Brian McTavish

Brian McTavish is a freelance writer specializing in the arts and pop culture. He was an arts and entertainment writer for more than 20 years at The Kansas City Star. He regularly shares his “Weekend To-Do List” at KCUR-FM (89.3)/kcur.org.

It’s a Guy Thing

The Bobos book club can’t help but call attention to itself. For starters, the club’s 14 members belie their well-educated, professionally accomplished backgrounds by calling themselves Bobos. Even club founder Phil Smith, a 67-year-old retired advertising creative director and writer, concedes that the offbeat sobriquet may call to mind “nuts” or “clowns,” although that’s hardly the intent.

March 13, 2018
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Holidays with the Heartland Men’s Chorus: A Unique Blend of Reverence and Ribaldry

Until the creation of the Heartland Men’s Chorus in 1986, reverence and ribaldry rarely if ever coalesced on a Kansas City concert stage during the holidays. Then came the chorus and its distinctly odd-bedfellows tactic of imbuing the season with not only deep thoughts but also drag queens. More than 30 years later, the self-proclaimed […]

October 31, 2017
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Cool Tools

As the current sex symbol of cool tools, 3D printers easily attract ogling eyes by producing a virtually endless variety of objects seemingly out of thin air. It almost makes you feel sorry for the robots and other gadgets operating at the heady confluence of art and science — many of them accessible to the public, others well out of the spotlight — that also serve Kansas City’s cutting-edge tool scene.

September 12, 2017
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Arts News: Diary of a Storm Chaser

If 12-year-old Reed Timmer had been harmed the day he used the family video camera to shoot a severe thunderstorm in his West Michigan front yard, the budding inclement weather fan might have thought twice about the perils associated with becoming an extreme storm chaser. Fortunately, young Timmer emerged unscathed from the quarter-size hail that […]

September 7, 2017
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The Job: Joseph Brandwein

By his own estimation, Joseph Brandwein has tuned pianos for virtually every major concert pianist who’s performed in Kansas City over the last 40 years. But he refuses to name-drop. “I’m strictly low-key,” Brandwein says. “I don’t need the praise. I don’t need more business. I just do what I do.”

August 1, 2017
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Robert Stewart: Leading Man of Letters

What is the written word really worth? Only everything you can put into it. So goes the ardent ethos of probing poet and essayist Robert Stewart, veteran editor of “New Letters” magazine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and founder of the Midwest Poets Series at Rockhurst University. Stewart’s credentials make him a high-profile player in the Kansas City literary community.

July 3, 2017
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