Alessio Bax has made a career of taking roads less traveled. The Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient from Bari, Italy has circled the globe performing the widest variety of music, not […]

Imagine a full-length ballet like Swan Lake or The Nutcracker,but based on an American subject and crafted by an entirely American creative team. You’ll have to imagine it, because such a thing has not existed […]

Paris in the 12th century was a hotbed of student unrest, corruption and greed, and lively political discourse – and it saw a ferment of artistic, literary and musical creativity the […]

Marc Wolf’s one-man play Another American: Asking and Telling is not just about the American military’s bizarre and soon-to-be-defunct “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, it addresses the whole history of the armed forces’ […]

Violinist Joshua Bell delighted a sold-out Folly Theater audience on January the 22nd with his signature earthy-sweet tone and lovely, long-breathed phrasing. This generous Harriman-Jewell Series recital included three meaty masterpieces […]

The Kansas City Symphony’s first season in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts looks auspicious indeed, with Mahler’s Second Symphony, Beethoven’s Ninth, Brahms’ German Requiem and commissions from composers Chen […]

Of all the local organizations who will be presenting for the first time this fall in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, none will be more thrilled to “stretch […]

Joyce DiDonato, who grew up in Prairie Village, is fast on the way to becoming the world’s greatest living mezzo-soprano. In anticipation of her February 13th recital here on the Harriman-Jewell Series, […]

Sometimes the best way to deal with the horrors of war is to break into song. Yes war is ghastly, but it is also rife with absurdities that often cry […]

The Metropolitan Opera’s Nixon in China rides on powerful performances and a meticulous, lavishly outfitted production. Through the miracle of HD, I was able to see the February 12thperformance live at the […]

One of the specialties of the Harriman-Jewell Series has been to present recital debuts—either world or U.S. debuts—of budding young opera stars. On March 5th at the Folly the headline-grabbing young […]

How does one pay suitable homage to Henry Fogel, arts visionary, longtime orchestra executive, and current dean and distinguished professor of the arts at Roosevelt University? For the League of American Orchestras, […]

When we listen to Bach’s keyboard music today, do we hear the same thing he did 300 years ago? It’s the kind of question that spurs musicians and lay music-lovers […]

Evan Luskin, who joined the Lyric Opera of Kansas City in 1986 and has  been its general director since 1998, announced on March 15th that he would retire at the end of […]

Composers have long delighted in creating elaborate narrative “programs” for their instrumental works, then instructing us not to rely on the programs too much, or even asking us to ignore […]

Can one woman change the direction of a culture? We all know the answer is yes, but it’s still gratifying to see it when it happens. Among her multifarious other […]

It’s not often that a 12-minute piece by a living American composer proves to be the musical highlight of a two-hour concert of classical favorites. Usually the “modern” piece is […]

Choreographer David Parsons’ earnest new piece Remember Me takes as its ambition to do Jesus Christ Superstar and Movin’ Out one better, by creating not just rock-opera or rock-ballet but rock-opera-ballet. Its conceit seems reasonable enough: to tell a love […]

Are you as tired as I am of country singers and demagogues telling you what it is that makes America great? Freedom, family values, guns, pickup trucks. Choreographer Paul Taylor embodies, as […]

Octarium continues to refine its sonority and musical profile, and its distinguished concert on November 14 and 15, Modern Masters, showed that the group is gaining heft with leading choral composers around […]

If you want to know what the six youngsters playing the lead parts in the Kansas City Ballet’s The Nutcracker think about what they do, just ask them. Not only can they […]