Tyrone Aiken danced prodigiously as a youth, trained at The Ailey School as a young adult, worked as a professional dancer at the height of the New York dance ferment, and even ran his own company at one point. Today he is best known nationwide for the pioneering work as educator that has occupied him […]

CAROLINE DAHM Dancer, choreographer, producer, master teacher, adjunct dance professor at The UMKC Conservatory, assistant director at Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company What I love about the Kansas City performing-arts scene: Kansas City is a very special place. Since moving here back in 2011, I have seen a steady rise in the arts. I love that the […]

It’s difficult to remember what the Kansas City skyline looked like 20 years ago, before the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts began to take shape at 16th and Broadway. Today anyone who drives through our city must remember one thing: This internationally acclaimed, 316,000-square-feet structure stands as a testament not just to the importance […]

You don’t have to watch an Allegro Choirs of Kansas City rehearsal for very long before you start to understand why these youngsters sound so good. The founding director, Christy Elsner, knows exactly what she wants, and she will persist until she gets it. “On a scale of one to 10, that was about a […]

Tristian Griffin’s success grows partly from his openness to the wide world of arts. The Kansas City-based dancer-choreographer, who established his own company in 2019 (Tristian Griffin Dance Company), didn’t even begin his performance career with dance. He and his brother explored modeling as youngsters, until someone suggested to them that they should develop other […]

Many elements came together to make Teisha Bankston into the theater artist she is today. The frequent star of productions at the Unicorn Theatre and Kansas City Actors Theatre recalls an important early improvisation class with Valerie Mackey at Theatre for Young America, where she made friends with like-minded youngsters and began overcoming her natural […]

Ben Bliss is no stranger to superlatives. During his rapid rise to the top of the opera world he has been called “one of the leading Mozart tenors on the scene today,” “close to the ideal,” “a revelation,” and at Lyric Opera of Chicago, “perhaps the finest Mozart tenor that has graced the Lyric stage […]

JANUARY 23: Harriman-Jewell Series; Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason; The eldest of the seven celebrated musical siblings performs Prokofiev’s Third Concerto, and conductor Vasily Petrenko leads London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Rachmaninoff’s hyper-charged Second Symphony; Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. Contact: 816-415-5025 or hjseries.org. 25: International Center for Music at Park University; Rosamunde Trio; The renowned […]

The music of Mahler has formed an important part of Michael Stern’s repertoire throughout his nearly two decades as music director of the Kansas City Symphony. For mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, the Prairie Village native who soared to the top of the opera world 25 years ago and has remained there ever since, Mahler is a fairly […]

In 2015, the Kansas City Ballet treated its production of The Nutcracker to a complete makeover, with new set designs by Alain Vaës, costumes by Holly Hynes, and lighting by Trad A Burns. It was an investment in the future, as it was designed to serve, for many years to come, what has always been the […]

Kansas City brought so much exceptional work to local stages this year that narrowing this list to 10 became a Solomon-like exercise. It’s hardly a comprehensive survey (and it’s in chronological order): No mortal could attend every presentation of classical music, theater, and dance here (more than 500 annually, by my estimate). But I saw […]

Collaboration in the arts is not a choice: These days, it’s practically a necessity. In recent decades, Kansas City’s arts groups have noticeably moved toward a collaborative model, to the point where on any given night you are likely to partake of a performance of music, theater, or dance that involves multiple non-profit arts groups […]

If it’s December, you can be pretty sure that our concert-life is turning very Baroque. That is to say, there will be a bevvy of choral, orchestral, and chamber performances featuring music of the Baroque era (ca. 1600 to ca. 1750). This is perhaps to some extent because we associate the holidays with masterworks such […]

Musicians love chamber music because it offers a chance to perform with friends in a warmly collegial, relatively low-stress environment. The most intimate chamber music of all is that for two pianists, especially when they perform together at the same keyboard. Some of the repertoire for piano duet is scored for two pianos, it is […]

If any musical is worthy to be performed by an opera company, it is The Sound of Music. Its best songs are not just Rodgers & Hammerstein at their most inspired, they are among the classiest products of the Broadway hit-factory. Whether the show should be placed alongside the operas of Mozart and Verdi is […]

There was a time, during the restless months of 2020, when many performing arts groups wondered whether they would survive. In the decade since its founding in 2010, Spinning Tree Theatre had by then already earned a reputation as one of the region’s most adventurous companies. Each year it produced three or four “intimate productions, […]

The double-bill of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana (1890) and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (1892) remains one of the most accessible evenings at the opera. With busy choruses, passionate arias and ensembles, and the “tears of a clown,” literally, these early verismo works offer much, to novice and seasoned opera buff alike. No, verismo does not mean […]

Some of the most extraordinary inventions are born almost inadvertently, on the way to creating something entirely different. Even the Slinky was the byproduct of industrial springs manufactured to protect sensitive maritime instruments in rough seas. OUTside VoicesKC, Kansas City’s newest LGBTQ-friendly choir, was forged in a cauldron of change that has now produced one […]

Enjoy the best of Kansas City’s thriving arts landscape JUNE__________ June 2-4: Kansas City Symphony; Michael Stern conducts Mahler and Montgomery; Superstar Soprano Julia Bullock performs Jessie Montgomery’s newly commissioned Five Freedom Songs and joins the ensemble in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony; Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. Contact: 816-471-0400 or kcsymphony.org. June 3-4: Te Deum and […]

Each spring, the Kansas City Ballet presents a program of mixed repertoire embodying some of the more fascinating trends in contemporary ballet: where dance has been recently, where it stands now, and where it might be headed. This year’s program, Bliss Point, which opened May 12th at the Kauffman Center, brought us a deliciously executed […]

If you grow up in a home with a celebrated pianist for a mother and a world-renowned cellist for a father, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll at least consider a career in music. For Jun Iwasaki, there was never any pressure to pursue piano or cello, or any instrument for that matter. But the […]