Photos by Samantha Jane Beatty
Styling by Kate Stukenberg
Grooming by Tonya Riner for Page Parkes Agency
Models Madison Johnston for Wallflower Management and Jake Atterberry for Page Parkes Agency
Photo assistance by John Lewis
Styling assistance by Molly Jodeit
Men’s styling consulting by Cody Sever
and Whitney Wiggins for M Penner
Shot on location at Hotel Alessandra in Downtown
Dessert Gallery cake and cookies
Houston's New Faces of Pride Festival (12-6pm) and Parade (7:30-10pm) in Downtown Houston, June 22, and promises to present Pride like never before.
Common Bond
During Pride Month, the multi-location bakery and café will offer a limited-time-only Pride Cream Puff to celebrate the LQBTQIA+ Community at all Common Bond Bistro & Bakery and On-The-Go locations. The specialty Puff features a festive fluffy pastry shell filled with tropical passion mango diplomat crème, and topped with Chantilly cream, passion mango shell and rainbow décor.
Dessert Gallery
Houston’s venerable bakery renowned for its homemade sweet treats, introduces the “Slice of Pride” cake. Featuring layers of French vanilla filled with rainbow buttercream and a burst of Pride confetti sprinkles, it’s on offer for $9.95 per slice, or $62.50 per whole cake. In addition, Dessert Gallery is serving up custom Pride-themed butter cookies and cupcakes, a two-pack of Pride chocolate-dipped pretzels, and square petit fours to sweeten your celebrations! All desserts are available for order online and in-store.
On Sunday, June 2, from 11am-6pm, Karbach Brewery will host the Pride Houston Market at their biergarten. The event will showcase over 25 local vendors, live music — including DJ performances — games, giveaways, contests, food trucks and special merchandise. The 2024 Pride Market is free, open to the public with no RSVP needed.
Kenny & Ziggy's rainbow cake (photo by Paula Murphy)
For the folks at Kenny & Ziggy’s, joining the Pride celebration is a piece of cake — or a whole cake, for that matter! For the month of June, its Cakeworks Cake of the Month is the delectable Rainbow Cake, a special cake that made its debut during Pride 2022. The Rainbow Cake is a colorful, five-layer cake encased in a smooth buttercream icing. The cake is 10-inches round and 12-inches high. Oh my!
Heights House Hotel
Dive into one of the hottest events this month at the Official Pride Pool Party. Kicking off at 3pm at Heights House Hotel on June 22, the party will offer live entertainment with hosts, DJs, and dancers, along with drinks, hookah, and poolside vibes. The event continues until 8pm, with general admission tickets starting at $15.
Velvet Taco's LGBTQ+ brunch burger
The taco group is tasting the rainbow for Pride 2024 — literally. The rainbow Pride Brunch Burger dish blends the best of both worlds (tacos and burgers, of course) to craft a unique “LGBTQ+” blend of lemon chile aioli, green onion, bacon, tater tots, queso blanco, medium egg and candied pepitas all on a rainbow waffle tortilla. A portion of proceeds from each sold will be donated to Lambda Legal, the oldest and largest legal organization in the U.S. dedicated to protecting the civil rights of the LGBTQ+ community.
This new-to-Houston, authentic Detroit-style pizza concept is introducing three limited-time items: the Bacon Chicken Caesar Salad Pizza, PB&J Sticks, and a reimagined Smoked Grog Drink cocktail. One dollar from each special item ordered benefits Pride Houston 365, a nonprofit that has been working to support the LGBT+ community for more than 40 years and is home to the Official Houston Pride Parade and Festival. Available now through June 3.
Rachel Willis-Sorensen (photo by Olivia Kahler)
“Strauss is like a secret,” says Willis-Sørensen, a tall, blonde, glamourous yet down-to-earth superstar who speaks with refreshing candor about her voice and the beauty and poignancy that lies within Four Last Songs. (She recorded the songs for her 2023 album for Sony Classical.) “You have to get to know the piece well enough that you think you understand what it’s doing, and it will still surprise you.”
Born in Provo, Utah, Willis-Sørensen grew up in Richland, Wash. Thinking back to her childhood, she recalls family sing-a-longs accompanying herself on ukuleles built by her father and hopping off of the living room couch to sing and dance to TV commercials. “As the first person in my family with an interest in classical music, I was an anomaly,” says Willis-Sørensen. After a short-lived dream to play violin with an orchestra, her operatic voice emerged, and in 2008, Willis-Sørensen made her professional debut in Aida as the High Priestess at the Utah Opera Festival. She joined the HGO Studio the following season.
In interviews, Willis-Sørensen will dutifully, if reluctantly, describe herself as “an opulent lyric soprano,” but finds the labels directors and critics use to describe various voice types a bit wanting. “I just try to sing really beautifully. That’s my jam!” says Willis-Sørensen. “I have a big enough voice to be heard over the orchestra, but I also like to sing with as much finesse as I’m allowed.”
The order of Four Last Songs fell into place after Strauss had first composed “Frühling (“Spring”), “September,” and “Beim Schlafengehen” (“Going to Sleep”) to poetry by Hermann Hesse. “Im Abendrot” (“In the Glow of Evening” or “At Sunset”), with words by Joseph von Eichendorff, came later. Strauss’s publisher at Boosey & Hawkes determined the now-familiar ordering, and published the songs posthumously in one continuous score in 1950. Despite the recurring themes of time passing and mortality, Willis-Sørensen finds Four Last Songs very life-affirming, albeit in ways the listener might not expect. “The more I sing them, the more I find in them that’s worthwhile,” she says.
When not on tour or in the recording studio, Willis-Sørensen’s home base is Denmark, in a countryside town just outside of Copenhagen, where she lives with her daughter, 10, and twin sons, 8. (Willis-Sørensen’s ex-husband is Danish.) “They come to me whenever they have school vacations, and I come to them whenever I am between contracts, which unfortunately, is not as often as I’d like,” says Willis-Sørensen. Having recently turned 40, Willis-Sørensen is happy to share her wealth of experience with emerging classical singers, often in the form of short, humorous videos on Instagram. If there is one overriding message she has to share it’s that technique should never overshadow the singer’s real job, which is to emote.
“If people notice the singing too much, then I haven’t done my job,” says Willis-Sørensen. “The thing I’m trying to do is make people feel . . . and that comes more from my expression of the soul that is inside me, rather than the sound color of my voice.”
(photo by Lukas Beck)