If you haven’t heard of Open Spaces yet, chances are you’ll be getting an earful in the coming weeks. This sprawling, nine-week celebration of the visual and performing arts, which runs […]

At least once a year, some enterprising Kansas Citian comes up with an idea for an arts organization that has us slapping our foreheads saying, Why didn’t we think of […]

When Anthony Krutzkamp and Logan Pachciarz welcomed the audience to the Kansas City Dance Festival’s inaugural performance in June 2013, some doubted that such an endeavor could thrive in KC’s […]

When stories linger in our collective imagination for thousands of years, told and retold in ever-evolving versions, it’s generally because they’ve touched a nerve. In theater, tales from myth and […]

If you think you’re up-to-date about music in Kansas City but have ignored the world of the pipe organ, you aren’t really seeing the whole picture. Our city now boasts […]

It’s such common fodder for literature, stage and screen that it’s become almost cliché: two people who spend so much time exchanging verbal barbs that eventually their cohorts have to […]

It’s largely by coincidence that the Kansas City Women’s Chorus and the Heartland Men’s Chorus have scheduled their Summer Concerts on adjacent weekends. But it’s win-win for Kansas Citians who […]

Is opera music, or is it theater? That the best answer to that question is “yes” is part of what makes this art form so intriguing: The struggle over whether […]

Theater about economic disparities will always be current. From the master-servant dynamics of Shakespeare’s plays to close-to-the-bone American tales such as Death of a Salesman or even Stephen Karam’s recent […]

If you like Stephen Sondheim’s musicals, chances are you’ll enjoy the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s finely outfitted production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which runs through […]

In many ways it seemed inevitable that William Baker should become a choral director. Early in life two of the main strands of his existence, faith and music, began to […]

The Kansas City Ballet is about to embark on an artistic voyage as challenging as any it has navigated. As part of its 60th anniversary “Diamond Jubilee” season it will […]

People seldom become opera singers willy-nilly. It’s a step-by-step process not unlike the acquisition of any other professional skill. It’s also an art-form, and thus success can be more elusive. […]

That Rigoletto is regarded as one of Verdi’s most beloved operas might seem surprising considering what an ugly story it recounts. First performed in 1851 but based on a tawdry […]

The Kansas City Ballet’s New Moves is gradually coming into its own. The project that Artistic Director Devon Carney launched shortly after arriving in 2013 (an outgrowth of a previous […]

If you still think of Kathleen Battle as an opera singer, you haven’t been paying attention for the last 40 years. It’s true that the soprano, who possesses one of […]

Classical music has proven itself to be one of the last bastions of “high-brow” art, but even its stubborn notions of the superiority of cultivated European tradition are giving way. […]

For Michael Stern the centenary celebration of musical icon Leonard Bernstein is a personal journey. The Kansas City Symphony Music Director not only grew up around the enormously gifted conductor-composer-pianist, […]

Mention composer Harold Arlen’s name to music lovers and they’re likely to say, “Oh yeah, he was one of those old Broadway guys, right?” But then drop into the conversation […]

Some might say there are advantages to being the only actor in a play. You wield complete control over the pacing, you don’t have to worry about other players forgetting their […]

Kansas City musicians scored extraordinarily well in the 2018 Grammy Award nominations announced on November 28th: seven nominations in all. Congratulations go to the Kansas City Symphony, KC’s mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, […]