“It’s kind of like a school year on steroids. Basically, the students have no distractions from academics, and they learn intensively with the teachers and prepare a different program every week that ends in a live performance,” said Alan Austin, general and artistic director for the Texas Music Festival. “The festival as a whole brings about 15 to 25 events to Houston at a time when most of the arts organizations are either stopped for the summer or they’re ending their season. It’s a great cultural opportunity for concert goers here.”
The students, ranging in age from 18 to 30, hail from across the country and globe. Nearly 20 U.S. states are represented, along with Chile, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Taiwan, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Further, only the cream of the crop are accepted, with many participants studying at prominent music schools like Oberlin, Eastman, Juilliard, Northwestern, Indiana University, Cleveland Institute of Music, Cannes School of Music, Manhattan School of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music.
Roughly 280 students auditioned for a highly competitive spot in the festival this year.
“The audition itself is actually pretty rigorous because our purpose is to train the student orchestra like a professional orchestra would live and work,” Austin said. “There is a required list of pieces they have to play. They have to play the pieces nonstop with the video camera on so that we know that it’s them and we can see the quality of their playing from piece to piece.”
Originally founded in 1990, the festival was created to provide young professional musicians with a nurturing environment to prepare for future careers in music while offering the chance to learn from today’s leading conductors and coaches and to experience the vastly varied musical cultures of the most diverse city in the country.
As the years have gone by, the festival has grown to include partners. This year, it merged its young artist competition with a similar program from the Houston Symphony to form the Cynthia Woods Mitchell-Ima Hogg Young Artist Competition.
The Mitchell Family provided ample support of the Texas Music Festival dating back to its early years. The namesake event started as a small competition at the festival that students could participate in with the eventual winner receiving a small cash prize and a chance to play with their colleagues in the orchestra.
“It seems like a natural partnership to merge the Ima Hogg and Cynthia Woods Mitchell competitions for the Texas Music Festival. We have a a terrific relationship with the symphony. Many of their players are on our faculty. Hans Graff, the Houston Symphony’s former music director, comes periodically and conducts at the festival,” Austin added.
With the inclusion of the symphony’s annual Ima Hogg Competition, the synergy and resulting benefits are even larger.
“The big prize that we get out of it for our student who wins is that they will be invited back to play with the Houston Symphony next year. For any young musician, this will be a real touchstone moment,” he added.
Eighty musicians will train under the best of the best players and conductors.
Photo by Felipe Harker of Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts
The Texas Music Festival also introduced the Sharon Ley Lietzow Piano Series this year, an evolution of its International Piano Festival.
“We held the International Piano Festival for 34 years, and it was built around one of our faculty members who was a very famous pianist. It took place usually on Super Bowl weekend in February,” Austin said. “Unfortunately, the founder Abbey Simon died several years ago, and he was kind of the linchpin of that series. He was 99 and played almost up to the end.”
Simon’s passing along with the trials and tribulations of COVID-19 spurred the musicians to reimagine the piano festival in a different way, prompting the move to summer as part of the Texas Music Festival to further enhance the already-packed programming.
“Part of a festival is that there’s a lot going on all the time, and this gives us an extra kind of hallmark concert each week. One of the pillars of each week now is the Tuesday night piano series,” he said.
The guests pianists this year are Amy Yang, Awadagin Pratt and Vadim Kholodenko. Yang’s story is a standout for this year as her connections to Houston and the university run deep.
Yang’s father, Hau, earned his doctorate degree in composition from UH’s Moores School of Music. Naturally, Amy picked up after her father. She studied under a UH faculty member while she was in high school, and she furthered her studies at Juilliard and the Curtis Institute of Music.
“Amy grew up around the Moores School of Music and around us, and it’s a really great honor to know that she has a strong and established career,” Austin shared.
She will perform one of her father’s compositions, Piano Suite No. 1 (nicknamed “Homesick”), as part of the Sharon Ley Lietzow Piano Series.
Amy Yang returns to her old stomping grounds this month.
Photo by Balázs Böröcz
The two other featured pianists are Vadym Kholodenko, who won Texans’ hearts and was immediate appointed the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra’s first Artist in Partnership for three years, and Awadagin Pratt, who became the first student in the Peabody Conservatory of Music’s history to receive diplomas in three performance areas — piano, violin and conducting.
Three other guest conductors will join festival to sharpen the musician’s skills: Andrew Grams, Gerard Schwarz and Franz Anton Krager.
Austin and his team look for certain traits when deciding which conductors to recruit each year.
“It’s very important that the conductors who work with the orchestra are not only musicians of the highest level but also are used to conducting major orchestras. For young students, it’s important to work with the kinds of people that they hope to work with professionally when they’re out in their field, but it’s also important that the conductors have a passion for educating younger musicians,” he said.
“They don’t walk in expecting the orchestra to play exactly like a professional orchestra would. There’s an inspirational component and then there’s an educational component that’s crucial with all of the people who come to conduct our orchestras.”
Through all his years assembling the festival, Austin gives a special mention to a hidden gem in the programming that deviates from the typical festival attendees.
“One thing I’d like to highlight is our Jazz Institute Orchestra’s concert. It’s a concert made up of Houston high school jazz players, and it is always unbelievably good,” he said.
Duly noted.
Beautiful melodies will fill the UH performance hall this month.
Photo by Felipe Harker of Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts
The Immanuel & Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival’s full schedule is below:
Weekly schedule format:
Tuesdays: piano recital by guest artist
Wednesdays: master class with guest artist
Thursdays: faculty chamber music concert
Saturdays: full-orchestra concert
Thursday, June 8
7:30 p.m.
Faculty Chamber Music Concert
French Classical: TMF Faculty artists and guests perform Mozart’s sublime Clarinet Quintet and French chamber music.
Saturday, June 10
6:30 p.m., Free
- Pre-concert music: members of Virtuosi of Houston
- Pre-concert lecture: Settling the Score, Dr. Andrew Davis
7:30 p.m.
Festival Orchestra Concert
Franz Anton Krager, conductor
Vadym Kholodenko, piano soloist, McGovern Distinguished Artist
Under the baton of Franz Anton Krager, the Festival Orchestra opens its season with iconic works of Debussy and Ravel. McGovern Distinguished Artist Vadym Kholodenko is the featured soloist in Beethoven’s equally iconic Concerto No. 4.
Program: Debussy: Prélude to the Aftenoon of a Faun, La mer; Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major; Ravel: Alborada del Gracioso
Sunday, June 11
2 p.m. Free
Cynthia Woods Mitchell – Ima Hogg Young Artist Competition, Final Round
TMF’s young artists compete for the chance to win cash prizes and to be the featured soloist in the festival’s final orchestral concert. A distinguished panel of judges chooses the winner, but Houstonians can help choose the Audience Favorite prize.
Tuesday, June 13
7:30 p.m.
Sharon Ley Lietzow Piano Series
Recital: Awadagin Pratt
The Naumberg prizewinner presents a fascinating program, exploring connections among seemingly disparate composers as Phillip Glass, Couperin, Vasks, and Tchaikovsky, ending with Liszt’s monumental Sonata in B Minor.
Program: Glass: Glassworks; Couperin: Les Barricades Mistérieuses; Vasks: Castillo Interior; Hersch: Nocturne for Left Hand; Rachmaninoff: Prélude in D; Chopin: Nocturne in B; Tchaikovsky/Pletnev: “Intermezzo” from The Nutcracker; Liszt: Sonata in B Minor
Wednesday, June 14
9:30 a.m., Free
Master Class: Awadagin Pratt, featuring Keyboard Academy participants.
Thursday, June 15
7:30 p.m.
Faculty Chamber Music Concert
American/Russian: Faculty artists perform a program featuring American composers and Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet.
Saturday, June 17
6:30 p.m., Free
- Pre-concert music: members of Virtuosi of Houston
- Pre-concert lecture: Settling the Score, Dr. Andrew Davis
7:30PM
Festival Orchestra Concert
Gerard Schwarz, conductor
Longtime maestro of the Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz returns to Houston to lead an exciting program of music by 21st-century African-American composer Valerie Coleman, an arrangement of a tonally lush movement from a Webern string quartet, and Prokofiev’s searing Symphony No. 5.
Program: Coleman: UMOJA; Webern/Schwarz: Adagio (Langsamersatz); Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5 in B-flat
Tuesday, June 20
7:30 p.m.
Sharon Ley Lietzow Piano Series
Recital: Amy Yang
Now a faculty member at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, Houston’s own Amy Yang has established an impressive career. She returns home for a program featuring music of Bach, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, and her father Hua Yang.
Program: Bach: Toccata in D Minor; Yang: Piano Suite No. 2; Brahms: Hungarian Dances; Schubert: Impromptu No. 1; Schumann: Sonata in F Minor, Op. 14
Wednesday, June 21
9:30 a.m., Free
Master Class: Amy Yang, featuring Keyboard Academy participants.
Thursday, June 22
7:30 p.m.
Faculty Chamber Music
Fantastic Journey: Join our world tour, as faculty artists explore offerings from composers around the globe and close the series with Paul Schoenfield’s delightful Café Music.
Friday, June 23
11 a.m., Free
Keyboard Academy Ensemble Concert
7 p.m., Free
Jazz Institute Orchestra
Noe Marmolejo, director
Classic to contemporary big-band jazz, played by Houston high school all-stars from the TMF Jazz Institute.
Saturday, June 24
12 p.m., Free
Keyboard Academy Solo Piano Concert
2 p.m.
Organ Recital Hall, Free
Keyboard Academy Solo Organ Concert
6:30 p.m., Free
- Pre-concert music: members of Virtuosi of Houston
- Pre-concert lecture: Settling the Score, Dr. Andrew Davis
7:30 p.m.
Festival Orchestra
Andrew Grams, conductor
with 2023 Cynthia Woods Mitchell – Ima Hogg Young Artist Competition Winner, TBA
One of America’s most exciting young conductors, Andrew Grams, leads a program of virtuoso music for orchestra: Berlioz’s Corsaire Overture and the iconic Symphony No. 3 by Aaron Copland. The winner of the Mitchell-Hogg Young Artist Competition joins the Festival Orchestra as soloist.
Program: Berlioz: Le Corsaire Overture; Copland: Symphony No. 3
The Immanuel & Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival runs now through Saturday, June 24 at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music, 3333 Cullen Boulevard at Elgin (Entrance 16). For tickets or information, visit tmf.uh.edu or uh.edu/artstickets or call the box office at 713-743-3388. Free to $30 for individual tickets; $36 – $175 for season subscriptions.