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December 6

Several Kansas City performers are Grammy nominees

Once again multiple Kansas City voices are represented on the long list of Grammy Award nominations. (For a complete list, go here.) Announced Wednesday night, the nominees include the Kansas City Symphony in performance with Joyce DiDonato; the Kansas City Chorale, which with every recording seems to have a lock on the Grammy nomination process; jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, who hails (proudly) from Lee’s Summit and is a perennial nominee and frequent winner; and pop-soul singer Janelle Monae (above), a native of Kansas City, Kan

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December 5

Farewell, Dave Brubeck

The legendary jazz pianist and composer died of heart failure Wednesday morning in a hospital in Norwalk, Conn., one day shy of his 92nd birthday. From his bio in the All-Music Guide: In the 1950s and '60s, few American jazz artists were as influential, and fewer still were as popular, as Dave Brubeck with his emphasis on unusual time signatures and adventurous tonalities, Brubeck showed that ambitious and challenging music could still be accessible

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December 3

Review: Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar, a rapper responsible for one of the best albums of 2012, gave one of the year’s worst performances Sunday at the Midland. Rarely has the disparity between the quality of an artist’s recorded work and a corresponding live performance been greater

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December 3

Review: Trey Songz

Trey Songz is doing what many others before him have done, from Tom Jones to Luther Vandross: singing songs of seduction. He’s just doing it more salaciously

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November 29

Ten shows in six days: for your consideration

Gold Fields Thursday Czar Bar A savvy distillation of the alternative rock radio charts, the music of the Australian band Gold Fields evokes the bristling melodic sensibility of Muse, the glossy sheen of Passion Pit and the dramatic posturing of Fun. The carefully calibrated sound has the Australian band poised to play larger venues upon the release of its debut album in 2013

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November 29

Review: Megadeth

Knowing that a performance of a 20-year-old album would serve as the centerpiece of Megadeth's concert Wednesday at the Midland, some fans of the thrash band may have decided not to splurge on 40-dollar tickets. They could have blown the dust off one of the over 2 million copies of "Countdown To Extinction" that have been sold since 1992 and enjoyed an inexpensive and relatively tranquil evening at home

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November 19

Review: Rosanne Cash

Rosanne Cash couldn’t stop fretting about Bruce Springsteen during her concert at the Folly Theater on Saturday. Aware that the rock icon was appearing at the nearby Sprint Center, Cash repeatedly invoked his name

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November 18

Review: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

Photos by Joe Ledford/The Star That church from Topeka that preaches the blasphemy of (among other things) rock and roll exercised its freedom of speech across the street from the Sprint Center on Saturday night. But the more spiritual and evangelical expressions of the heart and soul occurred inside the arena, where for more than three hours Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band unleashed a show for the ages

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November 16

Review: The Wallflowers

He has assiduously tried to escape the long, prominent shadow of Bob Dylan, yet the older he gets, the more Jakob Dylan looks and sounds like his father. Thursday night, he joined his reunited band, the Wallflowers, on stage at the Midland, drawing a modest-size crowd (well under 1,000)