Final Concert

It has been a year of milestones and transitions for member of the Baltimore Consort. For one, they are celebrating 10 years as an ensemble, an unusually long life span for a group that focuses on British, French and Italian music of the 16th and 17th centuries.The group has also released its first compact disc, "On the Banks of Helicon: Early Music of Scotland," on the Dorian label.And, after seven years as ensemble-in-residence at the Walters Art Gallery, the Consort has become the Peabody Conservatory's resident ensemble.

THE ANNAPOLIS Symphony Orchestra this weekend plays under the baton of Gisele Ben-Dor, resident conductor of the Houston Symphony, the third of six candidates trying out for full-time conductor this year before a selection is made in May.Pat Edwards, executive director of the 80-member orchestra, said the new permanent leader will replace Peter Bay, who left last year to become associate conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic and assistant conductor of...

A pair of Baltimore filmmakers will likely have a guaranteed audience from Westminster when Last Ride of the Raven, their romantic comedy, makes its debut. To add a 1950s flavor to their movie, George R. Rivers III and Gene Vincentt filmed scenes last weekend during the final installment of the summer concert series at Westminster City Park -- with the audience cued to dress in period costume, right down to poodle skirts, saddle shoes and greased hair. Rivers and Vincentt wanted to revisit the days of the old hot rod movies by creating one of their own. The filmmakers chose to shoot parts of their story in Westminster because it's home to the Street Cars of Desire club, with its hot rods and classic cars -- and because Vincentt's band would be playing the final concert in the summer series.

Some six weeks after 22 of its members returned from a singing tour of the Czech Republic, Columbia Pro Cantare, Howard County's premier choral organization, has announced details of its 1999-2000 concert season.Under the baton of conductor Frances Motyca Dawson, Pro Cantare will begin its 23rd season Oct. 30 at the Jim Rouse Theatre of the Performing Arts at Wilde Lake in Columbia with a performance of Giuseppe Verdi's monumental "Requiem Mass."Dedicated to the memory of Italian novelist and nationalist Alessandro Manzoni, the Verdi requiem is a dramatic musical treatment of the Roman liturgy for the dead.

THE CHRISTMAS STORY: The Walters Art Museum, 600 N. Charles St., might be closed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but there's still plenty of time to reflect on the meaning of the holiday. "The Christmas Story: Picturing the Birth of Christ in Medieval Manuscripts" includes medieval illustrations based on the events of the Christmas story as recounted in the New Testament. This exhibit runs through Feb. 28. Admission is free. Call 410-547-9000 or go to thewalters.org. DANIELIA COTTON: This rock-and-roller influenced by the likes of Tina Turner, AC/DC and Joe Cocker comes to Rams Head on Stage, 33 West St. in Annapolis, at 8 p.m. Kat Parsons also performs.

Three of the five performances featured in the 1997-1998 concert series of the Performing Arts Association of Linthicum showcase local talent."PAAL has from the beginning striven to present local talent," said incoming association President Jo Barker.The series begins Sunday with an Annapolis Opera production. A narrator will weave a "love won and lost" theme that will be illustrated by favorite arias from such composers as Verdi, Puccini, Bizet and Offenbach.Sopranos Laura Vicari and Marcia Platt Treece, tenor George Aud and baritone Stevin Goodman will sing.

It's time to kick up your heels at the final concert this season of Columbia Pro Cantare. This rousing concert of Celtic music from Ireland, Scotland and Wales features the full Pro Cantare chorus along with the Chamber Singers and guest artists Rob McIver, tenor; Rosie Shipley, fiddler; Gerry O'Beirne, singer and guitarist; Jared Denhard, piper and harper; and Alison Matuskey, pianist; and a festival chamber orchestra. These gathered forces will perform at 8 p.m. tomorrow at Jim Rouse Theatre at Wilde Lake High School under the direction of Columbia Pro Cantare Artistic Director Frances Motyca Dawson.

The greatest marriage of sight and sound in the cinema was between Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and his compatriot, composer Sergei Prokofiev. The first fruit of that partnership -- the 1938 film epic, "Alexander Nevsky" -- was the centerpiece last night in Meyerhoff Hall for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's final program of the season.This was not the 40-minute cantata that Prokofiev fashioned from his film score. It was all 107 minutes of Eisenstein's great movie (in a fine-looking, restored print)

How much people love the flutist James Galway can be gauged by how willing they are to get wet for him.Last night during the superstar flutist's appearance with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Merriweather Post Pavilion in the final concert of the Columbia Festival of the Arts, it rained. It one was the sort of deluge that can sometimes make one think that Maryland is the subtropics. But most of the people sitting on the lawn did not leave, preferring to get drenched in order to hear Galway play Mozart with the BSO and its music director, David Zinman.

The Annapolis Chorale pulled out all the stops for its final concert of the season Saturday, bringing in professional soloists and augmenting the chorale with a high school chorus to perform works by Mozart, Brahms and Schubert.The string section of the Annapolis Chamber Orchestra opened the program at Maryland Hall for the Performing Arts, playing the overture to Mozart's comic opera "Der Schauspieldirektor" with precision and verve.The rest of the orchestra, chorale and soloists joined the strings for Mozart's "Vesperae Solennes de Confessore" ("Solemn Vespers")