Change is almost always frightening, but when it comes to timeworn holiday traditions it can be as terrifying as realizing you left the Christmas turkey in the oven on “high” […]

Everest possesses something found in surprisingly few contemporary operas: soaring, tastefully singable tunes that stick in your head but avoid the tacky pizzazz of Broadway that plagues so many new […]

Hearing one musical giant at a concert is a great thing. Two, even better. But three, on the same program? Few events on this season’s calendar stand out quite as […]

Lee Ritenour might not know exactly what he and his ensemble will be playing when they perform here on October 28th, at the glittering Opening Night of the Folly Jazz […]

The Chicago Symphony plays like a well-oiled, meticulously hand-crafted engine, and an opportunity to hear it in a fine acoustic space is always a treat. In 2015, when the Harriman-Jewell […]

Devon Carney has already demonstrated his skill as choreographer in the four full-length ballets he’s created since becoming the Kansas City Ballet’s Artistic Director in 2013. What stood out in […]

Theater comes in all shapes and sizes, but the plays that stick with us tend to be those that hold up a mirror to our own joys and tragedies, our […]

The Lyric Opera’s handsome production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin hit home partly because of its simplicity. The spare approach both to design and to direction, and the unfussy singing that […]

Kansas City’s performing-arts season opened with a vengeance in mid-September, with more than a dozen professional-level productions of music, dance and theater vying for attention. Among the half-dozen or so […]

It’s true that many operas of the standard repertoire are drawn from stories that are implausible, overwrought or even downright ridiculous. Almost as often, though, composers find themselves setting literary […]

Email: Paul@kcindependent.com   Paul studied piano and musicology at WSU and Cornell University. He also earned a degree in journalism, because writing about the arts in order to inspire others to […]

By Paul Horsley Trying to gauge the artistry of a musician on the basis of a performance at an international composition is like trying to identify a future Oscar-winning filmmaker […]

For a kid who was about to devote his life and career to dance, young Devon Carney sure took a long time to realize that Romeo and Juliet was not […]

By Paul Horsley Often when peering at photographs of historically momentous events, after our eyes have stared at the central subject for a while, we begin to gaze at what’s […]

By Paul Horsley Feel like “raging against the machine” this Fall? Art is your best recourse! So get out your desk calendars, cell phones, iPads and whatnot and start marking […]

By Paul Horsley The making of every great musician involves natural talent, assiduous practice and, perhaps most important of all, teachers whose influences mold an artist through intelligence, caring attention […]

By Paul Horsley If we listen to stories and songs of men, we learn of conflicts and wars, preening pride and costly conquest. If we turn our ear to women’s […]

By Paul Horsley Here’s a hint for performing-arts groups: If you want to keep the public interested year-in, year-out, you have to try new things all the time. Kansas City’s […]

By Paul Horsley For actor Nathan Darrow, Hamlet is not some dreamy philosopher pondering the meaning of life. The title character of Shakespeare’s essential play is asking some very specific […]

By Paul Horsley From the moment she first discovered the freedom and beauty of movement, Misty Copeland had one goal in life: to become a Principal Dancer at the American […]

By Paul Horsley If we were to write out our conversation the way we actually speak, it might look like the scrawled musings of a child. Or it might look […]