With Custom Tapestries and Jeweled Archways, MFAH Transforms Into Indian Palace for Glam Gala
Feb. 7, 2023
GALAS AT THE Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, are always a spectacle — but the 2023 Art of the Islamic Worlds Gala, which drew more than 300 guests to the Museum District campus, was especially dazzling.
Gala-goers began the evening in a red-carpet-lined tent before walking through a jeweled archway and into the MFAH's Cullinan Hall. Custom tapestries, painted to recall the City Palace of Jaipur, hung from the ceiling, while rose-gold linens and beautiful florals, courtesy of The Events Company, adorned the tables.
The night included a lively performance by FJK Dance and dinner — harissa- braised beef short rib, grilled sea bass slathered in saffron butter — catered by City Kitchen. Attendees also cast their vote for which art objects should be next acquired for the museum's permanent collection, and got a sneak peek of the new 6,000-square-foot Art of the Islamic Worlds gallery, named for Hossein Afshar. Exhibitions in this space will reflect the "breadth of historic Islamic lands, such as Morocco, Spain, Tunisia, Egypt, Türkiye, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India."
Performance by FJK Dance (photo by Daniel Ortiz)
Sophie Elhage, Lynn Tohme and Maya Fleyhan (photo by Wilson Parish)
Arshad and Shazma Matin (photo by Wilson Parish)
Bobby and Phoebe Tudor (photo by Wilson Parish)
Art of the Islamic Worlds Gala (photo by Daniel Ortiz)
Shohreh Aghdashloo and Monsour Taghdisi (photo by Daniel Ortiz)
Sabiha Rehtmatulla, Aziza Rehmatulla Noshani, Amina Malik, Zinat Ahmed and Sana Malik (photo by Wilson Parish)
Randall and Tiffany Wong (photo by Daniel Ortiz)
Rabeea and Robert Collier (photo by Wilson Parish)
Jacey and Fanny Jetton with Naushad and Narmin Kermally (photo by Daniel Ortiz)
Kathy and Marty Goossen (photo by Wilson Parish)
Nancy and Rich Kinder (photo by Wilson Parish)
Mary and Jack Dawson (photo by Daniel Ortiz)
Majid and Mojdeh Jourabchi (photo by Wilson Parish)
Kent Lucas, Reginald DesRoches and Bobby Tudor (photo by Daniel Ortiz)
Nisreen Barazi and Nour Barazi (photo by Wilson Parish)
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Symphony, Sasha Cooke Sweep Listeners Off Their Feet — and Bring Them Back Down with 'Songs of the Earth'
Feb. 7, 2023
THE HOUSTON SYMPHONY’S Songs of the Earth festival, a two-week series of concerts exploring the influence of Asian music on the Western canon and vice versa, begins this weekend.
The lineup kicks off with Gustav Mahler’s orchestral song cycle, Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), featuring tenor Clay Hilley and Texas-raised, Grammy award-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke. Cooke wowed audiences as Thirza in the Houston Grand Opera’s October 2022 acclaimed production of The Wreckers, and this weekend is an opportunity to hear her sing in a very different setting. Houston Symphony Music Director Juraj Valčuha conducts.
The sound of Das Lied von der Erde is intimate and transparent; Mahler uses the voice to express his deepest thoughts and emotions in a chamber music-like landscape, making it one of Cooke’s favorite pieces to sing. “Mahler really relates to the mezzo,” says Cooke. “It often feels like it’s autobiographical, and that his voice is coming through the mezzo.”
The words Mahler chose to set for Das Lied von der Erde come from a collection of classical Chinese poetry, freely translated by German poet Hans Bethge. While the lyrics for the tenor’s three songs are set in what Cooke describes as a “human living space” — with vivid descriptions of being young, wild, and free, as well as drinking to stave off feelings of sadness and existential dread — the mezzo’s songs, especially the cycle’s sixth and final movement “The Farewell,” are more contemplative and nuanced.
For “The Farewell,” a nearly 30-minute meditation on friendship, finality, and fate, Mahler chose to write the very last stanza himself, bringing the work quietly to a close with an unresolved interval and a single repeated word: éwig (eternal). For Cooke, the ending isn’t an expression of resignation, but an affirmation of transcendence, and of how we somehow live on after death, especially in art.
“Because Mahler was in touch with death so much, I think he knew he would live on in his song,” says Cooke. “His song was him. We live on in what we do.”
Born in 1983 in Riverside, Calif., Cooke grew up in College Station and now lives in The Woodlands with her husband baritone Kelly Markgraf and their two daughters, ages 6 and 11. She appreciates the solace of living in a tree-filled community and “the medicine of a deer coming by” the windows when she sings at home. Nature metaphors abound throughout Das Lied von der Erde, and Cooke imagines Mahler drew inspiration from the Dolomite Mountains and the natural landscape that surrounded the hut where he composed the work. (Mahler had just been diagnosed with heart disease, which prevented him from one of his favorite pastimes: walking and bicycling in nature.)
“Mahler puts you in a meditative state,” says Cooke, who admits after performing Das Lied von der Erde it takes a little time for her to come back down to earth.
“You’ve been in another realm,” she says of the time onstage. “You kind of leave yourself, but you’re also really in yourself. You’re more there than ever.”
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