Orchestra

The songs from "South Pacific" have been practically embedded in the DNA of many Americans for a long time. So it's all the more remarkable that the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical about love, loss and gain amid World War II did not get an all-out revival on Broadway until nearly 60 years after its premiere. That 2008 revival, directed by Bartlett Sher at the Lincoln Center Theater, simultaneously honored the 1949 original and made both the book and the music freshly compelling. With a superb cast, evocative design and a luxury-size orchestra in the pit, the production seemed too good to be true.

The Susquehanna Symphony Orchestra opens its 35th season on Saturday, Oct. 8, featuring works by Schubert, Haydn, Strauss and Copland, along with what SSO founder and music director Sheldon Bair describes as "two Russian barnburners" by Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky. The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. at Bel Air High School, 100 Heighe St. in Bel Air. A pre-concert lecture will be given by SSO musician and local music teacher, Donald McClure, at 6:30. Tickets are available in advance at MusicLand and Preston's Stationery in Bel Air for $20 for adults, $15 for seniors age 60 and above, and $10 for students with I.D. Season tickets are available in advance or at the door of the first concert for $75, $55 and $40. For more information, visit http://www.ssorchestra.org . SSO music director and founder, Sheldon Bair, commented, "The concert will not have a soloist, but will include music from three centuries.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is all about brand-new this month. Two weeks after premiering David T. Little's Baltimore-inspired "Charm," the BSO is set to premiere another commissioned work - "Chuphshah! Harriet's Drive to Canaan," by James Lee III. Lee's composition - in Biblical Hebrew, "chuphshah" means "freedom" - connects to a theme running through the BSO's season: music to celebrate women who persevered against oppression. "Harriet Tubman's ties to Maryland and heroic efforts to shepherd hundreds out of slavery … inspired me to commission a new work to honor and celebrate her legacy," BSO music director Marin Alsop said.

Performances will be held at New Town High School, Owings Mills on July 15, 16, 22, 23, 29 and 30 at 8 p.m. and July 17 and 24 at 3 p.m. featuring a cast of local youth and adults and a live orchestra. Liberty Showcase Theatre is a fully sponsored program of Owings Mills Recreation and Parks.

As I write, the sun is shining and it's a beautiful day in Guilford. Schools are recessed, the summer solstice has passed, and vacations are on the horizon. We look forward to the delights that the season provides. Held on a Sunday afternoon in June, the Baltimore Symphony Associates "Wine Event" at the home of Ellen and Geoff Lord was well-attended by about 50 partygoers — music lovers all — assembled to benefit Baltimore's acclaimed symphony orchestra. Ellen and Geoff prepared a beautiful setting , with floral arrangements and a beautiful centerpiece on the dining room table.

Some classical music artists, it seems, are available for a limited number of cancellations each year. That's a rap that, for awhile, seemed applicable to Yuri Temirkanov, the inspired Russian conductor who served as Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director from 2000 to 2006. He canceled several weeks with the BSO during his final season and several more, as music director emeritus, in 2007 and 2009. He likewise canceled engagements with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and others during those years.

When 9-year-old Andre Palmer and 119 of his classmates at Lockerman Bundy Elementary School file out of the wings of the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall tonight and again on Sunday, it won't look like just an ordinary concert. Chances are that some of the musicians' shoelaces will be untied, as they were during a Tuesday afternoon rehearsal. Andre and the other pint-sized performers playing the cellos and double basses will have to raise their arms above their heads to avoid dragging their extra-large instruments across the stage floor.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will celebrate "revolutionary women" next season with music inspired by the lives of such heroines as Joan of Arc and Harriet Tubman. BSO music director Marin Alsop, something of a revolutionary herself in a profession still dominated by males, will lead the orchestra in performances of Arthur Honegger's rarely encountered 1935 oratorio "Jeanne d'Arc au Boucher" ("Joan of Arc at the Stake") in November. "The impetus for this is that 2012 is thought to be the 600th anniversary of the birth of Joan of Arc," Alsop said.

OrchKids, the music education initiative developed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and given national exposure on the CBS show "60 Minutes," has expanded to a second school. Funded by a two-year grant of $50,000 from the Rouse Company Foundation, the program had a quiet introduction last month at the New Song Academy in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of West Baltimore; a media launch is being made Friday at the school. OrchKids, which combines during- and after-school classes and lessons, started three years ago with 30 first-graders at Harriet Tubman Elementary.

Whether you're coming to "Metropolis" fresh or for the third or fourth time, seeing the "complete" 147-minute version of Fritz Lang's 1927 silent masterpiece is like watching a fever dream reach delirious perfection. This glorious dystopia gains in both logic and gusto. Building on the 2001 124-minute restoration, it fills out Lang's vision of a futuristic city as a glittering, buzzing organism that thrusts high up into the atmosphere and digs way down into the earth. Now you can really connect to the romantic fervor behind the cool genius of Joh Fredersen, the architect of Metropolis — and the animus that simmers, then explodes between him and his mad-magician inventor, Rotwang.