Symphony

Next season promises to be a good one for contemporary American music in Baltimore. With Marin Alsop as its new music director, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will perform nearly a dozen pieces by living American composers, as well as 20th-century masterworks by Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington and George Gershwin. But local enthusiasts of new and recent American works need not wait for Alsop's arrival to hear the indigenous music of our time. At 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at Jim Rouse Theatre, music director Jason Love and the Columbia Orchestra will close out their season with "A New World," a program featuring music by three Americans and one famous European visitor.

If there's a problem child among Gustav Mahler's nine symphonies, it's No. 7. A little unwieldy and unruly, prone to go off in unexpected directions, the Seventh has never been quite as easy to love as the others. But the work responds well to discipline, respect and affection, qualities it received Tuesday night by conductor Hajime Teri Murai and the Peabody Symphony Orchestra. Mahler, a little obsessive about death, slipped something funereal into all of his symphonies, usually to profound effect.

The recording studio continues to be a hospitable setting for the talents of Gisele Ben-Dor, whose six-year stint at the helm of the Annapolis Symphony ended in spring 1997.Ben-Dor, who maintains a bi-coastal career with the Santa Barbara (Calif.) Symphony and the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, began her recording career auspiciously in 1995 with a well-received anthology devoted to the music of Hungarian Bela Bartok issued on the Centaur label.Her second disc, also released in 1995, was devoted to the works of Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera.

Proxim's Symphony creates PC harmony by wireless networkSeveral weeks ago, we reviewed Diamond Multimedia's HomeFree Wireless Networking kit. That inexpensive system is good for basic file and print sharing between the PCs in your house, but it has its failings, such as frequent packet loss.A more flexible and reliable solution is Proxim's wireless Symphony ($149 with an internal ISA card, $199 for a laptop PC card). This system is just as simple and quick to set up and use as HomeFree. You plug an ISA-based card into each desktop PC on the network and a PC card into each laptop.

A new three-CD set of live recordings issued by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, "The Zinman Legacy," has allowed me to return to the scene of the crime: performances of Mozart, Brahms, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky and Mahler that I reviewed. I can thus not only re-review some of David Zinman's performances, but also some of mine.First, however, I want to question the use of the words "The Zinman Legacy" for this release. If we talk about the Zinman legacy, we must talk about his celebrated role as an advocate for new American music.

The Annapolis Symphony's 1998-99 season comes to a close this weekend with a pair of concerts conducted by Leslie B. Dunner, completing his first year at the helm.The program will be brought to us by the letter "B": the G minor Violin Concerto of Max Bruch and the "Egmont" Overture and Symphony No. 7 of Ludwig van Beethoven.Young Canadian violinist Lara St. John will be the soloist in the Bruch.A grand winner of the Canadian Music Competition at the age of 9, St. John went on to win prizes at the Yehudi Menuhin Competition, the Philadelphia Orchestra Competition and the Concours Nerini in Paris.

The best thing about the NHK Symphony Orchestra's concert in the WPAS series Sunday afternoon at the Kennedy Center was the NHK itself.That's saying a lot about a program that included the local premiere of a new work by composer-of-the-moment Sofia Gubaidulina, and the stellar presences of conductor Charles Dutoit and violinist Sarah Chang.The NHK, Japan's oldest professional orchestra, sounds like a superb Austro-Germanic ensemble. The string playing is marked by beautiful tone, rich and firm in the lower strings, ringing (though not over-bright)

The moment David Zinman leaves Baltimore, it seems, he gets famous -- profiting from his years here while making us look bad for losing him.Just kidding, folks, just kidding.Actually, anything that's good for David Zinman reflects favorably on the Baltimore Symphony and vice versa.Nevertheless, it seems that there's been more mention made of Zinman in the international music press in the last few days than in all 13 years of his tenure as our orchestra's music director.In the Arts and Leisure section of Sunday's New York Times, for example, music critic Greg Sandow, in his "Looking for Listeners Who Can Love New Music," mentions Zinman's "enthusiastically played" performances of "a lot of contemporary work" and calls the BSO, along with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony, the "three major American orchestras that play the most new music."

OUTSTANDING YOUNG musicians from across the country auditioned in the spring for the eighth annual Disney's Young Musicians Symphony Orchestra.One was Elijah Smith of Sykesville.Elijah was one of 85 youngsters ages 8 to 13 selected for the orchestra, which was led by Lucas Richman.Richman is assistant conductor for the Pittsburgh Symphony and principal conductor for the Pasadena Pops Orchestra in California.Prospective members were required to submit a written application outlining performance experience and award history.

Daniel Hege believes in being prepared, keeps a cool head and has a knack for surmounting obstacles.The evening before the final day of the Baltimore Symphony's tour of Japan 18 months ago, music director David Zinman was stricken by a kidney stone and had to be flown home. But what prevented Zinman from conducting the final concert of the tour in Tokyo's Suntory Hall turned into a triumph for Hege, the orchestra's then 32-year-old assistant conductor.Without so much as a chance to rehearse the program, Hege went on to lead a brilliant concert.

It was both heartwarming and heart-rending to watch the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's musicians voluntarily give back $1 million in pay raises and other previously negotiated benefits last year in order to keep the institution afloat through the current economic downturn. The players' sacrifice was an expression of the fierce loyalty they felt toward the orchestra and its management, and their generosity was unprecedented. Of the 17 major symphony orchestras in the country, the BSO players were the only ones to give back previously negotiated salaries and benefits on their own, rather than in response to management demands.

In yet another sign of how the recession continues to weaken local arts organizations, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra musicians agreed to a 12.5 percent pay cut Thursday, as management faced its first budget deficit in two years and an endowment fund now off-limits because its value has slipped too low. "I think the musicians' eyes have been opened," said Paul Meecham, BSO's president and CEO. "Everyone has recognized that this is not a question of how...

Shortly after signing a new five-year contract that will keep her in the post of Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director until 2015, Marin Alsop led the ensemble in a hefty program Thursday night that included the East Coast premiere of Jennifer Higdon's Violin Concerto. Written for Baltimore's own classical music star, Hilary Hahn, it's a killer of a concerto for the soloist, and it asks a lot of listeners, too. Cast in three movements, the half-hour concerto makes a grand statement, packed with thematic material and expansive development, all of it delivered with extraordinarily prismatic colors.

After a Sunday concert last fall, members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra stayed late at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall to record a performance of Dvorak's 7th Symphony with Music Director Marin Alsop. When the session ended, BSO President Paul Meecham mounted the stage to congratulate the musicians. "People had been there all day, and I just wanted to say thanks," he recalled. But before he could say a word, orchestra leaders asked if they could have a minute. That's when they told him the musicians had decided to pitch in to help the BSO through the current downturn: Instead of taking raises this year, they would give up the money - roughly $1 million - to help balance the symphony's books.

Sum-41 Known for its rowdy synthesis of punk-pop and hip-hop, Sum 41 performs at 7 p.m. Saturday at Sonar, 407 E. Saratoga St. $12. Call 410-547-7328 or go to ticketmaster.com. 'Tokyo Sonata' Americans curious to see how the Japanese deal with their economic woes should check out Tokyo Sonata, a study of a middle-class Tokyo household after the man of the house loses his executive position. It's this weekend's entry in Cinema Sundays at the Charles. Doors open at 9:45 a.m.; showtime is 10:30 a.m. $15. Call 410-727-4567.

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra musicians volunteered to give back $1 million in wage increases and other benefits next season to help the organization weather the recession, while challenging supporters to raise an additional $2 million in matching funds to maintain fiscal health. The move comes during an arts season that has already seen the demise of the Baltimore Opera Company, a suspension of activities by the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra (which plans to return in the fall) and cutbacks at the Walters Art Museum.

theater 'Ragtime': This is an all-new production of one of the great musicals of our times. The stage version of E.L. Doctorow's novel is a masterly interweaving of the fates of a middle-class Victorian family, an immigrant Jewish family and an African-American jazz player. Performances are Saturday through May 17 at the Kennedy Center, 2700 F St. N.W., Washington. Tickets are $25-$90. Call 800-444-1324 or go to kennedy-center.org. Mary Carole McCauley art Landscape shows: Two landscape-oriented shows open today at C. Grimaldis Gallery, 523 N. Charles St.: New Work by visual artist Christopher Saah and a group show titled Landscapes Into Art, featuring work by Fairfield Porter, Robert Dash and others.

This was supposed to be the week that Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director emeritus Yuri Temirkanov returned to conduct after an absence of several seasons, but he canceled all U.S. engagements this month and next, leaving a lot of disappointed fans. Temirkanov's place is being taken here by Yan Pascal Tortelier, one of the orchestra's frequent and best guest conductors. He kept the original program of Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5 and Brahms' Violin Concerto, the latter with the original soloist, Vadim Repin.

Toward the end of his much-too-short life, Gustav Mahler completed two works filled with the sounds of leave-taking. Both Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth) and the Symphony No. 9 suggest a composer coming to terms with his mortality, looking back on what had been and also peering into the mist for a sense of what would come after. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will perform Mahler's Ninth Symphony, conducted by music director Marin Alsop, on a program that, fittingly, will be prefaced by Leonard Bernstein's Opening Prayer, a setting of the ancient text "May the Lord bless you and keep you."

This week's Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program finds Marin Alsop conducting works by the original American musical maverick, Charles Ives, and two composers she is not automatically associated with - Mozart and Saint-Saens. The latter will be represented by his popular Symphony No. 3, nicknamed "Organ," for its thunderous use of that instrument in the finale. It's a sure-fire score that combines French refinement with thematic ingenuity and brilliant tone colors. The Mozart item is his Symphony No. 29, which strikes a perfect balance between elegance and propulsion.