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    Rare Birds

    Violinist Nicholas Leh Baker spreads the word about Houston's contemporaryclassical scene

    Chris Becker
    Sep 25, 2011 | 2:30 pm
    • C. Gregory Gummersall, acrylic and collage on canvas
    • Nicholas Leh Baker
    • C. Gregory Gummersall, acrylic and collage on canvas
    • Nicholas Leh Baker and Lynsey Anderson

    I first met and heard Houston based violinist and conductor Nicholas Leh Baker in performance as Duo Scordatura with violist Faith Magdalene Jones last January at First Presbyterian Church. The concert took place in a medium sized classroom — there may have even been a blackboard behind the duo —and drew a respectable audience of maybe 50 people of all ages. The program, COMMISSIONED, consisted entirely of works written in the 21st century, were world premieres, and had all been commissioned by Baker aka Duo Scordatura.

    "I love to collaborate with anyone and everyone, especially composers." Baker would tell me later. "Our world is all about meeting people, working together, and collaborative creation."

    "I love to collaborate with anyone and everyone, especially composers. Our world is all about meeting people, working together, and collaborative creation."

    I was struck by how easily Baker moved between addressing the audience and playing some very technically demanding music. Baker and sometimes Jones spoke before playing each piece, and even asked the composers in attendance to chime in as well. That whole left-brain verses right brain thing is real, by the way. At my own performances, I’ve always found it hard not to sound like a space cadet when introducing the music I'm about to play. But Baker was very much at ease in his role as public advocate and virtuosic performer. In person, he’s even more personable, His love of the violin and enthusiasm for new music is contagious.

    A network of composers continues to grow

    Since that concert, Duo Scordatura, now known as the Scordatura Music Society, has grown with the scope of its ambitions and perhaps more importantly in the size of its audience base. Violist Lynsey Anderson has replaced Jones who has relocated to Boston, and a network of additional guest musicians provide more possibilities for instrumental combinations.

    Baker's network of composers with works to premiere continues to grow. Scordatura Music Society's inaugural concert on Sept. 11 at Memorial Drive United Methodist Church drew an impressive 650 people, an excellent turnout for what was a concert of mostly brand new music. The concert, programmed with the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks in mind, featured three newly commissioned works by Jordan Kuspa, Joel Love and Jason Turbin as well as a previously commissioned and premiered work by Alexandra T. Bryant for combinations of violin, viola, organ and soprano voice. Works by Mozart, Arvo Pärt ("Fratres" arranged for violin and organ) and Josepf Rheinberger rounded out a peaceful yet powerful evening of music.

    The concert’s success also provided some funding for Baker’s next and most ambitious commissioning project.

    The Commissioned Project: 12 x 7

    A serendipitous meeting with visual artist C. Gregory Gummersall provided Baker with the idea and the means to produce the Scordatura Music Society’s latest commissioning project. Gummersall agreed to donate six brand new works on canvass to six composers including George Heathco, Jordan Kuspa, Alexandra T. Bryant, Federico Garcia, Paul Dooley and Ali Helnwein, who will each compose a piece of music inspired by the gifted art. The new compositions will be presented, alongside the respective paintings, Nov. 12 at 7 p.m. at Memorial Drive Methodist Church. Six paintings, one visual artist, and six composers gave the project its name: 12 x 7.

    Baker is documenting the steps leading to a world premieres using video and the now ubiquitous platform YouTube. Each of the participating composers will blog via video as they conceptualize and begin the process of composing and rehearsing their respective works. Baker utilized video before in earlier commissioned projects, and it's exciting to see this relatively inexpensive medium being used by so many musicians and composers. Violinist Hilary Hahn for instance has contributed a series of video interviews with composers, including one with Mark Adamo, for the popular classical music blog Sequenza 21.

    The videos posted for the 12 x 7 project are endearing, offering some intriguing clues to each the composers’ creative processes. In his first 12 x 7 video, Houston-based composer George Heathco references the Japanese creative concept of shibui when describing the Gummersall painting he will respond to compositionally.

    “I have a tendency to make some overly complex things,” Heathco confesses. “The added challenge to this (project) would be to make a work that touches in to that shibui simplicity.”

    Videos featuring each of the commissioned composers can be found on the Scordatura Music Society website.

    "My early years of performing and exploring new music was for the simple fact that I wanted to be one of those cool guys who performed new music," says Baker. "Like a classical violinist playing with a jazz band or rock group."

    Or perhaps, like classically trained musicians who founded such ground breaking new music ensembles like Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can, or The Paul Dresher Ensemble to name just a few. Since then, Baker has realized that "to commission and perform new works is very important to the survival of art music." And he feels responsible for not only bringing the new work to fruition, but helping it to become a part of standard contemporary repertoire.

    While in Pittsburg later this month to guest conduct that city’s new music ensemble Alia Musica, one can be sure Baker will be spreading the good word about Houston’s contemporary classical scene. In the meantime, check out the 12 x7 website, follow the project on Twitter, and like them on Facebook. By doing so, you become a part of a creative process.

    unspecified
    news/entertainment

    Movie Review

    Live action Lilo & Stitch remake offers up frenzied fun and nostalgia

    Alex Bentley
    May 23, 2025 | 2:30 pm
    Lilo & Stitch
    Courtesy of Disney
    Lilo & Stitch returns to theaters this weekend.

    The project to turn every single Disney animated movie into a “live action” film has rarely seemed like anything but a money grab by the movie studio. Most of the films have failed to update the original in any meaningful way, and in many of the cases, they’re almost shot-for-shot remakes, making the reason for the new film’s existence even more confusing.

    Having almost exhausted the supply of their 20th century movies, Disney has now remade 2002’s Lilo & Stitch. The film follows an alien experiment, originally known as 626 (voiced by Chris Sanders), created by Jumba ( Zach Galifianakis) for the benefit of an alien race led by the Grand Councilwoman (Hannah Waddingham). Unfortunately, 626 is too uncontrollable for them, and is banished to the faraway planet known as Earth.

    Landing in Hawaii, the creature soon to be known as Stitch gloms on to a young girl named Lilo (Maia Kealoha), who mistakes it for a dog while looking for companionship following the death of her parents. Tracked by Jumba and fellow alien Pleakley (Billy Magnussen), now in human form, Stitch leaves a trail of destruction wherever he goes, much to the chagrin of Lilo’s older sister, Nani (Sydney Agudong).

    Directed by Dean Fleischer Camp and written by Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes, the film will surely be a blast of nostalgia for anyone who was a kid when the original came out. The now-3D Stitch is just as chaotic as ever, and they even included cast members from the first film like Tia Carrere (now playing a social worker for the orphaned sisters) and Amy Hill as a kindly neighbor.

    But for all of the frenzied fun that Stitch offers, there’s very little else that holds the story together. For one, the Lilo character as a real person doesn’t work as well as she does in animated form, as there’s something fluid that happens in animation that feels stilted when it’s an actual little girl. Perhaps sensing this fault, the film is loaded to the hilt with bite-sized moments that try to make the audience laugh, but do little to give the story any meaning.

    The difference between animation and live action is never more evident than with Jumba, Pleakley, and CIA agent Cobra Bubbles (Courtney B. Vance). Characters that are goofy and enjoyable in animated form come off as weird and off-putting in human form. They’re supposed to bring a sense of fun and even suspense to the film, but instead they feel like characters who are getting in the way of a better story.

    Kealoha, making her professional debut, is definitely cute and offers up some interesting moments opposite Stitch and Nani, but her lack of experience shows. Agudong turns in the best performance, giving a bit of emotional weight to a film that needed more. Galifianakis and Magnussen would have been better served as voice-only roles; neither comes off well when their characters turn into humans. Hill is like a warm hug every time she comes on screen, and the story could have used more of her.

    The new Lilo & Stitch is not an abomination, but like most of the Disney live action remakes before it, it fails to stand on its own merits. Never given a chance to be its own thing and featuring storytelling too disjointed to be effective, the film is another so-so effort from a studio that knows how to make much better movies.

    ---

    Lilo & Stitch is now playing in theaters.

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