Stop. Look. Listen.

Roger Ebert writes about Paul Newman here and here. And, if you missed it, an interesting tribute from a letter to the New Era.

That curious sound you hear: random bleats, tweets, twangs and thumps, fragments of melody and the hum of strings, coalescing around the plangent “A” from the oboe. Here, there and all around, musicians are hauling their black clothes out of the closet as symphony orchestras get ready for the upcoming season. Here’s a look at some opening programs.

How could you get any more classical than Beethoven and Mozart? The Lancaster Symphony Orchestra, directed by Stephen Gunzenhauser, will be opening its season Friday, Oct. 3 with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 and Mozart’s Symphony No. 32 in G Major. A romantic, but far less familiar work to many listeners, will be Jeno Hubay’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G minor, Op. 99, with Hagai Shaham as soloist. (CD collectors will note that Shaham has recorded all four of the Hubay violin concerti for Hyperion.)

Looking around the immediate area, we find several other orchestras with mainstream repertoire-heavy opening programs. The Reading Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Andrew Constantine, opens its season Saturday, Oct. 4 with “Working Vacations.” This big, beefy program includes Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35 with Elena Urioste as soloist, Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 73 (both written while the composers were on vacation) and Beethoven’s Overture to “Coriolan.”

Another program with a late-romantic/very-late-romantic bent will be presented by the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra, also Oct. 4-5. In “Prelude to Romance,” the orchestra, directed by Stuart Malina, will perform Liszt’s “Les Préludes,” Brahms’ Double Concerto, and Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 2, “Romantic.” We’re lovin’ it!

The following week, Robert Hart Baker and the York Symphony Orchestra depart from this trend with a pops-infused program: “Spicy Classics.” The concert, which takes place Oct. 11, will include Richard Rodgers’ Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, Gershwin’s Piano Concert in F (with Anne-Marie McDermott), music from Weill’s “Threepenny Opera,” the Finale from Darius Milhaud’s “The Creation of the World” and Paul Hindemith’s “Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria Von Weber.” Mmmm, sounds good!

The Landis Woods Outdoor Art Show called for umbrellas, tarps and extra plastic this year. (Click on the link for a brief slide show, click on each picture for the caption.)

Picking up the fall previews again …

 There are plenty of notable cultural events happening at Millersville University this fall. The Reduced Shakespeare Company will present “The Complete History of America (abridged)” in a “Special Election Year Edition” Sept. 28. mZuri will present the one-woman show “The Fannie Lou Hamer Story: The Right to Vote” Oct. 2. The second ‘Ville Idol singing competition gets under way Oct. 11, continues Oct. 25 and winds up Nov. 9. The American Repertory Ballet will present the world premier of “Worlds end. And worlds begin.” Oct. 17. This new collaborative work is based on a text by Richard E. Miller, choreographed by Graham Lustig to music by Millersville faculty member Rusty Banks. The Millersville University Community Orchestra, led by new music director Reuben Blundell, will perform works by Schubert, Debussy and a new work for strings by Eastman composer Jennifer Bellor Oct. 21. The group Bearfoot, a mix of American musical styles from North to South, will perform Oct. 24. The University Theater will present John Patrick Shanley’s “Italian American Reconciliation” Nov. 7-9. The annual “Glorious Sounds of the Season” concert will take place Dec. 6 and 7.

The Music from Millersville concert series at St. James Episcopal Church has already gotten underway with a Sept. 7 performance by Anita Renfroe on harpsichord of works by the baroque greats Bach, Handel and Scarlatti. The next concerts will be Keith Wiley & the Jazz Ministers Big Band, 4 p.m. Oct. 5 and ”The Son of the Night of Living Composers,” music by Millersville faculty members performed by Christy Banks and the Faculty New Music Consort, 4 p.m. Oct. 26. (This concert will also take place at noon Friday, Oct. 24 in the Ford Atrium of McComsey Hall on the Millersville campus, in case you can’t make it to the Sunday event.)

This really only scratches the surface of things that are happening at Millersville. The Humanities Film Series is open to the public, showing films such as “Ezra” and “Road to Guantanamo,” and there are many other recitals and concerts of interest. Check here for a calendar or here for tickets.

An exhibit of paintings by Leigh St. Clair will open Friday, Sept. 19 at the Parlor Gallery, 320 Laurel St. The reception will be 5-10 p.m. and, just because it’s Music Friday,  a DJ will be entertaining 7-10 p.m.

David Spitzer, whose digital photographs are now on display at the Phillips Museum of Art’s Rothman Gallery, will discuss his work at a reception 4:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 19. Spitzer, who is known for his photographs of jazz musicians, has created set of images of fascinating duality: monumental vs. small-scale, the inexpressiveness of buildings and the inexpressiveness of store dummies, the creativity of architects and display designers, reflections in and on reflections. And, at the same time he captures the simple pleasures of sight-seeing and window shopping, all in single images.

Also worth checking out are Edward Evan’s calligraphic paintings, upstairs in the Dana Gallery. They’re not calligraphic in the usual sense: Evans uses airbrushes to convincingly create an illusion of folded, bent, curved and even pierced and torn surfaces, bearing “relief” or “incised” images of Chinese characters or archaic letter forms. The colors are stony or dim and metallic; the characters difficult (or impossible) to read. “I do not want the writing to be easily read,” says Evans in his artist’s statement. “There is beauty and a strange comfort to not being easily decipherable.”

This day in 1179, the German composer, abbess and mystic Hildegard of Bingen died. Hear some of her music here, and read more here and here.

Maybe there’s something gross left over from the “Grossology” exhibits … The Whitaker Center is cleaning house and holding a tag sale, and you could be the proud owner of an IMAX film collectible or exhibit item. Check here for details.

 The Car Music Project is a great deal more than a novelty group, despite wiper-blade bows, brake-drum drums and a certain found-in-the-junkyard air.  While the group’s music contains a fair amount of humor, from cartoony stops and starts, goofy slides and other crazy elements, it never enters Spike Jones territory. Basically, it’s a free jazz outfit that manages to get an entirely musical sound out of its unusual instruments, most of which were made from parts from one single car: a 1982 Honda Civic, to be exact, by metal sculptor Ray Faunce III of Bensalem. The group performed at Binns Park in downtown Lancaster Saturday, to a sparse but enthusiastic crowd, many of whom gathered around at concert break to talk to the musicians and check out the oddball instruments. The musicians, in their turn, were eager to talk about their instruments and answer questions.  James Spotto (seen in the photo at left), who plays the exhaustaphone (the large instrument in the foreground) and the strutbone (seen in the lower right) assured us the exhaustaphone had been made out of a new exhaust system, since an old one would be pretty gunky and carcinogenic to boot. A sort of sousaphone/trombone hybrid, the exhaustaphone has not one but two slides, producing a half-step difference in tone. It has a range of about five octaves, although two of the octaves are incomplete. In the background you can see the “percarsion” battery (all kinds of stuff, from hoods and windows and, of course, brake drum, to bits of engine) played with enthusiasm by William Trigg. With Bill Milbrodt on air (cleaner) guitar, Dave Homan on tenor convertible, a saxophone-like instrument, which, minus mouthpiece and bell, became a flute, and Wilbo Wright on (gas) tank bass, the group played about 10 songs to the gallon, with music that ranged from spacy to funky, improvisational to through-composed, with titles like “Uh-Oh,” “Crenabulations” and “I Can’t Think of a Title.” It was easy to forget you were listening to chunks of an old beater and enjoy the varied soundscape the musicians provided.

Dana Gioia will leave his post at the National Endowment for the Arts in January. Read more here.