Steven Brown

Alecia Lawyer, the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra’s artistic director, introduced the idea discreetly last fall: She and two other musicians devoted a program on the group’s Unchambered series entirely to works by female composers.

In your typical music-school teaching studio, a Steinway grand piano would easily dominate the room.

When the Rolston String Quartet first flashed onto Chamber Music Houston’s radar screen, the young ensemble was quartet-in-residence at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.

The Ivy Leaguer tore up his career plan. For his first two years at Princeton University, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen had majored in public policy, figuring he’d go to law school and work in public affairs. Then a summer project stirred his love for singing, which went all the way back to his childhood.

Da Camera has flourished because of the entrepreneurial spirit and open-mindedness of its hometown of Houston, as general director Sarah Rothenberg will readily tell you.