Damaged Romanticism: Joan Tower with Pianist Melvin Chen
Thursday September 25 – Saturday September 27 
7:30 pm

Saturday October 18
8:00 pm (7:00 pm Pre-concert conversation with Sarah Rothenberg and poet Richard Howard)

Conceived, directed, and performed by Sarah Rothenberg, pianist and artistic director of Da Camera of Houston, Epigraph for a Condemned Book is a unique tapestry of sight and sound that reveals the daring genius of Chopin’s piano works. Rothenberg is the Mitchell Center's Fall 2008 artist-in-residence.  

Presented in conjunction with the Blaffer Gallery exhibition "Damaged Romanticism: A Mirror of Modern Emotion," which surveys a strand of contemporary art that puts emotions front and center, built on the knowledge that rebirth grows out of experiences of things gone horribly wrong.

Location: Cullen Theater, Wortham Center downtown
Tickets and Information: Please call Da Camera of Houston at 713-524-5050

Organized by beloved outgoing University of Houston faculty member and celebrated poet Mark Doty, this evening will focus on contemporary poetry inspired by Emily Dickinson. Doty, as well as special guest poets Alice Fulton and Susan Howe, will read samples of their own works alongside poems by Dickinson.

Presented in conjunction with the commission and production of Ridge Theater's "Lightning at our feet," a multimedia song cycle created from the poems and letters of celebrated American poet Emily Dickinson.

MINI FESTIVAL

Back-to-back evenings of film screenings by award-winning filmmaker Bill Morrison, Ridge Theater member and co-creator of Lightning at our feet, featuring music by composer Michael Gordon.

Included in the festival is Decasia: The State of Decay (2001), a new kind of documentary, with music composed by Michael Gordon, in which Morrison uses decomposing film stock as raw material and draws on the tension between the fact of film’s unstable surface and the fragile nature of what was once photographically represented. An artist talk with Morrison will follow the film program.

Presented in conjunction with Ridge Theater's "Lightning at our feet," a multimedia song cycle created from the poems and letters of celebrated American poet Emily Dickinson.

Location: Aurora Picture Show and Museum of Fine Arts Houston
Tickets and Information: Please contact Aurora Picture Show at 713-868-2102 and MFAH at 713-639-7300

Wednesday October 29, Thursday October 30, 
& Saturday November 1
8:00 pm 

The Mitchell Center presents the world premiere of Lightning at our feet, a multimedia song cycle created from the poems and letters of American poet Emily Dickinson that reunites composer Michael Gordon and New York’s Ridge Theater – the creative team behind the critically acclaimed Decasia (2001). Setting Dickinson’s poems to music and motion, Lightning at our feet straddles the genres of music, theater, and dance, encompassing its elements in a world of projections from filmmaker Bill Morrison and visual artist Laurie Olinder (Shelter, BAM 2005, Next Wave).

Lightning at our feet was commissioned by the Mitchell Center and co-commissioned by Brooklyn Academy of Music for the 2008 Next Wave Festival in New York.

Location: Wortham Theater, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center University of Houston (Entrance 16 off Cullen Blvd; Free parking in Lot 16)
Admission: $10/$15
Tickets and Information: 713-743-2929