If you want to hear the music of Benjamin Britten and Edward Elgar performed in the proper English manner, you can do no better than the BBC Concert Orchestra. The British orchestra, led by American Keith Lockhart, is coming to Yardley Hall on Feb. 8 for a concert of music by Britten, Elgar and Felix Mendelssohn, too.
The inaugural production from Melting Pot KC is a barebones execution of an interesting new play with some dynamite performances.
Rob Riggle grew into his funny bones in Overland Park. Out in Hollywood, he has developed a knack for turning small parts in big films into everyone’s favorite part of the movie. This football season, he yukked it up on game days as the house comedian on the Fox NFL Sunday pregame show.
It would be comforting to call the horrific violations recounted in “Mea Maxima Culpa” unthinkable. But after decades of revelations about the epidemic of sexual abuse of minors in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the ever-accompanying accounts of enabling church officials, a new documentary from Oscar winner Alex Gibney tracks the problem to its source.
Bruce Springsteen fans are going to find “Warm Bodies” completely implausible. Not because an attractive young blonde falls in love with a zombie. Nope. It’s when said blonde pulls out vinyl of Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” and puts the needle on the record’s fourth track. The song that plays: “Hungry Heart.”
There’s nothing gothic or noir about Darkness. Wednesday night, the four-man band from England unleashed its garish mix of hard-rock glam and pop metal on a crowd of more than 500 inside the Uptown, proving over the course of 85 minutes or so that a little humor goes a long way toward making a show memorable and entertaining.
The rapturous praise and energetic applause that greeted the opening song of Sweet Honey In the Rock’s magnificent performance Thursday at the Muriel Kauffman Theatre indicated that the concert would contain plenty of communal rapport between the audience of about 1,200 and the six women on stage.
You can take Calexico out of the Southwest, but you can’t take the Southwest out of Calexico. Instead of absorbing and resonating with the many musical sounds of New Orleans and Louisiana, where it was recorded, “Algiers,” the band’s ninth studio album, bears the sounds and traits of all that have made Calexico unusual — traits born in the Southwest.
This may sound sacrilegious to the legions of hard-core “Star Wars” fans, but having J.J. Abrams direct “Episode VII” will be a vast improvement and the best thing to happen to the franchise in a very long time.
February First Fridays should be lively, with the Xijing Men opening at Block Artspace, new works by Andy Brayman at Red Star Studios and new Artboards at the Missouri Bank Crossroads branch. Diverse group shows leaven the mix.
“An Otherwise Hopeless Evening of Very Gay and Extremely Grim Short Plays by William Inge,” a unique production that includes visual art and the performances of four obscure one-act plays by Inge, will mark the 100th anniversary of the Pulitzer-winning playwright's birth.
Jazz can absorb just about anything it touches. Even if there isn’t a mass audience paying attention, the music is always responding to new influences. Just ask Eddie Moore, a 27-year-old pianist who’s been in Kansas City about three years and is busy expanding what KC jazz is all about.
“The Americans,” FX’s smart espionage drama, puts the enemy in Guess jeans and an Oldsmobile with Juice Newton on the eight-track. Starring Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as a deep-undercover, accent-free Boris and Natasha, the show rewinds the clock to the Cold War and turns the black-and-white America-first mentality of the early ’80s inside out.
Whether they're fans of football or not, millions of people will tune in Sunday for the action that happens during breaks in the game: the commercials. Here are is preview of the ads that will appear on big screens across the nation during Super Bowl XLVII.
The CIA thriller "Argo" continues to steamroll through awards season, winning the top honor for overall cast performance at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Sunday's win came a day after "Argo" claimed the top honor from the Producers Guild of America.
There were lots of jokes on the 19th annual SAG Awards show Sunday night, including the requisite Sofia Vergara jokes. The Colombian-born actress herself noted that she'd reassured her dad he needn't worry about her prostituting herself in show business because her God-given anatomy was such that she already looked "like a hooker."
We've been hearing it and feeling it for years: Kansas City is emerging as a vibrant place for the arts and culture. Now, the newly formed Mayor's Task Force for the Arts is launching a series of community meetings this week aimed at finding ways to bolster the city's growing image as a center for arts and culture.
“Number the Stars,” based on Lois Lowry’s novel, tells the inspiring story of the Danish resistance and its efforts to smuggle Jews to Sweden during the German occupation. It’s supposed to be a high-stakes nail-biter, but the Coterie Theatre’s production, which runs through Feb. 21, seems curiously bloodless.
The key to capitalism is to give the people what they want. Kansas City balletomanes want “Swan Lake.” The Russian National Ballet Theatre's touring production, performed Friday night to a sold-out crowd in the Muriel Kauffman Theatre, retained much of the mystery and charm of the classic version, despite being pared down to ensure profitability.
DC Comics is launching a new “Justice League of America” comic book series Feb. 6. The heroes hoist a flag, Iwo Jima-style, on the cover, and DC is printing a cover for each state, plus Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., and one for the whole USA.
