Cellist Bjorn Ranheim, who the last time I saw him had shaved his head just before the last Casual Classics concert, sent me a note about the "intense music festival" he's already in the thick of in Boulder, the Colorado Music Festival, aka "Michael Christie's summer band."

I got a call from Silvian Iticovici, one of the three Romanian violinists in the SLSO. He wanted to write about something "exciting" for his 0910 Musician Pick, and asked if I had a recording of Osvaldo Golijov's Azul, which SLSO Principal Cello Daniel Lee performs with the orchestra on Opening Weekend. "Golijov is a composer who I find to be very interesting," Silvian said.

Some of my colleagues have been asking me questions about the upcoming season as they prepare to send me their Staff Picks for 0910. I ask both staff and musicians to send me their Hot Picks, and some staff members actually like to do some research. I recommended to one colleague, who I already knew enjoyed more uncommon fare, to listen to György Ligeti's Violin Concerto, which is paired with Holst's The Planets on a program in March, with David Robertson conducting.

The final Casual Classic concert was Sunday, as was the finale to the Opera Theatre season, with Salome.

The Henchmen were bringing stuff back from the Loretto-Hilton Center Monday morning, and a few of us bade farewell to the 0809 season with malts and cholesterol busting sandwiches at Crown Candy Kitchen.

While I was out tracking down a memory Thursday afternoon, I stopped in at the Central Branch of the St. Louis Public Library to check out a few CDs for my summer listening of the SLSO 0910 season. As sometimes happens, I ran into an SLSO musician doing the same thing, percussionist Tom Stubbs, who was turning in multiple versions of Mahler 5, Janacek Sinfonietta and other selections. "Hearing the different interpretations is really the fun part," Tom told me.

With Scott Joplin's "The Ragtime Dance," "The Entertainer" and "Maple Leaf Rag" on Sunday's Casual Classics program, I ventured out into Heat Advisory City to track down a memory. In the summer of 2000, Opera Theatre of St. Louis opened its 25th-anniversary season with Joplin's Treemonisha, his sole surviving opera. It's known that he wrote an opera prior to Treemonisha, A Guest of Honor, which dramatized Booker T. Washington's visit to Theodore Roosevelt's White House. Joplin toured a production of A Guest of Honor around the Midwest, and pretty much went broke because of it. The opera score and libretto have disappeared. If you happen to find it in your great-grandparents' attic, you'll have truly found something.

The big top is all the way down. The circus passes, the dogs bark, and so on.

I've solicited the musicians for their top picks for the 0910 season, trying to catch them before they disperse to places clear and cool for festivals and such. Violist Chris Woehr placed the weekend with André Previn high on his list. The SLSO has a significant history with Previn, as he made his conducting debut with the orchestra in 1961. Chris wasn't around for that, but he has a much more intimate Previn connection that he shares:

Circus Flora's big top is going down in 97-degree heat today.

David Robertson is back in town to get his fill of St. Louis summer heat and to conduct the Casual Classics concert tonight (Friday). A very go-for-Baroque program; or an if-it-ain't-Baroque-don't-fix-it program and so on. The trumpets are sounding very bright and sunny, and Andrea Kaplan's flute makes the Bach Suite No. 2 a festive occasion. Pachelbel's Canon, Handel's Water Music: big hits to cool the evening. Many of my colleagues are in their blue Casual Classics polos. The foyer glows with butter-colored table cloths and those darling little sand-bucket centerpieces. Come early for food and drink. Tap your flip-flops to the Baroque.