KCMETROPOLIS.org
Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

Kansas City Ballet
Tom Sawyer: A Ballet in Three Acts
Thursday, October 20 at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, October 21 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, October 22 at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, October 23 at 2:00 p.m.
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Muriel Kauffman Theatre
1601 Broadway Blvd, Kansas City, MO
For tickets, call 816-931-2232 or visit online at www.kcballet.org.

Of all Kansas City arts organizations making their debuts at the Kauffman Center this fall, this writer doesn’t think that any have matched the Kansas City Ballet in the pure brilliance of its selection: a world premiere, based on an classic American novel, by a famous Missourian, performed right here in Missouri at the new Kauffman Center. What an unbeatable combination!

For its fall series of performances, the Ballet is presenting the world premiere of a ballet based upon the famous Mark Twain novel, featuring an original score by Tony Award-winning composer Maury Yeston, with choreography by the KC Ballet’s artistic director, William Whitener.

The full-length ballet covers many of the episodes in the classic novel, including Tom’s wild and untamed childhood, his budding romance with Becky, his exploits on the Mississippi river with his friend Huck Finn, their staged “funeral,” and, according to the Ballet, “the many other adventures that have become part of our central American myth and treasured heritage.”

Yeston, primarily known as a Broadway composer, won Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Score for both Nine in 1982 and Titanicin 1997. He also won a Drama Desk Award for Nine. In addition, he wrote a significant amount of the music and most of the lyrics to the Tony-nominated musical Grand Hotel in 1989, which was nominated for Best Score.

Longtime Starlight Theatre audience members may recall his musical version of the novel The Phantom of the Opera called Phantom, not to be confused with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s version, which Starlight debuted a number of years ago. This writer frankly preferred the Yeston to the more eclectic and jarring Webber score. Yeston is also a composer of classical concert music, including a song cycle and a Cello Concerto.

This writer, along with the rest of a capacity audience at the Muriel Kauffman Theatre, saw a sampling of Tom Sawyer at the Kauffman Center’s grand opening gala on September 16, and the music and action appeared charming, indeed. In fact, several friends, after seeing this scene, promptly went out and purchased tickets to the full performance.

It should be the greatest evening in the Ballet’s history. Do you want to admit that you missed it?

A note to longtime Ballet audience members: for this production, the Ballet performing over two weekends instead of the usual single weekend. The first weekend does not include a Thursday performance, but the second one does.

 

Westport Center for the Arts
Goldenberg Duo
Friday, October 21 at 12:10 p.m.
Westport Presbyterian Church
201 Westport Road, Kansas City, MO
Free admission; donations accepted. For more information, visit http://www.westportcenterforthearts.org/ 

Kansas City Symphony violinist Susan Goldenberg and her brother William Goldenberg, pianist, perform one of their duo recitals during the lunch hour. These lunchtime concerts make from a great break from work near the end of the week, and you’re invited to bring your lunch and snack, as long as you’re not too disruptive (might want to leave the crackly potato chips at home). The Goldenbergs are both very talented musicians and their programs are entertaining and informative. They have been performing together for 32 years.

 
Friends of Chamber Music
Tokyo String Quartet
Friday, October 21 at 8:00 p.m.
Folly Theater
12^th and Central Streets, Kansas City, MO 
For tickets, call 816-561-9999 or online at www.chambermusic.org.

The Friends of Chamber Music presents one of the world’s leading string quartets, the Tokyo String Quartet, at the Folly Theater in a program of Haydn, Hindemith, and Schuman.

Founded more than forty years ago, the quartet continues to win acclaim for its performances and recordings. A recent review in the Toronto Globe and Mail said:

“Fit, classy, seasoned, impeccable, the Tokyo scaled the dizzying heights…. One approaches with some trepidation performances by a group that has been before the public for more than 40 years: We can admire their solidly won fame and full measure of experience, but fear the possibility of the mailed-in, the jaded, the stale. No such fears were realized [in the performance being reviewed]. Not only was [the music] vigorous, limber and fresh, but…[this] group has reached an ideal balance in their thinking and their individual virtuosities.”

 

UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance
Fall Conservatory Orchestra Concert
Friday, October 21 at 7:30 p.m.
White Recital Hall, James C. Olson Performing Arts Center
UMKC Campus
4949 Cherry Street, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-235-6222 or online at http://conservatory.umkc.edu

The Conservatory Orchestra of the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance performs its fall concert with selections by Russian composer Mikhail Glinka, American composer Aaron Copland, and French romanticist Hector Berlioz. The Glinka selection is the Overture to the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila, the Copland selection is excerpts from his ballet Appalachian Spring, and the Berlioz piece is the orchestral showpiece Symphonie fantastique.

 

Fine Arts Chorale
Howl-o-ween Laughter Songs & Stories with Storyteller Priscilla Howe
Friday, October 21 at 7:00 p.m.
Kansas City Public Library, Plaza Branch
4801 Main Street, Kansas City MO
No admission charge, but tickets are required. Reserve them from the Plaza Library at www.kclibrary.org/event. For more information visit http://fineartschoralekc.org

Conductor Terri Teal brings her Fine Arts Chorale to the Plaza Library for a Halloween concert including haunted tales by storyteller Priscilla Howe. According to the Library, “Howe tells stories from books and world folktales, served with a generous dollop of humor to be appreciated by audiences of all ages.”

 

Country Club Plaza
Waterfire
Saturday, October 22 at dusk
(rain date October 29)
Brush Creek on the Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, MO
Free admission. For more information visit http://www.countryclubplaza.com/Events/WaterFire

Waterfire is a multi-faceted entertainment that has become one of this community’s most interesting and prized fall evenings. This year’s event on Brush Creek features not only the intriguing sight of fireboats sailing up and down the creek, but also a variety of music and dance entertainment, including opera singers Sylvia Stoner-Hawkins, Elaine Fox and Nathan Granner, KC Swing and Tango, and the intriguing dance/acrobatic troupe Quixotic.

 

Performing Arts Series at Johnson County Community College
Los Angeles Guitar Quartet
Saturday, October 22 at 8:00 p.m.
Yardley Hall, Carlsen Center
Johnson County Community College Campus
12345 College Blvd., Overland Park, KS
For tickets call 913-469-4445 or online at www.jccc.edu/performing-arts-series

The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet is billed as a group that performs “From Bach to Bluegrass.” Founded three decades ago, the four acoustical guitarists perform transcriptions of instrumental classics as well as contemporary and world music. Winner of a 2005 Grammy award, the group has received critical and audience acclaim.

“The world’s hottest classical ensemble or its tightest pop band? However it helps you to think about the LAGQ,” wrote a Los Angeles Times critic, “keep the emphasis on superlatives for its unrivaled joy, technical élan, and questing spirits.”

In this concert, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet is scheduled to play the works of Boccherini, De Falla and Stravinsky, a set of jazz tunes by Miles Davis and John Coltrane, and excerpts from the group’s latest compact disc recording, LAGQ: Brazil.

 

Liberty Symphony Orchestra 
Music of John Williams
Saturday, October 22 at 7:30 p.m.
Liberty Performing Arts Theatre
1600 S. Withers Road, Liberty, MO
For tickets call 1-800-71-TICKETS or online at www.libertysymphony.org.

Film composer John Williams is one of the most popular tunesmiths of our day, and the Liberty Symphony performs a variety of his works in this concert, including music from the Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Harry Potter film series. The music director is Dr. Tony Brandolini of William Jewell College.

 

Village Church Music Programs
Lament for Jerusalem
Sunday, October 23 at 5:00 p.m.
Village Presbyterian Church
6641 Mission Road, Prairie Village, KS
Free admission, but offering will be received to benefit the KC Interfaith Youth Alliance. For more information, visit http://villagepres.org/worship-music/music-ministry/upcoming-music-events/

Matthew Christopher Shepard, director of the Village Presbyterian Church music programs, presents the Midwest premiere of this new choral work by English composer John Tavener. The Lament for Jerusalem weaves Islamic, Christian, and Jewish texts, representing Jerusalem’s three religions.

Tavener describes his piece as a mystical love song: “It is only through love that there can be a transcendent unity of all religions and all manifestations of God.” This concert is sponsored in part by The Greater Kansas City Festival of Faiths.

 

UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance
Conservatory Choirs: Faith, Hope and Love
Sunday, October 23 at 3:30 p.m.
St. John’s United Methodist Church
6900 Ward Parkway, Kansas City, MO
Free, but contributions are requested to benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure. For more information, visit http://conservatory.umkc.edu

This concert is tenth annual benefit concert by the UMKC Conservatory choirs for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Featured in the concert will be the Conservatory Concert Choir, directed by Charles Robinson; Canticum Novum, directed by Jacob Narverud; the Lee’s Summit West High School Una Voce, directed by Amy Krinke; and the Truman High School Chamber Singers, directed by Jonathan Krinke.

Musical selections will include compositions by Praetorius, Morley, di Lasso, Janequin, Handel, Brahms, Dello Joio, and more.

 

Kansas City Youth Symphony
Fall Concert
Sunday, October 23 at 3:00 p.m.
Ruskin High School Auditorium
7000 East 111th Street, Kansas City, MO
Free admission. For more information, visit http://youthsymphonykc.org

The Academy Orchestra, Symphonette Orchestra and String Orchestras of the Kansas City Youth Symphony will perform this afternoon. No programming details are available as of the publication date for this issue of KCMetropolis.

 

UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance
Wind Symphony and Wind Ensemble Concert
Wednesday, October 26 at 7:30 p.m.
Blue Valley Southwest High School
17600 Quivira Road, Overland Park, KS
For tickets call 816-235-6222 or online at http://conservatory.umkc.edu

This presentation is a combined concert of the UMKC Conservatory Wind Symphony directed by Steven D. Davis and the UMKC Conservatory Wind Ensemble directed by Joseph Parisi. The two groups will perform works by Chen Yi, William Bolcom, Mozart, Steve Mackey, and others but the crown jewel is Schmitt's Dionysaique. 

Harriman-Jewell Series
Midori
Thursday, October 27 at 8:00 p.m.
Folly Theater
12^th and Central Streets, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-415-5025, or visit online at www.hjseries.org.

The extraordinary Japanese violinist Midori is now completing the third decade of a remarkable international career. Fresh off performances in Denmark, she is spending October on recital tour of the United States with pianist Özgür Aydin. Their program consists of works by Mozart, Shostakovich, Schumann, and Schubert.

A recent review of a Midori performance in the Lexington Herald Leader said that “every aspect of her well-seasoned performance gave the impression of having been worked out in minute detail and then delivered with organic immediacy…. Midori seemed even more to find every conceivable expressive effect…. The audience received the concerto enthusiastically, calling Midori back to the stage several times….”

 

Kansas City Symphony
Brahms’ German Requiem
Friday, October 28 at 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, October 29 at 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, October 30 at 2:00 p.m.
Helzberg Hall, Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts
1601 Broadway, Kansas City, Missouri

For tickets call 816-471-0400 or online at www.kcsymphony.org.

The Brahms Deutsches Requiem [German Requiem] has long been considered one of the choral masterpieces of the Romantic era. The Kansas City Symphony chorus receives its official debut in Helzberg Hall this weekend as it sings this magnificent work with the Kansas City Symphony. Soprano Layla Clair and baritone Christopher Feigum are featured.

Also on the Symphony program are Beethoven’s Elegischer Gesang [Elegaic Song] and an offering by the iconoclastic French composer Olivier Messiaen, Les offrandes oubliées.

 

Owen/Cox Dance Group
International Center for Music
Collaborative Concert
Saturday, October 29 at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, October 30 at 3:00 p.m.
Graham Tyler Memorial Chapel
Park University Campus
8700 N. W. River Park Drive, Parkville, MO
Tickets available online at www.owencoxdance.org.

Owen/Cox Dance Group, one of Kansas City’s most innovative small dance companies, collaborates with the remarkably talented musicians of Stanislav Ioudenitch’s International Center for Music at Park University for this concert. The performance will include new dance works to the music of Igor Stravinsky, Johann Sebastian Bach, Dmitri Shostakovich and more.

 

Topeka Symphony Orchestra
The Fifth!
Saturday, October 29 at 7:30 p.m.
White Recital Hall
Washburn University Campus, Topeka, KS
For tickets call 785-232-2032 or visit http://www.topekasymphony.org

Ludwig von Beethoven’s monumental Symphony No. 5 is the featured work on this ambitious program of the Topeka Symphony, led by Stephen Strickler. Also on the concert will be the Sinfonia da requiem by Benjamin Britten, and Rainbow Body by Christopher Theofanidis.

Theofandis is the composer of Heart of a Soldier, an opera being premiered by the San Francisco Opera this year, and is becoming one of America’s most popular composers. His Rainbow Body dates from the year 2000, and according to the composer was inspired by the music of medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen and “the Tibetan Buddhist idea of Rainbow Body, which is that when an enlightened being dies physically, his or her body is absorbed directly back into the universe as energy, as light.”

 

Metropolitan Chorale of Kansas City
Of Peasants and Princes
Saturday, October 29 at 7:30 p.m.
Stone Church Community of Christ
1012 West Lexington, Independence, MO
Free admission. For more information visit http://mcckc.edu/blueriver/humanities/music/

The Metropolitan Chorale of Kansas City, directed by Rebecca Johnson, includes students from the Metropolitan Community Colleges in Kansas City.

The promotional information for this concert states: “Journey with the Chorale as we explore the exquisite ‘princely’ music of the Renaissance as well as the more, well, ‘earthly’ music of that era. From England to Italy, Spain to Paris, the music will transport you to another time, another culture.”

 

UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance
Conservatory Combined Choirs
Sunday, October 30 at 7:30 p.m.
Old Mission United Methodist Church
5519 State Park Road, Prairie Village, KS
Free admission. For more information visit http://conservatory.umkc.edu

The UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance features in this concert the Conservatory Concert Choir, directed by Charles Robinson, and Canticum Novum, directed by Jacob Narverud. Programming details were not available as of press time for this issue of KCMetropolis.

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.