CLASSICAL
The Music on the Plaza concerts at MFAH return..
As audiences experience the sights and sounds of innovation, artists fill their souls with the notion of expressing originality while also giving back to the community through their art.
Both perspectives and the consequential unity formed within the city’s vibrant arts scene lie at the foundation of Music on the Plaza, a program presented by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston that returns for its second annual summertime celebration after a successful and robust debut last May to inaugurate the new Glassell School of Art building.
On Friday, Two Star Symphony, in collaboration with METdance company member and choreographer Genene McGrath, will perform at the Brown Foundation, Inc. Plaza in the second of the three-part series, the first of which was canceled due to weather.
The family-friendly evening will feature original compositions by the quartet, including “Wolf Outside My Window” and “The Marionette,” which will provide the accompaniment for an ensemble of about five dancers. The movement will spread throughout different areas of the cultural complex, including the rooftop garden, the interior of the building and of course the plaza, where food vendors and a cash bar will be available.
The nature of the program has changed slightly in order to provide a more concrete, in-depth connection back to the MFAH and its collections, explained Sydney Kreuzmann, the participatory programs specialist in the museum’s learning and interpretation department. Not only has the series cut back from last year’s lineup of eight events, it has expanded to encompass all genres of art.
The curated concert scheduled for last month was planned to incorporate work by mixed-media artist Emily Fens, who explores the relationship between art and neuroscience; whereas, the final Friday in August will feature spoken-word poet Zachary Caballero, who will create a soundscape of sorts by layering his narratives into the music of Houston group Handsomebeast, Kreuzmann explained.
“The goal from square one with us, with this program, is that we have this really great open space that we want to actively invite people into, while also celebrating the museum and our local creative voices here in Houston,” she said. “We want this to be a community space. We want people to feel like it’s their space, and we want people to see that their community is reflected in the space.”
With this in mind, Music on the Plaza offers audience members an opportunity to be directly involved by including
interactive, hands-on, art-making experiences that support not only the collective vision for each event, but also the particular vision of the featured artist.
For McGrath, the inspiration for the upcoming performance is color — “how color makes us feel and how we interrupt it, how it is OK to be in a constant state of change, growth and development,” she said in an email interview.
Color will be clearly represented in the props, Kreuzmann explained, but it will also be expressed through the choreography and within the notes of the musicians — cellist Margaret Lejeune and violinist Debra Brown, who co-founded Two Star Symphony in 2002, alongside violist Bill Tackett and violinist Bonnie Diggs.
The ensemble, which has grown to include eight members, is recognized for having a “dark, distinctive sound,” according to its website, but Lejeune said she believes that can sometimes be misconstrued.
“We like to express the full gamut of emotions in our music,” she said. “Although we dabble in the darkness, our sound is also playful, cartoonlike, and sometimes heartbreaking.”
Through movement, McGrath set out to either challenge or surrender to the emotions she initially felt upon listening to the selected compositions, which is why she decided to place a heavy emphasis on improvisation, she explained. In this way, the dancers react in the moment, as she did, to the sounds they experience — a small detail that reflects the overall synergy of the summer series.
“When we reached out to these featured artists, it was really important to me that they felt like they had agency in this process,” Kreuzmann said. “That they felt like they could express a creative vision and then collaborate with the museum to execute that in a way that supports their practice, the practice of the musicians and then our mission as an institution here at the museum.”