Quintet

At first, no one paid much attention to the group of five when they erupted into song in the middle of Clyde's restaurant in Georgetown. Conversations continued, and servers kept taking orders. But as the melody grew, diners began lifting their heads from their plates, poking one another and pointing - most with the same quizzical looks on their faces. "We're not used to getting music in here," said Cherie Calvert of Kensington, "just martinis." The colorful members of High Five, the night's impromptu entertainers, aren't used to being together without performing, either, regardless of where they are - they claim it's nearly impossible to refrain.

Eric Alexander Quintet Since his recording debut in 1991, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander has cut 13 albums. His latest is The Second Milestone, which includes renditions of the show tune "Matchmaker Matchmaker," a song that pays tribute to jazz legend Herbie Hancock, and two Latin-inspired tunes. You can groove to the jazzman's many styles -- from bop to avant garde -- when the Eric Alexander Quintet performs from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday at the Teamsters Union Hall, 6000 Erdman Ave. The concert is sponsored by the Left Bank Jazz Society.

Albert "Diz" Russell's house is a shrine to a bygone era. The walls of several rooms are covered in black-and-white photographs, posters and framed records. A rough sketch of dancers titled "The 50's" is stretched between two walls across a corner of the living room. A cappella harmonies drift in from the kitchen where a quartet is practicing as Russell waxes nostalgic from his recliner about the glory days. Here, in this modest home in Capitol Heights, is what remains of Baltimore's once-famous rhythm and blues group, The Orioles - the group that is memorialized along with Billie Holiday on a faded, billboard-size mural above the boarded-up Mayfair Theatre on Howard Street.

If the string quartet is master of the instrumental chamber music idiom, the woodwind quintet sleeps with the servants. Oh, how the great composers lavished extraordinary care on their string quartets. Franz Joseph Haydn, the inventor of the genre, wrote more than 80 of them. Beethoven gave us 16 that span each period of his artistic life. But works for an ensemble of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn in those two canons with no orchestra or piano to accompany them? Good luck trying to find one. Still, there is a marvelous woodwind quartet repertoire.

The ghosts of Christmases Past were out in force when the Annapolis Brass Quintet took center stage for an evening of holiday music Sunday at historic St. Anne's Episcopal Church. The quintet had not played together as Annapolis' "official" representative to the world of brass chamber music since April 1993. It was a delight to hear the ensemble at work again, paying tribute to Christmas, to the past lives of its members and to the spirit of Charlie Byrd, the master guitarist and quintet colleague who died last year.

When a nursing home director, a music publisher, the administrator of a scientific laboratory and a couple of college professors get together to play chamber music for an evening, you wouldn't think the public would be clamoring to hear them. But when those five players are the former Annapolis Brass Quintet, you can bet that tickets will be at a premium. For the first time since the ABQ's dissolution in 1993, trumpeters David Cran and Robert Suggs, French hornist Sharon Tiebert, and trombonists Wayne Wells and Robert Posten are getting together musically, returning to Annapolis for a performance of holiday music at historic St. Anne's Episcopal Church.

You've heard of a pack of wolves, a gaggle of geese and a pride of lions. Now, courtesy of Candlelight Concerts, you can thrill to a "noyse of violins." This Saturday evening at Columbia's James Rouse Theatre, Candlelight Concerts will present the King's Noyse - North America's only performing Renaissance string band. Ensembles of roving violinists entertained rich and poor alike in the 16th and 17th centuries. And this quintet of violins, violas and viols still led by its founding fiddler, David Douglass, has been bringing the hearty songs and dances of Renaissance Europe to life for audiences since 1988.

"The horn, the horn, the lusty horn, is not a thing to laugh, to scorn," wrote Shakespeare in "As You Like It." As usual, the Bard got it right, especially when those horns are being blown by the American Brass Quintet. Since 1960, members of this group have performed on concert stages all over the world, achieving top-rank status as leaders among brass chamber musicians. At 8 p.m. tomorrow, Raymond Mase and Kevin Cobb, trumpets; David Wakefield, horn; and Michael Powell and John Rojak, trombones, will perform at Jim Rouse Theatre for Performing Arts in Columbia under the auspices of the Candlelight Concert Society.

When the Annapolis Brass Quintet disbanded in the spring of 1993, after 22 years of exceptional music-making, its fans hoped against hope that the pioneering ensemble would consider reassembling for occasional forays into the brass chamber music repertoire they did so much to popularize. But true to their word, trumpeters David Cran and Bob Suggs, French hornist Sharon Tiebert, and trombonists Wayne Wells and Robert Posten went their separate ways and avoided reunion concerts of any kind.

Remember how it was back in the early '90s, when it seemed like every new rock band on MTV wanted only to brood angrily about the unfairness of life? Did you ever find yourself wanting to yell, "Oh, lighten up?" when some glowering grunge star whined to Kurt Loder about the pressures of rock stardom? If so, then you're probably a member of the BNL generation -- even if you didn't know it at the time. BNL, of course, is Barenaked Ladies, a Canadian quintet whose 1992 debut, "Gordon," was ignored by MTV and pretty much everybody else in this country.