Orchestrating Success
The Conductors of the Texas Music Festival When is a conductor more than a conductor? When he (or she) is conducting the fellows at Houston’s premier summer musical festival. The Immanuel and Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival (TMF), May 31 -June 29, is a nationally recognized summer music festival held at the University of Houston [...]
Read MoreJune for Jazz
Peter Lucas on his Summer Series at the MFAH This June, the MFAH presents Jazz on Film, a month-long film series where cinema and jazz converge. The series is curated by Peter Lucas, a Montrose native who has done interesting work in the arts on both coasts. The films include Jazz on a Summer’s Day, [...]
Read MoreRiver Oaks Chamber Orchestra: Big Bang Encore
With the Houston premiere of the Concerto for Orchestra and TwoPercussionists by Jonathan Leshnoff as its centerpiece, the season finale for the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (ROCO) lived up to the promise of its title and gave the orchestra an opportunity to go out with a “Big Bang” [...]
Read MoreReview: Diotima Quartet
In acknowledgment their commitment to modern and contemporary music, the Diotima Quartet takes its name from Luigi Nono’s work, “Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima.” The French ensemble’s concert at Houston’s Menil Collection was presented by Da Camera Houston [...]
Read MoreReview: Roscoe Mitchell with Nameless Sound
On March 29th, Roscoe Mitchell’s Houston residency with Nameless Sound came to a joyous end at the Eldorado Ballroom. The quartet, featuring trumpeter Hugh Ragin, bassist Jaribu Shahid, and drummer Tani Tabbal, played two solid sets, each of which felt fully-fledged on its own. Roscoe Mitchell is chair of composition at Mills College in Oakland, [...]
Read MoreReview: Il trovatore
There are two sides to every story, but it’s easy to pick a favorite when the fight is between a sniveling Count and a fiery gypsy. Verdi’s ever-popular Il trovatore, Houston Grand Opera’s last production of the season, shows why revenge is something to savor. First performed in Rome in 1853, the music in this opera is structured very differently from Wagner’s [...]
Read MoreReview: Falstaff
Send two identical love letters to two married women, and even a lovable scoundrel deserves to be dumped in the brook with the dirty laundry. There may be no honest, civil or sober men in Verdi’s Falstaff, but it makes for a hilarious opera, and Opera in the Heights’ production had the audience [...]
Read MoreReview: Selkie, A Sea Tale
The origin of a myth has its roots in the earth as much as the soul of a people. Thus, it makes sense that the legends of the half-human/half-seal Selkie creatures hark from the Northern British isles, a place where sea merges with land, and where sea has consumed the land. It’s no wonder then [...]
Read MoreReview: Tristan and Isolde
Can you bear the burden of love? With a love beginning in rapture, malice, bliss, and deception that finally eases into sweet death, Houston Grand Opera presents Wagner’s legendary Tristan and Isolde, with extraordinary attention to the emotional angst inherent in this opera. Tristan and Isolde marks the final repertory in HGO’s 2012-2013 season, with [...]
Read MorePipe Dreams
Cameron Carpenter on the future of the Organ Virtuoso composer-performer Cameron Carpenter, one of the most accomplished organists working today, stops in Houston this month via Society for the Performing Arts. He has played the organ since an early age, but he did not come from a religious family, nor was he first exposed to [...]
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