Bruce Sorrell has spent a great deal of his life thinking about Mozart, and it shows when he conducts the composer’s music: He has a special understanding of this most challenging of Classicists. Astonishingly, the founding music director of the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra finds that he has never conducted Mozart’s iconic Requiem, and this week […]

The Kansas City Ballet continues to be the envy of mid-sized American companies, maintaining fiscal health while continuing to challenge itself artistically. At Thursday’s season finale opener, veterans and younger dancers mingled like a well-oiled machine in two distinguished world premieres and a reprise of Twyla Tharp’s elegant Nine Sinatra Songs. And the company showed that it has a […]

Is there anything worse than an evening of bad Gilbert & Sullivan? If there is, let me know. The Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s production of The Pirates of Penzance came as a shock to my system, perhaps because I’ve become too accustomed to mediocre-to-awful productions of the operettas by this celebrated team of Victorian satirists. This version, to my […]

Saying goodbye is an art form unto itself. You want a farewell to be just the right length, use just the right words and contain the perfect mix of sentiment and encouragement, tristesse and hope. Saturday’s Friends of Chamber Music concert at the Folly Theater was part of a 60-city farewell tour of the Guarneri String Quartet, […]

In the famous opera scene in Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts asks Richard Gere how she’s supposed to know what’s happening onstage if everyone’s singing in Italian. “Oh, you’ll know,” he replies. “Believe me, you’ll understand. The music’s very powerful.” I’ve always scoffed at the pre-supertitle cliché that if a performance is good enough you can follow an […]

There are several reasons why you might expect Benjamin Bagby’s performance of Beowulf to fall flat on a contemporary American audience. The renowned medievalist performs the epic as a one-man bard, accompanying himself on a diminutive six-string harp that is his only prop. He recites-sings the monodrama in the original Anglo-Saxon, which to non-expert ears sounds like a mixture […]

The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is one of the most venerated musical establishments in England, one could even say in the history of English music. You know a chamber orchestra has clout when it can convince a composer of the stature of Sir William Walton to compose a new work for it. Well, almost […]

The final seconds of Yuri Possokhov’s Firebird contain a simple event that is so natural, so poignant and dramatically satisfying that it made my heart clutch up. Naturally I’m not going to spoil it: You’ll just have to see the Kansas City Ballet’s winter program that opened Thursday at the Lyric Theatre. Let’s just say it’s just one […]

Chen Yi’s musical world is a cheerful place teeming with activity and populated by stately emperors, raucous villagers, artful calligraphers and lovers boating through lotus blossoms — always against the backdrop of the gorgeous Chinese landscape. Her new seven-movement song cycle for choir and string quartet From the Path of Beauty feels so all-encompassing it’s like a miniature […]

Competition was fierce this year for the best of 2008, for one simple reason: Kansas City’s culture remains on such an upward trajectory that it’s not out of line to say this might have been the city’s best-ever year for classical music and dance. I mean ever, as in, during Our Town’s 155-year history. Whoa, baby. […]

One local holiday tradition that changes little from year to year is the Kansas City Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker, and that will be either good or bad news depending on whether you’re a traditionalist or an adventurist. At the opening performance on Saturday afternoon, December 6, I found myself not minding a bit that I was […]

Konstantin Lifschitz, the Ukrainian-born pianist, is one of those restless musical spirits who sails uncharted waters seeking ever-elusive truths behind musical masterpieces. There was a mystical, almost séance-like atmosphere to his Friends of Chamber Music recital on Friday, the 31-year-old pianist’s only appearance in the United States this season. Expectations were high for this program […]

No one ever accused Puccini of subtlety for his potboiler Tosca. A diva agrees to “give in” to a lecherous villain in return for her lover’s freedom. Instead she stabs him. Villain betrays her. The lover is executed. She leaps to her death. Didn’t I see this on the Lifetime Channel? The cast and crew […]

At a time when Roman Catholics and Episcopalians seem to be growing ever-further apart, gestures of unity are always refreshing. That’s why Summer Music at the Cathedrals, a musical partnership between Our Town’s Catholic and the Episcopal cathedrals downtown, is a welcome addition to the upwelling of local performing arts during the last decade. This […]

The plot of Tosca is a pretty crass affair, but even seasoned opera devotees keep returning to the piece because it features what is perhaps Puccini’s most incisive and consistently compelling musical score. The Lyric Opera of Kansas City was wise to eschew tinkering with the drama in favor of confronting head-on the opera’s musical glories. The […]

Young people do grow up, a fact we sometimes forget when we expect youthful celebrities to act mature beyond their years. The version of Lang Lang who played Tuesday, September 15 on the Harriman-Jewell Series was a notably more serious pianist than the one who performed on the same series in 2004, also at the Folly Theater. Considerably toned-down […]

Stefan Jackiw played a  beautiful recital on September 26 at the Folly Theater, confirming once again my ongoing impression that he is destined to lead a career at the very top of the toughly competitive world of classical violin. In fact he is already leading it, and Saturday’s Harriman-Jewell Series recital with pianist Max Levinson showed […]

As a vocal student, Lawrence Brownlee wanted to sing the big romantic roles that tenors pine for: Rodolfo in La Bohème, Alfredo in La traviata, Cavaradossi in Tosca. Looking back, he’s awfully glad he heeded the advice of those who knew his voice was destined for a different realm. For instead of leading a short career in the wrong vocal fach, the 36-year-old native of […]

Imagine a future in which Our Town’s nationally renowned ballet company had its own home for the first time in its 52-year history, a dynamic place where professional creativity, community arts and education all converged into a synergistic hub in the heart of downtown. Well dream no more, supporters and fans of the Kansas City […]

In the center of a giant disc of white lycra covering half the dance studio stands a lone ballerina, Stayce Camparo, wearing the heavy, textured fabric around as a burdensome skirt. As she twists slowly counterclockwise, the skirt pleats together liked twisted rope and gently binds her. Meanwhile at the edge of the shrinking circle of fabric, Marcus […]

If you want an excellent example of what small-to-medium-sized arts groups in Kansas City can achieve when they team up, look no further than the October 16-18 production of Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, a masterpiece from 1692 that has reportedly not been performed here in a half-century. This partnership of the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra, the […]