By Paul Horsley Artists are always being told to create art about what they know, even though many live such insulated lives that they know little beyond the world of […]

Paul Horsley Deborah Voigt is one of the great sopranos of our age or any other, and although her voice has diminished in recent years she can still delight an […]

By Paul Horsley Mozart’s The Magic Flute is so full of opportunities for visual display that an opera company would be lax not to take advantage of them. But hiring […]

By Paul Horsley In 2008 the world-renowned trumpeter and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Wynton Marsalis determined to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church with an ambitious mass for […]

By Paul Horsley What a delight it was to see the Dance Theatre of Harlem back on the local stage, in its first appearance on the Harriman-Jewell Series, or in […]

By Paul Horsley Deborah Voigt is at an enviable point in her life where she can make career choices on the basis of what she wants to do. “I’m very […]

By Paul Horsley Violinist Stefan Jackiw’s official bio and press clippings read pretty much like those of any young musician these days. He is “one of his generation’s most significant […]

By Paul Horsley One of the challenges of the Kauffman Center these days is for the resident companies to prove that the brilliant successes of the first two seasons were […]

By Paul Horsley Jodie Gates has danced, choreographed, staged ballets, created festivals, served as mentor for young dancers. But few things excite the California native more than creating new choreography, […]

By Paul Horsley The operatic version of the Romeo and Juliet legend that Bellini and his librettist Felice Romani created from Italian sources predating Shakespeare is at least as action-packed […]

By Paul Horsley Always look both ways before crossing, because sometimes the car that hits you comes from the place you least expect. The season-opening productions by the KC Actors […]

By Paul Horsley Not every child prodigy makes it through adolescence to emerge as an extraordinary adult artist. One such musician to arrive recently at the “other side” is pianist […]

By Paul Horsley Opera is such a collaborative art form that it cannot succeed unless music, acting, stage direction and design all work together to form a sort of magical […]

By Paul Horsley Eugene O’Neill’s dark-hued Long Day’s Journey into Night is a classic whose infrequency on the stage belies its importance in theater history. The great Irish American playwright […]

A Conversation with Angela Lee Gieras Angela Lee Gieras is a financial whiz whose fundraising savvy is driven by a lifelong passion for theater, so she was in many ways […]

By Paul Horsley Part of the fun of watching William Inge’s Picnic just a stone’s throw from its setting, the small-town Kansas milieu in which the playwright was raised, is […]

By Paul Horsley To be sure, one could start by looking at the sheer empirical data on Deborah Sandler’s first season as general director and CEO of the Lyric Opera […]

British playwrights have figured heavily into the Kansas City Actors Theatre seasons of late, so this year the nine-year-old company found material for its late-summer shows closer to home. KCAT’s […]

BOLD NEW DANCE: In an era of change, Carney steps in as Kansas City Ballet’s new leader By Paul Horsley It must be an exciting time to be Devon Carney. […]

  If you want to build a dance festival from scratch, the key is collaboration. When veteran Kansas City Ballet dancers Logan Pachciarz and Anthony Krutzkamp determined to create an […]

Summer in Kansas City used to be a pretty sleepy affair for classical music, theater and dance, but no longer. The Summer Solstice is not even upon us yet, and […]