Sacred Music

The Bob Jones University music ministry team touring the Atlantic states will appear in concert at Reformation Bible Church on Wednesday evening, May 22, at 7 p.m. Comprised of both students and faculty, the BJU team's program consists of sacred music and Christian testimony. Reformation Bible Church (formerly Evangelical Methodist Church) is at 1736 Whiteford Road (Route 136) just north of Dublin MD. There concert is free.

The Bob Jones University music ministry team touring the Atlantic states will appear in concert at Reformation Bible Church on Wednesday evening, May 22, at 7 p.m. Comprised of both students and faculty, the BJU team's program consists of sacred music and Christian testimony. Reformation Bible Church (formerly Evangelical Methodist Church) is at 1736 Whiteford Road (Route 136) just north of Dublin MD. There concert is free.

Chartres Cathedral was once filled with music: the haunting beauty of Gregorian chant and the echoes of early troubadours. Lecturer Malcolm Miller, an English specialist on the great church, will bring some of that music with him when he speaks about Chartres on Sunday at Second Presbyterian Church.Miller, a medieval historian, has been a guide at the cathedral for many years and is an expert in its architecture, which spans the Romanesque and the Gothic styles, and its unmatched deep-blue stained glass.

St. Anne's Church in Annapolis was filled last weekend with the miraculous sound of the Annapolis Chorale Chamber Chorus, joined by the Annapolis Chamber Orchestra and six guest soloists for two great performances of Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B-minor. This performance of Bach's medley of masterworks was the first by Live Arts Maryland music director J. Ernest Green and his chorus, lending the added luster reflected by their joint discovery of its musical secrets. Regarded as a supreme achievement by music scholars, Bach's Mass is also an enigma, a Latin work composed by the Protestant "Cantor of Leipzig," and finished in the last year of his life.

Although some of my best friends say it isn't necessarily so, Rossini's sacred music always persuades me that nothing could be more fun than being a Roman Catholic.Surely, there is nothing solemn about the composer's "Petite messe solonelle" (literally, "Small Solemn Mass"), the most genial contribution to the church liturgy in music history. In its simple instrumentation -- two pianos and a harmonium -- the tiny harmonium (or reed organ) often sounds like a hurdy-gurdy. And while there may be no dancing monkey, jokes abound: a tenor aria for "Domine Deus, Rex coelestis" that sounds like a football fight song; tempo indications such as "Allegro Christiano" ("fast and Christ-like")

Horace Clarence Boyer is a teacher, musician, director, performer, arranger, lecturer, historian and entertainer when he shares his knowledge of the origins of African-American sacred music. Even when he's not lecturing, his resume includes all of those vocations, plus a few more: researcher, author and editor -- all related to African-American music. "Music is imbedded in our culture," Boyer said. "From the 1950s to the present, gospel music has become king. I am trying to show that the churches need to blend different styles of music."

When Music Ministries Director Carolyn "Carrie" Grams started working at Ellicott City's Glen Mar United Methodist Church in 1989, one of the first things she started planning was the Choirfest. "I learned about the concert series in a conference," says Grams. "Dick and Sandy Nelson of the music ministry at St. John's United Methodist in Columbia joined with us the first year," said Grams. "I was interested in providing an opportunity for singers in small churches to sing with a large choir.

Rodrick Dixon, one-third of the popular Three Mo' Tenors act, will give a recital today to benefit the W.W. Payne Community Outreach Center. Dixon has chosen an enticing program of superior art songs by Schubert, Schumann, Faure and others; opera (a duet from Verdi's Rigoletto) and sacred music (Gounod's St. Cecilia Mass); and traditional spirituals. A medley from Kern's Showboat and, for a grand finale, the Battle Hymn of the Republic will complete the concert. Joining him will be soprano Alfreda Burke, pianist Victor Simonson, the 80-voice Concert Choir of the City Temple of Baltimore (Baptist)

As many as 1.5 million non-Asian Americans practice some form of Buddhism today, thanks in part to celebrity adherents and popular films such as "Kundun" and "Seven Years in Tibet."There will be an opportunity to learn more about the Tibetan form of Buddhism this weekend during the Sacred Arts of Tibet Celebration at Towson University.The celebration, presented by the university's Asian Arts and Culture Center, includes an art exhibit, a lecture and a Tibetan music and dance performance."I wanted to do this because of my respect for the culture," says Suewhei Shieh, the director of the Asian Arts and Culture Center.

Camerata to perform Haydn, Mozart worksSacred music has never had more widespread secular appeal than it does now. It is perhaps in response to that interest that the University of Maryland Baltimore County has this year inaugurated a new sacred music series. The Harmonia Sacra Series will continue Tuesday at 8 p.m. with a concert by the Maryland Camerata at the chapel of the Charlestown Retirement Community, 711 Maiden Choice Lane in Catonsville.The Camerata's concert of works by Haydn and Mozart includes the latter's great "Coronation Mass" and Haydn's "Salve Regina" and "Ave Verum Corpus."

With a lineage going back more than 550 years to the reign of Henry VI, the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, enjoys a sterling reputation for tonal beauty and technical polish. The current roster of boys and young men, led with impeccable taste by Stephen Cleobury, lived up to that reputation before a capacity crowd of 1,600 Sunday evening at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen. People started arriving more than two hours early for the event, quite a testament to the choir's appeal. Presented, in a rare off-campus venture, by the Shriver Hall Concert Series, the ensemble explored repertoire that touched on various time periods and styles of sacred music.

"Come before his presence with a song," the psalmist wrote. People of Hebrew and Christian faiths have done just that through the centuries. While a lot of sacred music is intended for actual services, there is a vast repertoire that fits just as neatly into concert hall settings. This is particularly true of works by Catholic and Protestant composers, from Bach cantatas and Handel oratorios to Masses by Beethoven, Verdi and Stravinsky. But comparable concert works from the Jewish liturgy are much smaller in number, the opportunity to hear them in performance exceedingly rare.

A family affair If you're tired of high-tech special effects, if you've overdosed on glitz, then maybe it's time to take a look at The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, performing at the Theatre Project tonight through Sunday. The three-member family collects slides at yard sales and thrift shops, then creates original pop songs based on the images. Dad Jason, plays guitar and keyboards and sings; 11-year-old Rachel plays drums and sings; and Mom Tina operates the slide projector.

Artists can confront things most of us would rather not think about, things like war, death and disease. It's not that they feel some odd attraction to darkness and tragedy, but, rather, that they simply cannot be silent. They are provoked when they see the beauty of this life and this world threatened and shattered. By creating in the midst of destruction, they affirm the better side of humanity. The still incomprehensible scale of the 9/11 attacks has been answered, and will continue to be answered for a long time, by artists - visual, literary, musical.

If you scan the horizon in the days ahead, you should see two blue moons. Ordinarily, a performance of Gioacchino Rossini's Petite messe solennelle - Little Solemn Mass - comes around once in one of those moons, but the Baltimore area will soon get two of them. Rossini was not a particularly religious man, but he wasn't about to take any chances. In 1864, at 72, four years before he died, he composed what he labeled "the last mortal sin of my old age" - the Petite messe solennelle. He attached a little note in French to the final page of the score: "Dear God, this poor little Mass is now finished.

Rodrick Dixon, one-third of the popular Three Mo' Tenors act, will give a recital today to benefit the W.W. Payne Community Outreach Center. Dixon has chosen an enticing program of superior art songs by Schubert, Schumann, Faure and others; opera (a duet from Verdi's Rigoletto) and sacred music (Gounod's St. Cecilia Mass); and traditional spirituals. A medley from Kern's Showboat and, for a grand finale, the Battle Hymn of the Republic will complete the concert. Joining him will be soprano Alfreda Burke, pianist Victor Simonson, the 80-voice Concert Choir of the City Temple of Baltimore (Baptist)

A family affair If you're tired of high-tech special effects, if you've overdosed on glitz, then maybe it's time to take a look at The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, performing at the Theatre Project tonight through Sunday. The three-member family collects slides at yard sales and thrift shops, then creates original pop songs based on the images. Dad Jason, plays guitar and keyboards and sings; 11-year-old Rachel plays drums and sings; and Mom Tina operates the slide projector.

Fifteen years ago, an aspiring San Francisco impresario scraped together $27,000 to put on an unassuming little jazz festival.The turnout was puny, the shows started late and the technical problems proved too numerous to count."

Horace Clarence Boyer is a teacher, musician, director, performer, arranger, lecturer, historian and entertainer when he shares his knowledge of the origins of African-American sacred music. Even when he's not lecturing, his resume includes all of those vocations, plus a few more: researcher, author and editor -- all related to African-American music. "Music is imbedded in our culture," Boyer said. "From the 1950s to the present, gospel music has become king. I am trying to show that the churches need to blend different styles of music."

When Music Ministries Director Carolyn "Carrie" Grams started working at Ellicott City's Glen Mar United Methodist Church in 1989, one of the first things she started planning was the Choirfest. "I learned about the concert series in a conference," says Grams. "Dick and Sandy Nelson of the music ministry at St. John's United Methodist in Columbia joined with us the first year," said Grams. "I was interested in providing an opportunity for singers in small churches to sing with a large choir.