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HOUSTON, TX (January 18, 2023) — The Houston Symphony explores dance rhythms from around the world in its PNC Family Series concert Get Up and Dance!, Saturday, February 3 at Jones Hall. Houston Symphony Assistant Conductor Gonzalo Farias leads the orchestra in popular selections like Ary Barroso’s Brazil (samba), Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer (ragtime), Aaron Copland’s Hoedown from Rodeo, and Arnoldo Villodo’s and Gabriel Matos Rodriguez’s El choclo & la cumparsita (tango), all likely to have the whole family dancing in the aisles. Also on the program are Bernstein’s Three Dance Variations from Fancy Free (galop, waltz and danzٕón), and Zequinho de Abreu’s Tico-Tico no Fubá (Brazilian choro) which rose to popularity in the ’40s as a signature song for Carmen Miranda.
Guests can look forward to trying various orchestral instruments at the Instrument Petting Zoo and can enjoy a lively dance party at the Round Bar. Between performances, the Folklorico Dancers will treat the audience to short and entertaining dance routines. There will also be a dance ribbon crafting and coloring session in the lobby. For tickets and more information, please call or text 713.224.7575, or visit houstonsymphony.org/dance.
HOUSTON SYMPHONY PRESENTS GET UP AND DANCE!
Saturday, February 3 at 10a.m.
Saturday, February 3 at 11:30 a.m.
Gonzalo Farias, conductor
About Gonzalo Farias
An engaging orchestral conductor, award-winning pianist, and passionate educator, Gonzalo Farias is the Assistant Conductor of the Houston Symphony. In an ever-changing world, Gonzalo desires to establish music-making as a way of rethinking our place in society by cultivating respect, trust, and cooperation among all people in our community.
Gonzalo was born in Santiago de Chile, where he began his piano studies at age five. He earned his bachelor’s degree at the P.C. University of Chile and then continued his graduate piano studies at the New England Conservatory as a full-scholarship student of Wha-Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman. He won first prize at the Claudio Arrau International Piano Competition and prizes at the Maria Canals and Luis Sigall Piano Competitions. As a conductor, he attended the University of Illinois working with Donald Schleicher, the Peabody Conservatory with Marin Alsop, and worked privately with Larry Rachleff and Otto-Werner Mueller.
Besides having a fond love for piano, chamber, and contemporary music, Gonzalo is a passionate supporter of second-order cybernetics to help understand communication and how complex systems organize, coordinate, and interconnect with one another. This includes the interdependent and recursive nature of musical experiences in which performers and audiences alike interact, respond, and co-create each other’s space. His final doctoral thesis, Logical Predictions and Cybernetics, explores the case of Cornelius Cardew’s The Great Learning to redefine music activity as a self-organized organization. In addition, he has a warm affection for his formal studies of Zen Buddhism, which has been a major influence on his approach to music and life.
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.
