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Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

As we move into January, several Kansas City music organizations are beginning their winter seasons. It will be a grand two weeks for audience members seeking virtuoso instrumentalists, as three great pianists, Andre Watts, Radu Lupu and Jean Yves Thibaudet, take the stage for the Kansas City Symphony, The Friends of Chamber Music and Harriman-Jewell Series, respectively, and are matched by two great string players, Joshua Bell, violin (Harriman-Jewell Series) and Alisa Weilerstein, cello (Kansas City Symphony).

Fans of medieval music have a rare chance to hear the sonorous tones of Sequentia, Benjamin Bagby’s famous early music vocal ensemble, in the appropriate surroundings of Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral for The Friends of Chamber Music. Meanwhile, dance aficionados will not be disappointed as the Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company reprises its popular program from last fall, The Cypress Avenue Concert, at the Folly Theater, and Lar Lubovitch, one of today’s most celebrated modern dance choreographers, brings his inimitable ensemble to the Carlsen Center in Johnson County.

Kansas City Symphony
Andre Watts Plays Rachmaninoff
Friday and Saturday, January 14 and 15, at 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, January 16, at 2:00 p.m.
Lyric Theatre
11th and Central
Kansas City, Missouri
For tickets call 816-471-0400 or online at www.kcsymphony.org.

The central number of the Symphony’s following concerts this weekend is one of the most familiar pieces of classical music, Rachmaninoff’s gigantic Piano Concerto No. 2.  This music embodies the virtuosic brilliance and Romantic sensibilities of one of Russia’s greatest performers, Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was also one of its greatest composers.  It dates from a day when composers were generally also great virtuosos (whatever happened to that tradition?  Composers rarely perform their own music these days), and Rachmaninoff was an almost larger-than-life figure on the concert stage. 

It takes a larger-than-life pianist to pull it off even today, and in its soloist, Andre Watts, the Symphony has just the man for the job.  Watts has had one of the most spectacular pianistic careers of the past century.  Now nearing the twilight of a brilliant career, he will undoubtedly bring polish and verve to one of his (and his audiences’) favorite pieces.

Also on tap for the concert is Martinů’s Symphony No. 4 and Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge.  These two pieces, one by a relatively modern composer (1890-1959) and the other by one of music’s greatest classical heroes (1770-1827) would seem to have little in common.  Yet surprisingly, their musical language is not all that different.

Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company
The Cyprus Avenue Concert
Friday, January 14 at 7:30 p.m.
Folly Theater
12^th and Central Streets
Kansas City, Missouri
For tickets call (816) 474-4444 or online at http://wylliams-henry.org/home.

Last September, The Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company, led by University of Missouri-Kansas City dance department chair Mary Pat Henry, opened its season with The Cypress Avenue Concert, featuring choreography set to classic popular music numbers chosen by Bill Shapiro, the longtime host of KCUR-FM’s Cypress Avenue rock music program. The choreography for these numbers was by a plethora of local dance professionals, including Mary Pat Henry, Paula Weber, the Kansas City Ballet’s artistic director William Whitener, New York’s Sean Curran, Tiffany Sisemore and DeeAnna Hiett.

The concert was such a hit that the Folly Theater is now bringing it back under its own sponsorship. So if you missed it the first time, here is your chance!

Topeka Symphony Orchestra
KS 150: Concert of Works by Native Kansas Composers
Saturday, January 15 at 7:30 p.m.
White Concert Hall, Washburn University Campus
Topeka, Kansas
For tickets call (785) 232-2032, or online at http://topekasymphony.org.

Topeka Symphony conductor John Strickler always has interesting programming for his concerts, and this evening offers one of the most intriguing of his tenure.  All of the featured works are by native Kansas composers, and are in honor of the sesquicentennial (that means 150^th anniversary, for the uninitiated) of Kansas’ statehood.

The concert will open with a piece called Flint Hills Contours by contemporary composer Charles Hoag, a professor of music theory and composition at the University of Kansas.  Next the orchestra will play Prairie Glimpses by painter and songwriter Cathy Krallman in collaboration with Diane Gillenwater, a piece featured on a disc of Kansas songs recently released by the two. 

Native composer Kirke Mechem, nationally known for his many choral compositions and also for his operas (the Lyric Opera of Kansas City premiered his John Brown in its 50^th anniversary season three years ago), is represented by the world premiere of the song cycle From the Heartland performed by Independence (Missouri) native David Okerlund.  Finally, the concert will end with another Mechem piece, sure to be a favorite with Kansans for its title alone, the Jayhawk Overture.

Friends of Chamber Music
Sequentia
Friday, January 21 at 8:00 p.m.
Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral
415 West 13^th Street
Kansas City, Missouri
For tickets call (816) 561-9999 or online at www.chambermusic.org. 

Medieval music specialist Benjamin Bagby brings his all-male vocal ensemble Sequentia to Kansas City under the auspices of the Friends of Chamber Music for a concert in the imposing surrounds of Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral downtown, which is a perfect venue for the low and sonorous tones for which this group is so famous.

In this presentation, the men will perform works written for services at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris during the 12th century.

Sequentia’s unusual but highly popular programming of early music reflects the international reputation and highly-respected scholarship of Bagby. The New York Times described Sequentia as "extraordinarily inventive," and as a group that "has made a specialty of bringing medieval music to life."

This concert offers unusual opportunity to hear music you may never have had before, as performed by one of the world’s leading groups specializing in this type of music.

Harriman-Jewell Series
Joshua Bell, violinist, and Sam Haywood, pianist
Saturday, January 22 at 8:00 p.m.
Folly Theater
12th and Central
Kansas City, Missouri
For tickets call (816) 415-5025 or online at www.hjseries.org.

Violinist Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated virtuosos of our day, and we have been blessed here in Kansas City to have had the opportunity of seeing him several times over the past few years.  He headlined the Signature Series for the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance a few years ago for the Conservatory’s 100^th anniversary and just last season he played with the Kansas City Symphony.  His most frequent appearances, however, have been with the Harriman-Jewell Series, for whom this is his fourth appearance.

Bell has not only become a classical music superstar since his debut concert performances at the tender age of 14, but his stylish playing along with his boyish good looks have made him a crossover and popular cult figure as well; his stints on late night talk shows and in television pop concerts have won him many fans outside the usual circle of classical music aficionados. As a recording artist, he has committed to disc more than 30 CD’s for Sony Classics.

For this recital, Bell returns to town in the company of collaborative pianist Sam Haywood to perform works for violin and piano by Brahms, Schubert, and Grieg, plus additional numbers “to be announced from the stage,” according to the advance publicity.  Bell’s strength is the standard Romantic repertoire, and it looks like this concert is designed to play to his “sweet spot.” Expect much lush and sonorous playing, along with a splash of spectacular technique here and there. 

UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance and Friends of Chamber Music
Conservatory Artist Series: Music Alliance
Parker Quartet
Saturday, January 22 at 7:30 p.m.
James C. Olson Performing Arts Center
White Recital Hall
4949 Cherry
Kansas City, Missouri
For tickets call the Central Ticket Office at (816) 235-6222 or online at www.umkc.edu/cto.

The UMKC Conservatory’s Conservatory Artist Series: Music Alliance of recitals and concerts resumes this month with a performance by the Parker Quintet, a group of young musicians who began touring professionally nine years ago.  In 2005 the group gained international stature by winning the Concert Artists Guild Competition and the Grand Prix and Mozart prizes.  Most recently, it won the Cleveland Quartet Award last year, which is given to outstanding young string quartets.

The Quartet is currently in residence with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota. In this concert it will performs works by Dvořák, Mendelssohn, Kurtag, and Hindemith.

UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance
Faculty Recital: Aidan Soder, mezzo-soprano
Wednesday, January 24, at 7:30 p.m.
James C. Olson Performing Arts Center
White Recital Hall
4949 Cherry
Kansas City, Missouri
Free admission.  For more information call (816) 235-2799 or online at conservatory.umkc.edu

UMKC Conservatory vocal faculty member Dr. Aidan Soder will perform mezzo-soprano works by George Frideric Handel, Franz Schubert, Kirke Mechem, Ernesto Granados, Francis Poulenc and William Bolcom in a wide-ranging recital covering a variety of music and vocal styles.  The works of Mechem and Bolcom will be unfamiliar to many audience members, but Mechem was the composer of the opera John Brown premiered by the Lyric Opera several years ago, and a nationally known choral composer.  Bolcom, likewise, is a contemporary opera composer who counts among his stage successes McTeague and A View From the Bridge.

And in addition to what is expected to be outstanding artistry, you can’t beat the price.

Kansas City Symphony
Ravel’s Spanish Rhapsody, Plus Shostakovich
Friday and Saturday, January 28 and 29, at 8:00 p.m.
Lyric Theatre, 11th and Central
Kansas City, Missouri
For tickets call (816) 471-0400 or online at www.kcsymphony.org

A decidedly Spanish theme marks the Symphony’s last concerts in January, performed under the baton of guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero. The performances will open with the Interlude from Geronimo Giménez’ zarzuela called La boda de Luis Alonso.  This brief but brilliant piece of music by the late 19^th Century Spanish composer and conductor was one of his most popular zarzuelas and remains a classic in his home country.

The concert also features the Sinfonia No. 4 of composer Roberto Sierra and one of the greatest pieces of Spanish music composed by a non-Spanish composer, Maurice Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole. 

Sierra, a contemporary American-born but Spanish-influenced composer, has had a significant career in symphonic composition with his works performed by the orchestras of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, New Mexico, Houston, Minnesota, Dallas, Detroit, San Antonio and Phoenix, as well as by the American Composers Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich, the Spanish orchestras of Madrid, Galicia, Castilla y León and Barcelona, among others. In 2003 he was awarded the Academy Award in Music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which cited his “brilliant music, mixing fresh and personal melodic lines with sparkling harmonies and striking rhythms. . ." His Sinfonía No. 1 won the 2004 Kenneth Davenport Competition for Orchestral Works, and the Sinfonia No. 4 to be played by the Symphony is one of its successors.

Ravel, like his fellow Frenchman Georges Bizet before him, did not feel it necessary to necessarily be of Spanish blood to feel the hot passion of Spanish music. Following in the footsteps of Bizet, who wrote the “Spanish” opera Carmen, Ravel used Spanish themes and influences in his Rapsodie espagnole and wrote music that many listeners will identify as more “Spanish” sounding than many genuine Spanish compositions. Regardless of whether you consider it authentic, you will thrill to the marvelously nuanced orchestrations and great Romantic passion of Ravel’s vision, one of classical music’s great masterpieces.

Finally, just in case you have tired of dancing in the aisles, the Symphony gives you a break with a decidedly un-Spanish piece of music, the Cello Concerto No. 2 of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.  Shostakovich, a mid-20^th-century master who fought his whole compositional life against the strictures and horrors of Stalinism, somehow managed to carve a distinct and somewhere modernistic musical language against the reactionary tugs and pulls of the totalitarian Soviet state. His Cello Concerto No. 2, written for his close friend, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, is one of his final works, composed after the death of Stalin, and shows the composer stretching his compositional legs and engaging in adventurous flights of imagination.

The Symphony’s soloist is the young American virtuoso Alisa Weilerstein, who has appeared with many prestigious ensembles, among them the orchestras of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Minnesota, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco, as well as the New York Philharmonic and National Symphony Orchestra. An ECHO “Rising Star” and alumna of Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society II, she has performed as recitalist and chamber musician in many of the world’s top concert halls and festivals. She records for EMI classics and she was the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Harriman-Jewell Series
Jean Yves Thibaudet, pianist
Friday, January 28 at 8:00 p.m.
Folly Theater
12th and Central
Kansas City, Missouri
For tickets call (816) 415-5025 or online at www.hjseries.org.

Like Joshua Bell, appearing with the Harriman Jewell Series on January 22, French pianist Jean Yves Thibaudet is making his fourth appearance with the Series this month. Also like Bell, Thibaudet was a child star who has grown into one of the most impressive virtuosos of our day, and we are extremely fortunate here in Kansas City to have had several opportunities to hear him play.

For this recital, Thibaudet has outlined a challenging program featuring works entirely by Franz Liszt.  One of the most brilliant piano virtuosos of any age, Franz Liszt was the “rock star” of the mid-19^th century, a performer at whose concerts young ladies would swoon and faint, and whose many fans stomped and cheered his every move, both on and off the stage.  Liszt virtuosity was so great that some rumored him to be possessed by the Devil.  How else could it be that anybody could cram so many notes and so much volume into such a short space of time? 

Nobody today would mistake the mild-mannered Thibaudet for one possessed by the Devil, but he does not lack for technical expertise, which is required in spades for any aggressive Liszt program. This listener is especially looking forward to Liszt’s arrangement of Chopin pieces, and Liszt’s piano version of the “Liebestod” from Wagner’s historic opera Tristan und Isolde. 

The Performing Arts Series at Johnson County Community College 
Lar Lubovitch Dance Company
Saturday, January 29 at 8:00 p.m.
Yardley Hall at Carlsen Center
Johnson County Community College
12345 College Boulevard
Overland Park, Kansas
For tickets call (913) 469-4445 or online at www.jcc.edu/performing-arts-series

Lar Lubovitch is one of the most significant choreographers on the American scene.  Born in Chicago and educated in Iowa and at the Juilliard School in New York, he founded the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company 41 years ago and since then has choreographed more than 100 works for the ensemble.  The company gives an annual fall season at the New York City Center and tours throughout the rest of the year. It has performed in virtually every state of the United States and in more than 30 foreign countries. Lar Lubovitch has been cited by The New York Times as “one of the ten best choreographers in the world.”

The company’s reputation is as one of the world’s foremost modern dance companies. It has received many awards and grants, including citations from from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and numerous foundations, including the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund.

By Don Dagenais

City Classics Music and Dance Columnist; Classical Contributor

A lifelong classical music fan, Don Dagenais is a frequent preview speaker for the Lyric Opera of Kansas City and has taught classical music and opera courses at several Kansas City venues. He has served on the boards of directors of a number of performing arts organizations including the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, the Lyric Opera Guild, UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance, Opera Volunteers International, the Civic Opera Theater of Kansas City, Inspiration Point Fine Arts Colony, Octarium, and the Friends of the Symphony.  He has been the past president of most of these organizations and is current the president of the Friends of the Symphony. 

Dagenais co-authored a history of the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, published on the occasion of its 50th anniversary (2007) and has written books on the histories of both the Lyric Opera Guild and Opera Volunteers International, as well as an introductory book for opera novices (Your Passport to the Opera).  He has received several local and national awards for outstanding volunteer work for the arts, including a lifetime achievement award from The Coterie Theatre in 2000, the Kansas City Musical Club's annual award in 2001, a Partners in Excellence Award from Opera Volunteers International in 2002, a Bravo Award from Opera Volunteers International in 2004 and a community service award from the Daughter of the American Revolution in 2008 honoring him for his community service to the arts.

In addition to his music interests, Don is president of the board of directors for the Metropolitan Ensemble Theater and has served on the boards of The Coterie Theatre and the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, serving as president of each organization.  He publishes newsletters for seven arts organizations.  When not involved in the performing arts, Don is a senior real estate attorney with Lathrop & Gage LLP in Kansas City, Missouri, where he has practiced law since 1976 after graduating from the Cornell Law School.