Da Camera’s Big, Varied Season
Houston’s Da Camera bills itself as a presenter of chamber music and jazz, but that hardly gives you the whole picture.
Steven Brown
Apollo Chamber Players Concludes 20×2020
The project could hardly have a catchier title: 20x2020. But the Apollo Chamber Players faced the challenge of bringing it off. With only six years to go, could the group choose and commission 20 composers to create works it could premiere by 2020?
Children at Play: Gary Lee Price at Dallas Arboretum
Well-behaved visitors to the Dallas Arboretum wouldn’t dare. But people who are sculpted in bronze in can get away with a lot more, can’t they?
Artistic Partners, New Works, and Historic Musical Moments: Houston’s ROCO at 15
Don’t hold your breath waiting for Houston’s River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (ROCO) to anoint a conductor as its music director. Being player-driven is in ROCO’s DNA.
Artful Summer Travels: Santa Fe Opera & Crested Butte Arts Festival
Once Texas’ summer torpor hits, escaping the heat may be priority No. 1. If you’re looking for a reason to flee to a higher, cooler altitude, Santa Fe Opera (June 28-Aug. 24) offers a world premiere, the company’s first staging of a 20th-century classic, and new productions of two perennial favorites.
Dallas Opera’s Season of Celebration
The Dallas Opera commemorates a handful of anniversaries next season, and the most notable involves one of your not-so-catchy numbers.
Fort Worth Opera Festival Kicks off with ‘Porgy and Bess’
Thanks to his boundless optimism, the hero of Porgy and Bess is one of opera’s most lovable characters. Porgy needs all the hope he can summon, because he often contends with the weaknesses and errors of others--especially those of his beloved Bess.
Dallas Symphony’s Soluna Festival Thinks Big
Why does the Dallas Symphony mount its annual Soluna music-and-arts festival? Not because it wants to escape the proverbial same old thing. For an orchestra, “the ‘same old’ is fantastic,” president Kim Noltemy says. With Soluna, the group is thinking bigger.
Out of the Shadows: HGO’s ‘Don Giovanni’ and ‘The Phoenix’ Explore the Mozart & da Ponte Partnership
He helped create an iconic group of operas, but to most of us, he exists as little more than a surname after a hyphen: Mozart-da Ponte. Yet without Lorenzo da Ponte’s librettos, we wouldn’t have Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni or Così fan tutte.
Musical Story Lines: Houston Symphony’s New Season
A festival celebrating arch-Romantic composer Robert Schumann. Spotlights on Richard Strauss, master of orchestral tone-painting, and today’s John Adams. A pairing of dramatic but little-known choral works by Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler.
Sylvia Continues Houston Ballet’s Storybook Season
Thanks to Welch’s love for the music, he and the company are about to unveil their first staging of the mythology-based work, which premiered in a luxe Paris Opera Ballet production in 1876. Sylvia, the tale of a shepherd’s love for a forest nymph, is the first of four full-length story ballets that Houston Ballet has in store from now through June. The coming ones include the other great beneficiary of Delibes’ gifts, Coppélia.
REVIEW: Ars Lyrica’s ‘Agrippina’
When Matthew Dirst was a graduate student in France, a splashy revival of a long-neglected 17th-century opera galvanized his love of baroque music.