Alabama is the band that changed everything. They reeled off 21 straight #1 singles, a record that will probably never be equaled in any genre. 
They brought youthful energy, sex appeal and a rocking edge that broadened country's audience and opened the door to self-contained bands from then on, and they undertook a journey that led, 73 million albums later, to the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The award-winning Texas Medical Center Orchestra proudly announces their return to the Hobby Center continuing their 21st season.
Texas Medical Center Orchestra was founded in 2000, and is one of the few community orchestras in the United States to be based in a medical 
community. Each year, TMCO performs concerts in the Crain Garden Lobby of Houston Methodist Hospital and various locations within the Texas Medical Center as well as in premier concert halls in Houston. In addition, TMCO contributes to the community and has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the MS Society and has performed free concerts for tens of thousands of Houstonians.
Jazzy Sundays in the Parks is a free live music series made possible by the Kinder Foundation continuing this weekend at Buffalo Bayou Park.
This Weekend its is vocalist/saxophonist David Caceres with an afternoon opening performance by Horace Grigsby.
David Caceres comes from a family with a rich musical heritage. His grandfather, jazz violinist 
Emilio Caceres, led a popular swing orchestra in San Antonio, Texas in the 1930's & 40's. However, to jazz fans the Caceres name is familiar due to the work of his great uncle Ernie Caceres, who played saxophone and clarinet with the Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Woody Herman big bands.
Horace Grigsby’s talent and influence runs strong and deep through the Houston jazz scene. Beginning his jazz career in the 1960’s, audiences 
across town are mesmerized by his soulful and emotive voice. Audiences across town are mesmerized by his soulful and emotive voice. The Houston-native thrives on smooth jazz standards where his vocals can really shine.
With his magnetic charisma, expressive scat singing, and incredible trumpet skills, Louis Armstrong changed music forever and made the 
whole world smile. Travel back to the golden age of jazz as the incomparable Byron Stripling salutes Satchmo with recreations of iconic hits like “What a Wonderful World,” “Basin Street Blues,” “St. Louis Blues,” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Houston's Grand Opera this week and weekend presents "Carmen". Carmen is an opera in four acts by French composer Georges Bizet. ... It is set in southern Spain and tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of the fiery gypsy Carmen.
A tragedy of obsessive love, Bizet’s Carmen from 1875 is considered the most popular opera in the world today. It is impossible not to smile with recognition when the well-known first notes of the prelude ring out from the orchestra.
Mezzo-soprano and Houston Grand Opera alumna Carolyn Sproule takes on the role of the famous bohemian whose beauty, confidence, and provocative lifestyle captivate the soldier Don José, sung by incredible tenor Richard Trey Smagur.
Featuring original music by Tony and eight-time Oscar winner, Alan Menken (Newsies, Beauty 
and the Beast, Little Shop of Horrors), this uplifting musical was nominated for five Tony Awards, including Be
One morning in the summer of 1999, Shukriya Barakzai woke up feeling dizzy and feverish. According to the Taliban’s rules, she needed a Maharram, a male guardian, in order to leave home to visit the 
doctor. Her husband was at work, and she had no sons. So she shaved her 2-year-old daughter’s head, dressed her in boys’ clothing to pass her off as a guardian, and slipped on a burka. Its blue folds hid her fingertips, painted red in violation of the Taliban’s ban on nail polish. She asked her neighbor, another woman, to walk with her to the doctor in central Kabul.
To top it off: rude customers, whose abuses restaurant staff are often obligated to tolerate. And lately, testy diners have only gotten more impatient as they emerge from 
the pandemic shutdowns.
Cornett, off work for a few weeks, realized he received enough money through unemployment benefits to start saving — for the first time. He wondered if the work he loves would ever entail a job that came with health insurance or paid leave.
Nicole Krauss’s Beautiful 
Letter to Van Gogh on How to Break the Loop of Our Destructive Patterns
Early one morning, Linsey Marr tiptoed to her dining room table, slipped on a headset, and fired up Zoom. On her computer screen, dozens of familiar faces began to appear. She 
also saw a few people she didn’t know, including Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for Covid-19, and other expert advisers to the WHO. It was just past 1 pm Geneva time on April 3, 2020, but in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Marr lives with her husband and two children, dawn was just beginning to break.
Over Zoom, they laid out the case. They ticked through a growing list of superspreading events in restaurants, call centers, cruise ships, and a choir rehearsal, instances where people got sick even when they were across the room from a contagious 
person. The incidents contradicted the WHO’s main safety guidelines of keeping 3 to 6 feet of distance between people and frequent handwashing. If SARS-CoV-2 traveled only in large droplets that immediately fell to the ground, as the WHO was saying, then wouldn’t the distancing and the handwashing have prevented such outbreaks? Infectious air was the more likely culprit, they argued. But the WHO’s experts appeared to be unmoved. If they were going to call Covid-19 airborne, they wanted more direct evidence—proof, which could take months to gather, that the virus was abundant in the air. Meanwhile, thousands of people were falling ill every day.