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HOUSTON, TX (January 18, 2023) — The Houston Symphony celebrates Valentine’s Day by welcoming the world-renowned Marcus Roberts Trio and Grammy Award-winning jazz singer Catherine Russell to join Principal POPS Conductor Steven Reineke and the orchestra for Jazz, Love & Gershwin: A Century of Rhapsody in Blue. Friday, February 2 through Sunday, February 4 at Jones Hall. Reineke, the Houston Symphony, the Marcus Roberts Trio, and Russell perform timeless love songs by George Gershwin, including “Our Love is Here to Stay,” “Embraceable You,” “The Man I Love,” and “I Got Rhythm.” And, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the work’s premiere, the Houston Symphony performs Ferde Grofé’s orchestral adaptation of his original orchestration of Gershwin’s iconic Rhapsody in Blue alongside jazz piano sensation Marcus Roberts. Guests can look forward to a livestream performance on Saturday, February 3.
Graceful and enchanting, jazz singer Catherine Russell has enjoyed a long and prosperous musical career. In 2006, her debut album World Village/Harmonia Mundi garnered rave reviews, and just a few years later she went on to produce Inside This Heart of Mine (2010), which topped the charts on JazzWeek, Roots Music Report radio charts, and Billboard. Her fourth album, Strictly Romancin’ (2012), was awarded Prix du Jazz Vocal (Vocal Album of The Year). In 2012, she won a Grammy Award as a featured artist on the soundtrack album for the HBO-TV series, Boardwalk Empire. Her fifth solo album, Bring It Back (2014), was released worldwide on the Jazz Village label, receiving a Five Star Review in Downbeat Magazine. Later albums, Harlem on My Mind (2017) and Alone Together (2019) received several Grammy nominations.
Known for their enthralling stage presence, the Marcus Roberts Trio captivates audiences with their innovative spin on jazz trio performance. The trio features pianist Marcus Roberts, drummer Jason Marsalis, and bassist Rodney Jordan. Blind since childhood, Roberts attended Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine, Florida, the alma mater of Ray Charles, and started playing the piano when he was only five years old. He has since founded a band, created several successful albums, and joined the faculty at Florida State University.
Now Roberts joins the Symphony to perform George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (1924), a captivating and controversial musical composition that challenged the confines of symphonic traditions in its premiere.
Guests can extend their experience and join the Houston Symphony at the Round Bar for an Encore After Party immediately following the Saturday evening performance. Ticketholders will enjoy dancing with live music by DJ Mr. Simmer Down, the specialty “Rhapsody in Blue” cocktail, free swag, and mingling with Houston Symphony musicians. For tickets and more information, call 713.224.7575 or visit houstonsymphony.org/gershwin.
HOUSTON SYMPHONY PRESENTS JAZZ, LOVE & GERSHWIN: A CENTURY OF RHAPSODY IN BLUE
Friday, February 2, 2024 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, February 3, 2024 at 8 p.m.
Livestream performance on Saturday, February 3, 2024
Sunday, February 4, 2024 at 2:30 p.m.
Steven Reineke, conductor
Marcus Roberts, piano
Jason Marsalis, drums
Martin Jaffe, bass
Catherine Russell, vocalist
About Steven Reineke
Steven Reineke has established himself as one of North America’s leading conductors of popular music. In addition to his role as Principal POPS Conductor of the Houston Symphony, this season, he celebrates his 10th anniversary as music director of The New York Pops at Carnegie Hall. Additionally, he is principal pops conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
Steven is a frequent guest conductor with The Philadelphia Orchestra and his extensive North American conducting appearances include Atlanta, Cincinnati, Edmonton, San Francisco, and Sarasota.
On stage, he has created programs and collaborated with a range of leading artists from the worlds of hip hop, Broadway, television, and rock, including Common, Kendrick Lamar, Nas, Sutton Foster, Megan Hilty, Cheyenne Jackson, Wayne Brady, Peter Frampton, and Ben Folds, among others. In 2017, he was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered leading the National Symphony Orchestra, in a first for the show’s 45-year history, performing live music excerpts between news segments. In 2018, Steven led the same orchestra and hip hop legend Nas performing his seminal album, Illmatic, on PBS’s Great Performances.
As the creator of more than 100 orchestral arrangements for the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Steven’s work has been performed worldwide, and can be heard on numerous Cincinnati Pops Orchestra recordings on the Telarc label. His symphonic works Celebration Fanfare, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Casey at the Bat are performed frequently in North America, including performances by the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic. His Sun Valley Festival Fanfare commemorated the Sun Valley Summer Symphony’s pavilion, and his Festival Te Deum and Swan’s Island Sojourn were debuted by the Cincinnati Symphony and Cincinnati Pops Orchestras. His numerous wind ensemble compositions are published by the C.L. Barnhouse Company and are performed by concert bands worldwide.
A native of Ohio, Steven is a graduate of Miami University of Ohio, where he earned Bachelor of Music degrees with honors in both trumpet performance and music composition. He lives in New York City with his husband, Eric Gabbard.
About Houston Symphony
Under Music Director Juraj Valčuha, the Houston Symphony continues its second century as one of America’s leading orchestras with a full complement of concert, community, education, touring, and recording activities. One of the oldest performing arts organizations in Texas, the Symphony held its inaugural performance at The Majestic Theater in downtown Houston on June 21, 1913. Today, with an operating budget of $37.8 million, the full-time ensemble of professional musicians presents more than 130 concerts annually, making it the largest performing arts organization in Houston. Traditionally, musicians of the orchestra and the Symphony’s three Community-Embedded Musicians also offer over 1,000 community-based performances each year at various schools, community centers, hospitals, and churches reaching more than 200,000 people in Greater Houston annually.
After suspending concert activities in March 2020, the Symphony successfully completed a full 2020–21 season with in-person audiences and weekly livestreams of each performance, making it one of the only orchestras in the world to do so. The Houston Symphony remains committed to livestreaming its 2023–24 Season to a broad audience in over forty-five countries and all fifty states, one of few American orchestras dedicated to transmitting live performances to a size-able audience outside its home city through this technology.
The Grammy Award-winning Houston Symphony has recorded under various prestigious labels, including Koch International Classics, Naxos, RCA Red Seal, Telarc, Virgin Classics, and, most recently, Dutch recording label Pentatone. In 2017, the Houston Symphony was awarded an ECHO Klassik award for the live recording of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck under the direction of former Music Director Hans Graf. The orchestra earned its first Grammy nomination and Grammy Award at the 60th annual ceremony for the same recording in the Best Opera Recording category. The Symphony’s most recent recordings include a Pentatone release in January 2022 of its world premiere performances of Jimmy López Bellido’s Aurora and Ad Astra, and a Naxos release in July 2023 of its world premiere performance of Jennifer Higdon’s Duo Duel.
