a little day music series
Da Camera Of Houston, Nov. 4, Dec. 2
Da Camera of Houston’s long-standing A Little Day Music series of free lunchtime concerts returns to
the Grand Foyer of the Wortham Theater Center at noon. The popular series of
chamber music and jazz concerts is especially attractive to downtown workers.
A Little Day Music is presented on the first Wednesday of every month and
continues in November with the Da Camera Young Artists and in December with a
holiday jazz program by the Sam Dinkins III Quartet.
Concertgoers are encouraged to enjoy their lunch while listening to the music.
For more information, call 713-524-5050 or go to
www.dacamera.com.
Mary Poppins
Broadway Across America, Through Nov. 8
Combining the best of the original stories by P. L. Travers and the beloved Walt
Disney film, the Tony Award-winning
Mary Poppins is everything anyone would hope for in a Broadway musical—and more. Produced by Disney and Cameron Mackintosh, the show includes such
wonderful songs as
Chim Chim Cher-ee, A Spoonful of Sugar, Let’s Go Fly a Kite and, of course, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
The NY Daily News hails Mary Poppins as “a roof-raising, toe-tapping, high-flying extravaganza!” For more information, go to www.broadwayacrossamerica.com.
The Elixir of Love
Houston Grand Opera, Through Nov. 7
This sparkling folktale is one of Donizetti’s most popular operas. Lovesick Nemorino falls madly in love with the young
landowner Adina knowing well that she is out of his league. Luckily, the
scheming Dr. Dulcamara has just the cure to what ails him. Russian soprano
Ekaterina Siurina sings the minx Adina and Eric Cutler is Nemorino.
Internationally renowned Italian bass-baritone Alessandro Corbelli plays Dr.
Dulcamara and Liam Bonner is the flamboyant Sergeant Belcore. Directed by
Annabel Arden,
The Elixir of Love takes place in a rustic Italian town square.
Josephine Meckseper
Blaffer Gallery, Through Nov. 14
Josephine Meckseper’s work engages leftist theories and politics in a consumerist reality.
Specifically, she examines the semantics of media propaganda as well as
capitalist sales and advertising strategies. The exhibition at Blaffer Gallery,
curated by Cynthia Woods Mitchell Curatorial Fellow Rachel Hooper, will contain
Meckseper
’s documentary photographs of anti-war protests; her signature mannequin and
product display installations; two videos,
0% Down (2008) and Mall of America (2009); and a new installation created on site—a replication of the stage sets used during U.S. presidential television
debates.
Joaquín Torres-García:
Paintings in Houston Collections
Museum Of Fine Arts Houston, Through Nov. 29
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston will showcase a selection of key paintings by
Joaqu
ín Torres-García through Nov. 29. He is one of the most influential Latin American artists and
theorists of the first half of the 20th century.
Joaquín Torres-García: Paintings in Houston Collections features a dozen paintings all culled from major Houston collections. The
exhibition complements
Joaquín Torres-García: Constructing Abstraction with Wood, an exhibition of more than 80 wooden constructions. These two exhibitions will
be the first to present Torres-Garc
ía’s work in the United States in over 40 years.
For more information, call 713-639-7300 or go to www.mfah.org.
Boston Camerata
Houston Friends Of Music, Dec. 8
The Boston Camerata preserves and reawakens human memory as expressed through
the art of music. It accomplishes this through live, historically informed,
professional performances. Founded in 1954, the Boston Camerata was associated
until 1974 with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The Camerata began touring
overseas in 1974, and has maintained an international presence ever since. This
performance promises to be especially interesting with holiday works from the
Christian, Jewish and Muslim cultures.
El Anatsui
Rice University Art Gallery, Beginning Jan. 28
Rice University Art Gallery has commissioned a site-specific installation by El
Anatsui, one of the foremost contemporary artists of his generations. Anatsui,
who has been called
“a master of material transformation,” is known for turning the detritus of everyday life into works of stunning
beauty and power.
A native of Ghana and resident of Nigeria since 1975, El Anatsui has
experimented throughout the years a variety of media including wood, ceramics
and paint. Although he was a respected teacher and artist in Africa for more
than 30 years, he was little known internationally until 10 years ago when he
began creating dazzling suspended sculptures made from liquor bottle tops and
metal foil collars from the bottle necks.
The Moon: “Houston, Tranquility Base Here.
The Eagle Has Landed”
Museum Fine Arts Houston, Through Jan. 10
The Museum Fine Arts Houston celebrates the 40th anniversary of the landing on
the moon with
The Moon: “Houston, Tranquility Base Here. The Eagle Has Landed.” The exhibition pays tribute to the achievements of the Apollo space missions.
This exhibition provides an overview of 500 years of fascination with the
ever-changing phases, yet ever-constant image of the moon. Approximately 130
works of art will be on view and will feature some of the most groundbreaking
treatises on the moon as well as 17th-century telescopes and other early
scientific instruments, moon globes and maps. For more information, go to
www.mfah.org.
Modern Virtuosos
Da Camera of Houston, Nov. 17
Da Camera celebrates Mondern Virtuosos on Nov. 17 at 7:30 p.m. at The Menil
Collection. The Menil Collection offers the ideal setting for the Houston
premiere of a major new piano work inspired by the great paintings of American
artist Cy Twombly, written for contemporary music virtuoso Marilyn Nonken.
Avery Fisher prize-winning violinist Jennifer Koh makes her DaCamera debut
performing Kaija Saariaho
’s Nocturne for solo violin, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Lachenverlernt and Elliot Carter’s Rhapsodic Musings and For Roger. Saxaphonist Valerie Vidal, on the faculty of the University of Houston’s Moore’s School of Music, brings her own virtuosity to Luciano Berio’s Sequenza IXB for alto saxaphone. For more information, go to www.dacamera.com.
Das Lied von der Erde
Houston Symphony,Nov. 19, 21, 22
Hans Graf will conduct Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in the Houston Symphony’s first performances of the work since 1991. Be both thrilled and touched by
these songs of youth, wine, death and beauty. This will also mark the close of
Graf
’s presentation of all six Mahler song cycles, which he began in 2003. Mahler
called
Song of the Earth his most personal creation. Special guests include Jane Henschel, mezzo-soprano
and tenor Paul Groves. For more information, go to
www.houstonsymphony.org.
Joaquín Torres-García:
Constructing Abstraction with Wood
The Menil Collection, Through Jan. 3, 2010
The Joaquin Torres-Garcia: Constructing Abstraction With Wood exhibition will center chiefly on works from the 1920s to the 1940s, spanning
the time when Torres-Garc
ía lived in Spain, New York, Italy and France, developing toys and the vocabulary
for his wood constructions, to his eventual settlement in Uruguay as the
founder of a Constructivist art movement.
These sculptural works will be accompanied by a selection of Torres-García’s oil paintings and drawings, which demonstrate the connections between his
experiments in two- and three-dimensional forms.
Celebrated for his work as a modernist painter, teacher and author, Torres-García is also known for breaking new ground in the realm of wooden constructions or “maderas.” Beginning in the late 1920s in Paris, Torres-García adapted the language of Neo-Plasticism from his colleagues Mondrian and Van
Doesburg into a new three-dimensional concept for grids and planes made of
wood. These maderas informed his simultaneous experiments in children
’s toys, which he promoted and sold as educational tools for young minds.
