Ellington

NOW OR NEVER Conductor Jeff Tyzik takes the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra through the works of two of the United States' best composers in Gershwin and Ellington: American Genius. The program includes selections from Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo" and "Sophisticated Lady" as well as George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Tickets for the performances, which take place tonight through Sunday at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, are $21-74. Call 410-783-8000 or visit www.baltimoresymphony.org for more information.

The Maryland Republican Party is paying Michael S. Steele $5,000 a month in consulting fees under an arrangement that began shortly after his selection as gubernatorial candidate Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s running mate. Although the payments appear legal, Democrats said the GOP's contract with Steele raises ethical questions and suggests the party might be subsidizing the living expenses of a candidate for statewide office. "It looks to me like they've hired themselves a candidate," said David Paulson, a spokesman for the state Democratic Party.

The composer and music critic Virgil Thomson wasn't merely being flip when he said, "The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish." From the homespun hymns that entered the 18th century Psalter, to Appalachian folk songs, to African-American spirituals, jazz, Broadway, Tin Pan Alley and formidable symphonists such as Aaron Copland and Charles Ives, our music has been as eclectic a national statement as one could imagine.

AMID THE comment and celebration that accompanied Bob Dylan's recent 60th birthday, few observers viewed him as part of a larger American artistic thread. Because Mr. Dylan has developed counter to the usual expectations concerning American musical artists, his most enduring qualities, the ones that link him to the traditions of American culture, have often gone unrecognized. That voice, for one. Critics and audiences have dismissed it, put off by surface roughness and lack of technical perfection.

U.S. Rep. Norman Sisisky, 74, a Virginia Democrat, died at home yesterday in Richmond while recovering from cancer surgery, his office said. A Navy veteran of World War II, he was first elected to the House in 1982 and was a senior member on the House Armed Services Committee as well as the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Herbie Jones, 74, a jazz musician who worked with Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, died March 19 of complications from diabetes in New York. A jazz trumpeter, composer, arranger and educator, he toured five continents with the Ellington band.

WASHINGTON -- More than100 years after his birth, we are still coming to appreciate the enormity of Duke Ellington in both his contributions to the cause of civil rights and to American culture. Organized marching, protests and other confrontations did not represent the only ways blacks struggled against discrimination, though they are the methods of resistance on which historians have concentrated the most. Ellington's efforts in this area showed that those who were quiet on political issues could push the boundaries of racism and black participation at the higher reaches of society and culture.

An abundance of pain lies just beneath the lightly romantic, gently comic surface of "Twelfth Night." One of the play's major themes is about having to suppress your truest self to be accepted by the dominant culture. It's about feeling powerless, about having to "pass." And that's a theme that resounds deeply for black Americans - or members of any minority group, really. So Sheldon Epps' decision to set this modern-day retooling of Shakespeare's story in Harlem in the 1940s was inspired.

For the most part they've bickered about Medicare, Social Security, big government, school vouchers and whether that "top 1 percent" deserves to get a tax cut. But neither presidential candidate has specifically said much about the American dream of owning a home. Al Gore and George W. Bush want to increase homeownership, but you would have to dig deep into the briefing books to know what their specific homeowning and housing proposals are. "The economy is so good, homeownership is so high, and interest rates are so low, it's a nonissue," said Keith T. Gumbinger, vice president of New Jersey-based HSH Associates, a firm that tracks and analyzes mortgage rates.

Dr. John Duke Elegant (Blue Note 7243 8 23220) During the Duke Ellington centenary, much was made about the weight and importance of Ellington's ouevre. He wasn't just an important bandleader or lively, expressive jazz pianist; he was a Great Composer, whose works deserve to rank among the greatest American music of the last century. All of which is true, but it overlooks one important detail: Duke Ellington was a very funky guy. When Ellington began to make his name, it was with dance music, and the sound of his early "jungle band" was blues-drenched and rhythmically vital, making it more the equivalent of contemporary R&B than the art music it's currently compared to. Unfortunately, the rhythms Ellington and his men worked with sound awfully quaint these days, so it's hard for modern listeners to appreciate just how funky this stuff was. Enter Dr. John.

Jo Barker, president of the Performing Arts Association of Linthicum, has good news this 18th season. For the first time, PAAL has more than 700 subscribers, and if that isn't cause enough for celebrating, writer-broadcaster John Tegler again played host for the season opener, attracting a number of his radio fans to the concert.Well known as a jazz authority -- he has a show on WEAA-FM 88.9 -- Tegler has a reputation for showcasing accomplished musicians in his re-creations of musical legends.