Steven Brown

Launched in 1993 as a showcase for a single performer, it has evolved into an annual contest that offers $40,000 in prize money to aspiring musicians aged 18 to 32.

Nobody expected the Houston Chamber Choir’s season opener to tie in with the news of the world.

The Houston Symphony’s new music director, Juraj Valčuha, acknowledged that opening the season with a requiem may strike some as “a strange idea.” But Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem is no ordinary setting of the mass for the dead.

When the Apollo Chamber Players made its debut, grand visions of the future had nothing to do with it. The quartet, violinist Matthew Detrick recalls, had one simple goal: “to do that first concert.”

Ars Lyrica is picking up right where it left off. After closing last season with the poignant finish of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Houston’s baroque ensemble will launch its 2022-23 season with another helping of the melancholy, gently dissonant harmony that bears Purcell’s trademark.