Best Bets: Twyla Tharp Dance, The Music of Motown and Runaway Radio

Breakfast is the most important meal of
the day, and today is Better
Breakfast Day, so we encourage you to get a better start on a day that will
hopefully end with you checking out one of our best bets. Keep reading because
this week, we’ve got season-opening programs, a documentary about a local radio
station-turned-legend, and more.

DACAMERA
will open its 2024-25 season tonight, Thursday, September 26, at 7:30 p.m. with
Takács
Quartet and Jeremy Denk in concert at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts.
Takács Quartet will be making
their first appearance with DACAMERA, playing Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in
C Major, Op. 54, No. 2, and Leoš Janáček’s String Quartet No. 1, dubbed the “Kreutzer
Sonata” after the Leo Tolstoy novella that inspired it, while pianist and MacArthur
“Genius” fellow Denk tackles Antonín
Dvořák’s Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81, which has been called “easily
one of the finest examples of late Romantic chamber music.” Tickets for the
performance are still available and can be purchased here for $46 to $76.

ROCO’s full
40-piece chamber orchestra, with three world premieres and a newly animated,
rescored classic, will head over to Miller Outdoor Theatre on Friday,
September 27, at 7:30 p.m. to present a spacey, season-opening program titled Remarkable.
The program leads off the chamber orchestra’s 20th season, which you can learn
more about here.
Tickets
to Friday night’s performance can be reserved here starting today,
September 26, at 10 a.m., or you can plan to sit on the Hill without a
ticket. As always, shows at Miller are free, and if you can’t make it, you can
livestream this one on the Miller Outdoor Theatre website, YouTube channel, or
Facebook page.

Remarkable
will be performed a second time at The Church
of St. John the Divine the following night, Saturday, September 28, at 5 p.m.
Tickets to this 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.

A modern-day witch living in the big
city, played by Kim Novak, falls for a mere mortal, played by James Stewart, in
Richard Quine’s Bell,
Book and Candle – the premise of which served as an inspiration behind
the classic American sitcom Bewitched (according
to series’ creator Sol Saks). On Friday, September 27, at 7:30 p.m., in
honor of the 100th anniversary of Surrealism, The
Menil Collection will host an outdoor screening of the 1958 rom-com. Why
this picture? Because the film, based on a play by John Van Druten, is set in Julius
Carlebach’s Carlebach Gallery, a favorite of the Surrealists and the place
where Novak’s witchy Gillian Holroyd works. Moon Rooster Tacos
and Kona Shaved Ice trucks will be
on-site during the free, open-to-all screening.

Celebrate the 60th anniversary of a
pioneering dancemaker’s company on Saturday, September 28, at 7:30 p.m. when Performing Arts Houston presents Twyla
Tharp Dance at the Wortham
Theater Center. The program, part of the Tudor Family Dance Series, will
feature three Tharp-choreographed works, including two new works – “a
male solo of breadth and power” called Brel,
its title a nod to its music by Belgian vocalist Jacques Brel, and The Ballet Master, a contemporary meets
Baroque piece with appearances by characters from Don Quixote and music by Simeon
ten Holt and Antonio Vivaldi – and a revival of Ocean’s Motion, a 1975 piece for five dancers set to music by Chuck
Berry that Tharp herself described as “cool.”
Tickets can be purchased here
for $29 to $99.

Berry
Gordy Jr. founded Motown Records (then Tamla Records) in 1959, and the
label produced music that is beloved to this day. Houston Symphony will bring Motown
classics from acts like The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, and The Jackson 5 to Jones
Hall on Saturday, September 28, at 7:30 p.m. during Ain’t
No Mountain High Enough: The Music of Motown. Conductor Steven Reineke will
lead the Symphony, which will be joined by vocalists Capathia Jenkins, Ryan Shaw, Chelsea
Cymone, Michael Dixon, and Raven Johnson. The concert will be presented a
second time on Sunday, September 29, at 2 p.m., a performance which will also
be livestreamed. Tickets to either in-hall performance can be purchased here
for $52 to $130, or you can buy access to the livestream here for $20.

Ethel Smyth’s 1910 composition, “The
March of the Women,” became “the
true anthem of the suffrage movement,” with Smyth saying of it, “If
I have contrived to get into my music anything of the spirit which makes this
movement the finest thing I have ever known in my life, then perhaps the March
may in some way be worthy of your acceptance.” On Saturday, September 28,
at 8 p.m., the Houston Pride Band will
open their season with a program of music that seeks to celebrate those
movements and activists, like Smyth and the suffrage movement, that have fought
for equality and justice during Power to the People
at the MATCH. Tickets to the program are
available here
for $5 (for children 12 and under) to $15.

One way to run afoul of the corrupt San
Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office under Humpy Parker – so corrupt it inspired a
book and TV movie, 1989’s Terror on
Highway 59 – was to display a KLOL sticker on your car. On Wednesday,
October 2, at 7:30 p.m., you can learn what made Houston’s progressive radio
station so popular, beloved, and dangerous during a screening of Runaway
Radio: The Rise and Fall of KLOL FM at Alta Arts. Mike McGuff, the filmmaker/local
blogger behind the documentary, has described KLOL as a “beacon,”
a pre-internet place for “wild
programming and escapism” known for its personalities and stunts. Tickets to
the screening, followed by a Q&A, are available here
for $25. (If you can’t make it, you can always stream it.)

Backstage shenanigans take center stage
on Wednesday, October 2, at 7:30 p.m. when the Alley Theatre opens Michael Frayn’s 1982
three-act farce Noises Off. Elizabeth Bunch, who plays Dotty
Otley in the show, which makes three stops in the life of the play-within-the-play,
recently told the Houston Press that “every
production is its own kind of journey,” saying that “it
doesn’t matter how many times you see this play, every production is going to
be different and frankly every night could be different because of the
electricity in the air.” Performances are scheduled to continue at 7:30
p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, and
2 and 7 p.m. Sundays through October 27. Tickets are available here for $29 to $105.