‘Love of Russia’ concert

ORONO – The Bangor Symphony Orchestra will open its 111th season with “Love of Russia” at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 8, at the Maine Center for the Arts.

Music director and conductor Xiao-Lu Li begins his fifth season on the podium.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter” overture, Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no. 3 give the opening concert its bold Russian theme for the autumn afternoon.

Guest soloist Alexander Moutouzkine will join the orchestra for Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto.

Moutouzkine burst onto the U.S. concert scene at 19 after garnering the Special Award for Artistic Potential at the 11th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Born in Yoshkar-Ola, Russia, to a family of professional musicians, he is the laureate of numerous international competitions.

Moutouzkine has toured Germany, France, Spain, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Italy as well as parts of North and South America. Recent performance activities include a CD recording at the Spanish National Classical Radio Station, debut recitals in Vienna and Rome, and concerts in Paris, Barcelona, Rimini, Tenerife, Zaragoza, Auditorio “Pablo Casals” in El Vendrell, and New York.

Concert tickets range from $13 to $40, with senior and youth discounts available. Tickets may be reserved at bangorsymphony.

com or by calling at 942-5555.

Mystery writers

BANGOR – Four of America’s best mystery writers will clue you in to the details of their work at 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 7, at the Bangor Public Library. Tess Gerritsen, Kathy Lynn Emerson, Kate Flora and Sarah Graves will talk about their latest works and answer questions about how to craft whodunits.

Gerritsen took a unique path to a writing career. Graduating from Stanford University with a medical degree, she was a practicing physician who started to write when she was expecting her first child. She is now a best-selling author of medical thrillers. Gerritsen will bring her latest mystery, “Mephisto Club,” a chilling tale of a Boston secret society that, with its investigations of evil, may have bitten off more than it realized.

Kathy Lynn Emerson is best know for her “Face Down” series, medieval whodunits featuring herbalist Lady Appleton, and her latest series with Victorian journalist Diana Spaulding. While some of Spaulding’s adventures have been set in Bangor, Emerson’s latest book, “Fatal as a Fallen Woman,” takes her heroine to the untamed West.

Down East Maine’s Sarah Graves has attracted many fans of her mystery novels. Her do-it-yourself heroine deals with mayhem and mysteries while restoring her rambling Victorian house on the Maine coast. Graves will bring her latest book, “Nail Biter,” in which her heroine encounters unexpected complications when she unknowingly rents an apartment to a coven of witches.

Kate Flora may well be called the mystery writer’s mystery writer. She is international president of Sisters in Crime, an organization for women who craft mystery stories. She also teaches writing in several venues. Flora’s Thea Kozak series features a chip-on-the-shoulder heroine who regularly wins critical praise. She will introduce her soon-to-be-released “Stalking Death.”

To learn more, call the library at 947-8336.

Planetarium shows

ORONO – “Destination Pluto” is a journey of discovery for space travelers of all ages on Sundays in October at the Jordan Planetarium. New space exploration has reshaped our understanding of the planets and their origins, even to the point of changing the identity of little Pluto and limiting the planet family to eight members.

“Destination Pluto” is a planetarium star show that introduces young students to the wonders of the sun’s system and reviews the latest space news for the rest of the family.

Recently discovered moons and far-flung mysterious ice worlds, rings around the largest planets, close-up views of alien landscapes and hazardous asteroids are all part of the adventure in “Destination Pluto” at the University of Maine Maynard F. Jordan Planetarium. The one-hour journey begins at 2 p.m. each Sunday in October at Wingate Hall on the Orono campus.

Far past the most distant members of the solar system, astronomers study the stars and galaxies only with sensitive bionic eyes such as the cameras of the Hubble space telescope. The star show “Hubble Vision” at the Jordan Planetarium unveils these exotic elements of the universe with images from Hubble and an imaginary tour from the sun to the beginning of time. Exploding stars, new-born solar systems and fields of glowing clouds all challenge the understanding of the cosmos. Join the tour group in “Hubble Vision” at 7 p.m. Saturdays, Oct. 14 to 28.

Tickets are $3 and may be reserved in advance or purchased at the door. Seating is limited. For more information or reservations, call 581-1341 or visit the Jordan Planetarium www.galaxymaine.com.

Indian life and culture

ORONO – Nicholas Smith, historian of American Indian life and culture, will give a presentation at 3 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 12, at the Raymond H. Fogler Library’s Special Collections department at the University of Maine.

Smith was a founding member of the Maine Archaeological Society and the Ethnomusicology Society. His fieldwork among the Maliseet and other Wabanaki groups has continued for more than 50 years.

Smith is a graduate of the University of Maine and worked in Fogler Library as an undergraduate before earning a degree in library science at Columbia University.

He became particularly interested in documents and manuscripts pertaining to the Wabanaki, and when a bundle of more than 100 related manuscripts was found at the Museum of the American Indian, Huntington Free Library, Smith was asked to assess their research value, organize them and lead the effort to preserve them.

Smith’s fieldwork has included opportunities to view and record the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy chief-making ceremonies and interview some of the last people who were married in the traditional fashion in Maliseet villages.

Smith’s lecture is free and open to the public.

History symposium series

ORONO – The University of Maine Department of History’s fall symposium series will continue with “Concerning the Extra-Legal Persecutions of the Nazi Era,” at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 8, with Henry Friedlander, emeritus professor of history in the Department of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

The talk will be held in the Bangor Room of the Memorial Union and is co-sponsored by the Jewish Community Endowment Associates, the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, Hillel and the UMaine Department of English.

John Laband, professor of history at Wilfred Laurier University, will present “Towards an Understanding of the Nature of Zulu Warfare During the Nineteenth Century” at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 6.

The series began in September with a lecture on the 1704 French and Indian raid on Deerfield.

University of Maine history professor Liam Riordan coordinates the symposium.

For information, call Riordan at 581-1913 or e-mail riordan@umit.maine.edu.