San Diegans with a good memory may recall that Christof Perick auditioned for the post of San Diego Symphony Music Director in 1989. It was his good fortune not to sign with the bankruptcy prone local orchestra, and he continued on to seek his musical fortune in his native Germany, although in the early 1990s he had several seasons leading the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He returned to Copley Symphony Hall Friday (Nov. 16) to conduct the San Diego Symphony in a thoroughly German program built around Beethoven”s Sixth Symphony (“Pastoral”). He opened with Richard Strauss’ evergreen tone poem “Don…

When I lived in Chicago, I was intrigued with the popularity of a shoppers’ chapel in the Loop that offered a mid-afternoon Roman Catholic Mass. Located midway between the fancy restaurants of Michigan Avenue and the bargain-filled department stores of State Street, the chapel drew a regular crowd of consumers laden with their day’s worth of purchases. In this urban bustle, I mused, there must be something more than just getting and spending. Wednesday (Nov. 14) at noon, a downtown San Diego crowd—minus the shopping bags—filled the chapel of First Lutheran Church of San Diego for another mode of spiritual…