Outspoken Bean

The concert also features ECHO’s 2024 Young Artist Concerto Competition winner Arturo Gonzalez, a supremely talented junior at The Woodlands College Park High School, who will perform the third movement of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto. Since its premiere in 1936, Peter and the Wolf has introduced countless young audiences to the individual sounds of Western classical instruments (the bassoon, the flute, timpani, etc.) through now-famous musical passages or “themes” representing the story’s characters, including the animals. It’s a favorite of concert audiences, and everyone from Sting to Patrick Stewart to Viola Davis has narrated performances — but before ECHO reached out to him, Bean had never heard Peter and the Wolf. “This is something new for me,” says Bean, who has performed live with Houston Ballet. “I’ve performed with music a ton of times, but never something like this.” In rehearsal, with ECHO’s co-founder and music director Michael Fahey conducting, Bean is exploring different voices for each character, and using his ears and eyes to stay “in the pocket” with the music as it unfolds. “There’s so much audio color in this, with the bassoon, the horn, the drums,” says Bean. “I just don’t want to get swallowed!”