Celebrating the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, this innovative collaboration between composer Anthony Brandt, neuro-engineer Dr. Pepe Contreras-Vidal, and a team of talented artists explores the fascinating relationship between music and the brain. Learn more about the original source material and human creativity here.
Ideas can come from a variety of experiences, and often come from multiple inspirations. Recent studies indicate that sources of inspiration might be grouped into categories like the “natural world (physical/biological), human world (psychological/social), holistic world, culture (general, art/non-art), and synthesis of influences.” In October of 2022, Musiqa presented three new works by emerging composers, each of who drew on a different source for inspiration.
Turn-of-the-century Paris was a hotbed of artistic innovation, and cabarets were the furnaces where this innovation was forged. It was here that poets, musicians, painters and bohemians of all sorts rubbed shoulders and laid the groundwork for the expressionist, abstract and modernist movements that continue to shape our culture today. And it was here that an American-born dancer, choreographer and light designer dazzled audiences, inspired artists from Toulouse-Lautrec to Yeats, and redefined modern dance, only to be largely forgotten in the decades that followed. In March of 2022 Musiqa and Stages proudly shone an overdue spotlight on pioneering artist Loië Fuller with the world premiere CABARET OF SHADOWS, of a new chamber opera by renowned composer Laura Schwendinger.
LiveWire by Anthony Brandt is new work for string quartet in which each movement explores a different process of the human brain. These six animated films were created by Traci Lavois Thiebaud, using a performance by Jacob Schafer (violin), Evie Chen (violin), Sebastian Stefanovic (viola) and Bree Ahern (cello). This project was made possible with support from the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance. Click onward to explore…
