Seong-Jin Cho (photo by Harald Hoffman) and Catherine Russell both perform with the Symphony next season.
The season opens Sept. 29 with Valčuha leading the Houston Symphony and Houston Symphony Chorus in a performance of Francis Poulenc’s Gloria, with guest soprano soloist Erin Morley. The all-French concert opens with Messiaen’s Les offrandes oubliées and close with Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 1 & 2. (Alternately, Ravel’s complete ballet score will be performed on September 30 and Oct. 1. So take your pick.)
Ravel returns Oct. 7-8 when Chopin International Piano Competition winner Seong-Jin Cho tackles the composer’s jazzy Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, which was commissioned by the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm during World War I.
More season highlights (and there are a ton of ‘em) include the U.S. premiere of composer and Bang on a Can co-founder Julia Wolfe’s Pretty (Nov. 17-19), Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 with guest soloist Emanuel Ax (March 22-24, 2024), and a concert of symphonic, lieder, and operatic music by Richard Strauss, including his gorgeous and transcendent meditation on this mortal coil, Vier Letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs), sung by American soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen.
The Symphony is also celebrating its history by welcoming back former music director Christoph Eschenbach for a special performance of Brucker’s Symphony No. 8 (Feb. 24-25). And for the first time since he bid farewell as music director in April 2022, Conductor Laureate Andrés Orozco-Estrada returns Dec. 1-3 to lead an all-Shostakovich program, including the Soviet-Russian composer’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with guest soloist Augustin Hadelich. Orozco-Estrada is back Apr. 19-21, 2024, to lead the symphony and chorus in a roof-shaking performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana and a world premiere as-of-yet-still-untitled Houston Symphony commission by Jimmy López Bellido.
Juraj Valčuha
Augmenting the HSO’s Classical Series is the Bank Of America Pops Series, featuring conductor Steven Reineke (the Pops’ February 2024 tribute to George Gershwin with guests jazz pianist Marcus Roberts and vocalist Catherine Russell is a don’t-miss concert), and the subscriber-only PNC Family Series, which includes fun, family-friendly concerts, including the Halloween Spooktacular for Kids, where the musicians perform “spooktacular tunes” in full costume.
“The music this season is very challenging, and every single musician will show their abilities at the highest possible level,” says Valčuha. “This ability is something we have here in Houston, and it’s going to be something that the audience will be invited to enjoy, along with all of these great compositions and composers.”
Visit the Houston Symphony website for much, much more about what may be the Symphony’s most ambitious and highly realized season yet.
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Kathryn Dunlevie's 'Crossing' and a mixed-media paper collage by Tiffany Heng-Hui Lee
Dunlevie’s collaged, feminine figures are supremely stylish silhouettes, comprised of fragments of images cut and placed with the precision of a fashion designer and the imagination of an early 20th-century cubist. These femmes are positioned as if marching, whirling in dervish-like motion, and even surfing. “Their patchwork interiors hint at what they have lived,” writes Dunlevie in her artist statement, “their silhouettes offer clues as to how they have proceeded through time.” Dunlevie hopes these ladies inspire the viewer to similarly piece together the best moments of their personal histories and live a life “with flair and without apology.” (For Saturday’s opening, Hooks-Epstein says they will be “spinning the artist’s favorite vinyl” and serving a limited-themed drink.)
Sarah Thompson's 'Pink Dahlias'
Looking at Siptak’s charming, gouache-layered portraits of birds, amphibians, and domestic pets, one is reminded of the phrase, “Animals are people too!” Often making direct eye contact with the viewer, every creature she paints radiates a distinct and complex personality. Born in San Francisco, the Houston-based Siptak has been painting the world around her since the mid-1960s, and as anyone who follows her on social media will attest the works on display at Koelsch represent just a fragment of her output.
Meanwhile, planted and potted flowers, often realized in otherworldly colors, are the subject of Thompson’s paintings. In a press release, Koelsch describes Thompson as a “visionary artist,” that is, an artist who works very intuitively while tapping into their subconscious, embracing the immediacy of creation without self-judgment, and indeed, her paintings have a dream-like quality to them, with cobalt blues and midnight blacks evoking a world after dark.
Located on Gallery Row in the Upper Kirby District, the intimate space of Heidi Vaughn Fine Art is the perfect setting for Heng-Hui Lee’s small (20-by-16 inches) lovely, layered collages, many of which use carefully selected combinations of color to reference geographical locations around the globe. (Her attention to such small details mirrors the meticulously composed fragments in Dunlevie’s collages.) There is a feeling of serenity throughout the works, and a sense of profound understanding of how the earth’s elements maintain balance within the natural world. The same could be said of Siptak and Thompson’s attention to and celebration of animal and plant life, albeit as it exists in an imagined, archetypical “enchanted garden.”
But enough with the artspeak! Go see all three shows and make your own connections.
Gail Siptak's 'Frog Attitude'
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