Houston Symphony Brings "The Planets" To New York; Times Notices

The Houston Symphony has been in New York, putting on a special presentation of Gustav Holst's suite "The Planets" (you know, "Mars, Bringer of War" and all that), a presentation that features dazzling new images from NASA's various probes and satellites.

The film that accompanies the symphony has been put together by Duncan Copp, who made the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, which was pretty good.

Today The New York Times took a look. And suprise!! They start off with some condescension for us rubes out here in the sticks!!

The Houston Symphony, like many of the country's fine orchestras just below the elite rank, struggles to carve out a profile for itself. The "Planets" production is a natural way to do that, given the city's NASA connection.

Aw, a pat on the head for the widdle orchestra that could.

Still, the Times' blog piece seemed to think well enough of the production.

The idea of adding celestial visuals to a performance of the 1915 piece is not new. But this production is a serious update, using some images less than a year old, all culled from the immense wealth of data collected by the army of probes, orbiters and rovers deployed by NASA in recent years.

Besides the Twittering linked to above, the Symphony is blogging the experience here.