“Warning: You’re going to hear me say ‘I’m really excited about this’ a lot.” This is one of the first things Hector Garcia says during our interview about the Elevator Project’s 2024 season, and it’s not an understatement.
The challenge is so great that no U.S. orchestra has pulled it off in recent decades: a concert-hall presentation of Richard Wagner’s four-opera epic, The Ring of the Nibelung. But the Dallas Symphony Orchestra is taking it on.
It’s the start of my whirlwind tour of the Dallas Arts District. Improbably, in all the years I have lived in Houston (23) and all the time I have been an arts writer in Texas (5), I had never been to Dallas. I am here now as a first time arts tourist, eager to absorb the wonders of a new place, open to every experience that might come my way.
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has been fortunate. Except for recasting a few concert programs in January after a few cases of omicron cropped up among its musicians—who recovered—it has been able to operate “full go-ahead” this season as planned, executive director Kim Noltemy says.
Nearly one year to the day that the Dallas Arts District—and most of the world—shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ACTX’s Lindsey Wilson interviewed its executive director, Lily Cabatu Weiss.
Ask any leader of an arts organization what life has been like during the past year, and most will probably swear it has been one of the most demanding times of their lives.