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Why Conductorless?

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Join ROCO for the annual Conductorless Concert Feb 9th & 10th, with violin soloist and guest concertmaster Joseph Swensen.

 

ROCO FlourishWikipedia defines conductorless as “a unique style of collaborative leadership in which the musicians interpret the music, not the conductor.” Performing without a conductor requires collaboration, mutual respect, and “radical trust”.  It empowers the individual musicians in a way that translates into an exciting experience for the audience. Performing conductorless is a ROCO signature and part of what makes ROCO “the most fun you can have with serious music.”

 

When performing conductorless, the musicians must rely much more heavily on listening not only to their section, but also to the rest of the ensemble. While remaining flexible, each musician must take on a higher level of responsibility for the balance and interpretation of the piece. Like a conductor, each musician must have a knowledge of the full score in his or her mind. The concertmaster, in this case Joseph Swensen, performs a significant role, acting as a leader in conjunction with other principal players through physical cues and the motion of his bow.

 
By removing the “wall” between orchestra and audience, the chamber orchestra exposes an intimate dialogue among its musicians and invites the audience into a delightful conversation. Few orchestras of ROCO’s size attempt to perform conductorless, especially on pieces as challenging as those on ROCO’s February 9th and 10th concerts. Sharing leadership among ROCO’s 40 musicians showcases the high level of artistry and strong spirit of “musical joie de vivre” that is ROCO’s signature.  The result a fantastic audience experience that author/journalist, John DeMers calls, “the most fun you can have with serious music.”

Start the Holiday Season with a Musical Mélange and Organ Solo!

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ROCO is thrilled to have so much talent under the St. Johns roof for our November concert, Musical Mélange with Organ Solo!

Joining esteemed conductor Edwin Outwater and guest concertmaster Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio, Grammy award-winning organist Paul Jacobs will present Guilmant Symphony No. 1 for Organ and Orchestra. Our concert home, The Church of St. John the Divine, has one of the most beautiful organs in Houston, so this piece will be a truly unique ROCO experience!

Along with the fun the organ will bring, we will also set the fall mood with a Houston premiere of Pierre Jalbert’s Autumn Rhapsody. Jalbert states that the piece is inspired by the “autumn landscape in Vermont, when the trees present a multicolored tapestry, and the wind begins to blow colder than summer”.

This concert is the perfect introduction to the holiday season and is sure to pair well with crisp weather and family cheer!

For more information click here

Catching up with Bassoonist Daniel Chrisman

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This Sunday afternoon, ROCO is pleased to present a chamber concert featuring Bassonist Daniel Chrisman. Within the intimate setting of Gremillion &Co. Fine Art Annex, Daniel chose to present a wide range of works that highlight the love of his instrument, the power of music and the fun of getting to share it all with ROCO’s wonderful audience. We caught up with Daniel to see what makes his musical selections so special.

The music will range from peaceful to unconstrained. As he says, “The Bach is very meditative and is something I always come back to when I need to center myself.” The contemplative Bach pairs well with the deceptively simple Saint-Saens: “it moves through lots of harmonic changes but without sounding excessively complex.  Ideally, it should sound very simple; the first movement song-like and the second, an alternatively light and aggressive waltz.” To continue with the theme of exciting and complex music, Daniel will perform Alexandre Tansman’s Sonatine, which is, as he puts it, “a piece I’ve always wanted to conquer! It’s wildly difficult and the outer movements are a welcome opportunity to play with barbaric abandon while the middle movement is soulful and somber.”

Exciting pieces like Transman Sonatine give voice to the bassoon in ways many have never heard before. Presenting this view of the bassoon is something  special to Daniel, as his roots with the instrument go back generations. Growing up in rural Kentucky, the bassoon was not a common instrument, so he says seeing one for the first time, “fascinated me, the sight and sound of the bassoon struck me as quite mysterious and exotic.” Discovering his family’s history, he learned that his grandmother’s brother actually performed with the Boston Symphony as a bassoonist. After visiting him and his wife, (also a bassoonist) he came away with a family heirloom- his very own bassoon. His passion for bassoon was set in stone in college: “Bassoon lessons, practice room culture, and ensemble performance were like oxygen to me…I added contrabassoon to my repertoire in graduate school, deciding that there was opportunity in making that big clunker sound like a real musical instrument.  It turns out that I quite enjoy making the lowest sounds in the orchestra!”

Chamber Concert: ROCO Bassoonist Daniel Chrisman, Oct 21 at Gremillion &Co. Fine Art Annex

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Please join us this Sunday afternoon for a chamber concert featuring ROCO basoonist, Daniel Chrisman and pianist, Sheryl Stack.

Bassoonist Daniel Chrisman graduated from the University of Kentucky, and pursued graduate studies at the University of Louisville and Temple University. Chrisman has also soloed with the Temple University Symphony Orchestra and University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra. In September of 2005, Daniel attained the contrabassoon position in the Haddonfield Symphony (now Symphony in C) in New Jersey. Chrisman resides in Austin, Texas where he is the contrabassoonist/3rd bassoonist in the Austin Symphony Orchestra.

Over the past 27 years, Sheryl Stack has built a successful music career in and around Austin as pianist, teacher, choir director, organist, and coach/accompanist. Stack she performs regularly with the Round Rock Symphony Orchestra, and recently joined the faculty of Austin Chamber Music Center. The summer of 2011, Ms. Stack served as the staff accompanist at Luzerne Music Center in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.

Gremillion &Co. Fine Art and River Oaks Chamber Orchestra have teamed up to feature individual ROCO musicians in intimate chamber concerts at Gremillion &Co. Fine Art Annex.  All performances are casual, interactive events on Sunday afternoons, at 4:00, with a reception before and during the concert. Admission is $20 and valet parking will be available.

ROCO Chamber Series hosted by Gremillion &Co. Fine Art Schedule

  • Sun, Oct 21, 2012, featuring Daniel Chrisman, bassoon
  • Sun, Jan 6, 2013, featuring Sandor Ostlund, principal bass
  • Sun, Mar 3, 2013,  featuring Joseph Foley, principal trumpet

All concerts are at 4pm at the Gremillion &Co. Fine Art Annex, 2504 Nottingham. Tickets are $20 each. A subscription for the 6-concert series (which includes String Quartet concerts at University of St. Thomas) is available at $100, a savings of $20.

This series is sponsored by CultureMap, Lasco Enterprises and Gremillion &Co. Fine Art.

Buy Tickets

 

Oct 6-7 Season Opener is a “Fiesta!”

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Featuring dynamic guest conductor Josep Caballe-Domenech, piano soloist Anne-Marie McDermott and a delicious program that pairs Mozart with Spanish and Argentine composers

AUGUST 20, 2012, HOUSTON, TX.  River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (ROCO) opens its 2012-2013 season by welcoming guest conductor Josep Caballe-Domenech, who will conduct classical favorites by Spanish and Argentine composers, and soloist Anne-Marie McDermott, who will perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in d minor. And in true ROCO fashion, audiences can expect a surprise or two!

“Fiesta!” October 6-7, 2012

Program
Arriaga Symphony in D
Ginastera Suite Estancia
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20 in d minor
Turina La oración del torero, Op. 34

Performances and Tickets

  • Sat, Oct 6, 2012, 5pm, at the Church of St. John the Divine, with ROCOrooters music education/childcare program
    Tickets $25 general admission, $20 students
    Purchase tickets
  • Sun, Oct 7, 2012, 7pm, at the historic Crighton Theatre in Conroe, Texas
    Tickets are $25/$20, $15 students, with reserved seating
    Purchase tickets

George Chase on Beer and Brass

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On Tuesday September 18th, The ROCO Brass quintet will help kick off the season with the always enjoyable Beer & Brass. We got the scoop on the program from ROCO Trumpet and Brass Quintet leader George Chase.

“We are excited to present a mixture of New Orleans jazz tunes, some works of Duke Ellington, and other fun pieces,” says Chase. One of the best parts about smaller group concerts is the the ability to showcase “great music specifically written for smaller groups, in settings where the audience can get to know the musicians,” he adds. After the concert, held at the Houston institution St. Arnold Brewing Company,  is the opportunity to  mingle with the musicians as well as taste a variety of signature brews. In fact, Beer and Brass are natural partners and have a long history. Chase let us in on this facinating historical tidbit: “As for the connection between brass bands and beer, it is believed by some that one of the inventors of the valves found on brass instruments was actually inspired by the motion of beer taps!  So after the performance, although it might look as though the members of the quintet are drinking a glass of St. Arnold’s beer, we’re actually engaging in, um, important historical research”.

ROCO Concerts Featured on Classical 91.7

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Tune in Wednesday evenings at 8pm throughout the month of August for an all-new series of broadcast concerts featuring Houston’s own River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (ROCO), hosted by Elaine Kennedy, on Classical 91.7FM and online at classical917.org.

Each week Elaine will showcase a different classic ROCO concert, so be sure to tune in to hear your favorites!

You are here because of me…

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The libretto of “Maternity” begins with the narrator singing to her child “You are here because of me.”  The narrator then begins to reflect back on her maternal line, paying homage to twenty-one mothers, stretching far back in time.  

 The music is organized as a theme and variations on a lullaby, introduced under the opening text.  What follows are twenty-one, short musical scenes in which the lullaby is transformed to depict each generation: for the mother who dies in childbirth, it is an agonized plea; for the mother who could calm her tribe, it is peaceful; for the amphibious mother, flowing.  When the mothers ignore their offspring or have a rough time protecting them, the lullaby is distorted or covered over; but its essence remains, carried all the way through. 

The narrator eventually looks back all the way to the very first mother.  Then, to accompany the text “She carries the first draft of a genetic handbook based from female to female,” the music rapidly rewinds through the generations in a massive orchestral rush.  Back in the present, the narrator sings a final version of the lullaby to her child: “Because of all of us, you are here.”

–Anthony Brandt, composer

ROCO will perform the world premiere of Maternity on Saturday, April 21, at The Church of St. John the Divine. More…

 

 

Founding Mothers: An ode to my matriarchs

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From Anthony Brandt, composer of Maternity:

Today, the federal government published the census data from 1940, enabling us to trace our parents and grandparents at a crucial moment in US history.  Where were they?  What were they doing?  It is that curiosity about our heritage that animates in the libretto of “Maternity.”  The text is adapted from David Eagleman’s short story “The Founding Mothers: An ode to my matriarchs—every last one.”  In David’s original story, the narrator celebrates Mother’s Day by spending “ five seconds thinking about each woman in the proud line of matriarchs who brought me here…”  David invented a special ancestral notation: great2grandmother, great3grandmother, etc.  Eventually, the narrator’s thoughts are carried back millions of generations, to the first female in history, the “moment when gender splits into being.” 

Turning David’s ode into a libretto, we made a few immediate decisions.  Instead of using Mother’s Day as the jumping off point, we decided the narrator was singing to her child.   Thus, the libretto begins “You are here because of me.”  We reasoned that the “five seconds” limit wouldn’t be musically plausible, so that was dropped from the text.  Asking the soloist to sing the ever-expanding matriarch notation–great88,299,894grandmother, great334,281,202grandmother—would have been too cumbersome and inadvertently humorous.  So we decided that the notation would be projected in synch with the music.   Once those decisions were made, work on “Maternity” began…

to be continued…

ROCO will perform Maternity on Saturday, April 21, at The Church of St. John the Divine. More…

What a miracle we’re all here!

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From Anthony Brandt, composer of Maternity:

Last week, I went to Sir Ken Robinson’s lecture for the Progressive Forum on creativity and education.  Sir Ken started by saying what a miracle it is each of us is alive: if we trace our lineage back even a few generations, the chances of our being born seem more and more improbable. 
 
That’s the story told by David Eagleman’s libretto for “Maternity;” It traces back a maternal line, from mother, to grand-mother to great-great-grandmother, skipping generations, eventually going back millions of years to the very first mother.  It’s a story that music rarely gets to tell: a narrative stretching over a vast expanses of time. 
 
My goal in setting the libretto is to celebrate our place in that “long line of inheritance.”  I’ll tell you more about the creation of “Maternity” in upcoming posts.

Hear the world premiere of Maternity on Saturday, April 21, at The Church of St. John the Divine. Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman will present a Pre-Concert Composer Talk at 4 p.m. The concert begins at 5. Learn more and buy tickets.