Maryland is a U.S. state with a musical heritage that dates back to the Native Americans of the region and includes contributions to colonial era music, modern American popular and folk music. The music of Maryland includes a number of popular musicians, folk styles and a documented music history that dates to the colonial archives on music from Annapolis, an important source in research on colonial music. Famous modern musicians from Maryland range from jazz singer Billie Holiday to pop punk band Good Charlotte, and include a wide array of popular styles.
Modern Maryland is home to many well-regarded music venues, including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Baltimore Opera, and the Peabody Institute's Conservatory of Music. Baltimore, the largest city in the state, is home to many important local venues, such as the Red Room, a center for the local experimental music scene, and the house nightspot Club Choices. Outside of Baltimore, Frederick's Weinberg Center for the Arts and Rockville's Strathmore are also important regional venues. The Merriweather Post Pavilion and 1st Mariner Arena host most of the largest concerts in the area. Since HFStival ended its successful run in 2006, Virgin Festival has taken over as one of the most popular summer festivals on the east coast since its inaugural year in 2006.
Institutions Most of the major musical organizations in Baltimore were founded by musicians who trained at the Peabody Institute's Conservatory of Music. These include Baltimore Choral Arts and the Baltimore Opera, as well as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO). The founding of the Peabody in 1857 would dramatically change the musical life of Maryland. Nearly all of Baltimore's major musical organizations – the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Opera, Baltimore Choral Arts, and a host of smaller organizations – owe their existence to Peabody musicians. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra formed in 1916 and was the only orchestra in the country to operate as a branch of the city's government. In 1942, the orchestra was reorganized as a private institution. The Orchestra claims that Joseph Meyerhoff, President of the Orchestra beginning in 1965, and his music director, Sergiu Comissiona, began the modern history of the BSO and "ensured the creation of an institution, which has become the undisputed leader of the arts community throughout the State of Maryland". Meyerhoff appointed Romanian-born conductor Sergiu Comissiona as music director; together, the visionary philanthropist and the charismatic conductor ensured the creation of an artistic institution, which has become the undisputed leader of the arts community throughout the State of Maryland.
Aside from the prominent Baltimore Symphony, Maryland is also home to several other institutions. The Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1962, is a well-known organization that has hosted guests like Cuban violinist Guillermo Perich and Charlie Byrd; the Annapolis Orchestra inspired composer David Ott to create the Annapolis Overture, which debuted in 1995. The Rohrersville Cornet Band, part of Maryland's cornet band heritage, claims to be the oldest continually performing community band in the state, having been founded in 1837; it now performs in a dedicated music hall in Rohrersville. The Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras (MCYO) was formed in the 1946 to "nurture, develop and advance young talented musicians in a quality orchestral program". Beginning in 1964, the Orchestras began to offer new programs, such as a summer camp that eventually became the Maryland Center for the Arts.
Venues and festivals
The largest music venue in Maryland is the Merriweather Post Pavilion, opened in 1967 and designed by architect Frank Gehry to avoid disturbing as much as possible the surrounding Symphony Woods; it is an outdoor performance area, home to most of the largest concerts that come through the area. In the 1990s and early 2000s, HFStival, held by the WHFS radio station, established itself as an extremely popular annual festival, and became a major draw across the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. Since 2006, Virgin Festival has established itself as a hugely popular festival annually held at Pimlico Race Course, drawing in a variety of popular acts. The Takoma Park Folk Festival is also well known among folk music aficionados, and has been held annually since 1978 in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Baltimore is home to several important concert spaces, including the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Concordia Hall and the Lyric Opera House. The Meyerhoff is home to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Concordia Hall is a long-standing venue, founded in 1867 by German musical societies, which were then a large portion of Baltimore's population. The Lyric Opera House, founded in 1894, is another important Baltimore music venue; it has hosted many of the most famous performers and public speakers to come to Baltimore. Smaller Hardcore and Punk acts play at the Charm City Art Space.
The city of Frederick is home to the Weinberg Centre for the Arts, which shows various kinds of theatrical and musical productions. The Weinberg was originally a large movie theater called the Tivoli, opened in 1926; the Tivoli was destroyed in a flood in 1976, and was reopened as the Weinberg Center two years later. North Bethesda's Strathmore opened in 1976, and is now a home for numerous programs, including the largest of its music venues, the Music Center at Strathmore; the Strathmore has hosted well-known musicians and composers like the cellist Steven Honigberg, pianist Christopher Taylor, jazz singers Nnenna Freelon and Luciana Souza and composers Virgil Thomson and Gunther Schuller, as well as DC-area cult acts like the founder of Go-go, Chuck Brown, and the reunited punk band The Slickee Boys.
History
Indigenous peoples created the first music in what became Maryland. The documented music history of Maryland begins during the colonial era, in the 18th century. The capital city of Annapolis was a major center for music during the colonial era; the city's Tuesday Club left behind documentation of musical life in Annapolis, one of the most complete sources for musical knowledge about that era in the United States. The larger growing port city of Baltimore 20 miles farther north eventually replaced Annapolis as a center for music in Maryland, and eventually became home to most of the prominent music institutions in the state, especially the Peabody Institute, founded by George Peabody in 1857. Later still, Baltimore's Pennsylvania Avenue, northwest of downtown, became a very well known home for African American music, especially jazz, while Maryland began producing popular musicians like The Orioles. In modern times, Maryland has been a home for styles including emo and hardcore punk.
Colonial era A few instruments, such as drums and trumpets, are known to have existed in the early history of the Maryland colony, probably as a functional means "of calling the populace to church or to market, or in serving as symbols for sea captains and those from the military"; some folk dancing and ballad singing is also substantiated by the historical record. The early colonists had little tradition of any performance art, due to the small number of individuals, their low standard of living and great poverty and disease. The few drums, trumpets, and other musical instruments recorded in seventeenth-century Maryland most likely played a functional role in calling the populace to church or to market, or in serving as symbols for sea captains and those from the military. A few references to ballad-singing and informal dancing pre-date 1700; there is no evidence of theatrical activities at this time.
With the arrival of large numbers of slaves, however, some white plantation owners earned enough wealth to invest in music and dance. The upper class used instruments like the flute, violin and harpsichord and danced formal dances like the stately minuet or English country dance, while the lower classes preferred reels and jigs, accompanied by various kinds of guitars, drums, banjos, transverse flutes and recorders, as well as, more rarely, hammered dulcimers and harpsichords.
Local music groups during the colonial era did much to sponsor musical development. Annapolis, a major center for colonial music in British North America, was home to the Homony Club and the Tuesday Club, while the Freemasons held balls and concerts across Maryland. Unlike the northern United States, religious music did not prosper in Maryland until the end of the colonial period, and then only in the German communities in the bustling ethnic port city of Baltimore along with outlying rural farming towns of Carroll, Montgomery and Frederick counties. Tavern owners frequently sponsored dances and concerts during the colonial era. Beginning in 1752, theater became a major part of Maryland culture for colonists of all classes; performances included light dance and incidental music, ballad operas and the works of William Shakespeare.David K. Hildebrand and Elizabeth Schaaf date the first theatrical seasons in Maryland as 1752, 1760, and more regularly from 1769 to 1773 Aside from the cultural and state capital of Annapolis, the city of Baltimore, and county seat towns of Upper Marlboro in southern Maryland and Chestertown on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, were major homes for Maryland theater, home to the debuts of the latest and most popular dances. With the French and Indian War (1754–1763), and then the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), soldiers brought back home to Maryland military band music, especially fife and drum ensembles.
Early independence and 19th century Professional theater in Maryland died out during the American Revolution but was reestablished by 1780, now with Baltimore having replaced Annapolis as a cultural capital in the state. Maryland ratified the federal Constitution on April 28, 1788, and became the seventh state in the Union. The Holiday Street Theater in Baltimore opened in 1793 and was one of the first large theaters in the country, showcasing light theater, opera, and concerts. In 1822, Arthur Clifton from Baltimore debuted his opera The Enterprise, while religious music flourished after the 1821 opening of the first constructed Roman Catholic Cathedral in the country. The African Methodist Episcopal churches in Maryland were home to singing traditions using the shape-note method.
By the turn of the century, the middle classes of Maryland were holding regular dances featuring the cotillion, quadrille, schottische, polka and waltz. Eastern European dances were also popular, brought by immigrants from various countries. Many immigrants in Maryland moved to Baltimore, forming their own distinct neighborhoods with German liederkranz singing societies, and Irish St. Patrick's Day parades and Jewish chants flourished among their respective communities. Maryland was home to several folk traditions, including the work songs of rail and canal diggers and the crab- and oystermen of the Chesapeake Bay, whose repertoire varied from hymns to risqué songs and Bahaman shanties.
By the middle of the 19th century, Baltimore was a major center of sheet music publishing, home to Joseph Carr, F. D. Benteen, John Cole and George Willig, as well as the piano-building businesses of William Knabe and Charles Stieff. This period also saw the rise of blackface minstrel shows, featuring the pseudo-African American songs of composers like Dan Emmett and Stephen Foster.