If you are looking for just one holiday event to attend, the Kansas City Ballet’s The Nutcracker might not be the most inexpensive offering in town, but it’s probably the most solidly […]

The Kansas City Symphony has an intriguing array of soloists lined up for the spring, from superstars to newcomers, and the first one I’m looking forward to is Benedetto Lupo, a […]

Musical groups of all kinds have drawn on word-play for their names — from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to Chanticleer (Geoffrey Chaucer’s “clear-singing” rooster in The Canterbury Tales) and […]

Italian composer Luca Lombardi has admired the artistry of flutist Emmanuel Pahud since he first heard him play years ago. “I was very impressed not only with the beauty of the tone, but with […]

Pianist Marc-André Hamelin has an uncanny ability to convince you, through the sheer force of his musical personality and will, that whatever he’s playing at the moment is the greatest music on […]

It’s an irresistible image, almost like a scene from a Werner Herzogmovie: the aging Albert Schweitzer — theologian, musician, philosopher, physician, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Johann Sebastian Bach biographer — sitting […]

One of the most electrifying pianists I’ve heard recently is a 19-year-old college student right here in Our Town. Uzbek-bornBehzod Abduraimov, a protégé of Van Cliburn Competition gold medalist Stanislav Ioudenitch at Park […]

Sometimes a conductor of strong musicianship can make up for a multitude of orchestral sins. Such was the case, almost, on Saturday at the Folly Theater, when the Moscow Radio […]

Verdi’s Rigoletto rings true because, like much great art, it deals in subject matter that most of us can relate to. A loving father smothers his teenage daughter with overprotective zeal, and […]

For about the first 20 years of my acquaintance with Joseph Flummerfelt’s artistry, I had no idea what he looked like. He was the silent presence behind great recordings of choral-orchestral works […]

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma is a restless soul. When he plays a piece like Schubert’s “Arpeggione” Sonata, which he has no doubt played hundreds of times, you can feel him struggle to take […]

Verdi’s Rigoletto is like a Lifetime Movie Network potboiler, complete with contrived crises, gratuitous violence and a cast of inexplicably mean characters who only occasionally seem like real people. The Lyric Opera’s […]

It’s not often you get to attend a standing-room-only classical concert in Kansas City. So many choral fans showed up for the thrilling rendering of Brahms’ German Requiem at the UMKC Conservatory’s […]

In 1975, Cynthia Siebert had a dream. She began by holding concerts in local homes, inviting top musicians to perform music of Bach, Beethoven, Schumann and others. But these were not just […]

Orchestra musicians love Mahler’s music because it’s fun to play. Hard work, yes. But what other music of the Austro-Germanic repertoire has the clarinetists raise their bells and point them […]

Europeans have a different concept of the passage of time than we do. The “New College” at Oxford and the famous choir associated with it were founded in the 14th […]

We have a fascination with tales of man-made things that come to life — whether to fascinate us (Pinocchio), hurt us (Frankenstein) or steal our hearts (Tales of Hoffmann, the Pygmalion […]

A well-oiled operatic production relies on the convergence of so many elements that it seems a miracle when it actually does all come together. The Lyric Opera of Kansas City was thrown […]

Dolls that come to life, a village love story, iconic ballet moves: Coppéliais hard to resist even in a so-so production. The version by the Moscow Festival Ballet, presented here on […]

As recently as 20 years ago it was rare to find works by women on the programs of professional ballet companies. That’s changing, albeit slowly. On May 6 the Kansas […]

The Kansas City Ballet has scored a home run with its spring program that opened May 6 at the Lyric Theatre, with an appealing lineup ranging from classical ballet to […]