| Date | Concert | Description |
| 10/2/2009 7:30:00 PM | Ferenc Illenyi and his Gypsy Band | Our first concert of the 2009-2010 season brings back the group that stretched our seating capacity to its limits; adding extra seats twice with people still left on the waiting list. And they didn't disappoint. We immediately booked Ferenc and his Gypsy Band to open our 2009-2010 season.
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Get ready for a fun and exciting way to start our 2009-2010 season. Houston Symphony violinist Ferenc Illenyi will lead his Gypsy Band through an eclectic evening of rhythms, classical interpretations, and jazz improvisations taken from Gypsy styles in Central and Eastern Europe.
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This will be a concert that either you were thrilled to have attended or very sorry to have missed! |
| 11/20/2009 7:30:00 PM | Fidelis String Quartet + Piano | Rodica Weber Gonzales and the Fidelis Quartet (comprised of four musicians from the Houston Symphony) are back along with pianist Ilgin Aka to bring us another great program.
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Back in early 2004 we asked Fidelis to perform two particular pieces; Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" string quartet and Dvorak's piano quintet. This concert proved so successful that they took this exact program to Carnegie Hall.
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Since it has been over 5 years since that concert and the music is so great, we have asked them to come back and perform both of these works. You will hear two of the best works for string quartet and piano quintet. |
| 1/22/2010 7:30:00 PM | Jing Wang (violin) / Jeewon Lee (Piano) | This concert features two Juilliard graduates who are top Ph.D. candidates at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music. Jing Wang is a violin student of Kathleen Winkler and Jeewon Lee is a student of Jon Kimura Parker. This is your chance to hear a couple of young artists who have an excellent chance of being major stars in the not too distant future. They have won numerous individual awards and their performances together have had the audience leaping to their feet with applause.
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Jeewon Lee is 2009 Audience Choice winner at the Houston Symphony's Ima Hogg Competition and the 2009 Rice University Shepherd School Concerto Competition in addition to being a prizewinner of the Frinna Awerbuch International Piano Competition and Young Musicians Foundation Competition. Her playing has been heard on WQXR New York, WFMT Chicago and Leipzig Radio. She has soloed with the New West Symphony in California and has performed at Carnegie's Weill Recital Hall and at Alice Tully Hall in New York. Ms. Lee holds degrees in Economics and Piano Performance from Northwestern University and a master's degree from the Juilliard School; she is currently a doctoral student at Rice University.
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Jing Wang, violin, is the 2007 First Prize winner of the 22nd Annual Irving M. Klein International String Competition. He has won First Prize at the 2000 International Competition "Concertino Prague" in Prague and was nominated "Le Titre de Jeune solist" of all French Radio in 2002. He is First Prize winner of the 1997 Canadian Music Competitions and the Montreal symphony Orchestra Competition in 1998. He was the Audience Choice Winner at the 2008 Young Texas Artists competition. |
| 2/19/2010 7:30:00 PM | 2010 Gala Concert - Jon Kimura Parker and Friends | This is a very special concert. Not only is it our 2010 Gala, it is our 10th year and the 50th concert in our series. We needed something very special to mark this occasion.
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Steinway is going to help us get a second concert grand Steinway piano into the room. Jon Kimura Parker is going to bring 3 of his friends; Patti Wolf, Scott Holshouser and Andrew Staupe. We will hear piano for 4 and 8 hands played on TWO pianos. Need we say any more???
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Internationally acclaimed concert pianist Jon Kimura (Jackie) Parker is one of the top touring concert pianists performing with most of the major orchestras in the world. In the past few years he has performed concertos with the New York Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, the Columbus Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, the Florida Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, Atlanta, Boston, Calgary, Denver, Ottawa, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Tampa, Tokyo, Toronto, Rochester, Warsaw and our Houston Symphony. Jackie is Professor of Piano at The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. |
| 4/9/2010 7:30:00 PM | Eric Halen (violin) / Scott Holshouser (Piano) | This concert brings together our favorite pair of musicians; Eric Halen (Acting Concertmaster of the Houston Symphony) and Scott Holshouser (Principal Keyboard of the Houston Symphony). Eric and Scott's recitals at the Woodlands Salon Series have consistently drawn some of our largest audiences.
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While the program will be new, we have asked it to include a matched pair of very special pieces. Eric will perform one of the seminal (and very difficult) works for violin, Paganini's violin Caprice #24. It has been the theme used on many works including Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini. Scott will follow with Liszt's Grand Etude de Paganini #6 which is based on the #24 caprice. It is one of the most difficult and favorite works in the solo piano literature. |
| 5/7/2010 7:30:00 PM | Daniel Saenz (cello)
Yuri Saenz (soprano)
Robert Hunt (piano) | It has been a while since we had a vocal program. As we heard from the recent Lynn Harrell concert, the cello really sings as an instrument. We are combining cello and the human soprano with piano for what should be a delightful way to end the 2009-2010 season.
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Daniel Saenz participated in the October 2008 Gypsy Band playing cello on a couple of the pieces. He studied at the Eastman School of Music and Rice University and has played concerts throughout the United States and Japan, and most recently in Paris, France with the touring string octet, Les Violons Virtuouses. Daniel is on the faculty of Sam Houston State University.
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Yuri Maria Saenz received her Master of Music degree from the Manhattan School of Music. She has sung in some of the world's most famous venues, including Carnegie Hall, France's Theatre du Chatelet, and the Suntroy Hall in Japan and may be seen on DVD in the title role of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Le Coq d'Or, conducted by Kent Nagano.
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Robert Hunt is well known to the Woodlands community and is the Artistic Director of the Constellation Chamber Music Organization (of which Daniel and Yuri Saenz are featured members). He studied at SMU, TCU, Indiana University and received his D.M.A. from the University of Houston. He is the former Music Director/Conductor of the Midland-Odessa Symphony and Chorale. His experience ranges from musical direction of the American Cabaret Theater in New York to serving as conductor/pianist to popular singer Ray Price. His arrangements have been performed in Carnegie Hall. |