EACH YEAR, HOUSTON’S Indo-American Association presents a diverse and wide-ranging series of entertainment and educational programs featuring music, dance, and film from across the Indian subcontinent.
Now in its 30th season, the nonprofit organization is a major contributor to Houston’s diverse, international community, and is helping to preserve India’s rich, cultural heritage for a new generation of audiences.
On Mar. 24 at the Wortham Center, IAA presents the Berklee Indian Ensemble, one of the hottest world music groups touring today. Its forward-thinking fusion of contemporary and classical Indian musical styles is winning fans all over the world. The ensemble has accumulated over 300 million YouTube views, and its debut album Shuruaat (“Beginning”) received a 2023 Grammy Nomination for Best World Music Album.
Founded in 2011 by Annette Philip, the first Indian music faculty member at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, the ensemble is a rare example of a university ensemble transformed into a professional, touring band, with 11 full-time members representing India, Jordan, Israel, Nigeria, Indonesia, Norway, the USA, and other regions across the globe. When Philip first joined Berklee’s faculty, the school did not have an ensemble that explored and performed Indian music. Since then, more than 700 students from 49 countries have played in the ensemble and created profound connections between their different respective cultures through the language of music.
“There is a unique power when musicians from different cultural and musical backgrounds make art together with vulnerability and openness in a space that celebrates their similarities and differences,” says Philip. She’s not kidding.
The 10 tracks on Shuruaat feature a whopping 98 musicians from all over the world, including special guests, Grammy-winning tabla master Zakir Hussain and Bollywood superstar Shreya Ghoshal. This Friday at the Wortham Center, the 11-member version of the ensemble promises a program of lushly orchestrated, groove-centric originals and arrangements of modern and classic Indian music. “The music that gets created in this space comes across viscerally,” says Philip, “and allows a song in a foreign language to feel completely relatable because of the human connection.”
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POP THE CHAMPAGNE, mark your calendars, and get your evening clothes to the dry cleaner — the Houston Grand Opera has announced its 2023-24 season.
Under the leadership of Khori Dastoor, who took the helm as General Director and CEO in 2021, a time during which musicians and audiences were desperate to reunite after months of pandemic-related precautions, HGO remains one of the most acclaimed opera companies in the United States, committed to producing longstanding, audience-friendly repertoire while commissioning and premiering groundbreaking new works.
In the upcoming season, Dastoor and HGO Artistic and Music Director Patrick Summers embrace and expand upon this vision, with a world premiere, a family-friendly staging of music theater classic, several smart productions of comic and tragic repertoire, and a mounting of Wagner’s final gesamtkunstwerk Parsifal.
The HGO opens its season in October with a world premiere: Intelligence, composed by Jake Heggie. Set during the Civil War, with a libretto by Gene Scheer, and direction by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, a 2021 MacArthur Fellow and founder of the Brooklyn-based dance company, Urban Bush Women, Intelligence draws on historical events to tell the story of a pro-Union spy ring created by Elizabeth Van Lew, a woman from a prominent Confederate family, and Mary Jane Bowser, a slave born into her household. Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton sings the role of Elizabeth, and soprano Janai Brugger makes her company debut as Mary Jane. The innovative production incorporates movement by eight dancers from Urban Bush Women and will be conducted by Kwamé Ryan, also making his HGO debut.
This fall, the HGO will also stage Verdi’s comedic opera, Falstaff, with baritone Reginald Smith, Jr. singing the role of one of Shakespeare’s most beloved and enduring characters. January 2024 heralds the archetypal journey of Parsifal, directed by Tony Award-winning director John Caird, and featuring what is described as “a cast of extraordinary Wagnerians,” including tenor and rising star Russell Thomas as Parsifal. Thomas, a queer, Black man, is a strong advocate for casting performers from all communities on the opera stage, be they Asian, Black, gay, straight, transgender, or nonbinary, which aligns with the HGO’s mission, and withParsifal, brings a welcome layer of depth and meaning to Wagner’s music and troubling biography.
Ailyn Perez (photo courtesy of Houston Grand Opera)
While “beloved tragedy” sounds like a contradiction in terms, the expression certainly applies to Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, which returns to the HGO at the end of January 2024. Jordan Braun directs this three-hankie revival of Tony Award winner Michael Grandage’s production, with internationally sought-after soprano Ailyn Pérez singing the role of Cio-Cio-San opposite tenor Yongzhao Yu as Pinkerton. On a somewhat lighter note, the company’s spring programming includes Mozart’s tragicomedy Don Giovanni, with a cast that includes bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni as the thoroughly un-woke womanizer Don Giovanni, soprano Andriana Chuchman in her role debut as Donna Anna, and, returning to the HGO, mezzo-soprano and all-around cool person Sasha Cooke as Donna Elvira.
Closing the season in April 2024 is Rodgers and Hammerstein’s tune-filled The Sound of Music, with Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard as Maria and baritone Alexander Birch Elliott as the Captain. You know the songs; isn’t it time your kids learned them too?
For more information about the 2023-24 season, including two more commissioned chamber operas, Giving Voice — its fifth annual celebration of Black artists in opera, and the 36th annual Concert of Arias, the final round of the Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers, visit the HGO website.
Isabel Leonard (photo by Sergio Kurhajec)
Khori Dastoor and Patrick Summers (photo courtesy of the Houston Grand Opera)
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