Young Musicians

Loraine P. Bernstein, a musical trust's administrator who assisted young musicians in gaining an audience, died of a heart attack Tuesday at Good Samaritan Hospital. The Mount Washington resident was 82. Born Loraine Panek in Warehouse Point, Conn., she was the youngest of three children of Polish immigrant farmers who raised vegetables and cigar tobacco in the Connecticut River Valley. "She was a child of the Depression and had lots of stories about the farm she used to her advantage during my childhood," said her son, Richard M. Bernstein of Freeland.

MICHAEL WATTS, a 14- year-old freshman at Centennial High School, recently spent a weekend in Boston recording a segment that will be heard on National Public Radio. Michael, a cello player who lives in Ellicott City, will be featured on From the Top, a weekly showcase of young classical musicians that is heard on nearly 300 radio stations throughout the nation. Locally, the hourlong show is heard on WETA (90.9 FM) at 7 p.m. Sundays. Michael and the other members of his string quartet played the first movement of Dvorak's "American" Quartet for the show.

Two gifted young musicians from the Howard County public school system will take center stage at the Smith Theatre at 2 p.m. Sunday when the Columbia Orchestra presents a program of music by Beethoven, Prokofiev, Ravel and Frank Martin. Flutist Martha Cargo and violinist Xinzi Liu are this year's winners of the annual Young Artist Competition sponsored by the orchestra. The pair of accomplished young musicians was chosen from a field of 23 applicants after submitting to a preliminary audition and performing a solo recital.

THE MUSIC PROGRAM at Glen Burnie High School hit a sweet note over the weekend. About 250 young musicians from Glen Burnie High and its feeder system - Marley and Corkran middle schools, and Oakwood, Quarterfield, Richard Henry Lee, Woodside, Freetown, Glendale, Marley and Point Pleasant elementaries - performed in the Glen Burnie Gala of Music. The second annual gala was staged at the high school Saturday. The high school band and orchestra director, Jeff Thompson, took part in a similar program in a previous teaching assignment at Meade High School.

While many young musicians packed away their instruments along with their textbooks at the end of the school year, hundreds of Howard County's youth have found that summer is a perfect time to strike up the band. Summer band camp programs are increasing in popularity and offer numerous benefits to participants. Music teachers say the summer programs help students refine the skills they learn in school music programs, enhance techniques such as breath control and intonation and, most important, keep the kids practicing their instruments over the summer months.

M.H. Jennifer Yeh remembers well the clammy hands, the hot flashes, the fidgeting and the nausea that always came before a musical performance. She never conquered the feeling totally, not even by the time she was in high school. But she discovered some strategies that helped -- like worrying less about what her teacher or audience may think and performing for her own enjoyment. "You have to look at discouragements as hills to climb over," says Yeh, 19, a Cornell University freshman from New Freedom, Pa., who has studied piano and violin since age 7. "They are a source of motivation.

For two years, Long Reach senior Alisha Strawbridge has been serving as manager of the band If Alaska, started by friends at Oakland Mills High School. "They formed a band, and I was just like, `Hey, you know, I'll help you out with everything,'" she said. She describes the music as "rock, kind of alternative, sort of Indie" and has succeeded in booking shows for If Alaska at Fletchers in Baltimore, The Other Barn in Columbia and a Washington venue called Nation. But her biggest coup might be in helping the band win a spot at the annual River Hill High School music event called RHHStival.

A program of opera favorites being performed on the Maryland Hall stage is hardly news. What is out of the ordinary is that the accompanying ensemble will be the talented young musicians of the Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra. For the first time, the CYSO will be an opera orchestra, says Julien Benichou, the French-born, Baltimore-based conductor in his first year as music director of one of Maryland's premiere youth orchestras. "I think it's very nice for kids to accompany singers," Benichou says.

The symphonic business couldn't be much more laden with distressing news these days - deficit battles almost everywhere, bankruptcy proceedings for some ensembles, out-of-business postings for others. But you might never suspect any of that gloom if you hung out at the National Orchestral Institute, sponsored by the University of Maryland's School of Music on the College Park campus. That's where 115 musicians from around the country, ages 18 to 28, are in the final stretch of an action-packed, three-week training program aimed at preparing them for entry into the professional world.

The 39 students who came to the first Baltimore String Orchestra Camp didn't know they were beginning a tradition.Now, 25 years later, the nine-day camp has grown to 176 participants, three conductors and 15 teachers."