Click above to buy for Eliot Fisk on guitar and John Gibbons on harpsichord on October 27 at 7:30 p.m. Click on the links below for other dates and performances.

• Buy here for The Juilliard String Quartet on October 3, 2009, at 7:30 p.m.
• Buy here for the Charles Lloyd New Quartet on October 17, 2009, at 7:30 p.m.
• Buy here for Italian Romantics performed by the Enso String Quartet on October 30, 2009, at 8 p.m.

Today’s Groupon hugs your half note, tickles your treble clef, and quivers your quaver with a $20 ticket for a Da Camera jazz or classical music concert (a $35 value). Da Camera is an organization that brings international and American jazz and chamber music ensembles, as well as running literature and visual arts programs, to Houston. It won Chamber Music America’s award for adventurous programming.

Performances take place at the Cullen Theater of the Wortham Center (click here to see a seating chart of the theater). Seating is first come, first served in reserved sections (not including front section of orchestra or mezzanine level). The Fisk Gibbons concert held at The Menil Collection is a general admission venue and is also first come first serve. Choose from four concerts:

• The Romantic Spirit concert is the world-renowned Juilliard String Quartet playing Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Schumann. See it on October 3 at 7:30 p.m.
• Charles Lloyd is a legendary jazz saxophonist whose live show is “a sterling example of acoustic jazz that straddles the fence between freedom and structure, where melody is king but is now and then deposed by chaos,” according to the Los Angeles Times. See him on October 17 at 7:30 p.m.
• Hear Vivaldi, Corelli, Scarlatti, and Bach performed by Eliot Fisk on guitar and
John Gibbons on harpsichord (click here to see a video of Fisk playing). See the duo on October 27 at 7:30 p.m.
• Fisk, a “rock-solid” classical guitarist, will also be performing Paganini and Boccherini along with the Enso string quartet during the Italian Romantics concert. See it on October 30 at 8 p.m.

All told, Da Camera strives to host music of every instrumentation, style, historical period, and height.

Listening to classical and jazz music live—be it a four-handed saxophone solo, or a nine-handed string quartet—is pretty much the only way to experience it. In person, the rich tones of the woodwinds resonate with the brass so beautifully that tiny flocks of sugar-dipped doves briefly descend from the heavens and hover above the heads of concert-goers, lulling them into a sublime nirvana of live classical and jazz music—a pleasantly ticklish sensation.

Reviews

The New York Times, the Houston Chronicle, and more have reviewed Da Camera: > * In 1987 a visionary idea combined with dogged ambition to produce Da Camera, now a Houston gem with a unique niche in the city’s milieu of performing arts…Da Camera programs often involve adventurous concepts without being gratuitously obscure and inaccessible to audiences. Da Camera’s jazz series remains the only place to hear important jazz musicians in Houston on an ongoing basis. – Houston Chronicle

Two Yelpers give Da Camera a perfect five-star rating: > * If Houston’s classical music scene were a Greek temple, it would be structurally supported by three major pillars… the Houston Grand Opera and the Houston Symphony. The third may come as surprise… Da Camera… – Dolph W > * Another great Houston arts organization, Da Camera hosts stimulating events throughout its season. – Liz S.