Author: Brian McTavish

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July 2, 2018

Arts Marketing Goes to the Dogs

Have you noticed how pets and other animals are everywhere? In addition to ubiquitous social media postings about silly pets and media stories extolling the latest sweet, brave or otherwise inspirational animal in the news, critters are helping to market all manner of goods and services these days. The art world has taken heed.
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June 1, 2018

A Job to Remember: Victoria Patrick

Victoria Patrick, manager of artistic relations for the Kansas City Symphony, took it upon herself to safeguard Joshua Bell’s prized instrument...
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May 22, 2018

All Musicians on Deck!

The blues is a voyage both personal and universal. So it’s fitting that Roger Naber, founder of the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise, has navigated such waters to move himself and other blues lovers. Move where? Forward, despite pain. Forward, inviting gain. Always and forever, forward. “This is my passion and this is something that I do,” Naber says. “And it’s not because (legendary blues vocalist) Bobby Bland once said, ‘Roger, never stop promoting the blues.’”
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March 13, 2018

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.
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October 31, 2017

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

[block pos=”right”] “You have a little Handel’s Messiah and some traditional carols. . . . then you also have an outrageous drag queen with candy..
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September 12, 2017

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.
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September 7, 2017

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..
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August 1, 2017

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.”
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July 3, 2017

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.
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