Contemporary Music

If your ears hanker for something out of the ordinary, just keep an eye on the events calendar at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where contemporary music is the standard music. You can start tonight with the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo. Pianist Helena Bugallo and pianist/composer Amy Williams will perform works by some of the 20th century's most notable mavericks - Morton Feldman, Conlon Nancarrow and Karlheinz Stockhausen. There will also be pieces by Gyorgy Kurtag and Mauricio Kagel, as well as Williams herself.

A lot of contemporary classical music is being composed, but there are relatively few opportunities to hear it live. The Dancing Heart Flute and Piano Duo will be doing its part to provide modern music for modern ears with a concert for the Sundays at Three series on March 10 at Christ Episcopal Church in Columbia. Comprising Karen Johnson on flute and Carlos-Cesar Rodriguez on piano, this duo is calling its program "American Spirit. " The 20th- and 21st-century composers on the bill are Lukas Foss, Joseph Schwantner, Robert Muczynski, Jeffrey Mumford, Manuel Ponce, Alberto Ginastera and Astor Piazzolla.

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. // A slogan often encountered in this compact city nestled along the north side of Monterey Bay, where the midsummer temperature hovers around 70 and the sky can be a startling blue, makes a simple, hard-to-resist plea: "Keep Santa Cruz Weird." Sure enough, there is some weirdness here, including a much-talked-about cross-dressing man decked out in pink who, shaded by a parasol, strolls at a snail's pace along the main drag. But just "offbeat" might be a better description for this diverse and tolerant community where a huge, century-old boardwalk and amusement center along the spacious beach provides one level of entertainment, and an ambitious celebration of new music held in a modest 1939 auditorium provides another.

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.

Randolph S. Rothschild, a patron of contemporary American music and a retired attorney, died Thursday of complications from Parkinson's disease and pneumonia at Sinai Hospital. The Pikesville resident was 93. A champion of modern composers for the past five decades, Mr. Rothschild was also a major benefactor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Peabody Conservatory and the old Chamber Music Society of Baltimore. Until her death in 2001, he was married to Baltimore artist Amalie Rosenfeld Rothschild for 65 years.

AM stations WCAO 600 Gospel music. WCBM 680 News, talk, information, business, sports. WBMD 750 Religious programming. WYRE 810 Classic country. WBGR 860 Gospel music. WAMD 970 Oldies rock, adult contemporary. WOLB 1010 Talk, information, news. WBAL 1090 News, talk, personalities, Orioles games and University of Maryland sports events. WBIS 1190 Financial news. WITH 1230 Religious programming. WJFK 1300 Personality talk, weekend sports. WJSS 1330 Gospel, religious programming.

A lot of contemporary classical music is being composed, but there are relatively few opportunities to hear it live. The Dancing Heart Flute and Piano Duo will be doing its part to provide modern music for modern ears with a concert for the Sundays at Three series on March 10 at Christ Episcopal Church in Columbia. Comprising Karen Johnson on flute and Carlos-Cesar Rodriguez on piano, this duo is calling its program "American Spirit. " The 20th- and 21st-century composers on the bill are Lukas Foss, Joseph Schwantner, Robert Muczynski, Jeffrey Mumford, Manuel Ponce, Alberto Ginastera and Astor Piazzolla.

When board members of the Columbia Orchestra hired Jason Love to conduct the ensemble two years ago, they knew they were getting one of the area's strongest proponents of contemporary music. Love's extensive experience with the avant-garde paid off handsomely Saturday evening when the orchestra presented American composer John Corigliano's "Pied Piper Fantasy" as the centerpiece of its spring concert at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre. Composed for James Galway, the Irish flutist and box office superstar, the "Pied Piper" is a flute concerto crammed full of dissonant, highly pictorial musical effects.

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.

This is the way we change, we change.In 1988, M.C. Hammer climbed the charts by telling the world "Let's Get It Started."Two years later, the world got hit hard with "Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em."The man who premiered his own Saturday morning cartoon series this fall -- as the super hero Hammerman -- is not about to stop kickin' it.OK, OK, stop the music. Stooop!!! I can't be perpetratin' to my public.Sorry to break the news, but Hammer's latest album, "Too Legit To Quit" is a little weak.

The Gryphon Trio will be thinking a lot about Beethoven when this Canadian ensemble performs locally for the Candlelight Concert Society Saturday, Feb. 18 at 8 p.m. at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre. "We love Beethoven," cellist Roman Borys says from his Toronto home. "When we're asked who our favorite composer is, it's usually Beethoven that is our answer. " And so Borys, violinist Annalee Patipatanakoon and pianist Jamie Parker are eager to launch into an all-Beethoven program comprised of the Trio in C minor, Op. 1, No. 3; Trio in B-flat Major, WoO 39; Variations in E-flat Major, Op. 44; and Trio in B-flat Major, Op. 97 "Archduke.

Brian Sacawa and Erik Spangler see themselves as sound guerrillas. The co-founders of the Contemporary Museum's off-kilter Mobtown Modern concert series don't just perform experimental music - sometimes they like to sneak up on people with it. That's the case with Mobtown Modern's latest project, a rendition of Mauricio Kagel's Eine Brise (A Breeze), subtitled "Fleeting Action for 111 Cyclists." No, that number's not a typo. The piece features a troupe of 111 bicyclists, who whistle, ring bells and make whooshing noises with their breath while riding to re-create the sound of a breeze.

NEW YORK --When Marin Alsop stepped onto the podium of the Carnegie Hall stage to lead the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Saturday night, a considerable crescendo of applause rose from a sizable audience that included feminist Gloria Steinem, stellar soprano Jessye Norman and Trey Anastasio, formerly of the rock group Phish. ... That feeling of good will in the house never abated. There was a sense of occasion about the event, which drew a larger turnout from the musical press than has typically greeted the BSO here in recent years.

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. // A slogan often encountered in this compact city nestled along the north side of Monterey Bay, where the midsummer temperature hovers around 70 and the sky can be a startling blue, makes a simple, hard-to-resist plea: "Keep Santa Cruz Weird." Sure enough, there is some weirdness here, including a much-talked-about cross-dressing man decked out in pink who, shaded by a parasol, strolls at a snail's pace along the main drag. But just "offbeat" might be a better description for this diverse and tolerant community where a huge, century-old boardwalk and amusement center along the spacious beach provides one level of entertainment, and an ambitious celebration of new music held in a modest 1939 auditorium provides another.

A call out for unity/in every province and city/what do you think we've been saying/since we first started playing." These words end 311's "Electricity," from the 1997 album, Transistor. This summer's Unity Tour - which comes to the Nissan Pavilion tomorrow - is turning these words into actions. Sharing the stage with 311 for the whole run are the Wailers, the legendary reggae band that backed Bob Marley for his entire career, and Hawaiian band Pepper, which plays a hybrid of reggae, rock, punk and pop. The tour is a celebration of the unity in contemporary music - these bands might not have shared the stage in a segregated live music scene decades ago. At each performance, Jamaican, Hawaiian and American music come together.

There could never be enough contemporary music around here. As is true in too many places these days, Baltimore audiences prefer to stick with well-worn sounds, preferably by long-decomposing composers. It doesn't help much to point out the obvious - if audiences way back when hadn't been willing to give new music a try, we might not be so familiar with the likes of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky now. Still, I heartily recommend a periodic visit to Nicholas Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective, originally published in 1953, for a strong dose of reality.

IT'S GOOD TO HEAR Michael Torke's music spread out over several concerts, as we are this month as David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra highlight the young composer in the orchestra's first American Composer Showcase.This is not so much because you can chart Torke's stylistic growth; his 1985 "Bright Blue Music," heard Friday on the BSO's Favorites Series, does not seem very distant from "Ash," a piece written only last year and heard at Meyerhoff Hall last week.It's more the ability to encounter a Torke work, with all its bubbly optimism (so alien to post-war contemporary music)

A play that deals with the sexual and physical abuse of women will be performed at Western Maryland College's Theatre on the Hill over the next two weekends."

The weekend's musical happenings included a sizzling performance by the Corigliano Quartet to close the 50th-anniversary concert season at Evergreen House in Baltimore. For this occasion, the locale was moved from the usual Carriage House site to the charming private theater inside the mansion, where chamber music was a notable hallmark of the Garrett family's residency there during the flapper and Depression eras. This young ensemble, named for composer John Corigliano, demonstrated remarkable qualities, including what was (to me, at least)

Randolph S. Rothschild, a patron of contemporary American music and a retired attorney, died Thursday of complications from Parkinson's disease and pneumonia at Sinai Hospital. The Pikesville resident was 93. A champion of modern composers for the past five decades, Mr. Rothschild was also a major benefactor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Peabody Conservatory and the old Chamber Music Society of Baltimore. Until her death in 2001, he was married to Baltimore artist Amalie Rosenfeld Rothschild for 65 years.