Houston Symphony's ExxonMobil Summer Symphony Nights Continue 6/26-27

The exciting third and fourth concerts in the ExxonMobil Summer Symphony Nights series with the Houston Symphony will take place on Friday, June 26, and Saturday, June 27, at Miller Outdoor Theatre.

The theme of Friday's concert will be "East Meets West." It will include music from China, France, Czechoslovakia and the United States, all led by Associate Conductor Robert Franz. Pipa player Changlu Wu will perform Han Lan Kui's Qilian Rhapsody for Pipa and Orchestra. Wu began studying the pipa, an ancient, four-stringed Chinese instrument often referred to as a Chinese lute, at age 6. She first came to the United States from China in 1990 to study piano at the University of Houston's Moores School of Music and upon graduation, she established the Changlu Wu School of Music, where she teaches her pipa and guzheng students the splendor of Chinese music and culture. The concert will close with one of Debussy's most admired orchestral works, La Mer, a rich work that depicts the ocean.

Saturday evening's concert will introduce two talented musicians, guest conductor Anu Tali and guest soloist Bixby Kennedy, silver medalist of the 2015 Houston Symphony Ima Hogg Competition. Tali will conduct a program of Shostakovich, Mozart, and Elgar's Enigma Variations. Music Director of the Sarasota Orchestra in Florida and Chief Conductor of the Nordic Symphony Orchestra, her conducting style has been described as "charismatic and energetic."

Kennedy, a graduate music student at Yale University, will perform Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. He holds degrees in modern and historical clarinet performance, as well as a performer's certificate, which was awarded to him for his undergraduate junior recital at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music.

Both performances will be "tweetcerts," a social media concert component that allows audiences to further connect and engage with the music, interact with other users, and post their comments and questions in real time. The Houston Symphony will live-tweet program notes and fun facts about the music from its Twitter handle, @HouSymphony, with the hashtag #HSSummer during the concert.

Admission is free for the concerts, but tickets are required for the covered seated area. Tickets are available at the Miller Theatre Box Office the day of the performance between 10:30 a.m. -1:00 p.m. Any remaining tickets are released one hour before the performance time. Visit www.milleroutdoortheatre.com for more information.