The Texas Medical Center Orchestra was heating up at its usual Wednesday rehearsal. Literally. On a surprisingly muggy January day, despite the previous week’s rehearsal getting canceled by Winter Storm Enzo, many of the players broke a sweat in their white lab coats. Every door at the Merfish Teen Center was open to try and capture an elusive Houston breeze, spilling music out into the Meyerland night.

Don Juan, specifically. A tone poem by modernist master Richard Strauss, a famously difficult and, uh, virile piece composed when he was only 24. The song is a sonic emotional dual between the conquests of the legendary Lothario and his profound melancholy at never finding true love.

TMCO founder and conductor Libi Lebel is determined to get the right emotional tone from her orchestra. Diminutive and dressed in typical conductor black, her enthusiasm shines through in her face and instructions, delivered in a broad New York accent. During the soaring romantic passages, she appears to swim through a sea of music, her eyes fixated on a scene no one else can see. When it comes time for the bass-driven triplets that signify Don Juan’s wild mood swings, she stabs her baton like a fencing foil, stomping her foot with the rhythm so hard it almost topples her music stand.

Read more: https://www.houstoniamag.com/arts-and-culture/2025/02/texas-medical-center-orchestra