Columbia Orchestra

Live music. Alive music. Live audiences. Come one, come all. But why should you? Why should you leave the comfort of your easy chair and venture out to a concert? Our compact-disc players and television systems provide us with sophisticated sound systems that deliver wonderful musical experiences with the flick of a finger. Yet the most intense musical experiences come about only when we are present, not virtually present. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is like live music. On a CD, the sound is so clear that you can hear the performers breathe; on television, the camera can zoom in so that you can watch the performers breathe; but when you are there, you are in control: you choose what to look at; you choose what to hear; you choose what to focus on. A concert is an intimate experience even if you are sitting in an auditorium with hundreds of other people.

For interesting, innovative musical fare, no regional ensemble will beat the Columbia Orchestra in the 2004-2005 concert season. Oh, the tried-and-true blockbuster masterworks will be there, don't you worry. Maestro Jason Love and his players begin the season with Beethoven's riveting "Coriolan" Overture and Hector Berlioz's phantasmagorial "Symphonie Fantastique," the groundbreaking Romantic work replete with extraordinary depictions of opium-induced love, fixation and murder with a creepy "Witches' Sabbath" tossed in for good measure.

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...

In general, amateur and semiprofessional orchestras give wide berth to works such as Igor Stravinsky's Petrushka, and who can blame them? Premiered as a ballet score for the Ballet Russes of Paris in 1911 and refurbished by Stravinsky as a full-scale work for the concert hall in 1947, Petrushka is a mighty tall order for all but the most elite orchestral players. Its harmonies flirt with bi-tonality. Instruments (especially the trumpets and clarinets) are assigned murderously difficult parts, and a host of mind-boggling rhythms fly out of the orchestral textures nonstop.

Maestro Jason Love's penchant for the contemporary musical idiom means that his Columbia Orchestra, Howard County's premier ensemble for instrumental music, spends a fair amount of time outside the standard symphonic repertoire. That, however, will not be the case Saturday evening when the Columbians take the Rouse Theatre stage for a program of favorites taken straight from the heart of the classical canon. There is no better-loved overture anywhere than the instrumental prelude to Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro, a story of love and forgiveness triumphant amid the fledgling republicanism of late 18th-century Europe.

Borrowing some spiritually charged lingo from the New Age folks, the Columbia Orchestra took the Rouse Theatre stage Saturday evening for a concert titled "Body, Voice, and Spirit." Homage to the "Body" came courtesy of "Rainbow Body," a work by Christopher Theofanides, a contemporary composer affiliated with New York's Juilliard School and the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Already recorded by Robert Spano and his Atlanta Symphony on the Telarc label, "Rainbow Body" was last year's winner of Masterprize, one of the music world's most prestigious awards for composition.

The Columbia Orchestra will commence its 26th season Saturday evening at Jim Rouse Theatre and, fitting for this time of year, a pair of autumnal masterworks will dominate the proceedings. "Each is an extraordinary valedictory statement," says conductor Jason Love of Tchaikovsky's final work, the alternately graceful and brooding 6th Symphony, subtitled Pathetique, and Elgar's grand, noble and deeply felt Cello Concerto, the last major composition by the English master. "Both pieces contain interludes of grief," says Love, who begins his fifth year at the Columbia helm with this weekend's concert, "but each has its share of gorgeous, even fun, moments."

When David Choo decided to end his five-year tenure as conductor of the Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra last season, the music world took notice. Fifty-two conductors from 21 states and three foreign countries (Britain, Italy and Austria) submitted applications to the orchestra's search committee for the job of conducting one of Maryland's premier young people's orchestras, said Robert Posten, a professional trombonist and CYSO parent who headed the group. The committee selected Julien Benichou, a French-born maestro who has trained under of Gustav Meier of Baltimore's Peabody Institute, one of the world's most renowned nurturers of young conducting talent.

When conductor Jason Love comes onstage wearing a brown cowboy hat, and concertmistress Brenda Anna dons Princess Leia braids during intermission, you can bet it's not just another night at the symphony. Indeed, Saturday night at Jim Rouse Theatre proved a delightfully different musical affair as the Columbia Orchestra concluded its 25th anniversary season with a "Symphonic Pops" program of selections by Richard Rodgers, Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, George Gershwin and film composer par excellence, John Williams.

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.