Holiday Gems
There’s a bounty of holiday art activity every year, from the mainstays like A Christmas Carol and The...
Music
Review: The Italian Girl in Algiers
The Italian Girl in Algiers Giant hats, a suspended cage, growing sand castles and balloons in the shape of Italy are just a few of the comic objects blown wonderfully out of proportion in Houston Grand Opera’s production of The Italian Girl in Algiers by Gioacchino [...]
Review: La bohème
In Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème, happiness is simply one hand to warm another. As a humming audience member made clear, the melodies Puccini wrote are stunning and memorable, making this opera a well-known favorite. It’s hard to capture Puccini’s original, effortless simplicity [...]
An Overnight Sensation
It is the stuff of dreams. Understudy goes on at the last minute. Important performance. Internationally broadcast over...
Review: Otello at Opera in the Heights
Gold medallions, dapper suits, and a man snorting heroin set the new scene of Gioachino Rossini’s Otello. Though still a tragic tale of a father’s prejudice and a daughter’s sense of duty, it is opera’s Scarface. Rossini’s Otello is the first of two Houston opera premieres in Oh!’s [...]
Cultural Warrior: ROCO’s Alecia Lawyer
Alecia L. Lawyer is the founder, executive and artistic director, and principal oboist of the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (ROCO). With a tag line of “the Most Fun You Can Have with Serious Music,” Lawyer takes to heart the job of making classical music welcoming to all [...]
Fresh Tracks
Three Houston Music Groups Offer New Recordings In the 21st Century you really can find everything on the internet. Thanks to the magic of digital technology, you can find a car, a house or, if you are the Houston Chamber Choir’s artistic director, Robert Simpson, the manuscript [...]
The History of Music
Dallas Symphony commissions new music based on an obscure date in U.S. history It can be said that...
Last Notes
Tokyo String Quartet’s Final Houston Visit “It’s something like a love affair between the Tokyo String Quartet and the Houston Friends of Chamber Music,” says violinist Kikuei Ikeda. First invited to perform in Houston just seven years after they officially formed at the Julliard School in 1969 [...]
Review: Jersey Boys
Lexus Broadway Series @ AT&T Performing Arts Center June 12–July 15, link 2012 There seem to be an...
All Jazzed Up
Even as they have decided to cancel this year’s Jazz Under the Stars outdoor series, sickness Dallas Museum...
Cultural Warrior: Sandra Bernhard
Sandra Bernhard is the engine behind such ground-breaking HGOco/Houston Grand Opera programs such as Song of Houston and Home and Place. She also is the lead on numerous other projects that bring HGO into Houston’s multi-cultural communities in a way that sets the standard for [...]