The Evening Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 21

Accent Plus Index Ann Landers B12 Best Bets B3 Calendar BS Comics. 13, 14 Cross word B13 Dining Out B9 Jeane Dixon Bl 1 Movies Dr. Lafia Bll TV 10,11 THE EVENING SUN PEOPLEARTSUVINGCOMICS BV THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1986 The Men usic Young composers woo Baltimore audiences XJ i 9 contemporary works, because it is built on a rather simple framework that is shockingly tonal -the entire piece is a patchwork of miniature extrapolations of a major chord. It's rife with tunes you can whistle. "The raw materials can be anything," Torke says of his use of conventional harmonic material.

"Since I was really young, certain keys and pitches have had strong color associations. major and the color blue is one of the strongest ones. The blue of this piece is a bright sky blue or the blue that reflects off a swimming pool on a bright day. So I conceived the piece as a huge major chord from beginning to end with no progressions." Torke's work "Vanada," which is on tonight's Discovery Series program, incorporates such popular music influences as funk, and is scored for electronic keyboards and brass. "Popular music is one of the chief factors of our culture," Torke says.

"It isn't good or bad, it just is. To ig- See MUSIC, B2, Col. 1 i 4 a i Michael Torke and David Zinman during a recent BSO rehearsal. By Scott Duncan Evening Sun Staff WAS A DECIDED BREAK with concert protocol: Two weeks ago, David Zinman gave a short speech prior to a Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concert. To the assembled faithful at Meyerhoff Hall, the BSO's music director introduced the or-.

chestra's new composer-in-residence, Christopher Rouse. Taking the hand-held microphone from Zinman, I Rouse looked like a slightly flushed stand-up co- median who just landed eight minutes on "The To-f night Show." Young and articulate, the award-winning American composer and Baltimore native loosened up the audience with a few jokes and delivered a small pre-concert pep talk on Michael Torke's "Bright Blue Music," which led off that evening's Celebrity Series program. "I could talk about his cerebral mathematization of rhythmic motives," Rouse said, pausing for effect while Meyerhoff 's well-heeled clientele braced itself, "but that would be needlessly academic. This is music to make you feel good. It should make you feel happy." It did.

Torke's effervescent, nine-minute work received a hearty ovation, the loudest given a new work in recent memory. The job of selling modern music to Baltimore was off and running. To any close observer of the city's musical scene, there is undoubtedly something unusual going on. Living, breathing classical music composers are roaming Meyerhoff Hall, sharing program space with their dead colleagues, trading rehearsal tips with Zinman and orchestra players and taking their bows onstage. Tonight, for example, three important American composers will sit in the audience while their works are performed during the BSO's Discovery Series concert at Westminster Hall.

Baltimore, a hotbed of the musical avant garde? What's going on? Certainly, Zinman is not abandoning the cherished core of the traditional concert repertoire composers such as Beethoven or Brahms. But Zinman is clearly attempting to address the appreciation gap that exists today between concert audiences and the music written in their lifetime. While some orchestras pay their lip-service by commissioningwith great fanfare a contemporary work once a year, Zinman is feeding BSO audiences a steady diet of new music throughout the season and inviting composers to Baltimore. And if local audiences expect these composers to look like ascetic, bespectacled, Teutonic music professors, they should look again. Some leading writers of orchestral music today look like your neighbor's kid just back from college.

Take Michael Torke, the 25-year-old phenomenon whom Zinman is backing with unabashed enthusiasm. With commissions for new works and a collection of prizes that would make many of his elders envious, Torke has been called one of the hottest young composers in American today. Orchestras in New York, Detroit and Milwaukee will play his compositions this season, and Torke recently landed a coveted exclusive publishing contract with Boosey Hawkes. The precocious Milwaukee-born Torke tooled around rehearsals at Meyerhoff Hall two weeks ago in painters' pants and sneakers. During one light moment, Zinman admonished the orchestra that Torke had marked a passage in the score with the Italian term meaning "play lightly." After instructing the players, Zinman turned to Torke sitting alone in the hall and added: "And by the way, it's spelled 1-e-g-g-i-e-r-o." Torke downplays his impressive accomplishments so far.

"It's like taking a hike through the woods. Your concentration is where the path is going, not where it's been. There's just so much still to do," he says. "Bright Blue Music" is a radical departure from most A page from "Vanada," copyright 1986 by Hendon Music reprinted by permission. Christopher Rouse 7 Hear modern composers fl Discovery Series: David Zinman, conductor, Leslie Guinn, baritone, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra; 8 p.m.

tonight Westminster Hall; "Dupree's Paradise" by Frank Zappa, "Mitternachtlieder" by Christopher Rouse, "On the Bad Lands Parables" by Eric Stokes and "Vanada" by Michael Torke. Tickets: $9 $4 at the door. Call 783-8000. Chamber Music Society: Concord String Quartet; 3 p.m. Sunday, Baltimore Museum of Art; Baltimore composer Robert Hall Lewis' Quartet No.

3 (1981) and Hindemith's Third String Quartet. Tickets: Call 783-8000. Res Musica Baltimore: "Laser Light Meets Music;" 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 26, Baltimore Museum of Art; "The Pleiades for Solo Violin," by Robert Errck-son, "Six Dark Questions," by Dexter Morrill and "Portrait of a Friend," by Vivian Adelberg Rudow Tickets: Mil.

Eric Stokes Frank Zappa Tune in, buy by tube 1 Leister's great pumpkin squashes the competition i -J. HJ-l1llllll1 By Steve McKerrow Evening Sun Staff It used to be we had to put up with commercials on television to get the entertainment. But guess what? Now we sometimes can't find the entertainment for all the commercials. Say hello, Baltimore viewers, to tele-marketing. This week WNUV-Channel 54 began airing (at 12:30 a.m.

Wednesdays and Fridays; that is, late-night Tuesday and Thursday) an hour-long, multi-product commercial known as the Direct Shopping Network. And come Monday, the previously announced format change at WKJL-Channel 24 will go into partial effect, with the station airing 18 hours of daily video salesmanship from the Home Shopping Network, which purchased the station this summer. Happily for rerun lovers, however, the station's richly nostalgic 6 p.m. to midnight schedule will continue to air, largely unchanged. Viewers of cable television, of course, are familiar with the con-cept of tele-marketing.

The twin-station cable operation Home Shopping Network, comprising 24-hour sales broadcasts, has been one of cable's few clear successes. Items ranging from art work to zirconium jewelry are shown and described on the tube, and viewers are urged to call a toll-free number and place their orders at a substantial savings over retail prices. It's TV's version of the mail-order shopping' revolution. It seems bizarre, but apparently! there is a public interest in turning TV into a bazaar. Until now, such services were not available on the broadcast airwaves Yet the Direct Sales Network which debuted on Channel 54 this week says a spokesman for the Philadelphia-based operation, is a pilot airing taking place in October here and in four other major markets-Indianapolis, Philadelphia Chicago and San Francisco.

See BUY, Bll, Col. 6 shape like Jabba The Hut. Still, Leister was not impressed. "I thought it might weigh 125 pounds, tops," he said. Last weekend, he entered it in the pumpkin contest at the Carroll County Fall Harvest Days.

Leister's entry Tho real dirt won easily, by over 60 pounds. Officials say it was the biggest pumpkin, by l'i pounds, in their 20 years of competition. They weighed it with the others on an old farm platform scale, as bystanders ogled the soon-to-be champion. "One ninety-two and a half," said the judge. "That's outrageous! That's incredible!" shrieked a woman from East Baltimore.

(The world record is 671 pounds.) Leister wasn't there for the weigh-in. He had entered the contest By Mike Klingaman Evening Sun Staff It has been a wretched year for Maryland farmers, and no one is more aware of it than Marvin Leister. He is a farm machinery salesman in Carroll County. Business isn't booming. Combines aren't moving.

So why is everyone in the store shaking Marvin Leister's hand? Did he just sell a tractor? Is he running for county commissioner? Or has he grown the biggest pumpkin this county has ever seen? Hint: Leister's is a Cinderella story- The state's worst drought of the century didn't stop Leister from growing a 1 92 Va -pound pumpkin on his farm near Westminster. He did not pamper it. He did not mulch it or water it. He did not even see the pumpkin until three weeks ago, when the vines retreated, revealing 29 large fruits and one extra-large one with faded yellow skin and a By Barbara Haddock-Evening Sun Staff side and cultivated them once with the tiller." Soon the patch was waist-high with vines which begat tiny, furry pumpkins that thrived under the shady leaves. Several well-timed and extremely localized showers also helped.

"We had a few rains that other people in the county didn't get," said Leister. The garden is 100 feet from a pond, but was never watered. for five straight years, never finishing better than second. How his pumpkin grew so large under such adverse conditions remains a mystery. Leister, who saves his own Mammoth seeds from year to year, planted 12 hills in a single row in the one-acre garden on his 25-acre farm on June 1.

"All they got was a little 10-10-10 fertilizer and some lime," he said. "I Rave them 12 to 15 feet on each.