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The Front Row, Tuesday, 09/08/2009 Houston’s 2009-2010 arts season gets underway this week with the first performances of the new year by two of the city’s major arts organizations. Dancers Sara Webb (pictured) and Joseph Walsh talk about their leading roles in Houston Ballet’s season-opening production of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s choreographic version of Manon. And, Houston Symphony Music Director Hans Graf previews the orchestra’s Opening Night program of works by Beethoven, Stravinsky and Holst... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 09/07/2009 Today, in celebration of Labor Day, that most American of holidays, we present that most American of musicians: fiddler, violinist and composer, Mark O’Connor (pictured with Chris Johnson). He talks about the results of his recent labors: a brand-new recording of his 2nd and 3rd String Quartets, which continue his experiments in fusing bluegrass, country, and old-timey string-band styles with classical forms … And we hear portions of Mister O’Connor’s latest musical creations... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 09/04/2009 Today, it is our honor to present one of Iran’s most respected - and controversial -- artists. Poet, singer and composer, Parvaz Homay, and his Mastan Ensemble join us in KUHF’s George Geary Studio to perform some of Homay’s original songs of the spirit and of the people that have gotten him in trouble with Islamic authorities back home in Iran... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 09/03/2009 We journey to Latin America as we hear music from 17th and 18th Century Mexico, performed by the Mexican vocal ensemble, Voz en Punto, who join instrumentalists from the Houston-based early-music ensemble, Mercury Baroque in our studio and Saturday night at Miller Outdoor Theatre for a program called Fiesta Mexicana Barroca... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 09/02/2009 We feature studio performances of keyboard works by Chopin and Ravel, played by the two young pianists who will be featured on tomorrow evening’s Save Iva Benefit Concert at Houston Baptist University - it’s a musical fund-raiser for Iva Milenkovic, a young Macedonian woman who is being treated by doctors from Houston’s M. D. Anderson Center for a rare and aggressive form of cancer... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 09/01/2009 Today, in KUHF’s George Geary Performance Studio, Gerald Elias, the Associate Concertmaster of the Utah Symphony, plays two of the solo violin pieces that are integral to the plot of his new mystery novel, Devil’s Trill. Mr. Elias also talks about his dark tale of manipulation and mayhem in the world of classical music with KUHF's Chris Johnson... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 08/31/2009 Today, we preview the Houston Friends of Music’s upcoming series of recitals by some of the planet’s best chamber ensembles. The organization’s Programming Chairman Daniel Musher talks about the internationally-acclaimed groups that will appear in Rice University’s Stude Concert Hall during the months to come, including the anual season opening concert by the Tokyo String Quartet... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 08/28/2009 UT Professor of Anthropology, Ward Keeler, talks about the ancient art of Indonesian traditional theater, as we preview The Grand Offering of the Kings, the first Javanese shadow-puppet show ever to be presented in Houston. We also hear from Comedy juggler, Alan Howard, as he tells us about LUMA, the world’s first human light show that combines illumination, dance, magic, acrobatics and high-tech lighting effects in a unique entertainment that plays at Miller Outdoor Theatre tonight and tomorrow night... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 08/27/2009 Artist James Surls speaks about the history of the Lawndale Art Center, which he founded three decades ago, and which he’ll discuss at greater length in a talk, Lawndale from 1979. And, we look at the latest creations of three of the Houston-based visual artists whose most recent work is included in Lawndale’s 30th-Anniversary Exhibition... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 08/26/2009 Writer Elliot Tiber remembers Woodstock on this 40th Anniversary of history’s most famous rock concert! Mister Tiber recalls how his intervention literally saved the festival from being cancelled, as detailed in his memoir, Taking Woodstock, which inspired director Ang Lee’s new film of the same name... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 08/25/2009 We meet Houston teenagers, Stephen and Dianna Muldrow, who along with their sister Melanie have organized Broken Cords, a major benefit concert to raise awareness about the world-wide social crimes of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. One of the Broken Cords concert’s participating musicians, pianist Andrew Staupe, plays the pieces by Scarlatti, Albéniz and Rice University composer, Pierre Jalbert, that he’ll perform on Saturday evening’s event at Jones Hall... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 08/24/2009 At the Heritage Society, we admire a rare exhibition of the work of the late Texas artist, E. M. “Buck” Schiwetz, who chronicled the Lone Star State’s indigenous homes, public buildings, landmarks and oil field panoramas in paintings and drawings made across the broad expanse of Texas during a career that lasted for more than fifty years... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 08/21/2009 We meet the grandson of legendary French artist, Henri Matisse -- Pierre Henri Matisse, whose latest works, in a style he inherited from his grandfather, are currently on view at the Off the Wall Gallery at the Houston Galleria...we also chat with Director Blake Wilkins about, and listen to excerpts from, the latest CD Release from his Moores School Percussian Ensemble... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 08/20/2009 We meet Kenita R. Miller, who plays Celie, the central character, and ensemble-member, Kristopher Thompson-Bolden, from the national tour of The Color Purple - The Musical, which has returned to Houston’s Hobby Center to make up the dates it lost last Fall when Hurricane Ike made his unwelcome call on the city. We also hear about what is happening this season at the Houston Ballet from Managing Director C.C. Conner... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 08/19/2009 Executive Director June Christensen talks about Society for the Performing Arts’ new season of world-class music, dance, theater, and family and performance art … as our countdown to this Fall’s 16th annual Theater District Open House continues. We hear concert performances by two of the internationally-renowned classical musicians whom SPA has brought to Houston in past seasons... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 08/18/2009 Bayou City’s nationally-acclaimed pianist, Cliburn Competition broadcast host, and musical entrepreneur, Jade Simmons, previews the recital she’ll present this weekend at the Wade Wilson Art Gallery. It’s a unique program in which Jade juxtaposes the solo piano pieces of the idiosyncratic Russian composer, Alexander Scriabin, with the equally innovative visual art of Scriabin’s contemporary, Wassily Kandinsky... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 08/14/2009 Shepherd School of Music composer and professor, Arthur Gottschalk, talks about the six new CD’s released in the past year that feature his music - and we sample the goods from one of those discs by listening to a recorded performance of Professor Gottschalk’s mini-violin concerto, the Fantasy Variations, as interpreted by soloist Pavel Kucera and the Prague Radio Orchestra... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 08/13/2009 Singers from HITS Theatre perform live for us! We hear some of the Gospel, Rock, Country, and R-and-B-inflected songs from the company’s production of Violet, a musical story of beauty, love and courage, set in the South during the early days of the Civil Rights Movement... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 08/17/2009 Today, we launch our run-up to this year’s 16th annual Houston Theater District Open House with our annual “State of the District” conversation with Andrew Huang, the President of the civic organization that oversees the arts-and-entertainment zone, the Houston Downtown Alliance. We also visit the Russian Cultural Center to talk with painter Dmitri Koustov whose work is currently on view... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 08/12/2009 We have two studio performances today. Violinist Batya MacAdam-Somer pictured plays Bach and Schoenberg, previewing the salon concert she and pianist Julie Loeb Sacks will give tonight in a penthouse overlooking Hermann Park. Then we welcome songstress Julia Kay Laskowski and pianist John Hardesty. They perform numbers from their latest collaboration … what has to be the summer’s most unusual musical, French Fries on the Floorboard... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 08/11/2009 Polka, anyone?? It's considered folk music for millions and fodder for the latest project by innovative, provocative and gifted violinist, Lara St. John. She talks with KUHF's Chris Johnson about her most recent musical adventure, which is documented on the new CD, Apolkalypse Now... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 08/10/2009 We look at visual art works by Houston artists Emily Sloan and Anthony Day (pictured) which are currently on view at BOX 13 Artspace. We also find out about what's happening at this year's Ten By Ten showcase of new plays... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 08/07/2009 Today, curator Clare Elliott from the Menil Collection and dancer-choreographer Karen Stokes of the University of Houston’s School of Theatre and Dance, remember two friends and associates, who also happened to be seminal American cultural icons: visual artist Robert Rauschenberg and choreographer Merce Cunningham pictured, both of whom we’ve lost within the last fifteen months and both of whom will be honored with a memorial-tribute film-screening this evening at the Menil Collection... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 08/06/2009 Today, we preview the city’s 2nd Annual Frenetic Fringe Festival, taking place over the course of the next three weekends! Festival curators Rebecca French and Robert Thoth talk about this year’s mix of daring and eclectic theatre, dance, visual arts, film and music … and playwright Loueva Smith and choreographer Teresa Chapman entice us with glimpses into their provocative new works, which will be featured this weekend on the Fringe Festival’s Program Number One... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 08/05/2009 Today, one of the Bayou City’s favorite theater people: actress, writer, director, choreographer, dancer, costume designer, food and late-night T-V addict, and inveterate self-confessor, Tamarie Cooper, pays her annual visit to our show to talk about HER new show. Her marriage and settling down to a quiet domestic life as wife and home-owner were the spring-boards for her 2008 song-dance-and-comedy revue. This year ... Omigod! She’s preggers! And thus begins Tamarie’s Journey to the Center of Her Mind (in 3-D!)... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 08/04/2009 Sports fans know Larry Dierker as one of the greatest pitchers ever to wear the uniforms of the Colt 45's and that team’s successor, the Houston Astros. Nowadays, Dierker is in the process of launching a new career in musical theater as a writer and composer. Today, he talks about his first project in that field, Old Stories: A Tale of Baseball and Love and cast members from this weekend’s première production perform songs from the show... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 8/3/2009 Committee member Bob Calver talks about the oldest music festival in Europe, England's Three Choirs Festival. We enjoy American chamber music, performed in concert by Aperio. And visual artist Loli Fernández-Andrade chats about Three Points in Spain at the Deborah Colton Gallery. |
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The Front Row, Friday, 7/31/2009 We have a live performance of Indian bamboo flute (bansuri) music by uncle-and-nephew virtuosi, Hariprasad & Rakesh Chaurasia! Plus, Dan & June Kuramoto of the jazz band, Hiroshima, share tracks from their CD, Little Toyko. |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 07/30/2009 Today, we hear excerpts from works by Rice University composer, Pierre Jalbert, who chats about two new recordings that feature his music: The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s 40th Anniversary Compact Disc, and an album by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, called Against the Emptiness... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 07/29/2009 We preview one of this year's two comedies in repertory at the Houston Shakespeare Festival. Founder and director Sidney Berger (pictured) and actor Paul Hope talk about Twelfth Night, considered by many to be one of The Bard’s greatest comedies; it’s a whimsical tale of hidden and mistaken identities, awkward romance and a ship-wrecked heroine... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 07/28/2009 We listen to tracks from Ars Lyrica Houston’s new C-D, as Artistic Director, Matthew Dirst, chats about the making of the album, which features world-première recordings of two vocal works by Alessandro Scarlatti and we visit DiverseWorks Houston to talk with Delilah Montoya about her work that is on display in the exhibition $TIMULUS... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 07/27/2009 We speak with Texas writer, Amanda Eyre Ward, about her new collection of short fiction, Love Stories in This Town. And, in the company of curator, Kate Bonansinga, we explore the newly-opened exhibition, Unknitting: Challenging Textile Traditions, at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 7/24/2009 Singer-songwriter Bobby Bridger performs tunes from A Ballad of the West and chats about his new DVD & autobiography! Best-selling author Daniel Silva talks about his recent thriler, The Defector. And we meet renowned Brooklyn-based artist Leonardo Drew. |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 07/23/2009 And actors from Texas Repertory Theatre get us in the mood to dance the Charleston, as they perform songs from the Tony Award-winning musical, Thoroughly Modern Millie, about a charming small-town girl-turned-flapper who arrives in Manhattan in 1922, looking for a job, a good time, and a rich husband... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 07/22/2009 Pianist-composer Joseph Messina unveils new ensemble versions of his original works that are included on his inaugural Messina Fest Houston. There will be additional performances throughout the weekend by a varied and eclectic line-up of artists, plus visual art exhibits and food & wine from the city’s top restaurants and regional vineyards. Messina talks about the festival and previews some of the music from the Geary Performance Studio... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 07/21/2009 We stop by the DiverseWorks gallery to look at the exhibition $TIMULUS. It features recent work by the Houston visual artists who received 2008 grant awards from the prestigious Artadia Foundation. We also hear from castmembers from the Masquerade Theatre production of The Producers as the gather in the Geary Performance Studio for a preview session... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 07/20/2009 we renew our acquaintance with musical-theater veteran, Chuck Wagner. For the past four years, Chuck Wagner has been serving as the ring-master of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, and he is the host of the 138th edition of "The Greatest Show on Earth, which is in the middle of a week-and-half-long run at Houston's Reliant Stadium... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 07/17/2009 We meet award-winning Houston composer, pianist, and Shepherd School of Music alumnus, Randolph Partain. He shares tracks from his new CD, Mysteries, a collection of original contemplative pieces for solo piano... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 07/16/2009 Today, we meet Houston singer, composer and pianist, Jennifer Grassman, who performs live for us! Ms. Grassman, a former student of the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music, is making a name for herself as a creator of passionate and fanciful songs, whose lyrics are often inspired by classic literature, including Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and Tolkien … and whose melodies soar to ethereal heights... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 07/15/2009 Today, We descend to the catacombs underneath the Paris Opera House to revisit the tragic love story of The Phantom of the Opera! Actor Tim Martin Gleason talks about playing the title role of the mysterious and physically and psychologically disfigured genius, in the national-touring production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s classic musical, currently on-stage at the Hobby Center... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 07/14/2009 We look at recent paintings -- equally colorful, but totally different, in terms of subject matter and consciousness - by Texas artists, Jon Von Letscher (pictured) and Jane Eifler, on view at the McMurtrey Gallery, one of the numerous Bayou City art spaces that participated in last weekend’s ArtHouston Art Walk... |
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The Front Row, Monday, 07/13/2009 Castmembers from the current Gilbert and Sullivan Society production of The Pirates of Penzance join us in KUHF’s Geary Performance Studio for a live introduction to their show, which opens this coming weekend at the Wortham Center. We also chat with best-selling novelist David Liss, about his latest historical thriller, The Devil’s Company... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 07/10/2009 Chanteuse Deborah Boily has been purveying the refined art of cabaret - with concentration on her specialty: sophisticated French love songs from the mid 20th Century -- here in her home town … around the country … and in Europe … for a number of years. Today, on our program, she and four of her musical friends preview their all-new cabaret production, Seasons in the Sun: A Celebration of Jacques Brel, which opens a four-weekend run at Ovations - tonight... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 04/28/2009 Today, we offer a preview of this Saturday’s final orchestral concert at the 39th annual International Festival-Institute at Round Top. We speak with guest conductor Grant Llewellyn, who will lead the Texas Festival Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, with Festival-Institute founder, James Dick, as the soloist … and Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” Symphony... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 07/08/2009 We share “laughter through tears,” as Stage Director Lee Walker of the A.D. Players and three of his cast-members chat about the company’s production of the heart-warming and hopeful Southern comedy-drama, Steel Magnolias. And, we head over to Miller Outdoor Theatre to catch actor Austin Miller between rehearsals for 42nd Street, this summer’s musical offering from Theatre Under The Stars... |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 07/07/2009 Today, two-thirds of the faculty-artists from this year’s American Festival for the Arts gather in KUHF’s George Geary Performance Studio to play music of Samuel Barber … previewing the concert they and the high-school aged musicians of the 2009 A-F-A Conservatory Orchestra will give tonight at the Wortham Center... |
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The Front Row, Friday, 07/03/2009 It’s our annual all-American celebration of Independence Day! We bring you two studio performances. The Paragon Brass Ensemble treats us to Sousa Marches, Brass Band Music, and Americana from the early 20th Century … and The Blue Gnus loosen things up with home-grown Jazz from the 20's and 30's... |
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The Front Row, Thursday, 07/02/2009 Renowned concert violinist Elmar Oliveira, innovative conductor Barry Jekowsky and award-winning composer Christopher Theofanidis, chat with KUHF's Chris Johnson about the final concert of the 2009 Texas Music Festival at the University of Houston! The all-American program features Mr. Oliveira as soloist in Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto … and the Texas Première of a new Symphony by Mister Theofanidis, co-commissioned by the Festival... |
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The Front Row, Wednesday, 07/01/2009 Today, we focus our attention on the Lone Star State’s most highly-regarded summer training camp for pre-professional musicians, the International Festival-Institute at Round Top. We chat with the bright, young Canadian conductor, Jean-Marie Zeitouni, who has returned to central Texas to conduct this Saturday’s orchestral concert on Festival Hill, a pairing of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra … |
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The Front Row, Tuesday, 06/30/2009 Consider this: What if the women of the Salem witchcraft trials really were witches? What if the magic were real? Former Houstonian and author Katherine Howe, whose own ancestors were tried in Salem in 1692, built her debut novel, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, around those questions. Ms. Howe talks with us about her new thriller, in advance of her in-store appearance this evening at the Blue Willow Bookshop... |
