The other day, I posted about the 40th anniversary of Judy Garland's death. I still have her on my mind, so I thought I'd turn to her for something musical to start the Fourth of July weekend.

Here she is from her CBS TV show (a show that should have gone much longer, but was thwarted by corporate idiots who didn't appreciate what they had), coming out of her tramp-outfit routine to sing "America the Beautiful."

Visually, the transition may look odd at first, but ...

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The 37th season of Candlelight Concerts, the fine chamber series in Columbia, will include the start of a two-year survey of the complete Beethoven string quartets. Six ensembles, American and European, will participate in the cycle, beginning the the Illinois-based Pacifica Quartet Jan. 23. The Ebene Quartet from France (Feb. 6) and Artemis Quartet from Germany (Feb. 27) will also be part of the series during the 2009-2010 portion of the Beethoven series.

Starting off the Candlelight lineup is soprano Emma Kirkby, the much acclaimed specialist in early music, who will perform a 17th century program with lutenist Jakob Lindberg on Oct. 24. The Concertante Sextet will play Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht and Brahms' G major Sextet, along with John Novacek's Three Rags, on Nov. 21. Cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan will perform works by Beethoven, Schumann, Shostakovich and others on March 13. 

And, providing the most concentrated dose of contemporary music on the series, the ... 

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The idea loudly espoused in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte – that women can’t help being unfaithful to their men – is hard to swallow under normal circumstances. Encountering the work while Gov. Sanford’s confession of serial line-crossing is all over the news requires even more indulgence than usual.

Wolf Trap Opera’s intriguing production, which had its final performance Tuesday night at the Barns, emphasized the darker side of Cosi fan tutte, treating the wager that sets the plot in motion as a kind of calculated scientific experiment, set in a pristine clinic. Folks in white lab coats peered through two-way mirrors and secretly taped everything that went on as two couples were gradually torn apart, thanks to Don Alfonso’s wager with Ferrando and Guglielmo that their fiances will betray them if given half a chance.

It is possible to question various elements in director Eric Einhorn’s concept, especially 

the uneven balance between broad slapstick and a gentler sitcom approach, but he managed to pull off this updating of the plot in often compelling, not to mention humorous and some ever so slightly vulgar, ways.

He’s not the first director to put an unhappy, unsettled spin on the opera’s ending, but Einhorn strongly underlined how none of the four central characters would ever be the same, how deeply wounded each one was by what happened during the experiment. In a persuasive touch, Einhorn showed one of the women ... 

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It may not register on the global scale as Michael Jackson's death, but the passing of Mollie Sugden today will leave a much deeper mark on a lot of us, and, as she would say, I am unanimous in that. 

Miss Sudgen endeared herself TV audiences as Mrs. Slocombe, the head of Ladies' Intimate Apparel on the long-running Brit com, Are You Being Served?, a show that gained its American following thanks to endless reruns on a lot of PBS stations for many years. I can never go too long without watching an episode for the millionth time. (Hey, I can't devote myself entirely to classical music.) 

Everything about Mollie Sugden's Mrs. Slocombe was ...

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Baltimore was one of the early stops on what is now a full-scale, 50-states-plus-Puerto-Rico-and-the-District-of-Columbia tour by Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser as part of the center's "Arts in Crisis" project.

Kaiser was at the Baltimore Museum of Art a few weeks ago for a public discussion on arts organizations facing the harsh challenges caused by the recession. He has a long track record of rescuing financially challenged institutions and for invigorating the programming and reach of arts groups, so a lot of folks naturally hang on his every word.

"Arts in Crisis," launched in February, is already working with more than 350 organizations around the country, providing planning advice on a range of issues. More than 100 veteran arts professionals are participating in the project as volunteer mentors.

The press release from Kennedy Center announcing the Kaiser road show included ...

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Baltimore Opera Theatre, recently formed by seasoned impresarios Giorgio Lalov and his wife, Jenny Kelly, will present its debut season at the Hippodrome -- full staged performances of Rossini's The Barber of Seville (Nov. 22) and Verdi's Rigoletto (March 11). Casting details have not been announced, but there is news about the orchestra and chorus.

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Music is inevitably a little less plentiful around here once the hot months arrive, but you can always find something to hear.

A fresh batch of off-season fare for 2009 arrives via the free Summer Chamber Music in Roland Park, which starts at 7 p.m. tonight (Tuesday, June 30) at Roland Park Presbyterian, 4801 Roland Ave. The program lists the exquisite Clarinet Quintet by Mozart and Ravel's Introduction and Allegro for flute, clarinet, harp and strings. A piece for flute and harp by contemporary composer Bernard Andres is also scheduled.

Performers include fine local talent: harpist Julia Martin, flutist David Lavorgna, clarinetist David Drosinos, violinists Melina Gajger and Tamara Seymour, violist Jackie Capecci, and cellist Kirsten Walsh.

The series will ...

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I couldn't let the month end without acknowledging one of the historic anniversaries being observed -- the 40th year since Judy Garland died (June 22, 1969).

I think of her as the Maria Callas of pop music, as nakedly emotional and, eventually, as technically flawed, yet totally irresistible right to the end.

In her later years, Garland's ability to dig beneath the surface of a song was astonishing, nowhere more so than ...

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Please excuse the delay in blogging, cherished readers. I snuck off to Argentina for a couple days, having heard there were great hiking trails down there. But I flew back via New York in time to  catch a significant event Saturday night at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall.

There, before a packed, vociferously enthusiastic crowd, Lorin Maazel wrapped up his seven year tenure as music director of the New York Philharmonic in appropriately grand fashion, leading Mahler's gargantuan Symphony No. 8.

Although discouraging words in the press about Maazel's tenure were not exactly rare over the years, the orchestra seems to have relished the association with one of the world's most brilliant technicians of the baton. Even Maazel's critics usually will grant that he commands a podium as few conductors can. It's his interpretive approach that bothers some folks. The most common complaints are ...

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The originally scheduled season-ending National Symphony program this week was to have included the orchestra's first performances of Strauss' Three Hymns and Rautavaara's Manhattan Trilogy, along with a more standard item by Strauss, Also sprach Zarathustra. When Finnish-born conductor Mikko Franck had to cancel and German-born Andreas Delfs took the gig, only Zarauthstra remained on the lineup.

Losing those rarities is a pity, to be sure, but the revised program is eminently appealing nonetheless. For one thing, the substitution for Three Hymns is the same composer's Four Last Songs, and I'll never complain about hearing them; they're right up near the top of my absolute favorite pieces of music. And, happily, the soloist hasn't changed -- the striking Finnish soprano Karita Mattila, who's plenty of a draw on her own. Taking the Rautavaara slot is ...

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