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Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

Lyric Opera of Kansas City
Turandot
Saturday, October 1 at 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday, October 5 at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, October 7 at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, October 9 at 2:00 p.m.
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Muriel Kauffman Theatre
1601 Broadway Blvd, Kansas City, MO 
Please note: All performances are sold out, but to get on a waiting list or check for last minute ticket turn-ins, call Lyric Opera Patron Services at 816-471-7344.

For its opening performances in the new Muriel Kauffman Theatre at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, the Lyric Opera has chosen well: Turandot, the epic grand opera from the pen of Giacomo Puccini, depicting a sweeping story of horror, bravery, and redemption set in ancient China. From the huge orchestra and chorus and the spectacular sets and scenery by Lyric Opera set designer R. Keith Brumley to the colorful Chinese costumes and the world-class singing of sopranos Lisa Lindstrom and Elizabeth Caballero, bass Samuel Ramey, and tenor Arnold Rawls, this should be one of the most remarkable productions in the company’s 54-year history.

Lindstrom has performed this role at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala and many other opera houses around the country and the world, and the Lyric Opera is fortunate to have secured her services for the demanding title role of the vengeful, but ultimately sympathetic, princess Turandot. Ramey, a Kansas native, has been the leading bass singer in the world for a generation, but has never before appeared on the Lyric Opera stage. The role of Timur, the old blind king, is one in which many basses nearing the ends of their careers have excelled, and it will be a joy to see him in Kansas City in an operatic role at last (he has given several recitals in the area over the years, so he’s not unknown to Kansas City audiences). Rawls made his own triumphal debut at the Metropolitan Opera last spring, and has sung in Kansas City previously as Radames in Aida a few years ago. The opera is being directed by Garnett Bruce, nationally known for his excellent productions, and no stranger to this opera, although he has never directed in anything quite like the Kauffman Center.

Alas, if you don’t have your tickets already you may be out of luck, because all performances have been sold out for weeks. Nonetheless, give the Lyric Opera Patron Services offices a call at the above number and you may get lucky if some audience member has to cancel at the last minute. If you miss this one, then plan on attending the Lyric’s second production, Così fan tutte, in November. It won’t be the opening show, but it should also be an outstanding presentation.

Note to longtime Lyric Opera fans: All Lyric Opera evening performances now start at 7:30 p.m. If you show up at your accustomed time of 8:00 p.m., you will have to cool your heels in the lobby until the first act is over. Bummer. Arrive early.

UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance
Diana Soviero Master Classes
Tuesday, October 4 at 3:30 p.m.
Wednesday, October 5 at 3:30 p.m.
Room 122, Grant Hall, UMKC
5227 Holmes Rd, Kansas City, MO
Free admission. For more information visit http://conservatory.umkc.edu

Diana Soviero is a world-famous opera singer who, during her career, appeared on most of the great opera stages including the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Vienna Staatsoper , Theatre National de Paris, Opera de Paris Bastille, and many others. Best known for her portrayals of Puccini heroines as well as Marguerite, Juliette, Violetta, Manon, Maddalena and other roles, she is currently a coach with the Metropolitan Opera Lindeman Young Artist Development Program.

Her master class at the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance would be of interest to anyone interested in listening to one of the best in the business coach vocal technique.

Kansas City Chamber Orchestra
Simple Gifts with Guitarist Douglas Niedt
Thursday, October 6 at 8:00 p.m.
Old Mission United Methodist Church
5519 State Park Rd, Fairway, KS
For tickets, call 816-960-1324 or visit online at www.kcchamberorchestra.org.

Guitarist Douglas Niedt of the faculty of the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance is one of the most delightful classical guitarists in this region. This evening’s concert will give you a chance to hear Niedt’s outstanding performance capabilities along with the forces of the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra.

Conductor Bruce Sorrell has put together a program consisting of the music of Vivaldi, Debussy, Copland and Arnold. The Vivaldi entries are a Concerto and a Trio Sonata for Guitar, Debussy is represented with Danses sacrée et profane, and the Copland piece is a selection from the charmingAppalachian Spring ballet score. Malcolm Arnold rounds out the program with  Serenade for Guitar and Strings, a 1955 composition. The Kansas City Chamber Orchestra and Douglas Niedt sound like a winning combination, and a rare opportunity for Kansas City audiences to hear some of the works of classical composers written for guitar.

UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance
Conservatory Wind Ensemble
Friday, October 7 at 7:30 p.m.
James C. Olson Performing Arts Center, White Recital Hall
UMKC Campus
4949 Cherry St, Kansas City, MO
For tickets, call 816-235-6222 or visit online at www.umkc.edu/cto.

Joseph Parisi conducts the Conservatory Wind Ensemble, which presents its fall program, featuring works by Balmages, Krommer, Kuster, Bolcom and Corigliano.

Musica Sacra
Durante’s Litaniae Lauretanae (Litany of Loreto)
Sunday, October 9 at 7:30 p.m.
St. Francis Xavier Church
52nd St and Troost Ave, Kansas City, MO
For tickets, call 816-235-6222 or visit online at www.rockhurst.edu/mtickets.

Timothy McDonald’s Musica Sacra chorus opens its 21st season with a program of Baroque choral music, featuring Francesco Durante’s Litaniae Lauretanae (Litany of Loreto). Durante was a major 18th-century figure in Neapolitan music and taught at two of the city’s leading music conservatories. Among his students were the composers Sacchini, Piccini and Paisiello, all of whom became famed opera composers of their day. Durante himself, however, chose to focus on sacred music, of which the Litaniae Lauretanae (Litany of Loreto) is a major example.

In addition to the Durante, Musica Sacra will perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s Easter Cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden and choruses from one of George Frideric Handel’s Anthems, O Praise the Lord with One Consent.

Youth Symphony of Kansas City
Fall Concert
Sunday, October 9 at 2:30 p.m.
James C. Olson Performing Arts Center, White Recital Hall
UMKC Campus
4949 Cherry St, Kansas City, MO
Free admission. For more information visit http://www.youthsymphonykc.org

The Youth Symphony and the Philharmonic Orchestra present their fall program this afternoon at White Recital Hall on the UMKC campus. Programming details were not available at press time to KCMetropolis.

UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance
In Celebration of the Liszt Bicentennial
Sunday, October 9 at 7:30 p.m.
James C. Olson Performing Arts Center, White Recital Hall
UMKC Campus
4949 Cherry St, Kansas City, MO
Free admission. For more information visit http://conservatory.umkc.edu

Pianist Jane Solose of the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance faculty presents an all-Liszt program in celebration of the 200thanniversary of the composer's birth. The program will include the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13, "Un sospiro" from Three Concert Etudes for Piano, Consolation No. 3, Grande Etude de Paganini, Sonata for Piano in B minor, and also A Liszt Fantasie by Appledorn.

Goldenberg Duo
Fall Concert
Wednesday, October 12 at 7:30 p.m.
Good Shepherd Catholic Church
12800 W 75th St, Shawnee, KS
Free admission.

Susan Goldenberg, violin, of the Kansas City Symphony, is joined by her brother William, a distinguished professor of piano at Northern Illinois University, in a joint presentation featuring the music of Handel, Rachmaninoff, Oscar Peterson, Scott Joplin, George Gershwin and Edvard Grieg. Sounds interesting, and you can’t beat the price!

Kansas City Ballet
Tom Sawyer: A Ballet in Three Acts
Friday, October 14 at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, October 15 at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, October 16 at 2:00 p.m.
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.

The Friends of Chamber Music
The Darwin Project
Friday, October 14 at 8:00 p.m.
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Helzberg Hall
1601 Broadway Blvd, Kansas City, MO
For tickets, call 816-561-9999 or visit online at www.chambermusic.org.

Cynthia Siebert’s Friends of Chamber Music kicks off its 2011–12 season with an unusual multimedia presentation in Helzberg Hall at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. The evening is a collaboration of The Friends of Chamber Music and the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

The music selections will feature the Daedalus String Quartet and pianist Alon Goldstein, along with the Kansas City Collegium Vocale, directed by Ryan Board.

Actors and a narrator will perform Jeremy Lillig and Nancy Cervetti's script, and we understand that a video presentation will also be a part of the performance. Kyle Hatley of the Kansas City Repertory Theatre directs Gary Neal Johnson as Charles Darwin and Kathleen Warfel as Emma Darwin. Cinnamon Schultz is the narrator. Scientific consultation is provided by Robert Powell, Ph.D., William Ashworth, Ph.D., and Bruce Bradley.

In the words of The Friends of Chamber Music, “this unique multi-media concert experience explores the life of Charles Darwin and the theory that changed our view of life. Renowned actors; beautiful classical music performed by string quartet, solo piano, and chamber choir; stunning historical images and captivating original photography from some of today’s finest field biologists combine to bring Darwin’s story to life in this dynamic original event.”

It is surely only a coincidence that this concert happens to come just weeks after the discovery of a possible “missing link” in human evolution, the 1.97-million year-old Australopithecus sediba, was announced by paleontologist Lee Berger in South Africa.

Harriman-Jewell Series
Marc-André Hamelin, pianist
Saturday, October 15, at 8:00 p.m.
Folly Theater
12th St and Central Ave, Kansas City, MO
For tickets, call 816-415-5025 or visit online at www.hjseries.org.

Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin is one of the most brilliant pianist alive today. In his previous appearances in Kansas City, hosted by the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance, the Kansas City Symphony, and the Harriman-Jewell Series, Hamelin has displayed an unparalleled technique in which his exceptional artistry excels in some of the most difficult works ever written for the piano. In his last performances here, under the sponsorship of the Harriman-Jewell Series in 2010, he also showed a sensitive and finely wrought pianism, which brought out the emotional depths of the pieces he played.

In this recital, sure to be one of the hits of the Kansas City recital season, Hamelin will perform Berg’s Sonata for Piano, Liszt’s Sonata for Piano in B minor, selections from Debussy’s Preludes, Book 2, and four of the pianist’s own Etudes. The Berg and Liszt works should provide ample opportunity for display of technical virtuosity, while the Debussy should allow Hamelin to show his more emotive side. It sounds like a great set of selections for an outstanding performer to demonstrate both sides of his artistry. This recital is not to be missed.

Kansas City Chorale
Chant and Beyond
Saturday, October 15 at 7:30 p.m.
St. Michael and Archangel Church
143rd St and Nall Ave, Overland Park, KS
Sunday, October 16 at 2:00 p.m.
Redemptorist Catholic Church
3333 Broadway Blvd, Kansas City, MO
Tuesday, October 18 at 7:30 p.m.
Asbury United Methodist Church
5400 W 75th St at Nall Ave, Overland Park, KS
For tickets, call 816-235-6222 or visit online at www.kcchorale.org.

The ancient chants of the 13th-century master Hildegard von Bingen, rediscovered and popularized in the 20th century, have become among the most popular representations of ancient music in modern times. In this concert, Kansas City Chorale director Charles Bruffy turns the Chorale’s attention to chants by Hildegard as well as other composers of ancient times, in a program which, according to the Chorale, features works of the 12th, 13th and 15th centuries, as well as “pieces written in our own time, inspired by these ancient tunes.”

Lee’s Summit Symphony
Fall Classic
Saturday, October 15 at 7:30 p.m.
Summit High School Bernard C. Campbell Performing Arts Center
400 SE Blue Pkwy, Lee’s Summit, MO
Tickets are available at Hy-Vee East and West locations in Lee’s Summit, and online at www.lssymphony.org.

Russell Berlin, Jr. begins his seventh season as conductor of the Lee’s Summit Symphony with the organization’s annual fall concert. No programming information is available as of press time for KCMetropolis.

Northland Symphony Orchestra
Bruckner Symphony No. 4
Sunday, October 16 at 3:00 p.m.
Park Hill South High School
4500 NW River Park Dr, Riverside, MO

Free admission. For more information visit http://www.northlandsymphony.org

The Northland Symphony Orchestra opens its concert season under conductor James Murray with an ambitious undertaking: the monumental Symphony No. 4 of Anton Bruckner. Long one of the composer’s most popular works, the “Romantic” symphony, as the composer nicknamed it, depicts a day in the life of a medieval city, and is intended to be a portrayal of Romanticism, along the lines of Wagnerian operas.

Bruckner’s later symphonies developed a huge arc of sound and melody which many writers have compared to the architectural features of medieval cathedrals. Even in the relatively early Fourth Symphony, however, these features are already evident. The Northland Symphony should be commended for taking on such a challenging work.

Bach Aria Soloists
Lerner Hauskonzert
Sunday, October 16 at 7:00 p.m.
Private Home
Tickets are available online at www.bachariasoloists.com.

Soprano Sarah Tannehill Anderson is featured in selections by Bach and Mozart at the Bach Aria Soloists’ first Hauskonzert of the season, at the home of Leslie Lerner in Mission Hills, Kansas. The Hauskonzerts are a unique phenomenon in Kansas City, presenting first-class classical music performances in intimate settings much like they might have enjoyed in Baroque times. In addition to outstanding performances by supreme violinist Elizabeth Suh Lane and her colleagues, the concerts feature delightful social gatherings and an excellent buffet.

UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance
Joint Faculty Recital: Carter Enyeart and Robert Weirich
Sunday, October 16 at 7:30 p.m.
James C. Olson Performing Arts Center, White Recital Hall
UMKC Campus
4949 Cherry St, Kansas City, MO
Free admission. For more information visit http://conservatory.umkc.edu

Cellist Carter Enyeart and pianist Robert Weirich, both of the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance faculty, present a joint recital featuring the work of Beethoven, Liszt, Debussy, Messiaen, and Brahms.