Gonzalo Farias may well be the busiest musician in Kansas City. The Chilean-born conductor, who this fall assumed the post of David T. Beals III Associate Conductor of the Kansas City Symphony, conducts dozens of concerts on the Family, Pops, Holiday, and Film + Live Orchestra Series, and he leads educational concerts that reach some […]

Kansas City’s canines have a message for audiences of theater, opera, and dance: We are ready for our closeups. Some might ask, Why put a dog on the stage in the first place? But perhaps the real question is, Why do we do it so seldom? Think about it: Dogs love people, they love adulation, […]

If classical orchestral music is dead, no one bothered to tell the nearly 400 Kansas City-area students who gather every Sunday at The Loretto to rehearse works by Strauss, Elgar, Respighi, Saint-Saëns, and Mahler. Not only do these youngsters show up willingly, they have already weathered a rigorous audition process to get here. Welcome to […]

Like many top orchestra and opera conductors, Carolyn Watson began her career on “the other side of the baton.” Having excelled as a young violinist in her native Australia, she studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and spent several years as an orchestral violinist, in her homeland and later in Europe. Returning to Australia, […]

One of the reasons that Stephen King’s horror stories are so indelibly etched onto our consciousness is that their macabre ingenuity has lent itself so readily to screen adaptation. Far more people know Misery or The Green Mile or Children of the Corn from the film versions than from their literary originals. Yet for all […]

There are reasons why artists find cross-disciplinary collaborations so invigorating. It’s a bit like a great chef preparing a meal with no recipe: When performing artists combine music, dance, visuals, or theater toward a common goal, they must rely on instinct and experience to guide them. The outcome is often unknown even to them until […]

This is an updated version of an article that appeared in The Independent in early 2020, shortly before the Lyric Opera had to postpone its production of The Shining: which it will now present this March. —P.H.  . The most terrifying thing on earth is the human heart. Thus the scariest parts of any horror story […]

Young classical musicians often dream of stardom. But the reality is that even if they make it to the big time, they will probably be playing with other musicians for much of their careers. Performers on strings, winds, or brass might be playing in an orchestra, and professionals on keyboard instruments will most likely be […]

Kansas City’s performing arts organizations have taken to heart the national push toward diversity and inclusion, and their commitment is reflected in this spring’s performances. Rarely have we seen such a variety of art and artists, genres and life-experiences, as in these programs.                     Playwrights Mashuq […]

Michelle Tyrene Johnson uses theater to tackle big issues. In more than a dozen full-length and longer one-act plays, and in numerous shorter works, she has often found that art can exert a greater impact than a simple recounting of facts. The Green Book Wine Club Train Trip, for instance, given a winning production by […]

Music, theater, and dance came roaring back to life in Kansas City during 2022. Hungry for an arts “fix” after being stuck at home for nearly two years, audiences ventured out: first in a cautious trickle, and by the end of the year, in a flood. The larger producing organizations rose to new challenges, motivated […]

Sometimes even the most beloved of fairy tales contain messages that appear “unmodern” on the surface, although upon closer scrutiny we often find reasons why they still resonate. The many Cinderella stories of the last several centuries seem to characterize a hapless woman who has to be “rescued” by a handsome prince: Yet even the […]

Just about everybody who is anybody has appeared on the Harriman-Jewell Series. Or so it seems these days, 58 years after the Series was founded by two William Jewell College professors, Richard Harriman and Dean Dunham, Jr. Let’s put it this way: If you are a classical performing artist or ensemble or dance company or even […]

Smaller arts groups are often nimbler in negotiation large-scale cultural shifts than their larger counterparts. As early as 2016, Kansas City Actors Theatre changed its slogan from “Classically Trained Actors, Classic Plays” to “Great Actors, Smart Plays.” A subtle shift, perhaps, but a step toward responding to community needs: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kansas City’s […]

A generation ago, an average concertgoer’s experience with contemporary classical music might consist of a dense, cacophonous piece at the beginning of a concert of, say, Mozart and Brahms. Once the new piece was “out of the way,” musicians would move on to more familiar territory. Listeners would breathe a sigh of relief, and often […]

Dance is live theater, and thus every performance of a work of choreography differs from every other. Standard works evolve from year to year, as well: Since 2015, when Devon Carney introduced his version of The Nutcracker to Kansas City Ballet audiences, we have witnessed fine-tuning and often barely perceptible alterations that, to be sure, […]

Innovation often happens when the right people are at the right place at the right time: and have come prepared. When Leilani Velasco Vaughn applied to join the William Baker Festival Singers, she mentioned in her application that she was fluent in Spanish, had studied vocal music, and had led choirs. During her audition with […]

NOTE: This is an adaptation of an article first published in The Independent in November 2020, shortly before the December world premiere of the Lyric’s Amahl. That year, COVID-19 prevented live performances of the production, which was instead filmed and made available for home viewing. In 2021 it was finally presented to live audiences. This […]

Lynn Nottage’s play Clyde’s takes place in a “liminal space,” as the playwright has written, a truck-stop sandwich shop that is trying to “carve out space in a rapidly evolving landscape.” This place of transition is a bit like Lynn’s work itself: Her impressive output stands as a refreshing, transformative locus within the shifting terrain of […]

La traviata continues to fascinate us some 170 years after its inception partly because it presents the viewer with no clear-cut heroes or villains. Its principle characters are a lot like the rest of us, imbued with glaring defects and endearing, even transformative strengths: in roughly equal measure. Francesca Zambello’s 2018 production, which opened at the […]

We hold holiday traditions close because they remind us of family and nostalgia, of childhood and gift-giving and sparkling lights. Kansas City is famous for its long-held performance traditions, but in recent years arts groups have begun to branch out, with offerings that are a bit off the beaten path. Don’t worry: No one wants […]