Music Department

The U.S. Naval Academy Music Department's 1994-1995 Distinguished Visitors Concert Series promises to be the most exciting in the history of Alumni Hall.The season begins on Sept. 24 at 7:30 p.m. with a performance by the Kirov Orchestra of St. Petersburg, under the direction of Valery Gergiev. The talented Russian's career has advanced steadily since he won the Karajan Competition in Berlin at age 23 and moved to the Kirov Opera as Yuri Temirkanov's assistant.Mr. Gergiev will conduct Wagner's Prelude to "Parsifal," Prokofiev's Fifth Piano Concerto and the wrenching Eighth Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich.

College celebrates Russian musicChamber Music on the Hill will commemorate the centennial of the death of Peter Tchaikovsky with an evening of music by Russian composers Feb. 20 in Western Maryland College's Baker Memorial Chapel.The 8 p.m. performance will feature instrumentalists from the college and the Baltimore-Washington area. Two members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, cellist Esther Mellon-Thompson and violinist Melissa Zaraya, will join pianist David Kreider, a senior music lecturer at the college.

Ruth Hoffman turned her birthday present into a present for three Towson State University music majors.Hoffman, a charter member of the Patapsco Valley Chapter 3850, American Association of Retired Persons, and an active participant in The Notables entertainment group, was given a cash gift by her friends in the organizations.Instead of buying something for herself, Hoffman decided to use her birthday money to award scholarships at Towson State.Dr. DavidMarchand, chairman of the university's music department, was contacted, and he and his staff selected three students to receive scholarships: Laura Kinsey, vocal major; Henryka Gryc, cello major; and Richard Hauf, saxophone major.

Some say Senate Minority Leader Jack Cade plays the upper house likea Stradivarius. Now, he will get a chance to lead the whole orchestra. Not the General Assembly. A real orchestra.Tomorrow night, theBear of Severna Park will be the guest conductor for the Anne Arundel Community College Orchestra during a benefit concert and reception called, "A Night in Vienna."Cade, a fifth-term senator from District 33, may be best known for devouring bureaucrats during state budget hearings.But the 61-year-old Republican will lead the 59-member orchestra through the "Radetzky March," a New Year's favorite in Vienna, shortly before intermission Saturday.

The Peabody Conservatory will offer a new master of music degree in electronic and computer music starting in September, the first such program in the country to offer three specialized areas -- composition, performance and research.Four faculty members, specialists in different aspects of computer music, will teach the program: Jean Eichelberger Ivey, Geoffrey Wright, McGregor Boyle and Edward Pirali. Wright directs the computer music department and designed the two-year degree program.The computer music department for several years has worked with Johns Hopkins University in cross-disciplinary projects such studying bird song and creating music software.

Baltimoreans are editing volumes on composersWe would know so much more about the music of Bach, Beethoven and other great composers if someone had written a book on the subject while they were still alive. That thought has occurred many times to Baltimore composer and percussionist Stuart Saunders Smith, who is also professor of music at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. To help ensure that opportunity isn't missed with today's composers, Mr. Smith and his wife Sylvia are editing a new series on contemporary American composers for New York's Excelsior Press.