By Paul Horsley Theater is like any form of communication in that it boils down to one thing: two people talking. With this in mind, Kansas City Actors Theatre has […]

By Paul Horsley One of the fruits of Kansas City’s performing-arts community is an abundance of opportunities for young people. From orchestras to dance groups, children’s theater to music lessons […]

By Paul Horsley What if we made a Cinderella in which, instead of a noble prince rescuing a desperate girl, we tell a tale of two people sort of rescuing […]

By Paul Horsley When it comes to chamber music, three’s already a crowd, and 13 is a veritable multitude. So when Summerfest Chamber Music Series began planning a “blowout” Gala […]

By Paul Horsley There’s a zephyr wind blowing through gay men’s choirs in America, and Heartland Men’s Chorus appears to have found just the right man to take it into […]

By Paul Horsley They battled addiction, domineering lovers, pigeonholing Hollywood studios, and a music industry controlled by men who feared strong women. They suffered defeats, but more often they triumphed […]

By Paul Horsley Victoria Simon remembers first seeing George Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments when it was almost new, as a youngster studying at the School of American Ballet in the […]

By Paul Horsley The Harriman-Jewell Series’ auspicious 50th anniversary season has been a wild ride, and it’s not over yet. Recently the Series presented two notable performances within a week […]

By Paul Horsley One of the opera world’s newest stars hails from the oldest of places. The singer whom the New York Times called “the real thing, a tenor who […]

By Paul Horsley András Schiff’s recent Friends of Chamber Music recital stood out chiefly because the Hungarian-born pianist truly interpreted each of the sonatas he’d chosen to play: four late […]

By Paul Horsley The Kansas City Ballet’s current Giselle is a lavish affair, with exceptional dancing, delicious scenic designs by Simon Pastukh, tasteful “period” costumes by David Heuvel and fine […]

By Paul Horsley Her mother tried to keep her away from the piano, but three-year-old Dubravka Tomšič insisted. Soon afterward, having learned how to read notes, she acquired a teacher […]

By Paul Horsley Angels in America, currently playing at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s Copaken Stage, is an odd duck in American theater and is likely to remain so. Set […]

By Paul Horsley Even the humblest of choirs can sound good in a lush, warm acoustic, but it takes an excellent choir to come across as clear, accurate and well-balanced […]

By Paul Horsley Silent Night is the product of a top-flight librettist, Mark Campbell, and a marvelous American composer, Kevin Puts, and it features some of the most beautifully intricate […]

By Paul Horsley Rich Boy disguises himself as Poor Boy in order to win Poor Girl, who falls for him despite Mom’s suspicion there’s something a little “off” about him. […]

By Paul Horsley Maybe all you know about Angels in America is that it’s a monumental, mystical, two-part, seven-hour stage work that wrestles with gigantic subjects such as good and […]

By Paul Horsley Composers throw us a curve ball when they drastically revise works and leave the original for us to mull over alongside the new version. Of course there’s […]

By Paul Horsley Americans are surprisingly narrow-ranged in their cultural exposure these days, internet or no internet. For most people it’s either hip-hop or ballet but not both, hillbilly or […]

By Paul Horsley At 85, André Previn has nothing to prove. As one of the great musical geniuses of the 20th century and for that matter the 21st, the Berlin-born […]

By Paul Horsley Silent Night, the World War I opera that is taking the music world by storm, is not a history lesson, and it’s not a sermon. It’s an […]