We have long recognized that the arts can aid in certain types of healing. Music, art, and dance therapy — which have grown into sophisticated, goal-oriented disciplines — offer practical tools that serve both physical and psychotherapy and can assist in treating post-traumatic stress, dementia/Alzheimer’s Disease, and even certain mental illnesses.  Drama therapy, which traces […]

Christoph Wolff has devoted much of his life’s work to demonstrating not just that music is a unifying force, but that musical research itself can also be a place in which scholars and musicians from various cultural backgrounds, regions, and even political convictions can come together for a common purpose.  During the chaotic years after […]

Freddy Acevedo possesses a range as wide as any theater artist you’ll meet. A strong presence on Kansas City stages in recent years, locally the Texas-born actor/producer/playwright/educator has played a valiant Jonathan Harker (Dracula, Kansas City Actors’ Theatre), a wittily hyperactive Rafael (Clyde’s, Unicorn Theatre), an elegant Paris (Romeo and Juliet, Heart of America Shakespeare Festival), and an […]

If you want to understand the complexity of Stephanie Zuluaga Kneeman’s artistry, you need to gain an image of the whole person. She is a mezzo-soprano of rich musical gifts and wide-ranging interests: music and theater, but also family, community, and even the business world. She is operatically trained but sings everything from salsa to […]

Jerry Mañan Actor/playwright/director  Jerry Mañan is an actor, writer, director, and theater artist based in the Kansas City area. He graduated from Avila University, where in his last year he received the Best Classical Acting award at the American College Theatre Festival. Locally he has appeared at the Unicorn Theatre (Refuge, Backwards Forwards Back, The Lifespan of […]

The first thing you notice, when delving into the thousands of letters that artist Georgia O’Keeffe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz exchanged over three decades, is how many of them read like poetry. So much so, in fact, that when composer Kevin Puts determined to write songs for Renée Fleming drawn from the O’Keeffe letters, the […]

The health of a community’s performing arts scene is measured not only by the vigor of its large organizations, but by the constant proliferation of smaller groups that fill out the landscape with fresh voices and provocative ideas. The first quarter of the 21st century has seen a remarkable flourishing of new choirs, chamber ensembles, […]

Urban Kansas Citians sometimes forget that our town grew out of a fundamentally agrarian culture. An important part of that was livestock, as reflected in the founding of the American Royal in 1899, just a half-century after the incorporation of Kansas City, Missouri, itself.  Of equal importance was a deeply rooted equestrian culture that remains […]

SEPTEMBER September 4-22: Kansas City Repertory Theatre; Once; This endearing musical by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová (with a book by Enda Walsh), set on the streets of Dublin, won eight Tony Awards in 2012 and a Grammy Award; Spencer Theatre. Contact: 816-235-2700 or kcrep.org.  September 11-29: Kansas City Actors Theatre; Dial M for Murder; Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of […]

Matthias Pintscher had already experienced a lifetime of music before stepping onto the podium of the Kansas City Symphony for the first time. He had led major opera productions in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, and he had conducted major orchestras of Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, London, Munich, Dresden, and Hamburg. For 10 years the German-born conductor […]

Anyone who has remained attentive to the performing arts in Kansas City is probably aware of a growing phenomenon of which we can all be justly proud: the presence of a large number of exceptionally gifted young musicians. Everywhere you look, there are festivals, competitions, and performances featuring kids whose artistic level just seems to […]

One mark of a great theater piece is that decades, generations, even centuries after its inception it can still grab us by the shoulders and shake us. The dozen or so plays that Alice Childress wrote between 1949 and 1987, which have remained virtually unknown to the broader public until recently, fix a startlingly contemporary […]

INGRID STÖLZEL:  Ingrid Stölzel is an award-winning composer whose works have been performed at concert halls and festivals around the world and have been called “richly introspective” and cited as demonstrating “a gift for melody”; currently associate professor of composition at The University of Kansas School of Music, she was formerly director of Park University’s […]

The last two decades have brought about dramatic changes in attitudes and laws concerning the lives of LGBTQ+ Americans. With Supreme Court decisions in 2003 and 2015 came legalization not only of behavior but of same-sex marriage, and American opinions have largely crept toward acceptance.  Yet we are far from home. A third of Americans […]

Musical inspiration often thrives under unusual circumstances. Mozart composed La clemenza di Tito after being yanked reluctantly from his progress on The Magic Flute, to take part in a highly politicized operatic commission for the Prague coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia; political agendas notwithstanding, it remains one of the great operas of the era.  Haydn forged […]

Getting paid well to do what you love most is the dream of many. Yet even that has a shelf life if it takes you away from family, friends, and home: if it prevents you from building a life with a back yard and a mortgage and maybe even some kids. Annie Laura Dauzat and […]

By Paul Horsley   JUNE 1-2 Te Deum; Sacred Banquet; Founder and Artistic Director Matthew Shepard conducts choral music of Palestrina, Arvo Pärt, and Olivier Messiaen and presents the world premiere of Composer-in-Residence Anthony Maglione’s commissioned setting of the Te Deum text, at Village Presbyterian Church (June 1st) and Visitation Catholic Church (June 2nd). Contact: […]

Fortune smiled on Kansas City music lovers when Tamamo Someya and Mark Gibbs decided to marry and settle down here. Born in Japan just a few years apart, they traveled very different musical roads before converging, finally, at the Kansas City Symphony: Tamamo as principal second violin, Mark as principal cello. Curiously, at a couple […]

Several aspects of Benny Lee’s formative years in Taiwan became driving forces in his life, and engendered curiosity, toughness, and positivity that continue to inspire him to this day.  The death of his father when Benny was just 13 impacted him greatly: He learned much about tenacity and self-reliance watching his mother learn new job […]

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 […]