Carlos Andrés Botero has a foolproof way to tell if a topic he’s considering for “Moment of Music,” his weekly series on the Houston Symphony’s YouTube channel, is successfully getting across. He runs it by his two young daughters, ages 5 and 6.

“They are both the most comforting audience and the most cruel, in the best way possible, because if they don’t like something, they are not afraid of saying it,” he laughs.

“They don’t care that I am trying to do a web series that is watched every week,” Botero adds. “They just say, ‘I don’t like that; I’m not interested in what you’re saying; I don’t understand it. You need to pick a better topic.’”

The Colombian-born Botero has been the orchestra’s musical ambassador for five years. That means he visits schools; teaches continuing-education programs (notably at Rice University’s Glasscock School of Continuing Studies); and presents the preconcert “Prelude” lectures that place each Classical Series performance in valuable context.

All these duties, Botero says, help “bridge that seemingly unaffordable gap between audience and orchestra,” but it’s the latter that gave rise to “Moment of Music.” Usually about 15 minutes long, these lectures provide musical and historical insight into the evening’s program. They usually conclude with the self-effacing Botero saying, “but you didn’t come here to listen to me.”

Talking with audience members at Houston Symphony concerts has helped Botero hone a recurring theme throughout the lectures and now his videos: how to be a better listener. By coming to Jones Hall, he explains, the audience has signaled its willingness to be immersed in the music; it’s his job to take it from there.

“What they perhaps haven’t realized is that there are certain codes in the music, and certain ways that, like in any language, as soon as you start getting into the way that phrases are organized, sentences are organized, then you start discovering there is a deeper level of understanding,” says Botero, who is also the music director for the ISMEV conservatory in the Mexican state of Veracruz.

When the pandemic set in, Botero had already been kicking around the idea of some kind of video series, he says. The orchestra was suddenly thirsty for regular online content that could “make ourselves a little present in everyone’s life, and bring some solace and comfort to everyone listening,” he says.

“Moment of Music” made an ideal fit.

Botero has since recorded more than 30 episodes, in addition to video introductions to the symphony’s Houston Public Media broadcasts. He’s also introduced this past spring’s Living Room Series and the ongoing “Live From Jones Hall” YouTube concerts.

“Some people enjoy crosswords, and for me, it’s rather interesting to try to narrow down 25 years of career into two minutes and explain simple concepts,” Botero says, “but at the same time, it requires a lifetime of doing it in order to achieve that level of expertise.”

Botero’s topics are happily all over the map: He’s covered noteworthy female and Latin composers, and the similarities between music and sculpture. When the protests over George Floyd’s death exploded in late May and early June, he did an episode on how to listen: not to music, but to other people’s points of view.

His daughters especially liked the videos devoted to Nadia Boulanger, the French composer and educator whose students included Phillip Glass, Darius Milhaud and Lalo Schifrin; and to the humorous side of Franz Josef Haydn.

Helpfully, most videos also link to a Spotify playlist featuring whatever composers and/or concepts Botero has just discussed. But no matter the theme, his goal is always to deepen the audience’s listening experience.

“We tend to peruse music in a very sensitive, skin-level, sort of a depth,” Botero says. “And so we use it as a background, and we put it on while we are cooking, or we put it in the background where we’re studying or we put it in the car while we’re driving, but we are not actually focusing our attention to music.

“Focusing the attention also is connected with how much we know of the codes the composers are using,” he continues. “So the more we narrow our attention to what’s happening musically, the deeper is the enjoyment and the more crystal-clear is the communication with the composers.”

Chris Gray is a Houston-based writer.