Five Questions

The music communicator: Former prodigy Frank Huang embraces new challenge atHouston Symphony

The Houston Symphony has plenty of new in store this season, but the biggest new face is Frank Huang, an acclaimed violinist who's returned to Houston to take over as concertmaster. Though he was born in China, Huang moved to Sugar Land when he was seven and spent many of his formative years growing up in the shadow of the Bayou City.

Huang was only 11 when he first performed with the Houston Symphony in a nationally broadcast concert and now after playing around the world as a soloist and teaching at the prestigious Eastman School of Music, he returns in one of Symphony's most important positions for Saturday's Opening Night: A Vienna Soiree at Jones Hall. Tabbing the 32-year-old Huang as concertmaster completed a two-year, worldwide search to fill the position.

CultureMap talks to Huang about seeing Houston in a different light, the challenges of his new role and the spectacle of Opening Night and the guests it brings.

CultureMap: You grew up in Sugar Land. How does it feel to be back in the hometown?

Frank Huang: It feels good. My parents are here and they're very happy I'm back close to home. I left when I was quite young, about 15, and I haven't had much time to be back, so it's nice to come back and get to know the city as an adult. I've seen a lot of things that I didn't know were here.

CM: What's your role as the concertmaster?

FH: Well I was a concertmaster before for about seven to eight years, of a chamber orchestra, but a full symphony is different — there's more people, a lot more people than the chamber orchestra, and before I had no conductor. It was a small thing, but with a big orchestra you want to still keep that small feel. The concertmaster is like a conduit between the conductor and the rest of the orchestra. What (the conductor) wants to do with the music the concertmaster has to translate that into actual playing.

There are specific things I have to do as well, making sure all the string players' bowings are matching, lots of discussions with other principal players about how to play things, especially things that are tricky and difficult. It's kind of like being the middle man. But the people here are great musicians, they listen and watch well.

CM: What are you most excited about this season? Is there anything you haven't played before?

FH: Opening night on Saturday, the Mozart Sinfonia concertante — that's going to be really fun, great piece between myself and Wayne Brooks on viola, as well as my first performance as concertmaster. There's a lot of great music throughout the season, it's hard to pick a specific one. Each week will be its own challenge.

There's actually a lot of pieces I haven't played, I know them just from hearing them, and maybe I played them in school, but most of my career so far has been concertos and trios, quartets, small groups, so I've played pretty much all that kind of music, but with symphonies and big pieces there is a lot that's new to me.

CM: Looking forward to any special guests?

FH: There's alot of people I know coming — Gil Shaham, I'm very excited to see him, I've done a few recordings with him and a few tours and he's one of the nicest, greatest guys around. A couple of younger musicians that are friends of mine from chamber music, like Alisa Weilerstein, she played in the first quartet I was in when I was 17-18 years old, her dad was my teacher. It's a lot of fun to see them and have them here.

CM: Before coming to Houston, you taught at Eastman School of Music. How does this experience compare?

FH: It's a completely different thing, I enjoyed teaching a lot and I'm teaching this year at the University of Houston. It's so rewarding. I've had some inspirational teachers and I think that's why I love it, because I can see what can happen when you inspire someone to practice and really work to be their best.

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Movie Review

Action-packed Kraven the Hunter showcases gritty Marvel antihero

Photo by Jay Maidment

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kraven the Hunter.

One of the oddest things about the blockbuster era we live in is that while Disney owns the rights to the majority of Marvel comic book characters, Sony Pictures owns the rights to Spider-Man and any affiliated characters. Since they’re sharing Spider-Man himself with Disney, Sony has been trying to capitalize on those rights by making stand-alone films using niche characters that only comic book fanatics would know.

Having exhausted Venom and whiffed on attempts with Morbius and Madame Web, they’re trying again with Kraven the Hunter. Also known as Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a self-styled vigilante who, as the film tells it, travels the world exacting vengeance on the truly bad people of the world. He’s the son of Nikolai (Russell Crowe), a hard-edged Russian oligarch, and brother to Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), who is relatively weak compared to the rest of his family.

The origin story has Kraven gaining his animal-like powers - including super-strength, speed, and jumping abilities - as a teenager from a mysterious serum given to him by a girl named Calypso (played as an adult by Ariana DeBose) after he was mauled by a lion. The two maintain a tenuous partnership as adults, with Calypso helping him hunt down other villains like Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott).

Directed by J.C. Chandor and written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, the film looks and feels enormously lazy, something made merely to hold on to potentially valuable intellectual property. Other than the tense family dynamic between the Kravinovs, little makes sense in the story. Kraven has an indecipherable moral code that has him going after poachers - because he’s part lion? - in addition to other high-powered criminals, with no clear goal except to … get back at his father?

The laziness extends to the action scenes, which feature Kraven being mostly impervious to any damage, whether it’s hand-to-hand combat, knives, or guns. The CGI-heavy scenes don’t even allow moviegoers to enjoy an R-rated bloody free-for-all, as all of the blood splatter is computer-generated, too. Since apparently one Spider-Man villain is not enough, three others make appearances with abilities that are under-explained and CGI that is poorly done.

That’s not even counting Calypso, another Spider-Man villain whose purpose in this film is nebulous at best. Her early connection with Kraven is so coincidental as to be laughable, and her continued reasons for helping him as an adult strain credulity as well. The only saving grace of her presence is that the filmmakers don’t try to shoehorn romance into the plot; perhaps they’re saving that for the (inevitable?) sequel.

Taylor-Johnson has had one of the most prolific-yet-anonymous careers in modern Hollywood, with appearances in big films like The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, and Tenet that have made very little impact. Even as the star here, he fails to hold your attention, with the story and visuals doing him no favors. DeBose has followed up her Oscar win for West Side Story with schlock like I.S.S., Argylle, and this, which doesn’t bode well for her career. At least Crowe gets to chew the scenery.

With a contractual inability to mention the name “Spider-Man,” movies like Kraven the Hunter exist in a weird area that forces filmmakers to make up stories for characters to which most people have no attachment. And just like Sony’s previous efforts, it is a very poor way to spend two hours in a movie theater; avoid at all costs.

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Kraven the Hunter opens in theaters on December 13.

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