By Connie Ballenger
With three successful 2023 events in the rear-view mirror, a committee has already started preparing for Glen Mar’s 2024 Summer Concert Series season. All concerts in this Series, which started in 2017, are free.
Mark your calendar for two of next year’s concerts: Beau Soir Ensemble (a trio playing the flute, viola, and harp) on Friday, May 31 at 7:00 pm and Charm City Junction on Friday, June 21 at 7:00 pm with a jam session after the concert. Other 2024 concerts have not been finalized.
With energy and joy, Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble bounded onto the Spirit Center stage on August 4 to perform the last 2023 concert in this year’s Series. Three hundred people witnessed the dazzling rhythmic magic, much of it delivered at lightning speed. Even toddlers watched in awe as five hoofers demonstrated step and gumboot dances, soft shoe slip jigs, Irish reels, clogging, and hamboning. The dancers were sometimes accompanied by singing and instrumentalists playing the banjo, fiddle, guitar, and a drum. Performances were rooted in different cultures, including Irish, African, and Native American.
John Barnes called the event “super,” while Joanne Miliner remarked, “It was educational and entertaining at the same time.” Another audience member commented that people would have paid over $50 each to see that performance at the Lyric in Baltimore.
The Baltimore Symphony Youth Orchestra performed the second concert in the 2023 Series in the Spirit Center on June 18. BSYO Artistic Director and Conductor Jonathan Rush exuded energy as he led the 77 middle- and high-school musicians and three adult BSYO staff members.
The musicians enthralled the 400-strong audience with well-known pieces: Danse Negre by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, An American in Paris by George Gershwin, Mambo from West Side Story and Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95 “From the New World” by Antonin Dvorak. Far and Away, a piece BSYO Interim Director of Education and Community Engagement Brian Prechtl wrote, was premiered.
Bayside Big Band performed the first concert in the 2023 series on May 19. While 350 people watched on chairs and blankets, the band’s 17-piece orchestra and singer, Monica Gillam, performed well-known classics such as “Come Dance with Me,” “Big Spender,” and “Over the Rainbow” outside of the Early Learning Center entrance.
Three food trucks – Greek on the Street, Kona Ice, and Breaking the Borders – also drew folks to the area.
“The band packed a lot of good music into an hour,” praised Lauri Mendenhall who drove to the event from her home in Stevensville, MD.
Concerts are free thanks to community support. In 2023, the Howard County Arts Council awarded the Series a $5,500 grant. Other major benefactors were Harry H. Witzke’s Family Funeral Home for its sponsorship, and two generous contributors, “Friends of the Music Program at Glen Mar Church” and a donation made in memory of Karen Angle.
If interested in contributing to or sponsoring the 2024 series, email the Summer Concerts team. For up-to-date information about this Series, visit the Summer Concerts page.
