Music in Our Schools Month needs a serious overhaul. First of all, the phrase itself - used to describe a national, month-long festival of in-school performances - generates as much heat as Administrative Professionals Day, Root Canal Awareness Week, and Better Sleep Month combined. It smells like community service. It calls up images of gymnasiums awash with sweaty 6th graders, parents lolling like walruses on a beach. I hereby suggest that music teachers put their heads together and come up with a new title, one that preferably includes the words "righteous," "awesomemest," and "sweet."

The Hochstein School of Music and Dance tackles the challenge by turning it inside out, making it Music Out of Our Schools Month, instead.

"We have so many layers of activity," says School President Peggy Quackenbush. "What we're doing this month is unpeeling all the layers of the school like an onion, from the smallest singers to the adults in the Fingers Lakes Concert Band."

I would love to watch the face of the unsuspecting shopper reaching for an onion in the Canandaigua Wegmans on March 29, when she hears the strains of Beethoven or Bach coming from the Market Café. That Saturday student performance promises to add a whole new layer to the shopping experience.

On March 30, Pittsford Library patrons looking for the newest John Grisham novel will overhear the appealing groove of the Hochstein Jazz Ensembles. That group, directed by Richard DeLaney, includes Sam Miller, Maggie Rhoda, Steve Basil, Brendon Caroselli, and Jeremiah McGrath. On March 14 the same kids will fire up the crowd for the Mambo Kings at Immanuel Baptist on Park Avenue.

Hochstein musicians are celebrating in their own splendid hall with the kick-off of a new season of Live from Hochstein, a live, free lunchtime concert series on Wednesdays from 12:10 to 12:15 p.m. The music making is top-notch, the programs varied, and you can bring your lunch. Why more downtown workers don't unchain themselves from their veal pens and slip away to the quiet beauty of Hochstein is beyond me. (Though I confess I'm prone to work through lunch, too.)

Food plays a key role in the annual birthday party for J.S. Bach. This is a cute tradition that deserves more attention than it gets. On Thursday, March 13, at 6:30 p.m. in the School's Hilda D. Taylor Recital Hall, student Elizabeth Whitehead will play Bach's "Prelude and Fugue in A-flat" and fellow student Britton Hopkin will perform Bach's "Prelude in C." These delicate, sophisticated piano pieces drift through undulating emotional territory. The Guitar Ensembles will play Bach fugues and "Bebop Inventions" by Bugs Bower. If you go, you'll also hear Bach's E-Major Violin Partita performed tag-team by Ruth Marie Balance and three of her students, each playing different movements. Bach's "Partitas" represent the apogee of the Baroque. It might even be argued that they're the most expressive, elevated suites he ever produced. Oh yeah, and there's free cake.

The Hochstein Percussion Ensemble plays on Monday, March 17, at 7:30 p.m. in the Performance Hall. Director Jim Tiller will whip up an adventurous program, including music by Steve Reich and George Hamilton Green. One piece will be performed exclusively on garbage cans.

A March 16 concert combines two orchestras and two conductors, John Fetter and Elizabeth Fino-Radin, directing the first movement of J.S. Bach's "Brandenburg Concerto No. 5" and "The Bringer of Joy," based on Jupiter from "The Planets" by Gustav Holst. There's an urban legend associated with this jubilant piece: supposedly, when janitors overheard the orchestra rehearsing it for the premiere, they stopped cleaning and danced a jig. That's what music is supposed to do: stop you in your tracks. Now that's sweet!

For more information on these concerts, and a full schedule of events, visit hochstein.org or call 454-4596.

Brenda Tremblay, a radio producer for WXXI, blogs about classical music at interactive.wxxi.org/blogs/brenda-tremblay.