classical music

With all the usual fresh-look-forward talk prompted by the new year, it's a good time to consider broadening your musical horizons to include performances presented by groups that might have been off your radar.

In this new year, we're enjoying memories from last year's highlights on Anne Arundel's theater scene - and looking forward to encore performances in 2013.

A local classical music tradition continues when the Columbia Pro Cantare Chamber Singers perform "A Christmas Noel" concert on Sunday, Dec. 9, at 3 p.m. at Christ Episcopal Church in Columbia.

Making this the band's seventh title since 2004, the Perryville High School marching band won its fifth consecutive Maryland State 1A Championship for high school marching bands earlier this month.

Three longtime volunteers — Peggy Lea Gosnell, Scott Shipley and Pat O'Conner — were recently honored as the Lutherville-Timonium Recreation Council's Volunteers of the Year.

There's a light and lush quality to French classical music that you can hear for yourself when Howard County's professional chamber ensemble, the Orchestra of St. John's, performs "The Best of Bizet and More" on Sunday, Nov. 11 at 4 p.m. at St. John's Episcopal Church in Ellicott City

Columbia Pro Cantare opens its 36th season with a choral blast when it does Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" on Saturday, Oct. 27 at 8 p.m. at Jim Rouse Theatre at Wilde Lake. It's such a popular piece of classical music that audiences seemingly just can't get enough of it.

Not everybody is watching football games on Sunday afternoon. Thank goodness that's the case for the classical music series Sundays at Three, which, true to its name, stands a sporting chance of attracting a non-sporting audience for its season-opening concert on Sunday, Oct. 28 at 3 p.m. at Christ Episcopal Church in Columbia.

A 'classical revolution' is spreading in Baltimore

Led by Bob Hunter, the activities director for Glen Meadows Retirement Community in Glen Arm, the 30-minute Music N' Motion class is a physical, social, intellectual and spiritual experience.

You don't have to venture further into the alphabet than the letter "B" to discover the bulk of the Columbia Orchestra's 35th season-opening concert on Saturday, Oct. 6 at 7:30 p.m. in Jim Rouse Theatre at Wilde Lake High School. Symphonic giants from the 19th and 20th centuries are paired in this program anchored by Leonard Bernstein's "Symphony No. 1, Jeremiah" and Beethoven's Symphony No. 8