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Imaginary Scenes

Presented by Musiqa and Houston Ballet at Hobby Center - Zilkha Hall

April 3, 2010

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Musiqa presents Imaginary Scenes, Saturday, April 3 at 7:30pm, in Hobby Center-Zilka Hall.

In collaboration with the Houston Ballet, Musiqa presents the third of its 2009-10 subscription concerts. The concert, titled "Imaginary Scenes," takes place on Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. The program features Karim Al-Zand's Imaginary Scenes for violin and piano, Wynton Marsalis' Blue Lights on the Bayou and Hellbound Highball for string quartet, Rob Smith's Hot Seat for saxophone and piano, Karlheinz Stockhausen's The Little Harlequin for solo clarinet, and Stanton Welch's ballet Fingerprints, danced by members of Houston Ballet II to live music by Hamza El-Din. Performers include Lisa Burrell, violin; Carlos Cordeiro, clarinet; James Dunham, viola; Tali Morgulis, piano; Sean Wang, violin; Valerie Vidal, saxophone; and Blake Wilkins, percussion.

The works on the program are united by having a narrative or descriptive thrust. Karim Al-Zand's Imaginary Scenes is inspired by four diverse and whimsical literary sources, including an engraving by J.J. Grandwille depicting an apocalyptic ballet. The two works by Pulitzer Prize winner Wynton Marsalis are drawn from his evening-long string quartet, From the Octoroon Balls, which evoke people and places in New Orleans and the city's Creole traditions. Rob Smith's saxophone duo depicts being on the "hot seat." Karlheinz Stockhausen's iconic The Little Harlequin celebrates the commedia dell'arte hero in a virtuosic work in which the clarinetist not only plays but dances. Stanton Welch's ballet, Fingerprints, in the choreographer's words, "explores how we leave our mark on others. Everyone is changed through simple encounters," leaving their fingerprints on other people's lives. This will be the first time that Welch's ballet will be performed with the score performed live.

Recently featured on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" and winner of 2008 and 2009 Access to Artistic Excellence Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Musiqa is nationally recognized for its innovative inter-disciplinary concerts. Musiqa performs an annual subscription series at Zilkha Hall as part of the Hobby Center's "Uniquely Houston" series, free loft concerts at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and an outreach program that has been seen by over 20,000 public elementary school students in the past six years.

Musiqa is a participant in the Arts Incubator Program and funded in part by grants from the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance and the National Endowment for the Arts. Major support for Musiqa has been provided by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Argosy Foundation Fund for Contemporary Music, the Bridgeway Charitable Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, the Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts, Dynegy, the Farb Foundation, the Herzstein Foundation, Houston Endowment Inc., the National Endowment for the Arts, the Powell Foundation, the Simmons Foundation, the Strake Foundation, the Texas Commission on the Arts and the Wolff Foundation.

Pictured:  Houston Ballet, Moores 06 (Polychronis, Wagley).