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 we’ve already had the Symphony in the Flint Hills, the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers, the MET’s Ragtime, the Starlight’s Catch Me if You Can, and […]

NO LIMITS   –    Stern on the Kansas City Symphony: We’re just getting started! One of the exciting things about living in Kansas City through the last decade has been the chance to see the Kansas City Symphony claim its place in the community as a world-class institution alongside the Nelson-Atkins and Kemper Museums, the […]

The stars came out on May 12th, as the Kansas City Ballet bid farewell to its longtime artistic director, William Whitener. He departs this June 30th after 17 years at the company’s helm. A reception was held in the Kauffman Center’s Brandmeyer Hall after the Ballet’s season finale: Among the several hundred attendees were board […]

NINE FOR THE NINE THAT DRESSED SO FINE: Harriman-Jewell Series presents Cantus Cantus is an all-male a cappella ensemble consisting of nine singers who perform a most eclectic mix of music from all eras and genres. The group’s Harriman-Jewell Series debut on May 16th – bumped from its February date because of mounds of snow […]

Unicorn’s production of Potok adaptation is golden My Name is Asher Lev became a classic work of American fiction virtually from the day it came out in 1972, and Aaron Posner’s theatrical adaptation of it is every bit as potent. I can remember reading Chaim Potok’s novel as a Baptist kid in Kansas and feeling […]

To be a serious ballet company these days you can’t just do an endless series of Swan Lakes: You’ve got to push things forward. The Kansas City Ballet in its current form has rarely flinched from risky artistic choices, works that might have left us scratching our heads at times. At the season finale that […]

You’d be hard-pressed to find an American artist in any field as interesting and engaging as Karole Armitage. The Wisconsin native, who grew up partly in Lawrence, learned classical ballet initially and absorbed the work of George Balanchine at the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève before becoming a dancer with the legendary Merce Cunningham. […]

Almost every singer has a “breakthrough” moment, when he or she lands the right role at the right time and scores a deep impression with public and press. For Irish-born mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught that moment came in March 2011, when she was called upon at the last minute to fill in for an ailing Vesselina Kasarova in the role […]

When a ballet audience gasps audibly at the sheer “look” of a piece, before the dancers have made a single move, you know you’re in for a ride. When the curtain went up on George Balanchine’s Serenade, the opening piece of the Kansas City Ballet’s final 2011-2012 production, the translucent azure lighting and ballerinas frozen in […]

Gary Neal Johnson is one of Kansas City’s most respected actors, best known as Scrooge in the KC Rep’s A Christmas Carol. But his experience has ranged widely, and he is currently performing his first Willy Loman in the Rep’s Death of a Salesman, directed by artistic director Eric Rosen. We had an intriguing chat with Gary about […]

If you really want to know who Richard Wagner is, The Flying Dutchman is a good place to start. For not only is this the first opera in which the composer began to experiment with the revolutionary musico-dramatic ideas that would later transform opera as we know it, but it is also a German opera of its […]

There’s one person you won’t see onstage in the Kansas City Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker, even though he is perhaps the most important element in putting the whole thing together. James Jordan is a KCB Ballet Master, and he is the martinet in charge of leading the 28-member professional company and the 225 students from the Ballet School […]

REVIEW: The Kansas City Ballet’s durable Nutcracker opens to acclaim The Kansas City Ballet’s The Nutcracker remains fresh partly because of a continual infusion of new talent that permits the production to evolve in subtle ways. For the 2012-2013 season nearly a third of the company dancers are new (eight out of 28), and though the premiere on December […]

When tenor Michael Fabiano performs on the Harriman-Jewell Series on January 19th, it will be only the latest in the Series’ half-century of presenting recital debuts by up-and-coming and, at times, well-established opera singers. Just among the tenors alone are such names as Luciano Pavarotti, Ben Heppner, Juan Diego Flórez, Salvatore Licitra and Clifton Forbis, […]

Is there any stopping Joyce DiDonato? Every time you turn around, America’s favorite mezzo-soprano has won new awards, fresh accolades and effulgent encomiums. The 43-year-old Prairie Village native and Grammy Award-winner is one of the greatest performing artists ever to come out of Our Town, and she is in the best voice of her life. If […]

There are some things on this earth that many of us just thought would never happen. Who could have imagined the dissolution of the Soviet Union, or the reunification of Germany, or the Arab Spring, with dictators falling like dominoes? And now there’s a new “first,” courtesy of the Harriman-Jewell Series: the first United States […]

There’s something about Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, whose thunderous opening chorus “O Fortuna” is one of the most recognizable pieces of classical music ever, that makes you want to pull out all the stops. And that’s just what the Kansas City Ballet plans to do at their season opener that starts on October 12th at the Kauffman Center. […]

If you want to be a member of the Mark Morris Dance Group, you’d better get busy. For not only are the auditions for his 18-member company as rigorous as just about anything in modern dance, some 300 men and women show up to fill one position, but Mark requires much more than just dance […]

It’s hard to say which opera is the most popular in the repertoire, but The Barber of Seville certainly ranks among the top five. This wittiest of comedies formed a fitting conclusion to what may have been the Lyric Opera’s most distinguished season so far – its first in the Kauffman Center – and the four originally […]

Elizabeth Caballero has built an opera career playing strong women, and she knows a bit about mettle herself. When she was 6 she and her family boarded a boat off the shore of Cuba and set off for America, as part of the 1980 mass immigration known as the Mariel Boatlift. “Being a child, it […]

One of the highlights of each holiday season in Kansas City is Quality Hill Playhouse’s annual New Year’s Eve Cabaret, which executive director J. Kent Barnhart and friends have been performing for 18 years. This past New Year’s Eve, Kent was joined by vocalist Molly Hammer and double bassist Brian Wilson for a program they […]