One month down and 11 more to go in 2024 as we move into February, but one thing that doesn’t change it our weekly list of best bets. This week, we’ve got the music of greats like George Gershwin and Frank Loesser, one-night-only of Japanese dance, and the return of one of the biggest festivals in Houston. Keep reading for these and more on this week’s list of best bets.
Martin Scorsese has called Georges Méliès “a magician,” saying that the filmmaker, arguably the father of the science fiction film, “understood the possibilities of the motion picture camera” and “invented everything, basically, he invented it all.” On Friday, February 2, at 7 p.m. you can catch Méliès’s 1902 “magnum opus,” A Trip to the Moon, during Cinema Luminaire at Discovery Green. The event, presented by Discovery Green and Villa Albertine in Houston, will also feature remarks from University of Houston Professor Keith Houk and French violinist Kami Ghavi Helm, who will supply live music alongside the silent short. A selection of four additional short films from the prolific Méliès, who directed more than “500 short experimental films from 1896 and 1913,” will also be screened. You can register for the free event here.
Visit the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on Friday, February 2, at 7 p.m. to see Mountains, the first of four films selected for the museum’s film series, “Through the Lens of Black Women: Beauty and Expectations.” The series, which runs through February 4, will also feature screenings of All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Invisible Beauty and Naked Acts. Series curator Autumn Johnson recently told the Houston Press that the opening night film Mountains would be her pick if you can only see one of the four films, saying that director Monica Sorelle is “someone to look out for,” adding that she thinks “it would be really cool to say you got to see her on the big screen before she really blew up.” Tickets to any of the screenings can be purchased here for $7 to $9.
The Marcus Roberts Trio and Catherine Russell will join the Houston Symphony on Friday, February 2, at 8 p.m. for Jazz, Love & Gershwin: A Century of Rhapsody in Blue at Jones Hall. In addition to classic George Gershwin songs like “Embraceable You” and “I Got Rhythm,” Roberts will join the Symphony for a special performance to mark the 100th anniversary of the premiere Rhapsody in Blue, “a sassy, tuneful, irresistibly down-to-earth portrait of a country that had found its voice and was poised to take its place on the world stage.” The concert will also be performed at 8 p.m. on Saturday, February 3, and 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, February 4, with Saturday night’s performance also being livestreamed. In-hall tickets for any of the shows can be purchased here for $36 to $135 or you can buy livestream access for Saturday’s show here for $20.
Ann Richards, the last Democrat to be elected governor of Texas, had a fan in actress Holland Taylor, who turned her grief over Richards’s passing in 2006 into a one-woman play simply titled Ann. Taylor put on the former governor’s white suit for the last time in 2022 and Julie White, who recorded the lines of Richard’s assistant for Taylor’s last show, noted that though the actress is not Texan, “she captured the part of Texas that I am proud of — that kind of iconoclastic, funny, laconic storytelling.” On Friday, February 2, at 8 p.m. over at the MATCH, you can catch Nora Hahn take on the role when The Garden Theatre opens the play. Performances will continue at 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays through February 11. Tickets can be purchased here for $23 to $28.
February, as you may know, is Black History Month. You may not know that the “father of Black history” is Carter G. Woodson, “who first set out in 1926 to designate a time to promote and educate people about Black history and culture.” He claimed the second week of February, and by the the 1960s, that week “had evolved into what is now known as Black History Month.” On Saturday, February 3, from 1 to 4 p.m. you can celebrate both the month and the man during the Woodson Black Fest 2024 at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. This year’s fest will feature performances by Outspoken Bean, Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, Stacey Allen and Russell Guess, and a comic and illustrator panel. The event is free, but you are encouraged to RSVP here.
Get ready for “a rare showcase” of Japanese dance on Saturday, February 3, at 7:30 p.m. when Japan-America Society of Houston and Japan Society of New York present Nihon Buyo in the 21st Century: From Kabuki Dance to Boléro at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts. Nihon buyo means Japanese dance, literally, and during the one-night-only program, you can see the traditional Kabuki piece “Toba-e” and Hanayagi Genkuro’s retelling of “The Legend of Dojoji,” titled “Boléro – The Legend of Anchin and Kiyohime.” The folk tale is a story of revenge and “Genkuro coaxes out the sinister notes of the score in a deranged but good way,” creating something “full of drama, danger and brittle, seething anger” all set to Maurice Ravel’s famous Boléro. Tickets can be purchased here for $65 to $85.
The ReelAbilities Houston Film & Arts Festival, produced by the Jewish Family Service Houston Alexander Institute for Inclusion with the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, returns for a two-and-a-half-week celebration of differently abled people across speaker events, films, music and art from Sunday, February 4 through Thursday, February 22. With a full slate of programming, the festival hopes to bring awareness and advocate for systemic change by, as 2024 Festival Co-Chair Karen Harberg recently told KHOU, trying “to focus on the ‘ability’ part of disability rather than the ‘dis’ part.” All of the festival’s art, film and music events are free and you can view the full schedule of events here as well as links to register for each individual event.
Broadway fans know Frank Loesser, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1962 for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, an Oscar for “Baby It’s Cold Outside” in 1949 and, of course, there’s his Tony Award-winning Guys and Dolls. On Monday, February 5, at 7:30 p.m. you can enjoy Loesser’s work when Paul Hope Cabaret presents Luck Be a Lady – Broadway of Frank Loesser. The cabaret fill feature such recognizable songs as “Adelaide's Lament,” “Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat” and “Standing on the Corner” among many others. Two additional performances of the program are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Monday, February 12, and Monday, February 19. Tickets to any of the performances can be purchased here for $20 to $35.
