School Of Music

Marilyn Neeley Gerle, a pianist who had been chairwoman of the piano division at Catholic University of America's school of music for more than three decades, died Wednesday of pneumonia at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring. The former Catonsville and Washington resident who lived in Hyattsville was 69. Marilyn Neeley, who played professionally under her maiden name, was born and raised in Los Angeles. "Her mother was a piano teacher, and she'd sit under the piano listening while she gave lessons," said her son and only survivor, Andrew Gerle, a musical theater composer who lives in New York City.

The classes in "Fame" include acting, singing and dancing. What the movie really needed is a class in screenwriting. This film has premises - the schoolrooms, stages and cafeteria of the Professional Performing Arts School in Hell's Kitchen, New York - but no premise. It simply plops a handful of aspiring entertainers and artists and a few teachers in front of the camera and samples their lives and work from audition day to graduation. And I do mean "samples": It's as if every bit of potential talent or conflict has been put through a digital synthesizer.

John Barth (1930-) is a native Marylander, who has been successful in his dual careers as novelist and professor. A former professional drummer, he was educated at the Juilliard School of Music and later attended Johns Hopkins School of music in Baltimore. Many of his novels, including "Lost the Funhouse," a volume of stories 'for Print, Tape and Live Voice'; The Sot-Weed Factor and "Letters" are considered unconventional. Barth is considered one of America's bestselling novelists. Some Barth is best seen as a counter-realist, constructing worlds outside the everyday.

Metaphor The lowdown: The jazz quartet Metaphor released its debut album, Temporary Suspension, which features a mixture of contemporary jazz and chamber music, as well as African, Afro-Cuban, rock and hip-hop, this month. The group gives two performances tomorrow at An die Musik. If you go: The concerts are at 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. An die Musik is at 409 N. Charles St. $5-$10. Call 410-385-2638 or go to andie musiklive.com. Art exhibit The lowdown: The Caryn Martin: Atmospheric Abstractions exhibit runs at the Creative Alliance Wednesday through Aug. 16. Martin's works consist of several quasi-monochrome and almost abstract landscapes.

Her sound was inviting, passion-soaked, beautifully soulful. But where did it fit exactly? It was 1978 and disco was king, ruling the R&B charts, where Angela Bofill, an ebony-eyed, full-lipped Latina from the West Bronx, found an immediate home. Alongside beat-driven albums by Instant Funk, Donna Summer, Chic and Sister Sledge, Bofill's debut, Angie, stood out on the listings for its eclecticism: a classy, intelligent mix of African chants, smooth jazz and uptown soul. Angel of the Night, her sophomore effort, appeared nine months after Angie and was a bigger smash, featuring the Quiet Storm, self-penned classic "I Try."

Hazel Penniman Luther, 113, the oldest woman in Florida, died Friday at Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, where she was taken after developing a cold and high temperature. Born Dec. 11, 1889, Mrs. Luther was the world's ninth-oldest living person, according to the Gerontology Research Group. At her 113th birthday party, she was asked if she wanted to live forever. "I think I already have," she replied. Mrs. Luther attended Juilliard School of Music, then known as the Institute of Musical Art, and earned two diplomas in singing.

Edith W. Stieber, 92, Towson Library founder Edith W. Stieber, a founder of the Towson Library, artist and longtime community volunteer, died Tuesday of emphysema at Stella Maris in Towson. She was 92. Born Edith Wilson in Lansdowne, Pa., she grew up in Towson and graduated from the Maryland Institute. College of Art in the early 1930s. In 1935, she married Frederick W. Stieber, a well-known Baltimore athlete and owner of Stieber's Store, a gourmet grocery in Towson. He died in 1992.

Gideon W. Waldrop, 80, a composer and administrator who served for 24 years as dean of the Juilliard School of Music, died May 12 in New York. During the 1950s, he was the editor of the Review of Recorded Music and the Musical Courier. He also served as a music consultant to the Ford Foundation. He became the assistant to the president at Juilliard in 1960 and was appointed dean the next year. In 1969, the school moved from its old building in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan to its new $30 million building at Lincoln Center.

Leslie Dragan, a 2003 Liberty High School graduate, has been awarded the Stewart W. Myers Memorial Scholarship from Stu's Music in Westminster. She participated in the Maryland All-State Orchestra all four years of high school. She was principal viola in her junior and senior years and All-Eastern principal violist. In her junior year, she joined the Greater Baltimore Youth Orchestra and won the concerto competition. As a senior, she joined the Peabody Preparatory Orchestra. Dragan is attending an intensive music program at Boston University's Tanglewood Institute.

Metaphor The lowdown: The jazz quartet Metaphor released its debut album, Temporary Suspension, which features a mixture of contemporary jazz and chamber music, as well as African, Afro-Cuban, rock and hip-hop, this month. The group gives two performances tomorrow at An die Musik. If you go: The concerts are at 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. An die Musik is at 409 N. Charles St. $5-$10. Call 410-385-2638 or go to andie musiklive.com. Art exhibit The lowdown: The Caryn Martin: Atmospheric Abstractions exhibit runs at the Creative Alliance Wednesday through Aug. 16. Martin's works consist of several quasi-monochrome and almost abstract landscapes.

The nine youngsters flapped, twirled, and sang songs about bugs and their creepy personalities. In a song about butterflies, one child donned antennae ears to portray a stinky bug, while the other eight children wore floor-length, sheer scarves to portray butterflies. When the music started, they did their best imitations of butterflies fluttering through the air. "I chose the bugs theme because I knew it was something that the kids would really get into," said Joyful Sounds School of Music co-owner Sandy Pietrowicz, who is also piano and voice director.

When internationally acclaimed pianist Eun Joo Chung steps onstage at 3 p.m. Sunday at Christ Episcopal Church in Columbia to perform a program of devilishly difficult music, she might not strike you as the girl next door. But she is; Chung has been a resident of Howard County for six years. "It's different here than in Vienna," she says, where she had studied in Austria at the Hochschule f?r Musik and performed at the Musikverein. "There everyone was a musician. Music was so much a part of everyday life."

A school guidance counselor recently asked Alvin Roda, owner of the Laurel School of Music, whether he could lend a child a string instrument. The girl wanted to learn to play in the school orchestra, but her mother could not afford an instrument, the guidance counselor said. Roda provided a violin for the child. "She loved the violin, and she loved getting music lessons," said Roda, 44, of Laurel. "The guidance counselor told me that she sleeps with her violin." The child's response inspired Roda to start a program to help children get musical instruments.

Marilyn Neeley Gerle, a pianist who had been chairwoman of the piano division at Catholic University of America's school of music for more than three decades, died Wednesday of pneumonia at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring. The former Catonsville and Washington resident who lived in Hyattsville was 69. Marilyn Neeley, who played professionally under her maiden name, was born and raised in Los Angeles. "Her mother was a piano teacher, and she'd sit under the piano listening while she gave lessons," said her son and only survivor, Andrew Gerle, a musical theater composer who lives in New York City.

Fresh-faced composer Jacob Bancks is one of four finalists in the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra's competition to write a piece reflecting the spirit of the city. A fine challenge, he thought. Except the Midwesterner had never seen Annapolis. That changed last week, when Bancks, 25, flew into town in search of inspiration. He just may have found it by the water. "The voyages across the water people have taken from all over the world," he said pensively, "to see this beautiful city at the end of the voyage."

Is classical music a dead art form? Not when musicians are as talented, adventurous and passionate as the five members of woodwind ensemble Imani Winds. Extending the boundaries of sound, style and repertoire in new directions, Imani Winds comes to Howard Community College's Smith Theatre at 8 p.m. tomorrow, sharing bright hope for the future of classical music. Founded in 1997, the five-member ensemble takes its name from the Swahili word for faith -- and faith is something that Valerie Coleman, flutist and composer, has in abundance.

Jacob Druckman,a conductor, composer and teacher who won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize in music, died of lung cancer Friday at the Yale Health Service in New Haven, Conn. He was 67.The composer spent most of his career teaching at universities, including Juilliard, Brooklyn College and the Yale School of Music. He was appointed chairman of the composition department at Yale in 1976, where he remained a professor of music until his death.Mr. Druckman's first large-scale orchestral work, "Windows," was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1972, and won that year's Pulitzer Prize in music.

Keyontia R. Hawkins, a 17-year-old soprano just graduated from the Baltimore School for the Arts, takes a step forward in a promising career with a performance at 8:30 tonight at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall in Washington.Recently named a Presidential Scholar, the nation's highest honor bestowed on graduating seniors, the Overlea resident has been invited to take part in Presidential Scholars National Recognition Week (June 15-20) in the nation's capital and will be honored by President Bush and members of the administration and Congress.

With its swirling instrumental colors and irresistible surges of melody spinning out musical "Tales of the Arabian Nights," Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade is one of the most exotic, best-loved orchestral showpieces of them all. True to the work's pictorial elements, the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra's performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's exotic masterwork Saturday evening provided an interesting portrait of where the ASO stands in Year Two of conductor...

Frederick Fennell, 90, a classical music conductor and teacher acclaimed for creating an innovative wind ensemble at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., died Tuesday at his home in Siesta Key, Fla. While bedridden with hepatitis for six weeks in 1952, Mr. Fennell dreamed up the notion of redefining the typical wind-and-brass band by whittling down its numbers and emphasizing its musical dexterity and virtuosity. His Eastman Wind Ensemble, signed by Mercury Records in the 1950s, went on to record 22 albums.