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The Front Row, Monday, 04/19/2010 Ground-breaking writer, performer and visual artist, Patti Smith, who gained recognition in the 1970’s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and punk-rock, chats with us about her new memoir, Just Kids, which tells the story of her relationship with the late photographic artist, Robert Mapplethorpe. Smith reads passages from the book and performs her music tonight, at the University of Houston... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 04/16/2010 Renowned French conductor, Yan Pascal Tortelier, and violin soloist Baiba Skride talk about performing Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto and Franck’s Symphony in D-Minor this weekend with the Houston Symphony... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 04/15/2010 In addition to talking with Judith Forst, who plays The Countess in Houston Grand Opera’s production of Tchaikovsky’s supernatural melodrama, The Queen of Spades, we also meet New York jazz pianist, Larry Ham, who gets together with some of the locals to play sets tomorrow night and Saturday at Cézanne... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 04/14/2010 Choreographers Sara Draper, Toni Leago Valle and Leslie Scates preview Danceplorations, a showcase of works that explore the intersections of movement, text and voice, presented by Dancepatheatre... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 04/13/2010 We renew our acquaintanceship with Italy's top film-maker, Pupi Avati (pictured) and his producer-brother, Antonio, whose latest cinematic portrait of one of society's losers - a comedy called, The Youngest Son - has its U.S. premiére this weekend at the 43rd annual WorldFest - Houston International Film Festival... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 04/12/2010 Today, we continue our observance of National Poetry Month as we welcome to the program four-time National Poetry Slam winner, Patricia Smith, and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, Dorianne Laux (pictured). Those two accomplished poets are in town for a joint appearance tonight at the Alley Theatre on the Inprint-Brown Reading Series... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 4/9/2010 Pianist Clive Swansbourne performs Schumann for us! Members of Aperio: Music of the Americas treat us to songs based on traditional folk music. And singer-actor David Baida [pictured] chats about his role in the national-touring production of In the Heights. |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 4/8/2010 Houston Symphony guest conductor Christian Arming & violin soloist James Ehnes [pictured] chat with us. Poet Edward Hirsch reads from his collection, The Living Fire. We preview the new documentary, For the Sake of the Song, and we check out the video art installation, Zoosphere. |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 4/7/2010 We chat with seminal African American poet, playwright & civil rights activist Amiri Baraka [pictured]. Singers from the Moores Opera Center perform selections from Elmer Gantry. And we preview Paintings in Proust, the next Artful Thursday program at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. |
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Members of the Brentano String Quartet [pictured] talk about their Houston Friends of Chamber Music concert. Playwright Lans Traverse chats about her World Première drama, Driftwood. And actor-singers from Masquerade Theatre perform songs from Stephen Sondheim's Company. |
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The Front Row, Monday, 4/5/2010 Pianists Timothy Hester, Jasmine Hatem & Paul Boyd and soprano Julia Fox perform music from Folk Tales. Cellist Norman Fischer & pianist Jeanne Kierman Fischer play music by Pierre Jalbert [pictured], previewing Da Camera's concert, Modern Romantics. And we visit an exhibit at the MFAH’s Glassell School of Art. |
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The Front Row, Friday, 04/02/2010 John Pizzarelli, performs numbers from the George Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Nat “King” Cole songbooks, sampling the kind of smooth, swinging style he’s bringing to the concerts that he, his quartet and the Houston Symphony Pops are presenting tonight and tomorrow night at Jones Hall... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 04/01/2010 The members of the ensemble, Windsync, give us a preview of their next concert, Winds in Tights, a program that features the World Première of A Ballad of Robin Hood by Houston composer, Garret Schumann... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 03/31/2010 Singers from Opera in the Heights and Artistic Director William Weibel perform live excerpts from La Bohème! The company is currently presenting the Puccini classic at Lambert Hall in The Heights... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 03/30/2010 Artistic Director Jason Nodler and actor Troy Schulze talk about The Catastrophic Theatre’s latest production - rarely-staged play by actor and playwright Wallace Shawn (pictured) entitled Our Late Night, set at a cocktail party at which no topic, thought or action is taboo... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 03/29/2010 Today, hot young Houston jazz singer, Kristine Mills, together with Grammy-award-winning New Orleans bass-man, David Pulphus, performs tunes from her Bossa-novafied CD and other sultry delights, adding a few encores to the shows they put on this past Saturday night at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 03/26/2010 Today, we have phone conversations with two living show-business legends: actor-singer-dancer, Joel Grey and pianist-composer-arranger-and-conductor, Marvin Hamlisch. They tell us about their show, From Broadway to Hollywood, which they’re bringing to Jones Hall tomorrow night, courtesy of Houston’s Society for the Performing Arts... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 03/25/2010 Today, soprano Lynelle Rowley and pianist Kathryn Woodard of Opera Vista - along with Artistic Director, Viswa Subbaraman, perform music by contemporary American composer, Daron Hagen! Mr. Hagen also joins us to talk about tonight’s recital of his chamber music and about this week’s Opera Vista Festival Competition, for which he’s serving as a judge... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 03/24/2010 Scotland’s Battlefield Band - voices, fiddle, bagpipes, accordion and all - perform live in KUHF's Geary Performance studio, treating us to some of the tunes they’ll perform tonight at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 03/23/2009 Today, singer-songwriter, Arlo Guthrie, son of the legendary American folkie, Woody Guthrie, chats about making music with the other members of his talented family, all of whom will be with him on-stage in Houston’s Hermann Park tonight, as Miller Outdoor Theatre opens its 2010 performance season... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 03/22/2010 Today, non-fiction writer, Tracy Kidder, speaks with us about his latest volume, Strength In What Remains, a novel-like telling of the true-life story of Deogratias, a medical student who escaped from the 1994 genocide in his native country of Burundi, Africa, and overcame displacement, homelessness, abject poverty, and unfamiliarity with English, to make a new life for himself in the United States. Tracy Kidder discusses his book on the Inprint/Brown Reading Series tonight at the Alley Theatre... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 03/19/2010 Guest Conductor Hannu Lintu (pictured) and cello soloist Alban Gerhardt chat about this weekend's Houston Symphony concerts, featuring Sibelius’ Symphony No.2 and Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante for Cello and Orchestra... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 03/18/2010 We have two studio performances for you today! Renowned French flutist, Jean Ferrandis (pictured), and Mexican concert pianist, Mauricio Náder, talk about their first-time collaboration and play selections from the concert they’ll present tonight at the University of Saint Thomas, in celebration of Mexico’s Bicentennial and the French Cultures Festival. And, psychiatrist and pianist, Richard Kogan, joins us live in the Geary Performance Studio to celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Schumann! |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 03/17/2010 Singers from Opera Vista and Artistic Director Viswa Subbaraman perform live for us, previewing the 2010 Opera Vista Festival! They treat us to excerpts from last year’s competition winner, Anorexia Sacra by Danish composer, Line Tjørnhøj, who also joins us... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 03/16/2010 Director Dennis Draper and cast member Patrick Green (pictured on left) chat about Unhinged Productions’ staging of Paul Rudnick’s comedy, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, a re-telling of life in the Garden of Eden by the ORIGINAL original couple, Adam and Steve... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 03/15/2010 Houston’s 13th Fotofest biennial got underway this past weekend. The 2010 show focuses on Contemporary U.S. Photography, and today on “The Front Row,” with some assistance from curator Aaron Schuman, we look at the flagship official exhibition which debuted last Friday night at FotoFest headquarters downtown; it’s titled Whatever Was Splendid: New American Photographs... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 03/12/2010 Artistic Director Emelyne Bingham talks about this year’s Young Texas Artists Music Competition. The Finals Round Concert of that competition takes place tomorrow evening at the Crighton Theatre in Conroe! And we have a studio performance by last year’s YTA Strings Division and Audience-Choice-Award-winner, violinist Natalie Lin... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 03/11/2010 Houston Symphony Music Director Hans Graf chats with Dean Dalton about the Anton Bruckner's Symphony No.7. The orchestra will perform that work in a special one-night-only appearance at Houston's Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 03/10/2010 Ballet master and former New York City Ballet dancer, Bart Cook (pictured), talks about Jerome Robbins’ classic dance piece, Fancy Free, which Mr. Cook is re-creating for Houston Ballet’s mixed-repertory program, American at Heart, opening tomorrow night at the Wortham Center. . . . |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 03/09/2010 Eckart Runge is the cellist with Germany’s Artemis Quartet. He tells us about the all-Beethoven program that he and his colleagues will present on the Houston Friends of Chamber Music series at Rice University. We also hear from |
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The Front Row, Monday, 03/08/2010 Today, two of Houston Public Radio’s own: flutist Victor Kendall and violinist Chris Johnson, talk about the pieces by contemporary American composers, Elliott Carter, John Adams and Mark O’Connor, that the KUHF Chamber Ensemble will perform this evening at the Menil Collection... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 03/05/2010 Choreographer and Artistic Director Beth Gulledge-Brown describes Spring Dance Fusion, the mix of new contemporary and classical ballet, jazz and modern-dance pieces that her Uptown Dance Company presents Sunday afternoon at the Hobby Center. That program includes the première of Ms. Gulledge-Brown’s new work, Say What, set to the music of Sting... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 03/04/2010 The improvisers who make up the Norway-based new-music ensemble, MURAL, share with us some examples of their music — which manages to be at the same time, both slightly edgy and softly contemplative. They perform live this evening at the Rothko Chapel... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 03/03/2010 Kevin Riehle, Artistic Director of the choral ensemble, Cantare Houston, talks about his group's upcoming performances of Sing Me To Heaven — Music from This Side the Veil, a collection of songs and choruses about the passage from earthly existence to the life hereafter... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 03/02/2010 And Texas singer-songwriter-and-pianist, Jennifer Grassman, performs live for us! Ms. Grassman treats us to material from her new album, Serpent Tales and Nightingales, which will be celebrated at an official release party this Saturday at Dowling Music... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 03/01/2010 Today, we speak with both of the distinguished authors who will appear this evening on this month’s Margarett Root Brown Reading Series program, presented by Inprint. Irish author and Booker-Prize-winner, John Banville (pictured), talks about the latest of his novels, The Infinities And, South Asian physician and writer, Abraham Verghese, whose two previous books were both memoirs, discusses his very first volume-length work of fiction, Cutting for Stone... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 02/26/2010 Stage director Jimmy Phillips and cast members, Jonathan McVay and Mary Hooper, chat with Chris Johnson about Theater LaB Houston's regional première production of Brad Fraser's True Love Lies, a dark comedy about a nuclear family with long-held secrets... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 02/25/2010 Former Houstonians, the Golka brothers, both musicians of international repute, join us live to celebrate the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Frédéric Chopin! Award-winning pianist, Adam Golka, performs for us, and his brother, Tomasz Golka — Music Director of the Lubbock Symphony (pictured) — chat about their Chopin anniversary concert with the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, coming up Saturday night at Rice University... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 02/24/2010 Houston Ballet Artistic Director Stanton Welch previews his newly-choreographed re-staging of one of the classic works of the nineteenth-century dance repertoire, La Bayadére -- The Temple Dancer... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 02/23/2010 We speak with Major Phillip Shannon of the Band of the Irish Guards, whose wind-and-brass players join the pipers, drummers and Highland dancers of the Royal Regiment of Scotland for an evening of traditional Celtic music, precision and pageantry tonight at Jones Hall... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 02/22/2010 Vocalists associated with Bayou City Concert Musicals perform well-known-and-not-so-well-known numbers by a young whippersnapper of a songwriter named Cole Porter, sampling the goodies from BCCM's Winter cabaret show, Let's Misbehave — The Early Music of Cole Porter, which has its final performance tonight at The Ensemble Theatre... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 02/19/2010 We meet young Israeli-American composer, Avner Dorman, and sample his work, previewing the concert of his music that the Foundation for Modern Music presents tomorrow evening at the Jewish Community Center of Houston... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 02/18/2010 Today, English-born, Houston pianist, Clive Swansbourne, plays Chopin and Schumann for us, previewing the third in the series of six recitals he’s giving in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the births of those two masters of the Romantic Era... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 02/17/2010 Choreographer and Artistic Director, Sandra Organ, describes her company’s 12th Annual Black History Month Program, Dancing the Dozens, in which audience members can take an active part. We also hear about the upcoming performance of Mozart's Requiem being presented by the Houston Chamber Choir... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 02/16/2010 Visual artist Jarrod Beck shows us his two-part installation, Migration Center. One component of it is made up of fragments and drawings from past projects, assembled together inside the Lawndale Art Center ... the other portion is a new, poured plaster structure the artist has created outdoors in Lawndale's Sculpture Garden... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 02/15/2010 James Black as the 10 year-old version of playwright, Jeffrey Hatcher, and Josie de Guzman (pictured), as young Jeffrey’s etiquette teacher … constitute the entire cast of the Alley Theatre’s regional première production of Mr. Hatcher’s semi-autobiographical comedy, Mrs. Mannerly... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 02/12/2010 Executive and Artistic Director, Alecia Lawyer, and concertmaster Brian Lewis preview the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra’s annual Conductorless! Concert, with two performances this weekend. ROCO’s program features acclaimed young American pianist, Simone Dinnerstein, as guest soloist, plus music by composer Chen Yi in celebration of the Chinese New Year... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 02/11/2010 Distinguished pianist and teacher, Abbey Simon, sits down at the KUHF Steinway to play some Chopin for us, and to preview the 2010 edition of the Moores School of Music's annual International Piano Festival, which Dr. Simon founded some 27 years ago... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 02/10/2010 And singer-actor Joseph Anthony Foronda talks about his latest turn at playing “The Engineer,” the bar-owner and pimp-character in the hit musical, Miss Saigon. The new Theatre Under The Stars production opened last night at the Hobby Center... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 02/09/2010 Choreographer and Artistic Director, Dominic Walsh, talks about his unique setting of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as a contemporary ballet. And, we hear a live performance of excerpts from the production’s score, which uses an amalgamation of pieces by Vivaldi arranged by Antoine Plante, Artistic Director of Mercury Baroque, and performed by that ensemble... |
