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In addition to receiving 26 issues of The Independent Kansas City’s Journal of Society, your subscription will include our annual publication, the Charitable Events Calendar and a subscription to our e-newsletter, The Insider.

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Alessio Bax has made a career of taking roads less traveled. The Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient from Bari, Italy has circled the globe performing the widest variety of music, not just in Europe and Asia but in Tel Aviv and Mexico City. He has explored interesting corners of the repertoire, both in recital and with […]

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Few things in concert life are as satisfying as hearing musicians who have attained near-legendary status actually live up to those legends. On November the 19th at the Folly Theater, Pinchas Zukerman and Yefim Bronfman played the Brahms’ Second Viola Sonata so gorgeously and insightfully, and with such detailed nuance and color, that one was reminded why these artists have […]

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Imagine a full-length ballet like Swan Lake or The Nutcracker,but based on an American subject and crafted by an entirely American creative team. You’ll have to imagine it, because such a thing has not existed – at least not until now. More than a quarter-century ago, composer Maury Yeston began to ponder this gap in the repertoire, and he determined to do […]

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The Kansas City Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker remains one of the city’s most refined holiday offerings, with Balanchine- and Robbins-influenced choreography by Todd Bolender, great dancing by the company members, well-trained kids from the Ballet School and a Christmas tree that grows to enormous proportions. At the December the 11th opening night performance all the elements were […]

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It was an auspicious year for the performing arts in Kansas City, with few signs that arts groups were “holding back” in anticipation of next year’s first season in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. We obviously weren’t able to attend everything in 2010: It’s been a long time, in fact, since Kansas City’s […]

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January 14-February 6: Another American: Asking and Telling (Kansas City Repertory Theatre). Actor/playwright Marc Wolf interviewed some 150 individuals about the U.S. military’s recently repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, and the play that resulted won an Obie Award. January 21: Sequentia, Voices from the Island Sanctuary(Friends of Chamber Music). The sanctuary in question is the walled Cathedral of Notre Dame […]

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Paris in the 12th century was a hotbed of student unrest, corruption and greed, and lively political discourse – and it saw a ferment of artistic, literary and musical creativity the likes of which the Western world has rarely witnessed. Within the walled Notre Dame Cathedral complex on the city’s Ile de la Cité lived hundreds […]

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Marc Wolf’s one-man play Another American: Asking and Telling is not just about the American military’s bizarre and soon-to-be-defunct “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, it addresses the whole history of the armed forces’ harsh and often cruel treatment of gays and lesbians. Therefore the recent repeal of the policy – an event that could easily have kicked the […]

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Violinist Joshua Bell delighted a sold-out Folly Theater audience on January the 22nd with his signature earthy-sweet tone and lovely, long-breathed phrasing. This generous Harriman-Jewell Series recital included three meaty masterpieces of 19th-century Romanticism, and Josh tackled all three with aplomb. Brahms’ Sonata No. 2 began a bit perfunctorily but built momentum. The Andante tranquillo was […]

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The Kansas City Symphony’s first season in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts looks auspicious indeed, with Mahler’s Second Symphony, Beethoven’s Ninth, Brahms’ German Requiem and commissions from composers Chen Yi, Stephen Hartke and Daniel Kellogg. Performers include former Cleveland Orchestra music director Christoph von Dohnanyi, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Joshua Bell, pianists Emanuel Axand Yefim Bronfman and Our Town native and Metropolitan star mezzo-soprano Joyce […]

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Of all the local organizations who will be presenting for the first time this fall in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, none will be more thrilled to “stretch its legs” than the Lyric Opera of Kansas City. After decades of performing in the cramped, moldy Lyric Theatre (among other venues), the company has […]

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Joyce DiDonato, who grew up in Prairie Village, is fast on the way to becoming the world’s greatest living mezzo-soprano. In anticipation of her February 13th recital here on the Harriman-Jewell Series, we asked what she’s up to these days. She was entrenched in a production at Houston Grand Opera — and looking forward to two Metropolitan […]

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What if I told you that there was once a composer as great as any who ever lived, as famous and beloved during his day as Bach and Beethoven were during theirs – but that you might never have heard a note of his music? On February 5th the Friends of Chamber music brought the marvelous a […]

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Sometimes the best way to deal with the horrors of war is to break into song. Yes war is ghastly, but it is also rife with absurdities that often cry out for satire, and for the lighter touch that a song can bring. Oh, What a Lovely War! – whose very title cues us into its sardonic […]

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The Metropolitan Opera’s Nixon in China rides on powerful performances and a meticulous, lavishly outfitted production. Through the miracle of HD, I was able to see the February 12thperformance live at the AMC Town Center multiplex, along with a sizable handful of other opera buffs. John Adams, the work’s composer, conducted the production, and of course he […]

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It’s hard to imagine Joyce DiDonato’s vocal artistry getting any better: The world-renowned mezzo-soprano from Prairie Village stands at her absolute prime. Her Harriman-Jewell Recital on February 13th—which happened to be her 42nd birthday—demonstrated the full range of her capabilities, offering a generous array of arias, scenes and French and Italian songs. Her mezzo is gorgeously […]

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“Oh, What a Lovely War!” is a curious piece of theater, a combination epic musical, black farce and history lesson that does not preach but still manages to “bring home” the horrors of war—in this case World War I. The Kansas City Actors Theatre production that opened on February 17th, a collaboration with UMKC Theatre […]

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Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment is perhaps more sentimental comedy than farce, though the wanton absurdities of its plot invite elements of silliness. The Lyric Opera’s production of the 1840 bel canto classic plays it somewhere in the middle, and the result is an entertaining evening with strong singing and a generous portion of well-grounded comedic action. If […]

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One of the specialties of the Harriman-Jewell Series has been to present recital debuts—either world or U.S. debuts—of budding young opera stars. On March 5th at the Folly the headline-grabbing young American tenor Stephen Costello will present the 20th such debut, following in a distinguished line that has included Luciano Pavarotti, June Anderson, Carol Vaness, Ben Heppner, Sergei Leiferkus, Salvatore Licitra, […]

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Adam Schoenberg’s American Symphony adopts an accessible style but does not stray so far into a Hollywood idiom that it grows cheesy. The agreeable new piece, a Kansas City Symphony commission, received its world premiere on March 4th at the Lyric Theatre, with the Symphony led by music director Michael Stern. If the finale felt prolix in proportion […]

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Tenor Stephen Costello possesses a natural, rich-auburn voice with a durable top, a pleasantly feathery lower register, a sweet head-voice that can shift into full voice with fetching ease, and a big capacity for warm pathos. The American artist, who made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2007 and won the Richard Tucker Award in 2009, seems destined for a […]

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