Art&Seek presents This Week in Texas Music History. Every week, we’ll spotlight a different moment and the musician who made it. This week, Texas music scholar Gary Hartman celebrate a jazz musician who gained fame playing country music.
You can also hear This Week in Texas Music History on Sunday at precisely 6:04 p.m. on KERA radio. But subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss an episode. And our thanks to KUT public radio in Austin for helping us bring this segment to you. And if you’re a music lover, be sure to check out Track by Track, the bi-weekly podcast from Paul Slavens, host of KXT’s The Paul Slavens Show, heard Sunday night’s at 8.
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Al Stricklin was born in Antioch, Texas, on Jan. 29, 1908. Stricklin always considered himself a jazz pianist and played in a variety of jazz bands during the 1920s. In 1930, he was working at Fort Worth’s KFJZ radio when a young fiddler named Bob Wills stopped by and asked to perform on the air. Although Stricklin was skeptical, he allowed Wills to play. The audience loved the music, and Bob Wills soon had one of the most popular Western Swing bands in North Texas. Stricklin ended up playing piano with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys from 1935 to 1941, appearing on many of the group’s most popular recordings.
In 1973, Al Stricklin reunited with his former band mates to record the Grmmy-award winning album Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys: For the Last Time, which helped reinvigorate Western Swing and make it popular worldwide.
Next time on This Week in Texas Music History, we’ll pay tribute to Texas music royalty.
In the Saturday Spotlight, we’re headed to McKinney for an afternoon of beer, brats, and Wagner. Enjoy local craft beer and wurst from Kuby’s Sausage House as The Dallas Opera presents a lecture on Wagner’s tragic love story, Tristan and Isolde. Get your learning and lager on at Franconia Brewing Company.
Afternoon Delight is a daily diversion for when you’re just back from lunch, but not quite ready to get back to work. Check back tomorrow at 1 p.m. for another one.
G. Love and Special Sauce play House of Blues tonight. Going to the show? This video should put you in the mood.
I just found out Friday morning that Donald E. “Don” Elder is ill and unable to attend the event, but it willl go on as scheduled. A big “get well soon, Mr. Elder” from all of us here at Art&Seek.
This weekend the Dallas Symphony Orchestra has a somewhat unusual program (unusual for the DSO, that is) with what is becoming the usual result: fine music-making under the direction of Jaap van Zweden.
The composers represented include Mozart, Wagner (who once said some disrespectful things about Mozart) and Debussy (who once said some disrespectful things about Wagner). Whatever the feelings of each for his predecessor, on the Meyerson Symphony Center stage Thursday night, all was harmony.
The unusual thing was the inclusion of not just one, but two works by Wagner. True, Wagner was primarily an opera composer, but there’s a lot that can be extracted from his works for concert presentation, and we haven’t been exposed to a lot of that in Dallas.
What Van Zweden and the DSO played was Siegfried Idyll and the “Good Friday Spell” from Parsifal. In each the conductor’s interpretation was subtle, expressive and occasionally dramatic (Siegfried Idyll is a mellow work throughout) and the orchestra’s playing, both among principals and the whole, was exceptional.
Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor brought onstage the young French pianist David Fray, whose slightly eccentric demeanor was belied by an elegant performance that seemed a bit understated at times but had its share of drama. Van Zweden and his orchestra seemed stylistically in sync with Fray.
Rounding out the evening was a highly atmospheric performance of Debussy’s La Mer, another impressive display of skill within sections and polish overall.
The program will be repeated tonight, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.
‘GIANT’ ON TV: Have you heard a lot about Dallas Theater Center’s Giant but not actually heard any of the music from Giant? You’re in luck. Aaron Lazar and Kate Baldwin – the show’s leads – stopped by the Good Morning Texas set earlier this week to perform one of the songs from the show, which you can watch in this video.
LONG ROAD TO THE DMA: Richardson High School senior Kathy Tran is one of a handful of young local artists whose work will be included for a second time in the Dallas Museum of Art’s ”Young Masters” exhibition beginning Sunday. But her road to life as an artist has been a rocky one. She tells dallasnews.com about how moving out of her strict parents’ house at 13 was the catalyst for her future success.
QUOTABLE: “It’s important that every single person that performs on that stage understands what they’re a part of because in terms of Ireland Riverdance is not just a show. It’s a cultural ambassador and with that comes a responsibility. And it’s important that we perform Riverdance every single night like it’s our last night or our first night.”
Leila Hatami and Peyman Moadi star in A Separation. Photo: Sony Pictures Classics
This week, Art&Seek’s Stephen Becker and Dallas Morning News movie critic Chris Vognar discuss A Separation, the outstanding Iranian film nominated for best foreign film and original screenplay at this year’s Academy Awards. And we’ll turn our attention for a moment to television to talk about Luck, HBO’s new horse-racing drama starring Dustin Hoffman. Be sure to subscribe to The Big Screen podcast on iTunes. Stream this week’s podcast below or download it.
The video shows what the Perot Museum is supposed to look like eventually. Below, take a quick hard-hat photo tour of some of the highlights — as they exist today. Read More »
Afternoon Delight is a daily diversion for when you’re just back from lunch, but not quite ready to get back to work. Check back tomorrow at 1 p.m. for another one.
Fort Worth Opera announced the six principal artists for its 2012 season — and oh yeah. They’re re-upping general director Darren Woods’ contract, adding two more years to it. That’s the third consecutive time the board has extended the ebullient Woods’ tenure and it puts him helming the company through 2018 — for a total of 17 years.
Among the artists making their debut at FWO are former SMU teacher Candace Evans, who’s directing Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers, University of North Texas grad Emily Pulley, who’s a soprano in Three Decembers, and native Texan Jan Cornelius, a soprano in The Marriage of Figaro.
