IRONY ALERT: this rant may not be suitable for children under the age of 12.

This short rant is inspired by a Culturemap piece that Joel Luks wrote this week. (I’m sorry Joel, for cashing in on your own article, but I just gotta get this off my chest.) You can read Joel’s piece here, I’ll refrain from regurgitating it verbatim. The gist, however, is that a local community orchestra is prohibiting children under the age of 7 from attending concerts. Let me write that again, but this time with suggestive typeface: a community orchestra is prohibiting children under the age of 7 from attending concerts. So much for the community, huh?

Now, we’ve all been more than a little annoyed with children at movie theaters, restaurants, libraries, and everywhere else on the planet. I refuse to enter any fast food establishment that has a play place, as I know that the sound of screaming children and the sight of them running around the dining area makes me want to run through a plate-glass window. I have a two year old daughter. Hell, sometimes the sound of her screaming and the sight of her running around our dining area makes me want to run through a plate glass window. McDonald’s allows for unruly children. A play place wouldn’t have been erected and a clown wouldn’t have been adopted as their spokesperson otherwise. Most parents seem to have the good sense to take their children to places best suited for young kids, but occasionally parents decide to go elsewhere for breakfast/lunch/dinner/4thmeal. In my opinion, this is necessary for kids to learn several important things: food shouldn’t always come with toys, food should sometimes be healthy, and that restaurants and gymnastics go together like cookies and sandcastles. It is important for parents to include their children in things other than “child/kid-friendly” environments because that is how they learn to adapt to the world around them. Very few things in my adult life include jungle-gyms and sing-alongs, and children need to learn that this is, more often than not, the general rule.

Lately, it has come to my attention several times that more establishments are looking to generate a kid-free environment. I get that bars, strip clubs, rated-r movies, and casinos should be kid-free, but why a restaurant or a concert hall? What is it exactly that some adults want to be doing in a concert hall that a child’s presence would prohibit them from doing? Do these people want to light up a joint, yell strings of expletives, and dance naked of tables? Do that at home buddy, I’m here with my wife and I just want to eat without you bothering me! All kidding aside, I know that these people want to enjoy their music or meal in peace, but do they really think that adults are any better to be around? What about the adults that never quite learned how to act like adults around other adults in adult situations? I’m constantly annoyed by loud adult talkers at restaurants, adults ignoring smoking ordinances, adults with loud and smelly candy during emotive quiet moments at the symphony, and adults that never learned personal space. Don’t get me started about adults who own cars and drive (talk about asshole central!). Adults make me angry because we supposedly have the ability to think through situations rationally and control our own behavior, but many make a conscious decision to ignore that ability. Children have an excuse. The nice little old lady who unwraps her delicious mint DURING the performance is just inconsiderate (Here’s a thought, put the HALLS cough drop in your mouth before the downbeat. I can hear your candy. WE CAN ALL HEAR YOUR CANDY! The maestro can hear it and thinks you should leave, but is a gentleman and puts up with it to save face).

If you want to enjoy your meal or music without being distracted by others, then do yourself a favor and learn to cook and buy a bitchin’ stereo. When you choose to enter into the public and be surrounded by others, then you forfeit various amounts of conveniences. Deal with it. I can’t ban your tacky shirt, don’t ban my child.

Misha Penton. photo credit: Kerry Beyer

I’ve been extremely lucky in my brief, post-grad school months. Right out of the chute, I’ve had several extraordinary musical opportunities essentially fall into my lap. Being that this seems like a rather unusual occurrence of coincidences for a young composer such as myself, I’m devoting two separate posts to two of the projects that I am currently involved with here in Houston. For those who might not be aware of some of the happenings in Houston’s music scene, there are some great things happening in the classical community. My posts are going to focus primarily on two of these things: Divergence Vocal Theater and Scordatura Music Society. This first post will be about DVT.

I’ve linked to the Divergence Vocal Theater website above. For any Houston musicians who haven’t heard of Misha Penton and DVT, I strongly advise you to cease all other activity and head on over to her site right this instant. Misha, a singer and entrepreneur, is definitely one of the freshest creative forces in Houston, in that she has not only founded her own opera/mutli-disciplinary company (Divergence Vocal Theater), but has also created one of the coolest new venues in town (Divergence Music & Arts) wherein a multitude of artists and performers throw down, located at Spring Street Studios in Houston’s cultural arts district. Her artistic focus with Divergence Vocal Theater centers around the creation of new music, particularly chamber opera. Having collaborated with composers such as Elliot Cooper Cole and Dominick DiOrio, Penton has quickly become a local favorite amongst many of us in the Houston-based composer community. DiOrio, by the way, just recently won Houston Press’ Best Composer award for his collaboration with Misha on the opera-dance-theater piece Klytemnestra. Misha’s attitude towards creating new art through building and developing a community of artists and musicians embodies exactly what is needed in a city as diverse and musically fractured as Houston.

The venue is easily one of the more interesting performance spaces in Houston. Situated in the corner of a large interdisciplinary arts complex, Divergence Music and Arts provides an atmosphere that is immediately intimate and engaging for both the audience and the performers. Complete with an acoustically treated 20 foot ceiling, wood floors, and the complete lack of a raised stage, the space invites audience members to receive an up close and personal experience that puts themselves at arm’s length from the performers. While most patrons park their rears in standard “chairs,” Divergence also offers the option to put one’s self right in the thick of it all on cozy and stylishly arranged pillows “down in front.” To boot, I have been amazed at the clarity of sound at this venue. Not one note was lost at a recent premiere of the Houston Heights Orchestra, who gave their inaugural performance in the space.

The project that I am involved with will be an upcoming Autumn Soirée, which will feature vocal and instrumental music spanning the 19th-21st centuries, dance, puppetry, poetry, and theater. Being an autumnal theme in October, there will be much reference to spooks, specters, and decapitation. My roll has been to create music that more or less provides continuity throughout the evening. The instrumentation for this feat, as I have mentioned in a previous post, is electric guitar, piano, and tabla. My initial thought when proposed the idea to compose some music for the evening was something like, “what the hell do you write for THIS group that could possibly hold this thing together?” I of course welcomed the challenge with open arms. The thought of juxtaposing electric guitar and tabla with 19th Century French art song is just way too good to pass up. The performers for the evening include: singers Misha Penton and Alison Greene, dancer Meg Brooker, puppeteer Kelly Switzer, actor Jon Harvey, pianist Jeremy Wood, tabla player Mini Timmaraju, and myself on electric guitar. Heads will roll!

Please spread the word:

October 14th and 15th, 2011

8pm – $20 @ Divergence Music & Arts

1824 Spring St.