If classical orchestral music is dead, no one bothered to tell the nearly 400 Kansas City-area students who gather every Sunday at The Loretto to rehearse works by Strauss, Elgar, Respighi, Saint-Saëns, and Mahler. Not only do these youngsters show up willingly, they have already weathered a rigorous audition process to get here. Welcome to […]

Like many top orchestra and opera conductors, Carolyn Watson began her career on “the other side of the baton.” Having excelled as a young violinist in her native Australia, she studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and spent several years as an orchestral violinist, in her homeland and later in Europe. Returning to Australia, […]

Life contains moments in which we are forced to steady our balance, draw a breath, and take a flying leap. Or as we say in ballet, a grand jeté. By her mid-twenties, Amaya Rodriguez had established a solid career as principal dancer of the National Ballet of Cuba, where she was the company’s top ballerina […]

There are reasons why artists find cross-disciplinary collaborations so invigorating. It’s a bit like a great chef preparing a meal with no recipe: When performing artists combine music, dance, visuals, or theater toward a common goal, they must rely on instinct and experience to guide them. The outcome is often unknown even to them until […]

This is an updated version of an article that appeared in The Independent in early 2020, shortly before the Lyric Opera had to postpone its production of The Shining: which it will now present this March. —P.H.  . The most terrifying thing on earth is the human heart. Thus the scariest parts of any horror story […]

Young classical musicians often dream of stardom. But the reality is that even if they make it to the big time, they will probably be playing with other musicians for much of their careers. Performers on strings, winds, or brass might be playing in an orchestra, and professionals on keyboard instruments will most likely be […]

Kansas City’s performing arts organizations have taken to heart the national push toward diversity and inclusion, and their commitment is reflected in this spring’s performances. Rarely have we seen such a variety of art and artists, genres and life-experiences, as in these programs.                     Playwrights Mashuq […]

Michelle Tyrene Johnson uses theater to tackle big issues. In more than a dozen full-length and longer one-act plays, and in numerous shorter works, she has often found that art can exert a greater impact than a simple recounting of facts. The Green Book Wine Club Train Trip, for instance, given a winning production by […]

Music, theater, and dance came roaring back to life in Kansas City during 2022. Hungry for an arts “fix” after being stuck at home for nearly two years, audiences ventured out: first in a cautious trickle, and by the end of the year, in a flood. The larger producing organizations rose to new challenges, motivated […]

Sometimes even the most beloved of fairy tales contain messages that appear “unmodern” on the surface, although upon closer scrutiny we often find reasons why they still resonate. The many Cinderella stories of the last several centuries seem to characterize a hapless woman who has to be “rescued” by a handsome prince: Yet even the […]

Smaller arts groups are often nimbler in negotiation large-scale cultural shifts than their larger counterparts. As early as 2016, Kansas City Actors Theatre changed its slogan from “Classically Trained Actors, Classic Plays” to “Great Actors, Smart Plays.” A subtle shift, perhaps, but a step toward responding to community needs: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kansas City’s […]

Innovation often happens when the right people are at the right place at the right time: and have come prepared. When Leilani Velasco Vaughn applied to join the William Baker Festival Singers, she mentioned in her application that she was fluent in Spanish, had studied vocal music, and had led choirs. During her audition with […]

NOTE: This is an adaptation of an article first published in The Independent in November 2020, shortly before the December world premiere of the Lyric’s Amahl. That year, COVID-19 prevented live performances of the production, which was instead filmed and made available for home viewing. In 2021 it was finally presented to live audiences. This […]

Lynn Nottage’s play Clyde’s takes place in a “liminal space,” as the playwright has written, a truck-stop sandwich shop that is trying to “carve out space in a rapidly evolving landscape.” This place of transition is a bit like Lynn’s work itself: Her impressive output stands as a refreshing, transformative locus within the shifting terrain of […]

We hold holiday traditions close because they remind us of family and nostalgia, of childhood and gift-giving and sparkling lights. Kansas City is famous for its long-held performance traditions, but in recent years arts groups have begun to branch out, with offerings that are a bit off the beaten path. Don’t worry: No one wants […]

The character of Violetta Valéry that Giuseppe Verdi and librettist Francesco Piave created for the operatic stage began provoking controversy from the moment of La traviata’s premiere in 1853. For moralists, including the Venetian censors of the day, this “fallen woman” (a literal translation of the title) presented an inappropriately positive image of a 19th-century courtesan: […]

Forming a musical bond is a bit like making a good friend. You often can’t explain exactly why you hit it off: You just do. And when this rare harmony descends upon a conductor and an orchestra, angels rejoice. “It’s a matter of timing and chemistry… sort of like the stars aligning,” said Marin Alsop […]

Imagine a world in which classical music is forbidden fruit, and learning to play Beethoven or Chopin or Mozart is a subversive act. That’s the environment in which Composer-Pianist Iman Habibi was raised: post-Revolutionary Tehran, where instrumental music was frowned upon, or even banned. And although his parents encouraged Iman’s skills on the family’s 40-key […]

Nelson T. Eusebio III’s distinguished career in theater began almost by accident. He was 15 and followed some girls into a room where auditions were about to take place, even though he had never acted before and had not prepared a thing. “I asked them what they were doing there, and they said we’re auditioning […]

Few events in the life of an orchestra are as exciting or as unnerving as the transition to a new music director. The search is on for a conductor to step up to the podium that Michael Stern will vacate at the end of 2023-2024, and the season that the Kansas City Symphony wrapped up […]

A brief look at some of the more promising offerings in music, dance, and theater   SEPTEMBER 6-25 Kansas City Repertory Theatre; Twelfth Night; The Rep’s new associate artistic director, Nelson T. Eusebio III, makes his local directorial debut with Shakespeare’s gender-bending “rom-com”: Viola, disguised as a young man, falls in love with the Duke Orsino, […]