This weekend, we’re celebrating Halloween and Día de Muertos and transitioning to November. Of course, that doesn’t change our best bets, which once again offer you our top picks for things to do. Keep reading for a quilter’s dream festival, a weekend of Korean films, a musical fairy tale, and more.
You can trace the International Quilt Festival, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, back to 1974 when future Quilter’s Hall of Fame member Karey Bresenhan threw a show for those who frequented her antique-turned-quilt shop. The event has grown, and when it returns to George R. Brown Convention Center on Thursday, October 31, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., attendees can expect hundreds of classes, more than 1,200 quilts displayed across 29 exhibits, and over 250 exhibitors with around 600 shopping booths for all your fabric, pattern, and sewing needs. The festival will continue from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, November 1, and Saturday, November 2, and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, November 3. Daily admission is available here for $15 to $18 (children ten and under free), with a full show pass also available for $58.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will kick off its latest installment of Korean Film Nights on Thursday, October 31, at 7 p.m. with a Halloween-appropriate screening of Jang Jae-hyun’s K-horror film Exhuma. In the film, a shaman and her apprentice, with the help of a geomancer and a mortician, are hired by a wealthy man to lift a seeming curse on his family’s firstborn sons, which takes them to the border between North and South Korea to exhume the body of one of the family’s ancestors. Tickets to the screening are available here for $8 to $10. The festival will continue throughout the weekend with five additional films, including screenings of Black Gospel at 7 p.m. on Friday, November 1, and Fighter in the Wind at 1 p.m. on Saturday, November 2, which both will feature post-film Q&As with actor and hip-hop singer Yang Dong-geun.
A minister living in Selma, Alabama, in 1966 faces challenges to vote in Bridge in the Distance, which Shabach Enterprise will open at 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 31, at the MATCH. Playwright Clarence Holmes Jr. recently told the Houston Press that he wants audiences, especially those “who are sitting there saying, ‘I’m not worried about the vote, man. Nobody cares about that,’” to “say to themselves, ‘Look at what people have done in order for some people to have the right to vote and then look at me…Let me get up and let me register and let me vote.’” Additional performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. Friday, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 3 p.m. Sunday through November 3. Tickets can be purchased here for $30 to $40.
Asia Society Texas will once again host their Night Market, a nod to the street markets found in East and Southeast Asia, on Friday, November 1, from 6 to 10 p.m. The rain-or-shine, all-ages-welcome event includes a free outdoor market with plenty of vendors selling food, art, apparel, and more; a stage with live music and dance; screenings by Netflix; a lantern display by Houston Botanic Garden; and an all-access beer garden. Indoors, you can find ticketed activities, including a dance concert spotlighting K-pop, Bollywood, and hip-hop; all things anime and manga on Otaku Alley; and various carnival activities and game zone. You can also check out the center’s latest exhibition, “Space City: Art in the Age of Artemis.” Indoor access can be purchased for $5 here, with $10 tickets that allow entry to watch the performances also available.
Sir Donald Runnicles will serve as conductor on Friday, November 1, at 7:30 p.m. when the Houston Symphony presents Hansel and Gretel & Don Quixote at Jones Hall. The overture to Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser will open the evening, followed by selections from Hansel and Gretel, Engelbert Humperdinck’s “sweeping interpretation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale,” and Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote, a tone poem based on Miguel de Cervantes’s classic 17th-century novel, with Brinton Averil Smith’s cello voicing the Man of Mancha and Joan DerHovsepian’s viola as his loyal squire Sancho Panza. Performances are also scheduled for Saturday, November 2, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, November 3, at 2 p.m. Tickets to the in-hall performances can be purchased here for $39 to $110. Saturday night’s concert will also be livestreamed, with access available here for $20.
Day of the Dead celebrations, which intend to honor loved ones – from family members to pets – that have passed away, have their “roots in southern Mexico,” with their unique approach a “combination of the Indigenous cult of death and ritual rites with Catholicism.” On Saturday, November 2, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., MECA will host their 24th Annual Día de Muertos Festival, inviting Houstonians to visit MECA’s Historic Dow School campus in Houston’s Old Sixth Ward for a free, two-day community celebration. Attendees can experience children’s art activities, artist and artisan vendors, food, and musical and dance performances across three different stages, as well as an exhibition of ofrendas curated by local artist Luis Gavito. The festival continues on Sunday, November 3, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Conductor (and Grammy winner) JoAnn Falletta will lead ROCO’s full 40-piece chamber orchestra in two ROCO-commissioned world premieres exploring the human experience, Jonathan Leshnoff’s “No Grit No Pearl” and Juan Pablo Contreras’s “Alma Monarca,” during its latest concert, Outspoken, on Saturday, November 2, at 5 p.m. at The Church of St. John the Divine. The program will also include pianist John Novacek’s Three Rags for two violins (played by Scott St. John and Brian Lewis) and orchestra, as well as the Texas premiere of a reimagining of Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden by Andy Stein. Tickets to the performance are pay-what-you-wish (with a suggested price of $35) and are available here. This performance will also be livestreamed for free on ROCO’s website, Facebook page, and YouTube channel.
Connecticut-based dance company Pilobolus will bring its particular brand of theatrical flexibility to Miller Outdoor Theatre on Saturday, November 2, at 7:30 p.m., when it brings its re:CREATION tour to Houston. The Emmy Award-winning company’s latest tour promises a collection of works both old and new, from “Walklyndon,” a signature piece from the company’s inception, to the more recent “On the Nature of Things,” which draws from the works of folks like Leonardo da Vinci and John Milton, and “The Ballad,” a two-year-old collaboration with storyteller Darlene Kascak of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation. Like all shows at Miller, Saturday night’s performance is free to attend, and tickets can be reserved for the covered seating area here starting Friday, November 1, at 10 a.m., or you can plan to sit on the Hill – no ticket required.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
