killing of a snake.

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.

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."

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.

Critics, let's face it, are cultural snobs at heart. If you had told me in advance that a concert beginning with the theme to television's The Flintstones and ending with a suite from John Williams' score to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone would be as downright pleasant as was the Columbia Orchestra Pops Series concert I attended Saturday evening, I never would have believed you. Truth is maestro Jason Love and his orchestra concluded their 2003-2004...

After a season finale that took them deep into the heart of Mother Russia via the searingly intense 5th Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich and the sweeping romanticism of Sergei Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto, Jason Love and his Columbia Orchestra are set for a walk on the lighter side. That promenade will come in a pair of concerts that will conclude the local orchestra's 25th-anniversary season. At 8 p.m. Saturday, members of the orchestra will come together for an intimate, collegial evening of chamber music at Christ Episcopal Church, 6800 Oakland Mills Road in Columbia.

Two gifted young musicians from the Howard County public school system will take center stage at the Smith Theatre at 2 p.m. Sunday when the Columbia Orchestra presents a program of music by Beethoven, Prokofiev, Ravel and Frank Martin. Flutist Martha Cargo and violinist Xinzi Liu are this year's winners of the annual Young Artist Competition sponsored by the orchestra. The pair of accomplished young musicians was chosen from a field of 23 applicants after submitting to a preliminary audition and performing a solo recital.