Lincoln Center

I am going to London in November. Can I get the schedule for the London Film Festival and reserve tickets before leaving the United States?Recent Hollywood releases as well as more exotic fare will be among the offerings of the 40th London Film Festival, presented by the British Film Institute Nov. 7-24. More than 300 films will be shown, mainly at the National Film Theater on the South Bank and at the Odeons 1 and 2 in Leicester Square, Soho. The festival encompasses works by filmmakers worldwide.

ANY DOUBTS that jazz is a fine art were laid to rest last year when New York's prestigious Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts announced that it was elevating its Jazz Department to equal status with the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Ballet.Yet even Lincoln Center's artistic imprimatur couldn't change the unhappy fact that jazz, America's singular cultural contribution to the world, is no longer a vibrant, living tradition.Though one can still hear good jazz, both live and on record, the world in which the music was created and in which it once thrived no longer exists.

THE LATE JAZZMAN Rahsaan Roland Kirk used to call the repertoire he played "black classical music." He was serious about it, though the mostly white audiences who flocked to hear him perform in places like New York's Village Vanguard during the late 1960s and early '70s seemed to regard it as a joke -- part of the colorful "jive" patter with which the eccentric saxophonist regularly entertained his listeners.So Rahsaan probably would have been gratified by the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts' announcement last week that it was awarding its jazz department equal status with the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Ballet.

Baltimore violinist Hilary Hahn will make her New York orchestral debut this week in four solo appearances with the New York Philharmonic.The 14-year-old musician, a student at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, has been performing with professional orchestras since she was 11. She performed earlier this year with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony. (She made her debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 1991.)Under the direction of guest conductor Paavo Berglund, Hilary will perform Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in concerts scheduled Oct. 13-15 and Oct. 18 in Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.

Leaving aside O. J. Simpson preliminary hearing coverage (I'm bypassing O. J., OK?), there's still an above-average selection of watchable offerings on TV tonight.* "Live From Lincoln Center" (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WMPT, Channels 22 and 67) -- This marks the 28th season of the Mostly Mozart Festival, a welcome summer breeze of concerts devoted to -- well, mostly to Mozart, but tonight to Tchaikovsky, Gluck and Haydn also. Headliners are pianist Shura Cherkassky, soprano Korliss Uecker and baritone Thomas Hampson.

NEW YORK -- William Schuman, one of the most influential figures in American music in the past 50 years, died Saturday at 81.Mr. Schuman won two Pulitzer Prizes for his compositions, including the first Pulitzer ever awarded for music. He also was the president of the Juilliard School of Music during its greatest period of growth after World War II; was president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts from its opening day in 1962 until 1969; and was instrumental in the creation of the Juilliard String Quartet, the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the New York Film Festival.

Fred Sherry could be a cello-playing advertisement for life i Columbia."It's great to play for an audience that knows the music and -- when they don't know an individual piece -- has enough background to appreciate it," the cellist says.Sherry is the outgoing artistic director of the world-famous Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and he's talking about audiences at -- yes, that's right -- the Columbia Festival of the Arts, where the CMSLC will be in residence from Friday through July 6.As it does in New York and in other cities (and as it did at last year's Columbia Festival)

David Zinman, conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, will conduct and perform in the nationally televised "Live From Lincoln Center" program Sunday at 3 p.m. on Maryland Public Television, channels 22 and 67.Zinman will conduct the Orchestra of St. Luke's and will accompany featured cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Jeffrey Kahane and cellist Carter Brey.The program of orchestral and chamber music will include the Sonata for Two Cellos by the baroque composer Barriere, the Rachmaninoff Sonata for Cello and Piano, the Faure "Elegie" and Tchaikovsky's "Variations on a Rococo Theme."