The pandemic of recent months has inspired a number of remarkable innovations among Kansas City’s performing-arts groups, from livestreamed concerts and “Zoom theater” to high-tech ventures combining seemingly disparate art […]

Hollywood thrives on cliché, and its treatment of classical music through the years has ranged from the puerile to the downright offensive. When it comes to opera, though, filmmakers have […]

When we think about musical giants of our time, we often completely overlook a hugely significant segment of the community. In terms of the impact their music exerts on our […]

Classical music might occupy a radically different place in American culture if more of us thought about it the way Keith Stanfield does. The violinist and founder of Kansas City’s […]

If you wish to gain a well-rounded view of American dance during the last century, look no further than the list of works presented through the years by the Wylliams/Henry […]

If you want to know the strength of an organization’s guiding principles, observe how it acts during times of crisis. Kansas City Ballet believes that live music is as essential […]

You might at first wonder what artist-poet-filmmaker Michèle Saint-Michel has in common with singer-songwriter AJ Harbison or UMKC Conservatory doctoral student Yunfei Li. All are among the six Kansas City […]

When David Dastmalchian returned to Kansas City after a 20-year absence, to appear in the independent film he wrote, All Creatures Here Below, it was not just a homecoming. It […]

Not all same-sex couples feel a pressing need to get married, but it begins to appear that most do. The United States is home to a half-million legally married gay […]

Theatergoers cherish a good love story. We look at some favorite couples from a range of English-language stage works, all of whom can teach us a thing or two about […]

During a chilly December walk on the grounds of the National World War I Museum and Memorial, Duke Lee stopped, kneeled, and asked Rena Ishii for her hand in marriage. […]

Heartland Chamber Music is not just a festival and it’s not just a music program or a “violin camp.” It’s many things at once, and unless your child has been […]

  Most mothers dread the day that their sons or daughters start to drive, but Black moms are especially fearful when their teenagers, and sons in particular, get behind the […]

Before there was theater there was storytelling. And if we ever end up living in a dystopian world with a broken “grid,” we might find ourselves returning to that oral […]

These days the primary qualification for achieving the American dream seems to be adaptability. Jessica Wakefield and Kevin Hao began preparing for their “first careers” as orchestral violinists in the […]

Many of us still think of it as the new kid on the block. But for anyone tracing the development of the performing arts in the Kansas City region, watching […]

Early humans may not have actually learned to make music from the beasts of the air, land, or sea, but they were clearly aware of the sounds around them. We […]

After local arts organizations got over the shock of not being able to perform in their normal manner, they began setting up cameras everywhere: streaming performances live, filming them to […]

One of these days, Yetunde Felix-Ukwu will again have a mountain of artistic, production, and curatorial duties to deal with at Kansas City Repertory Theatre. At the moment, though, the […]

Performing artists are such punctilious critics of their own work that they generally know what went well and what didn’t. Even before anyone else weighs in, they have at least […]

Kansas City arts organizations defied odds in 2020 and pulled off some of the most remarkable performances in recent memory. They ranged from a handful of live-with-audience performances (some pre-pandemic, […]