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Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

The Kansas City Ballet’s spring program of Giselle, the classic full-length ballet by Adolphe Adam, is the highlight of early March dance and music programming in Kansas City. It is one of the greats in the repertoire. The Friends of Chamber Music presents the outstanding original instrument ensemble Akademie für alte Musik Berlin in works of Bach and Telemann. Meanwhile, opera fans can enjoy the Civic Opera presentation of Conrad Susa’s Transformations.

Kansas City Ballet
Giselle
Thursday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, March 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 12 at 2:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 13 at 2:00 p.m.
Lyric Theatre
11th St and Central Ave, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-931-2232 or order visit at www.kcballet.org.

When one thinks of full–length classic ballet, there are a handful of towering masterpieces that come to mind, including the works of Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty), Stravinsky (The Rite of Spring, The Firebird), Prokofiev (Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella), Delibes (Coppelia), Chopin (Les Sylphides), Ravel (Daphnis et Chloe) and Mendelssohn (A Midsummer Night’s Dream).  Also ranking on any informed person’s list is Giselle by French composer Adolphe Adam.

The Kansas City Ballet’s late, great artistic director Todd Bolender first produced this piece in 1999.  This year, his worthy successor Bill Whitener is bringing it back to the Lyric Theatre stage. It is an evening–long extravaganza, featuring “a story of innocence, betrayal, death and forgiveness” as the Ballet’s press materials express it. Members of the Kansas City Symphony will perform the score under the direction of Kansas City Ballet music director Ramona Pansegrau. The evening should be a delight for the ear as well as for the eye.

The Friends of Chamber Music
Akademie für alte Musik Berlin
Friday, March 11 at 8:00 p.m.
Folly Theater
12th St and Central Ave, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-561-9999 or order visit online at www.chambermusic.org. 

The Akademie für alte Musik Berlin is one of the most celebrated Baroque music ensembles in the world, and in Kansas City we have been privileged to have the Akademie visit our town on several occasions under the sponsorship of Cynthia Siebert’s The Friends of Chamber Music series. On this occasion, the Akademie will be performing two works by Bach, two by Telemann, and one by Handel.

The Akademie was founded in 1982, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, to give young musicians from Berlin orchestras an opportunity to perform music on historic instruments, a then–novel idea, especially on the East Side of the Iron Curtain. In 1984, the ensemble began presenting an independent concert series in the Schauspielhaus. International renown was soon to follow. The Akademie performed not only in the cultural centers of Eastern Germany, but also in the West, such as the Holland Festival in Utrecht, the Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Festival in Duisburg, the Aachener Bachtage and the Händel Festival in Halle. Concert tours took the ensemble to other European countries as well as abroad. At the same time it was engaged by a number of broadcasting and recording companies.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Akademie has become known worldwide for the excellence of its original instrument performances. It has collaborated and made recordings with a number of celebrated artists such as René Jacobs, Reinhard Goebel, Ton Koopman and others.

Civic Opera Theatre of Kansas City
Transformations
Friday, March 11 and Saturday, March 12 at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 13 at 2:00 p.m.
Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre
3604 Main St, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-569-3226 or visit online at www.metkc.org.

 The Civic Opera Theatre, Kansas City’s “second” opera company, is putting on a rare production of contemporary composer Conrad Susa’s opera Transformations at the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre space this weekend.

Transformations stars soprano Sylvia Stoner in the title role of Anne Sexton, an American writer (1928-1974) who was the author of brilliant poetry and whose emotional disturbances led to a tragic personal ending.

Susa’s setting of Transformations uses actual poems by Sexton, which are largely retellings of classic fairy tales, but with introductions showing their special relevance to her and our lives today. The opera takes place in an insane asylum where she is a patient. She usually takes the lead role in the fairy tale, with other inmates taking other roles as needed.  Please be aware that although the poems derive from fairy tales, this is not a children’s show.

Critic Roger Brunyate has written that “for all the verbal pyrotechnics of Transformations, for all the kaleidoscope excitement of the switched roles and theatrical legerdemain, for all the fun of catching the various pop references in Susa’s score, it is Anne Sexton’s power to write as a woman, to transform her suffering into something both radiant and profoundly moving, that makes the piece so totally worth doing.”

Longtime Civic Opera Theatre fans will recognize Susa as the same composer who wrote The Wise Women, which was produced by the Civic Opera to popular acclaim for many years.

Kansas City Guitar Society
Tim Callobre, guitarist
Friday, March 11 at 7:30 p.m.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
40th St and Main St, Kansas City, MO
Free admission.  For more information visit http://www.kansascityguitarsociety.org/

Seventeen-year-old guitarist Tim Callobre is featured in this program of works by Turrina, Albeniz, Granados, and other composers, including a composition of his own.

He won the Parkening Young Guitarist Competition and the American String Teachers Association National Competition and has performed at the White House. As a composer, he won the ASCAP Foundation Young Composer Awards twice. As a pianist, he placed third in the Liszt International Piano Competition. He is seventeen years old.

 
Harriman–Jewell Series
Natasha Paremski, pianist
Saturday, March 12 at 7:00 p.m.
Folly Theater
12th St and Central Ave, Kansas City, MO
Discovery Concert: free admission, but obtain your tickets by calling 816-415-5025 or print your own tickets online at www.hjseries.org. Limit of four tickets per household.

Several times a year the Harriman–Jewell series presents an outstanding young artist at one of its free Discovery Concert series. These concerts often prove to be just as exciting as some of the regular Harriman–Jewell concerts for which you will pay full price. This Saturday, the 22-year-old Russian native Natasha Paremski will present a piano recital.

Her growing list of awards includes the Prix Montblanc 2007, the 2006 Gilmore Young Artist Award, top prize in the 2002 Bronislaw Kaper Awards sponsored by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and top prize in the Young Artists in Carnegie Hall 2000 International Piano Festival.

The program has not yet been announced. Note the earlier starting time for this recital.

 
Lee’s Summit Symphony
Spring Classic
Saturday, March 12, at 7:30 p.m.
Lee’s Summit High School
400 S.E. Blue Pkwy, Lee's Summit, MO
Tickets available at Hy Vee East and Hy Vee West in Lee’s Summit, and online at www.lssymphony.org.

The Lee’s Summit Symphony has ambitiously programmed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (the “Pastoral”) for its spring concert, along with an all-time orchestral favorite, Finlandia by Jean Sibelius. The orchestra will also perform excerpts from Aaron Copland’s ballet Appalachian Spring (“Variations on a Shaker Melody”) and the Hungarian Dance No. 5 by Johannes Brahms.

In the lighter section of the program, the orchestra will perform selections from the Broadway musical A Chorus Line by Marvin Hamlisch.

Kantorei of Kansas City
Solomon’s Song
Saturday, March 12 at 7:00 p.m.
First Presbyterian Church of Lee's Summit
1625 O'Brien Rd, Lee's Summit, MO
Sunday, March 13 at 3:00 p.m.
Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church
2552 Gillham Rd, Kansas City, MO
Tickets available at the door.  For more information visit http://www.kantoreikc.blogspot.com

Kansas City’s newest choral ensemble will perform twice, in a concert featuring a musical setting of the Song of Solomon, as well as selections highlighting the Wedding Rite. The latter will include Daniel Pinkham's Wedding Cantata with pianist Eryn Bates Preston and the rarely performed motets of Palestrina's Canticum Canticorum (Song of Songs).

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.