Month-long music fest

Ready, set, play: Five highlights of the 22nd annual Texas Music Festival

Texas Music Festival (TMF) Jazz Project, a 19-piece jazz band of Texas jazzvirtuosos, begins the Perspective Series concerts on June 7.
Out of 450 applicants, 95 will be invited to participate.
Mei Ann Chen, conductor, leads the Festival Orchestra in an all-American programfeaturing the music of Jennifer Rigdon and Aaron Copland on June 17-18.
Photo by Rosalie O'Connor

Now in its 22nd season, the Texas Music Festival (TMF) brings the creme de la creme of music students from all over the world— some as far away as Poland, Korea and Hong Kong — to study and perform alongside rock stars of the music world, both classical and jazz.

Only 95 students were accepted out of 450 student applicants. The one-in-four odds of being admitted ensures only high caliber young musicians on their way to becoming professionals grace the stage. Some are pupils at prestigious institutions like the Eastman School of Music, Cleveland Institute, Peabody Institute, Moores School of Music and the Shepherd School of Music.

Expect energetic, vigorous and ballsy performances, with a vitality that only a combination of impassioned faculty and ambitious students can generate.

The month-long fest presents nearly 50 public events, which include performances, master classes and seminars, primarily at the University of Houston Moores School of Music, with a couple of concerts at Texas A&M University in College Station and the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in The Woodlands as well.

Navigating through TMF's calendar, featuring the theme "Made in America," and choosing when and where to go can be daunting. Leave it up to us to make it a little easier to chose what to hear.

Here are several suggestions (all performances are at the University of Houston Moores School of Music, unless otherwise noted. Tickets are $15, $10 for seniors and students.):

Perspective 1: Texas Music Festival Jazz Project “Distinctly American," Tonight

TMF kicks off the month-long festival with a jazz bacchanal courtesy of the 19-person Jazz Project ensemble. Director and trumpeter Noe Marmolejo has assembled a star-spangled cast of who's who in the Texas jazz idiom, programming a concert featuring the compositions of Duke Ellington, Thad Jones, Chuck Owens, Aaron Lington, Rich DeRosa, Sammy Nestico and John Mahoney with notable Houston musicians like Warren Sneed (head of jazz studies at HSPVA), drummer Joel Fulgham (UH Moores faculty), Woody Witt and Mike Wheeler.

The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. Pre-concert mingling begins at 6:30 p.m. with free goodies from Camarena Tequila Taco.

Opening Festival Orchestra Concert, Saturday

Featuring the music of Mahler, the Third Symphony in D Minor is of massive proportions. The longest symphony of the standard orchestral repertoire, when performed at its peak, the experience is emotional, introspective, yet powerful.

Franz Anton Krager will step up to the podium and be joined by mezzo Melanie Sonnenberg, the Festival Women's Chorus and the Houston Treble Choir. All those forces are needed for the Mahler. It's grand.

Our suggestion? Pay attention to the French horns and trombones. There are huge epic solos.

Moores School of Music director David Ashley White will have one of his pieces premiered. Spirit, moving over chaos promises to be a treat for the ear.

It’s A Wrap mobile bistro food truck and Mmm . . . Cupcake truck will serve yummies. Bring cash.

Perspectives 2: Faculty Artist Chamber Music “New World Visions,” June 14

With an all-star cast of Houston's classical music scene — including the Webster Trio (Leone Buyse, Michael Webster and Robert Moeling), James Dunham, Brinton Smith, Jeffrey Cohen and Timothy Hester — the second Perspectives concert promises a thoughtful musical experience.

The program's theme is inspired by the interpretation of "new worlds" from the perspective of travel, longing and distance, with a hint of exoticism. Concert includes music by Dvorak, Robert Sirota and Coplan's sassy El Salon Mexico.

Festival Orchestra Concert with Mei Ann Chen, conductor, June 17-18

It's an all-American program with Jennifer Higdon's Blue Cathedral and Copland's Symphony No. 3 in C Major. Higdon's work is descriptive, filled with rich large sonorities and soulful wind solos evoking an expansive landscape. Higdon writes, "As I was writing this piece, I found myself imagining a journey through a glass cathedral in the sky."

It's a piece of possibilities. Segueing seamlessly into one of Copland's most performed symphonies, the program is coherent and thoughtfully put together.

On June 17, the Festival Orchestra travels to The Woodlands for a free performance at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavillion. The June 18 concert is at the University of Houston.

Festival Orchestra Grand Finale Concert, July 2

Both the Dvorak Cello Concerto and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade were performed recently by the Houston Symphony. If you missed these concerts, or if you need a second dose of these masterful compositions, the final concert of the festival grants you that opportunity.

Conductor Carols Spierer leads the concert with Brinton Averil smith as the soloist.

Scheherazade allows almost everyone in the orchestra to shine. From evocative solos from the oboe, clarinet, flute and bassoon, to technical passages in the brass, it is the solo violin carries the delicious tune that symbolizes the sexy temptress.

See you at the concerts!

Listen to Jennifer HIgdon's Blue Cathedral:

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Movie Review

Daniel Craig shines in Queer, an unapologetic tale of love and loss

Photo courtesy of A24

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer.

As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.

Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.

Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.

Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.

Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.

Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.

Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.

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Queer is now playing in theaters.

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