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Playwright Caridad Svich and Houston stage-director Rob Kimbro talk about Ms. Svich’s play The Way of Water, written in response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Theater companies across the country are presenting staged readings of the drama, marking the second anniversary of the nation’s worst environmental disaster in history. The local reading takes place at Main Street Theater’s Chelsea Market playhouse. |
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Libi Lebel, music director of the Texas Medical Center Orchestra, and Thomas Jaber, artistic director of the Houston Masterworks Chorus, tell us about the performance of Johannes Brahms’ German Requiem, which their two ensembles will give at Jones Hall. |
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Pianist Rene Casarsa and his Tango Quartet, including bandoneón player Pablo Fernandez, perform for us, giving us a taste of their Center-Stage performances at the Houston International Festival’s “Spotlight on Argentina.” Rene Casarsa performs and talks with St.John Flynn. |
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Choreographers Kiki Lucas and Joe Celej describe the premiere pieces and audience favorites that they’re staging on the Houston Metropolitan Dance Company’s program, Signature Works, at the Wortham Center. |
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"Memories, Dreams, Reflections" Pianist Rodney Waters and tenor Kenneth Gayle of Music Doing Good perform for us, previewing the ensemble’s recital, Memories, Dreams, Reflections: Looking Inward – Jung in Words and Music, which they’re at The Jung Center. Waters and Gayle are joined by narrator-reader James Conlan and Dr. Jerry Ruhl, executive director of the Jung Center. |
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Dashing (and perpetually sun-tanned) leading man George Hamilton and veteran Broadway actor Christopher Sieber chat about Le Cage Aux Folles, The Musical. The theatrical adaptation is based on the French movie farce about what happens when a young man brings his fiancee’s conservative parents home to meet his flashy nightclub-owner father, and his dad’s drag-queen partner. The national tour of Le Cage Aux Folles, The Musical (pink feathers and all) is being presented at the Hobby Center by Theatre Under The Stars. |
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Yoko Hiraoka, a virtuoso of the traditional Japanese lute known as the “biwa,” shares some of the chants and ballads from Medieval Japan that she’ll present at the Asia Society Texas Center in her performance Tales of Love and War. |
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Venerable choral composer, conductor and arranger Alice Parker tells us about her folk opera, The Family Reunion, which will have its regional premiere at Houston Baptist University. The Director of the HBU School of Music, John Yarrington, joins us also, and his singers perform selections from Ms. Parker’s work in the studio. Alice Parker and John Yarrington talk with St.John Flynn. |
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We chat with the patriarch of America’s “First Family of Jazz,” pianist Ellis Marsalis. He and his Quartet are the headline artists on the last of the Thursday evening Jazz Appreciation Month JAMs, presented by Da Camera of Houston. |
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English composer Bob Chilcott, a long-time member of the King’s Singers, tells us about his major choral piece, the Salisbury Vespers. He’ll conduct the work’s Texas premiere when it’s performed in Houston by the Choirs of Saint Luke’s United Methodist Church. |
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Soprano Joyce DiDonato talks about portraying Mary, Queen of Scots, in Houston Grand Opera’s presentation of Gaetano Donizetti’s historical drama Maria Stuarda. |
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Actors Sally Edmundson and James Belcher talk about Stages Repertory Theatre’s new production of The Unexpected Man, by the popular French writer Yasmina Reza. A woman riding on a train realizes that the gentleman sharing the compartment with her is her favorite author. Will she muster up the courage to speak to him? Will he have anything to say to her? |
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We introduce you to the Catalyst Quartet, an ensemble made up of top winners and alumni of the internationally-acclaimed Sphinx Competition for emerging young Black and Latino musicians. They perform a preview of the program of works by Beethoven, Webern, Ginastera and Ravel they’ll present at the Wortham Center as part of Society for the Performing Arts’ Young Concert Artists’ Series.
The Catalyst Quartet performs and talks with St.John Flynn |
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Violinist Eugene Drucker and violist Lawrence Dutton talk about the season-concluding program of pieces by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven that the Emerson String Quartet will play for the Houston Friends of Chamber Music at Rice University. |
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Houston photographic artist David A. Brown shows us the meditative space he has created, the interior (and exterior) of which is covered by 11,000 photographic images. An Optical Chapel is part of the FotoFest-related group exhibition on display at a vacated medical clinic next door to Khon’s Bar in Midtown. |
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Playwright Greg Hundemer and director Philip Hays talk about Mildred’s Umbrella Theater Company’s staged reading of Hundemer’s play The Simulacrum. In this psychological fantasy, a woman is haunted in her dreams by a man who claims she is nothing more than a character in a story he’s writing. |
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We talk with W. S. Merwin, 17th U.S. Poet Laureate, about writing, poetry, memory and life. He reads a selection from his latest book of verse, The Shadow of Sirius, which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. Merwin concludes Houston’s celebration of National Poetry Month and this year’s Margarett Root Brown Reading Series -- presented by Inprint -- with a live reading and conversation at the Alley Theatre. |
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We preview another of the new independent movies screening at the Houston International Film Festival. Mexican-born, Puerto Rican writer-producer-director Sonia Fritz, tells us about her movie América, in which a young Hispanic woman escapes an abusive relationship and starts a new life in New York City. |
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Executive artistic director and principal oboist Alecia Lawyer, guest conductor Alastair Willis and Shepherd School of Music composer Anthony Brandt, talk about Saturday’s final River Oaks Chamber Orchestra concert of the season, which includes the world premiere of Brandt’s orchestral song Maternity – Women’s Voices Through the Ages. |
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"Folk Colorings of the Impressionist Masters" (video) Members of Houston’s Apollo Chamber Players perform small-ensemble pieces by Debussy, Ravel and Satie, previewing their recital Folk Colorings of the Impressionist Masters, which they’ll present at Rice University. The Apollo Chamber Players speak with St.John Flynn. |
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Filmmaker Sharon Greytak and "The Queen of Independent Film," actress Sally Kirkland, talk about their new production, Archaeology of a Woman, which has its world premiere at WorldFest – The Houston International Film Festival. |
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Houston composers Brian Herrington and Stephen Yip talk about their new pieces that will be included on Geography Comes to an End, a concert of world premières that celebrate the coming-together of spirituality, landscape and folk traditions. Sam Houston State’s Intersection New Music Collective performs this program of contemporary works at the Rothko Chapel. |
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One of Argentina’s leading exponents of both the traditional and the New Tango, Héctor del Curto talks about his country’s signature music and dance form, which he and his quintet and dancers will demonstrate as the 42nd-annual Houston International Festival opens its 2012 “Salute to Argentina.” |
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We meet musical-theater composer, lyricist and producer Neil Berg, whose revue, 100 Years of Broadway (presented by Society for the Performing Arts), features five veterans of the Great White Way who’ve played the lead roles in such blockbusters as Les Misérables, Phantom of the Opera, Beauty and the Beast and Jekyll and Hyde. |
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Choreographer Patton White and dancer Heather Kemp tell us about In the Mood 2…Dance, a program of new and revival contemporary dance pieces that CORE Performance Company will present at Miller Outdoor Theatre. All of the works on program are inspired by the swinging music of the Big-Band Era of the 1930s and '40s. |
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Executive artistic director John Johnston and lead player Philip Lehl talk about the Classical Theatre Company’s new production of what they see as Shakespeare’s swan song, The Tempest. |
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"Bella Gaia: A Poetic Vision of Earth from Space" Violinist, composer and filmmaker Kenji Williams previews his multimedia Earth Day program Bella Gaia: A Poetic Vision of Earth from Space, which he will present at Miller Outdoor Theatre. Through original music, movement, spoken word and video images (some of them provided by NASA), Williams and his company offer a program that reminds us how dependent we are on the beautiful, fragile, green-and-blue ball upon which we live. |
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Mexican-American visual artist Rigoberto Gonzalez shows us the monumental canvases he created for his exhibition Baroque on the Border at Art League Houston. The paintings depict the sometimes violent aspects of contemporary life along the Mexico-U.S. border, using stylistic elements, intense colors and symbols that borrow from Seventeenth Century masters like Caravaggio. |
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Keith Weber of the Grace Song vocal chamber-music series introduces us to his latest discovery, Houston-based soprano Blair Doerge. They talk about the recital A Complicated Woman, which they’ll present at Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church. |
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We speak with Irish singer Lisa Lambe, one of the newer members of the Celtic Woman cast. "Believe," the tour’s latest evening of traditional Irish, pop, inspirational songs, fiddle tunes and step-dancing, plays Jones Hall under the auspices of Society for the Performing Arts. |
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Brooklyn-based visual artist Marina Zurkow takes us on a tour of Necrocracy, her immersive exhibition of video animations, drawings and sculptural pieces that explore the dynamics and contentions that occur between unspoiled Nature and the business of petrochemical production. Zurkow’s Fotofest-affiliated installation is on view at DiverseWorks. |
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Edward Grigassy & Grisha Goryachev Houston guitarist Edward Grigassy and his Russian performing partner Grisha Goryachev talk about the duo-recital of classical and flamenco guitar music they’ll present at Houston Community College. |
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Lead dancers Ramona Kelly and Christopher Vo describe their roles as the naïve young couple who meet at a dance hall in Come Fly Away, the dance-musical that combines the innovative choreography of Twyla Tharp with the vocals of Frank Sinatra. |
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Poet Rebecca Wadlinger and fiction-writer Zack Bean talk about their craft and read samples of their latest creations. Both are graduate fellows enrolled in the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program, and they’ll be featured in a reading presented by Gulf Coast Magazine. |
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Classical guitarist Valerie Hartzell chats about the solo recital she'll give at the Rothko Chapel as part of the Fourth Annual Menil Community Arts Festival, hosted by the Menil Collection and its neighboring Museum District arts organizations. |
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"Circle of Perpetual Apparition" Choreographer Jennifer Wood previews her latest evening-length dance-piece, Circle of Perpetual Apparition, which her Suchu Dance Company will present in a series of performances at the Barnvelder Movement/Arts Complex. |
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Academy Award-winning actor Louis Gossett Jr. talks about his role in the new movie, Smitty, which will be the Gala Opening feature of this year’s Forty-Fifth Annual WorldFest - Houston International Film Festival. |
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Pablo Heras-Casado & Jon Kimura Parker Acclaimed young Spanish maestro Pablo Heras-Casado, and internationally-renowned Houston-based pianist Jon Kimura Parker, chat about their Houston Symphony concerts, which include Beethoven’s Piano Concerto Number One and Stravinsky’s Petrouchka ballet score. |
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Asia Society Texas' Public Grand Opening and First Look Festival Executive director Martha Blackwelder and director of programs Sabrina Motley give us a “first look” at the Asia Society Texas’s new headquarters. Our guests describe the organization's Public Grand Opening and First Look Festival of musical performances, arts and activities, in celebration of the brand-new Museum District center, designed by the famed Japanese architect, Yoshio Taniguchi. |
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Organ builder Martin Pasi and organist Stephen Tharp chat about the lectures and concerts they’ll give as part of the conference, Historical Eclecticism: Organ Building and Playing in the Twenty-First Century. The colloquium takes place at area cathedrals and churches, sponsored by the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies and the University of Houston. |
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Pianist So Yoon Lee performs, previewing her recital of works by Haydn, Brahms and Schumann, that she’ll present for the West Side Piano Recital Series at Houston Community College’s Spring Branch campus. |
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Core Performance Company artistic director Sue Schroeder describes The Flow of Color, her new dance-piece to be presented in conjunction with the exhibition Revelation: Major Paintings by Jules Olitski at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. |
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Tenor Brandon Jovanovich talks about singing the title role in Houston Grand Opera's production of Verdi’s turbulent, passionate drama Don Carlos. |
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River Oaks Chamber Orchestra: String Quartet Recital Violist Suzanne LeFevre of the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra and composer Elena Ruehr preview the next ROCO String Quartet chamber-music recital. The program, entitled Song and Dance, features Bel Canto, a recent work by Ms. Ruehr, inspired by the novel of the same name by Ann Patchett. |
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We chat with David Flood, director of England’s Canterbury Cathedral Choir. The ensemble of men and boys inaugurates a concert tour of the United States with a performance at Saint Thomas Episcopal Church. |
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"See Rock City and Other Destinations" Players from Theater LaB Houston treat us to songs from their latest production, See Rock City and Other Destinations. Theatre LaB is presenting the regional première of this musical about missed connections … and connections made … at tourist attractions across America. |
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Filmmaker John Waters, the “Bad Boy from Baltimore” takes us on a tour of Neurotic, his exhibition of photographs, montages and sculptural assemblages at McClain Gallery. It’s not a show for those of delicate sensibilities, but it's a feast for fans of the director's boundary-pushing, outre oeuvre. |
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AURA Contemporary Ensemble: "Static" Artistic director Rob Smith previews the next concert by the Moores School of Music’s AURA Contemporary Ensemble. We hear musical excerpts from the program, entitled Static (also the name of one of the pieces on the program by New York composer Sebastian Currier). The word also describes some of the sonorities that will likely be produced during the performance of a classic aleatory work by John Cage: Radio Music from 1956. |
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Glassblower Andy Paiko and experimental sound-artist Ethan Rose talk about their large, mechanical installation Transference, which uses the same technique that allows a person to produce an ethereal ringing sound by rubbing a moistened finger around the rim of a wine glass to generate a meditative sound-space that is beautiful to look at, fascinating to watch and comforting to hear at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. |
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Written-word poet Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan and spoken-word artist Jeremyah Payne, a.k.a. “The Fluent One,” share their latest creations. They and Mayor Annise Parker read more poems as part of the downtown public library's Public Poetry Series. |
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