Unitarian Universalist Church

Another music-packed weekend is coming up. Good luck trying to choose what to hear. You might want to consider the small-scale concert series with the big name - Music in the Great Hall. Located in a comfortable, very listener-friendly church, the series has been offering a wide range of chamber music for 29 seasons now. The guitar duo of Julian Gray and Ronald Pearl will give two recitals there that sample the music of several centuries and styles, from Scarlatti to Debussy. As their recordings make plain, Gray and Pearl enjoy a tight musical partnership, notable for a combination of technical aplomb and sensitive interpretations.

Music in the Great Hall, one of the region's consistently appealing concert series, opens its 2002-2003 season this weekend with a program called "Marian Hahn and Friends." Hahn, a noted member of the Peabody Institute's piano faculty and the faculty at the new Singapore Conservatory being established in collaboration with Peabody, will be joined by violinist Lucy Stoltzman, violist Maria Lambros and cellist Lisa Lancaster. The program offers a violin sonata by Mozart and piano quartets by Faure and Turina.

A Mardi Gras-style dance party on church grounds may seem like an ethical contradiction, but that's how Rockland United Methodist Church in Ellicott City promoted the grand opening celebration of its amphitheater last month. The Rockland theater is one of a growing number of showcases for popular music, theatrical productions and visual arts being run by churches or by outside organizations renting church space in the Baltimore region. "It's kind of a new trend," said Joanne Juskus, a Columbia folk singer who runs a 9-month-old eclectic music series called "The Bottom Floor" at St. John's United Methodist Church of Hamilton in Baltimore.

Two of the most mellow and sensual instruments in classical music are the guitar and the cello. Both will be featured this weekend in a concert presented by the Baltimore Classical Guitar Society and again next month presented by the Music in the Great Hall series. Paul Moeller, an elegant player who studied at Peabody Conservatory with Manuel Barrueco, has earned several competition awards in recent years and is carving out a promising solo career. He shares the stage with his talented wife, cellist Kerena Moeller, who has her own solid solo credentials.

Douglas N. Brooks, 79, businessman, consultant Douglas N. Brooks, a businessman, consultant and former chief executive officer of Neptune Eastech, which makes meters used to measure liquid flow through pipelines, died Oct. 19 of a stroke at Maryland Shock Trauma Center. He was 79 and lived in Timonium. Mr. Brooks retired in 1979 from Neptune Eastech, an instrumentation company he had acquired earlier in the decade. Earlier, he had been CEO of Brooks Instrument in Hatfield, Pa., also an instrumentation manufacturer, which he sold in 1970.

Annapolis minister author of two books on faith, Unitarianism Having two books published simultaneously may seem quite an accomplishment, but their author - the Rev. Fredric John Muir, parish minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis - says it was more of an accident. The paperbound books, one looking at religious vocabulary through liberal eyes and the other on the Unitarian church in the Philippines, were planned for publication a year and half apart. But the first, "Heretics' Faith," was eaten by his computer - "erased," he said, leaving him faced with rewriting the entire volume.

If the names Francois Chauvon, Jacques Hotteterre and Marin Marais don't ring any bells, check out next weekend's "Music in the Great Hall" concert. Works by those three late-17th and early-18th century composers, along with a more familiar fellow named Johann Sebastian Bach, will be played on instruments of the period by a group called Tibiades. The ensemble -- John Moran on viola da gamba, Collin St. Marten on traverse flute, Billy Simms on theorbo -- takes its name from a collection of pieces by Chauvon published in 1717.

David Caplan, 87, store owner, volunteer David Caplan, former owner of an East Baltimore clothing store and a Red Cross Volunteer of the Year, died Thursday of complications after open-heart surgery at Union Memorial Hospital. He was 87. A resident of the Bartonwood Condominiums in Mount Washington, Mr. Caplan worked for the Postal Service as a registry clerk at the main post office on Fayette Street from 1962 to 1980, when he retired. Born into the dry goods business, he was raised above his parents' East Baltimore store.

Pets, owners invited to All Hallows Chapel for animals' blessing Pets and "peaceable animals of any description, from hamsters and mice to elephants" are invited along with their owners Sunday to the grounds of All Hallows Chapel at 864 Central Ave., just west of Davidsonville Road. The event at 3 p.m. is a blessing that will be bestowed on the animals in honor of St. Francis of Assisi by the Rev. John Miles Evans, rector of the Episcopal All Hallows Parish, South River. Last year's turnout included llamas, horses, chickens, a variety of breeds of dogs and cats -- and even a hermit crab.

When the lights dim in the wood-paneled circular sanctuary, tiny flames from votive candles glowing on rows of tables, the Unitarian Universalist church of Annapolis feels like camp.And when a couple of fellows in blue jeans and sneakers take the stage singing folk songs, accompanying themselves on acoustic guitar and leading sing-a-longs, you wonder if you've fallen into a time warp or whether the peace and love era has resurfaced in a new generation.Choose the latter. This is the 333 Coffeehouse.