A SWITCH REPLACEMENT near the Medical Center station will slow Red Line trips over four upcoming weekends. Although trains will service the entire length of the Red Line, single tracking between the Friendship Heights and Grosvenor-Strathmore stations will lead to the following changes, starting on Friday night:

» During the work periods, trains will run every 18 minutes through the work zone and on to the Red Line's Shady Grove terminal.
» During the day, alternating trains running from Glenmont and downtown D.C. will terminate at the Friendship Heights station before returning to Glenmont. During that time, trains will run at nine-minute intervals between Friendship Heights and Glenmont.
» After 9 p.m., all Red Line trains will run at 18-minute intervals, meaning that weekend warriors on Fridays and Saturdays, and those out on Sunday nights, will likely experience longer wait times for the Red Line.

The work periods will be in effect for the following weekends:

» Friday, Jan. 11, 9 p.m. through midnight closing on Sunday, Jan. 13.
» Friday, Jan. 25, 9 p.m. through midnight closing on Sunday, Jan. 27.
» Friday, Feb. 1, 9 p.m. through midnight closing on Sunday, Feb. 3.
» Friday, Feb. 8, 9 p.m. through midnight closing on Sunday, Feb. 10.

Image courtesy WMATA

"OH, DO YOU REMEMBER sweet Betsey from Pike? Who crossed the wide prairie with her lover, Ike?"

As the 19th century folk song "Sweet Betsey From Pike" continues, for the next 15 verses Betsey and Ike traverse the country to California to take part in the fabled Gold Rush.

For musician Eric Brace, the tune is more than a middle school history lesson — it served as the muse for his folk opera, "Hangtown Dancehall."

Continue Reading "After the Gold Rush: Eric Brace's 'Hangtown Dancehall'" »

WINNER OF THE 1998 Pulitzer Prize for music for his second string quartet, "Musica instrumentalis," Aaron Jay Kernis writes ardent, inspiring lyrical lines in works that explore spiritual quests, make political statements, and riff on pop music.

On Saturday, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and its music director Marin Alsop will play his newest orchestral work, 2005's "Newly Drawn Sky," contrasting its atmospheric beauty with the terrestrial inspiration of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Pastoral" symphony. Violinist Timothy Fain will also join the BSO to play Kernis' "Lament and Prayer."

» EXPRESS: You've written pieces in very different styles throughout your career.
» KERNIS: Within the small culture that is contemporary music, I feel often there's been too much emphasis on doing one thing, having one voice. I've just followed my instincts, done whatever I thought I needed to do, and at times I've thought, "Where is this going?"

At the same time, a lot of my works tend to have similar construction, to return to a home key. There are certain things that tend to happen at the end of pieces, an arrival point or a revelation somewhere in the piece.

» EXPRESS: Has your music been performed in the D.C. area?
» KERNIS: Not much. But Marin has been doing my work at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and some other places for a while. I'm absolutely thrilled to be included in [her] first season. It's a great season.

Continue Reading "Q&A: Aaron Jay Kernis, Composer" »

EXPECT MONTGOMERY COUNTY'S transit corridors to get a lot more crowded in the coming years: The county council last week approved new planning rules to encourage development in places already served by public transportation.

That means Bethesda, Silver Spring, Wheaton and Metrorail stations in the Rockville Pike corridor will likely see more dense development as the decades wear on.

Reports The Post's Miranda S. Spivack:

In the next 20 years, Montgomery faces several challenges as it tries to absorb the expected arrival of thousands of new residents and jobs already approved and plans for the proposed expansion of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. And the open land available for development is almost used up.

» "New Montgomery Growth Policy Formalizes Focus on Public Transit" [WaPo]

IN AMONG THE sellers of broken iPods and seekers of D/D-free HWP SWPFs, Craigslist also features people attempting to do constructive things.

Such was classical percussionist Simone Mancuso, who had recently come to Silver Spring from Sicily. He posted to the D.C. section of Craigslist in the spring of 2006, looking for someone with whom to improvise. Jeff Suzda, a jazz saxophonist who had recently come to Silver Spring from Chicago, was intrigued by the idea of a classical musician wanting to cut loose on some freestyle and shot Mancuso an e-mail.

The result?

The Mancuso-Suzda Project, purveyors of heady, intoxicating experimental jazz.

The Project finishes up a monthlong residency for emerging artists at the Mansion at Strathmore with a concert on Wednesday and is putting the finishing touches on a self-produced CD, to be released in mid-November.

Amazing what the Interweb can do when it really tries.

Continue Reading "Sounds Impossible: The Mancuso-Suzda Project" »

ALSOP FIRST MADE HER MARK with exciting, deeply felt readings of works by American composers like Samuel Barber, Michael Torke and her mentor, Leonard Bernstein. As her cycle of Johannes Brahms' symphonies for Naxos recordings shows, she also has a sure touch in older European repertoire. She's won both the "Artist of the Year" award from the British classical music mag Gramophone (in 2003) and a MacArthur "Genius" Grant (in 2005). On Thursday night, the first female director of a major American orchestra will lead her first BSO concert as music director at the Music Center at Strathmore.

» EXPRESS: Would you think about the fact that you're the first woman to serve as music director of a major American orchestra if we in the media didn't keep bringing it up?
» ALSOP: No, I would absolutely never think about it! [laughs] It's a neat angle for stories, I guess.

» EXPRESS: Many of the programs in your first season mix really popular works, like each of the nine Beethoven symphonies, with newer works.
» ALSOP: The Baltimore Symphony's never done a complete Beethoven cycle in one season, so there's a newness to that. By pairing all the Beethoven symphonies with contemporary works, four or five of them conducted by the living composers [who wrote the contemporary works], the idea is to give people a new perspective on something they're familiar with.

Continue Reading "On the Spot: Marin Alsop" »

TRACK WORK and rail car testing will lead to delays on the Red, Orange and Green lines this weekend. Here's what to expect:

» ORANGE LINE: This is where you'll find the heaviest of the weekend's work. From 10 p.m. Friday until midnight Sunday, trains will share the same track between Vienna and West Falls Church. Alternating trains will turn around at West Falls Church rather than proceeding to Vienna, so keep an eye on your train's final destination. Metro warns customers to add 30 minutes to their travel time.

» RED LINE: Track maintenance between Grosvenor and Medical Center could cause delays of up to 15 minutes, with trains in both directions sharing the same track. The work's scheduled to take place between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

» GREEN LINE: New railcar testing between Greenbelt and College Park will force trains in both directions to share one track from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday. Add 10-15 minutes to your travel time.

» "Weekend Track Maintenance and Rail Car Testing to Affect Metro's Red, Orange and Green Lines" [WMATA]

RED AND GREEN LINE passengers should plan ahead when taking Metrorail this weekend. With track maintenance scheduled for the Red Line in Montgomery County and railcar testing scheduled for the Green Line in Prince George's County, trains will share a single track in the following locations at the following times:

» RED LINE: Expect a 15-minute delay between the Grosvenor-Strathmore and Medical Center Metrorail stations. (7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday)

» GREEN LINE: Give yourself an extra 10 to 15 minutes when travelling between the Greenbelt and College Park stations from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday.

» "Weekend Track Maintenance and Rail Car Testing to Affect Metro's Red and Green Lines" [WMATA]

SEVERAL METRORAIL LINES WILL experience delays this weekend for scheduled track maintenance. Only the Orange Line will escape scheduled delays. Trains will run share a single track in the following locations:

» RED LINE: Expect a 15-minute delay when traveling between the Grosvenor and Medical Center stations. (7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday)

» BLUE AND YELLOW LINES: There will be delays of up to 30 minutes between the Van Dorn Street, King Street and Braddock Road stations. (10 p.m. Friday to 10 a.m. Saturday; 10 p.m. Saturday to 10 a.m., Sunday)

» GREEN LINE: Give yourself an extra 15 minutes when traveling between the Greenbelt and College Park stations from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday.

» "Weekend Track Maintenance and Rail Car Testing to Affect Metro's Red, Blue, Yellow and Green Lines" [WMATA]

LOTS OF PEOPLE complain about derogatory imagery in hip-hop. But not everyone has a platform from which to address the issue. Darin Atwater, composer-in-residence with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, has the conductor’s podium.

From it, he confronts hip-hop stereotypes with "Paint Factory." Atwater's hip-hop symphony will receive its world premiere Friday at Strathmore, as the composer leads the BSO artistic affiliate Soulful Symphony. The 75-member orchestra will be joined by the dancers of Soul Movement and the rappers of M.E.P.

"Part of my mission as a composer is really to take the music of our culture, the vernacular of America, and elevate it," Atwater said. "I started with spirituals, I’ve done some jazz. I’ve done some gospel as well. So, I looked to hip-hop as the next trajectory for me to explore."

A onetime Tribe Called Quest fan, Atwater had been away from hip-hop for some time. "When I readdressed the genre, I was really shocked at where we had progressed to," he admitted. "[I'm] really trying to recontextualize the art form myself and get back to that whole lyrical presence that it had back in the late ’80s and [early] '90s."

As a conservatory-trained composer, though, Atwater had no qualms about going back even further to grasp the music's future, modeling "Paint Factory" on the oratorios of Bach.

Continue Reading "With 'Paint Factory,' Hip-Hop Turns Classical" »