Review: 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 MoreSean Shim-Boyle: Salt House
Rarely does such a potentially disruptive, even violent architectural intervention feel as organic and sensitive as Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based artist Sean Shim-Boyle’s response to one of the historic Holman Street shotgun houses in Project Row Houses’ Round 38. Reacting to [...]
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 MoreMark Fox: If That Then This
Grids are nearly synonymous with the concept of order. Spreadsheets compartmentalize data into cells of information. Graph paper structures the organization of schemas and equations. Even if one does not deal in occupations that demand such regimentation, the grid is unavoidable for any urban dweller, as nearly all city streets are based [...]
Read MoreRobert Ruello: Open Other Side
Visiting Robert Ruello’s third solo exhibition at Inman Gallery, I was reminded of the term “abstract illusionism,” which critic Barbara Rose coined in the late 1960s to describe painters using trompe-l’oeuil devices to create spatial and other pictorial illusions in non-representational painting. After years of Clement Greenberg-decreed movements [...]
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: 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 MoreReview: Quiver
Dance and film are joined by movement as camera and body come together. Frame Dance Productions’ newest offering, Quiver, makes the most of that fact. Frame Dance artistic director Lydia Hance navigates a dual career track, exploring both film and live performance, and the intersection of both. Quiver opens with an oscillating pulse of a [...]
Read MoreBroke-ology
Broke-ology is the science of being broke and trying to survive,” says Ennis King to his younger brother Malcolm in Nathan Louis Jackson’s absorbing Broke-ology, on stage at the Ensemble Theatre (through April 14). While that may be Ennis’ self-styled definition of it all, the play is much more about ways that we’re broke: monetarily, [...]
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