beyond the sanctuary walls
friday may 26, 7:30pm
midtown arts & theater center houston
3400 main st, houston tx 77002
$30 general admission;
$10 student tickets at the door
Theo Chandler, Composer
Charles Paul, Bassist
Alexandra Smither, Soprano
About
Houston’s artist-led, artist-curated Kinetic Ensemble closes its 8th concert season with a deeply expressive program exploring themes of love, fear, and vulnerability through music for song and strings. At the center is the world premiere of “Behind the Sanctuary Walls” by award-winning composer Theo Chandler, written for soprano, double bass, and string orchestra. Featuring dynamic British-Canadian soprano Alexandra Smither, and Cleveland Orchestra bassist Charles Paul, “Behind the Sanctuary Walls” takes us through the enthralling, intertwining nature of intimacy and distance, connection and separation, capturing the extremes of human experience across five movements.
Complementing this premiere is Tchaikovsky’s celebrated “Serenade for Strings,” a work that epitomizes the outward, heartrending expressivity of nineteenth-century romanticism, along with a selection of newly adapted songs by Clara Schumann, arranged for string orchestra by Kinetic violinist Giancarlo Latta. This concert is generously sponsored by and dedicated to our dear friend, John Epstein.
— curated by Natalie Lin Douglas & Giancarlo Latta
Program
Clara Schumann / Giancarlo Latta: Four Clara Schumann Lieder, arr. for strings
Theo Chandler: Beyond the Sanctuary Walls for soprano, double bass, and string orchestra (2023 — Premiere)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings
Featured Artists
Theo Chandler is a Houston-based composer of concert music and stage works. Chandler is a recipient of the Barlow Endowment General Commission, Copland House Residency Award, SCI/ASCAP Graduate Commission, American Prize for Vocal Chamber Music, Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Award, Charles Ives Scholarship from the Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Graduate Music Award from the Presser Foundation. He has received commissions from the Tanglewood Music Center, New York Youth Symphony First Music Program, Maryland Chamber Winds, Utah Arts Festival, Les Délices, Fischer Duo, and others.
Chandler has been a fellow at the Cabrillo Festival Composers Workshop, Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, Mizzou International Composers Festival, Tanglewood Music Center, Copland House Cultivate, and Aspen Music Festival. His residencies include Composer in Residence for the Maryland Wind Festival, Young Artist Composer for Da Camera, Emerging Composer Fellow for Musiqa, Composer in Residence for Les Délices, and Young Composer in Residence for the Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings.
Chandler holds degrees from Rice University (DMA), The Juilliard School (MM), and Oberlin Conservatory (BM), studying with Pierre Jalbert, Shih-Hui Chen, Karim Al-Zand, Anthony Brandt, Melinda Wagner, Samuel Adler, and Steven Stucky.
Theo Chandler, composer
Charles Paul was appointed First Assistant Principal Double Bass of The Cleveland Orchestra in 2023, having previously served as a member of the bass section of The Cleveland Orchestra and the bass section of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He has appeared in the Boston Globe, Houston Chronicle and American Public Media’s Performance Today as a soloist, chamber musician and collaborator.
Paul performs a wide variety of repertoire, performing as a member of the Teatro Nuovo Bel Canto Orchestra, a founding member of the Kinetic Ensemble, and with Complexions Contemporary Ballet. He has premiered works of new music for solo double bass and chamber music by Doug Balliet, Erin Gee, Theo Chandler and Jon Anderson. In 2018, Paul worked with his mother Meg Paul and the Gerald Arpino Foundation in a recreation of the 1971 work for dance and solo double bass Valentine by Gerald Arpino and Jacob Druckman. Additionally, in 2018, Paul performed as a solo act on the main stage of the Detroit Music Weekend, opening for the Jackson Five.
Charles Paul, Bassist
From the thorniest contemporary scores to the lyricism of Mozart, soprano Alexandra Smither brings her consummate artistry and searing intellect to every engagement. Ms. Smither’s signature rapport with new music shows her as “an extraordinarily adept soprano, one who can shriek, gurgle, cackle, mutter, gesture, and declaim as well as sing beautifully.” (The Threepenny Blog). During the 21/22 season, Ms. Smither sang Iphigenia #1 in Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding’s new opera Iphigenia at MASSMoCA, ArtsEmerson, The Kennedy Center, Cal Performances at UC Berkeley, and The Broad Stage in Los Angeles, debuted with California Symphony in Katherine Balch’s Illuminate, and returned to Ars Lyrica to sing Belinda in Dido and Aeneas. The 22/23 season brought debuts with the Charlotte Symphony and Hamilton Symphony, and at the Buffalo Bayou Cistern for a co-composed work. She returned to FAWN Opera for a studio recording of Scime’s L’homme et le ciel and in May premieres a new work by Theo Chandler with Houston’s Kinetic Ensemble. She has sung with Houston Grand Opera, Boston Symphony, Tanglewood Music Center, California Symphony.
Passionate about systems change and advocacy, she works for Air Alliance Houston to manage the coalition of groups opposing the expansion of Houston’s I-45 freeway and is the volunteer communications director for Stop TxDOT I-45. A doctoral student at the City University New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, Ms. Smither’s dissertation focuses on historical communal song. She is a 2023 Music Academy Alumni Enterprise Awardee; in June she will travel to Santa Barbara to prototype her winning project “The New Community Songbook,” which facilitates the creation of new movement songs between community organizing groups and musicians.
Alexandra Smither, Soprano