Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

The melding of talk, visuals and music at a concert is a tricky business. That hasn't stopped the Baltimore Symphony from trying. This season's Explorer Series, centered on connections between music and nature, addresses in the final program the concept of symmetry. This provides for the re-entry of amiable astrophysicist Mario Livio as host, a role he carried out for the first time, most engagingly, last fall. If you go The BSO performs at 8 tonight and 3 p.m. tomorrow at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

How do you speak about the unspeakable? That was the creative challenge composer Aaron Jay Kernis faced in 1995 when he searched for the right musical language for Lament and Prayer, a piece marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust. It's one of two Kernis pieces the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, led by music director Marin Alsop, will perform this week. Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 is also on the program. Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Performs at 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Music Center at Strathmore.

Mozart had a very earthy side, as any perusal of his unabridged letters will reveal, but his music invariably touches the sky. Sibelius was pretty much a down-to-earth guy, too, and that's where his music stays, with the feel of soil and rock in it. The latest Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program contrasts the heavenly beauty of form and melody in Mozart with the craggy topography and shadowed emotions in Sibelius. Putting each composer into perspective is Gunther Herbig, a seasoned conductor who can be counted on for calm command and a firm sense of style.

It used to be said that I Love Lucy was being broadcast somewhere in the world just about every hour of the day. My guess is that the classical music equivalent of such ubiquity would be Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. Although the 1725 piece hardly registered in the public consciousness 40 or 50 years ago, it is never out of earshot now, not when you figure in all the 18th-century-saturated programming of classical radio stations and the baroque-heavy repertoire piped into elevators and lobbies.

Leonardo da Vinci thought that our souls are composed of harmony. Whenever I hear music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Anton Bruckner, I'm inclined to agree. If you go The BSO performs at 8 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Sunday at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 8 p.m. Saturday at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda. $25-$55. 410-783-8000, baltimoresymphony.org.

Every now and then you'll find composers in a concert hall, ready to bound up to the stage for a bow after someone else leads a performance of their work. That happened just last week, when John Adams was on hand to hear Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop conduct his kinetic Fearful Symmetries. But Adams is back this week, and he's not confined to a listening role. Alsop had the welcome idea of inviting several prominent composers to conduct programs that combined their own music with something from older repertoire, chiefly by Beethoven, whose nine symphonies are scattered throughout the season.

Ben Jaffe pursed his lips and whistled - a short, melodious bird call of a sound. As he did, he was reminded of how much he has lost. "There are certain things that, if you aren't from New Orleans, you have no idea what they mean," says Jaffe, artistic director of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which performs this weekend with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. If You Go Mardi Gras Celebration with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and vocalist Banu Gibson.

CONCERT COLE PORTER TRIBUTE Get a kick out of Cole Porter at the concert "Too Darn Hot! A Tribute to Cole Porter" today through Sunday at the Music Center at Strathmore and the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra SuperPops, under the direction of Jack Everly, along with the Baltimore Choral Arts Society and music director Tom Hall and guest vocalists, will perform many of Porter's famed Broadway hits from the Great American Songbook. Among them: "I Get a Kick Out of You," "I've Got You Under My Skin," "Night and Day" and "My Heart Belongs to Daddy."

There were more music lovers than you could shake a baton at. But Marvin Hamlisch certainly gave it his all at the 17th annual Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Gala. The BSO's principal pops conductor led the orchestra in a swinging concert before a sold-out crowd of more than 1,000 at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.But that was only the first movement. Next, the bedecked bunch enjoyed hors d'oeuvres in the hall's foyer, then dinner on a temporary floor in the auditorium. The grand finale to the evening was dancing in the lobby.

Toot! Toot!They're really steaming at the B&O Railroad Museum. With All Aboard Days: Live Steam Weekend in full gear, visitors can catch train films, museum tours and Civil War re-enactments, enjoy children's activities and hop rides on America's most famous Civil War locomotive, the William Mason, which will offer trips to Mount Clare Mansion. B&O visitors will hear Civil War-era music by the Gilmore Ensemble. Kids can take miniature steam train rides on the Chesapeake and Allegheny Live Steamers.

All orchestras need to get back to their roots periodically, putting aside the big-gun Tchaikovsky and Mahler works and exploring the more intimately scaled world of Haydn. He was, after all, the "father of the symphony," the composer who created the mold and filled it more than 100 times. Haydn's symphonic works aren't played as regularly as they should be around here, which is one reason why the latest Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program is well worth catching. Another reason is that French conductor Louis Langr?

Ideally, concertgoers in this country would know and love at least two big, hearty all-American symphonies - I'd vote for No. 2 by Charles Ives and No. 3 by Aaron Copland - as deeply as they embrace European classics. But that's not likely to happen if our orchestras don't make more room for them. Although the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra enjoys a solid reputation for its support of American music, it has programmed Copland's Third only four times in the past four decades and has never played Ives' Second.

Eastern Europe dominates the latest Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program - Czech and Polish composers, a Czech soloist. The results are energizing. The Czech material, Dvorak's Symphony No. 7 and Scherzo capriccioso, is being recorded live at each concert for a cycle of the composer's works that the orchestra has been making for the Naxos label. Music director Marin Alsop's strong affinity for this repertoire came through again Thursday night at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, especially when she turned to Dvorak's Seventh.

It's a wonder the fire alarms didn't go off at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall on Thursday night. The incendiary matchup of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, guest conductor Vasily Petrenko and piano soloist Stephen Hough produced one of the most memorable concerts of the season. Tonight's repeat should be just as gripping. The Russian-born Petrenko, who became principal conductor of England's Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in 2005 at age 29, put together a hefty program: Shostakovich's daunting Symphony No. 8; Tchaikovsky's sweeping Piano Concerto No. 1; and a rarity (on these shores)

Marin Alsop is back in town for her first Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concerts since last month's sensational production of Leonard Bernstein's Mass that won over audiences and quite a few critics in New York and Washington, as well as right here. The conductor will lead two performances of a full-length program this weekend at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, as well as introduce a new series there called "Off the Cuff." This latest BSO product has Alsop's name all over it. The concept is simple: one work of music, preceded by a discussion of it, all packaged together in 90, intermission-less minutes or less.

After the intensity of Leonard Bernstein's Mass, the provocative work that occupied the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for the past two weeks and garnered glowing notices from Washington to New York, last night's comfort-food program must have provided a welcome return to normality. Led by an exceptional guest conductor, Ludovic Morlot, the musicians sounded cohesive and dynamic as they addressed three repertoire standards in a less-than-filled Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. To start, there was a fun, if unintentional, nod to Halloween - The Sorcerer's Apprentice, by Paul Dukas.

Leonard Bernstein wrestled much of his life with issues of religion, politics and social conscience. He poured a combustible mix of feelings about those topics into a huge "theater piece for singers, players and dancers" called Mass, composed for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971. Much maligned in the press at the time, the brilliant work, which incorporates the Catholic liturgy into a personal and universal drama, has attracted advocates over the years, none more passionate than Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop.

Back in the day, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's summer season at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall steered a fairly straight classical course. Sometimes, there were substantive chamber music programs as appetizers before the orchestral concerts. Edible appetizers were available several years, along with lots of other refreshments, on sale outside the hall before the main event. Wine tastings were tried out, too, along the way. And after the BSO's final notes of the evening, the action often moved back outside for food, drink and dancing.

Comedian Lewis Black at the Meyerhoff The Lowdown: Comedian Lewis Black, the host of Comedy Central's The Root of All Evil, brings his caustic humor to Baltimore this weekend. A regular contributor to The Daily Show, Black uses sarcasm, anger and a lot of profanity to comment on the absurdities of daily life and modern politics. Black embarked on his "Let Them Eat Cake" tour this year to promote the recent release of his second book, Me of Little Faith. If You Go: Black performs at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall on Sunday.

The lowdown -- The Charles Theatre presents La Rondine as the latest entry in the La Scala Opera Series. Performed by Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Italy, Puccini's opera tells of a tragic love story between the courtesan Magda, played by Fiorenza Cedolins, and her lover, Ruggero, played by Massimo Giordano. If you go -- The opera will be shown at 12:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Wednesday and 6:30 p.m. June 29 at the theater, 1711 N. Charles St. Tickets are $21. Call 410-727-3456 or go to thecharles.