Houston Music - Rocks Off - "Classically Speaking" Archives

Three Bassoons Walk Into a Bar...: The Near-Classical "Noncert" at Under the Volcano

By Chris Gray in Classically Speaking, Live Shots, Only In Houston

Friday, Nov. 20 2009 @ 12:33PM

Photos by Chris Gray

Under the Volcano does not feel like Under the Volcano. The TVs are off, so no more NBA on ESPN. Hayes Carll's Trouble In Mind has come and gone - in its entirety - on the jukebox, taking its bad livers, broken hearts and drunken poet's dreams with it... mostly.

Earlier, a regular - appalled that there were actual music stands in the bar's small performance nook - asked Rocks Off if he should "mess with" the members of the Houston Symphony and other area orchestras setting up for Wednesday evening's "noncert," a bizarre program that will turn out to be half classical recital, half happy-hour mixer.

"That's up to you," we told him, managing to hold our tongue any further. "This isn't exactly three chords and the truth."

Now the musicians are ready to begin, and the evening's MC has an announcement. They understand it's a bar, so they're cool with people talking during the upcoming music, or as cool as they can be for people accustomed to performing in complete silence. But, he adds, "If you're breaking up with your girlfriend on your cell phone, you should probably go outside." Or, ahem, hitting on the blonde at the bar.

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Please, Kenny Rogers, Just Sing and Spare Us the Pictures of Your Kids

By Chris Gray in Classically Speaking, Live Shots

Friday, Nov. 6 2009 @ 2:29PM

Photos by Eric Sauseda/ Click here for a slideshow

Kenny Rogers is now 71 years old. And, as of a few years ago anyway, his boys can still swim.

Aftermath knows this because we were treated to a slideshow of Rogers' twin five-year-old sons - even some shots from the delivery room - as he sang the ballad "To Me" with the Houston Symphony at Jones Hall Thursday night. Cute kids and all, but it made for about five of the most squirm-filled minutes we've experienced at a concert, well, ever.

It was like being trapped in line at the DPS. All you want to do is renew your driver's license (or, in this case, hear "The Gambler"), but the guy in front of you insists on whipping out his wallet and thumbing through umpteen family photos. Thank God the Roaster didn't have any pictures of his pets, or we would have been so out of there.

Luckily, this was about as sappy and maudlin as the evening got - and we're talking about a show that also included "Through the Years," "Lady" and lesser-known but no less sentimental heartstring bullseyes like "The Greatest" and "Buy Me a Rose."

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Program Notes: Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor

By Chris Gray in Classically Speaking, Playbill

Wednesday, Nov. 4 2009 @ 12:05PM

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, 1809-1847

Here at Rocks Off, we enjoy album covers with turds on them and making fun of R. Kelly as much as the next guy. And just wait until Chris Brown gets here next weekend.

But there's a lot more to music than that. In a possibly fruitless effort to class up the joint a bit, we're introducing a new feature illuminating some of our favorite works in the classical repertoire as played by the Houston Symphony.

We could have hardly picked a better place to start. Composed between 1838 and 1844, Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor (op. 64) is, writes the All Music Guide's Roger Dettmer, a "pillar of the violin concerto repertoire" and one of the German-born composer's final orchestral works. Mendelssohn composed it especially for his good friend Ferdinand David, concertmaster for the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, which Mendelssohn conducted for many years.

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Aftermath: Eliot Fisk and John Gibbons' Guitar/Harpsichord Rhapsody at the Menil Collection

By Sarah Webster in Classically Speaking, Live Shots

Wednesday, Oct. 28 2009 @ 11:30AM

www.houstontheaterdistrict.org

John Gibbons

Can you actually use the word "shazam" in a review? Because that's what Aftermath was thinking at one juncture Tuesday night while watching John Gibbons and Eliot Fisk perform adapted Baroque pieces for the harpsichord and classical guitar. And yes, we did just say harpsichord.

The concert was held in the main entrance gallery of the Menil Collection, as part of Houston-based Da Camera's "The Romantic Spirit" 2009-2010 season. The setting, which was designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano was a perfect aesthetic complement to the works of Bach, Vivaldi, Albeniz and others which flowed over the audience.

The duo, Gibbons on harpsichord and Fisk on guitar, were stationed in front of Walter De Maria's vast yellow canvas, "The Color Men Choose When They Attack the Earth," and played an unamplified set to a full room of around 250 patrons. Some were there as Da Camera loyalists, some to experience the novelty of an unusual instrument, and some to pay homage to Fisk, who was the last direct pupil of Andres Segovia, the undisputed master of Spanish classical guitar who is to that genre what Rudolf Nureyev is to ballet.

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