We’ve got another batch of weekend calendar picks from our editor, Alice Thorson, starting with April First Fridays tomorrow night. For more events this weekend, visit Kansas City’s most comprehensive arts calendar at kcstudio.org/events.
Traditional Arts of the Bedouin
April 1 – April 30
Mid-America Arts Alliance
Visitors to the exhibition will learn how Bedouin arts and crafts frequently bridge the gap between aesthetic and utilitarian purposes, as well as recognize the unique tenacity of Bedouin traditions in an ever-changing political, social, and environmental landscape.
THE TALL GIRLS
March 31 @ 7:30 pm
April 1 @ 7:30 pm
April 2 @ 7:30 pm
April 3 @ 2:00 pm
Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre
By Meg Meroshnik
Directed by Karen Paisley
Sometimes basketball is the only way out. Even for a girl. Especially for a girl. Especially in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.The tiny hamlet of Poor Prairie doesn’t see a lot of folks coming into town, least of all men. But this man is mysterious. He’s coming home but nobody knows where he’s been and his story’s got some gaps. A play about more than basketball—a play about love, about friendship, determination, and having heart in the heart of America in the Dust Bowl 1930’s.
Kansas City Symphony Classical Series: The Mastery of Mozart and Mahler
April 1 & 2 @ 8:00 pm
April 3 @ 2:00 pm
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts
Michael Stern, conductor
Benjamin Grosvenor, pianist
W.A. MOZART Piano Concerto No. 27
MAHLER Symphony No. 1
Written during the last year of his tragically brief life, Mozart’s final Piano Concerto No. 27 is a hauntingly beautiful and introspective work. The gifted young British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor makes his Kansas City Symphony debut with the expressive Concerto. Mahler was at the outset of his career when he completed his First Symphony. Mahler told a friend his emotions “gushed forth like an impetuous torrent … At a single blow, all the floodgates were opened within me!” The First remains Mahler’s most cherished Symphony. Tickets start at $25.
Pablo Ziegler and the Quartet for New Tango
April 2 @ 8:00 pm
Polsky Theatre, JCCC
Latin Grammy®-winner Pablo Ziegler’s quartet “rubs shoulders with Shubert and Brahms” and plays with nuance and refinement, paying tribute to his mentor and colleague, Astor Piazzola, and taking the genre in new directions. This concert brings the rich Argentine musical tradition of new tango into a chamber music setting, playing exquisite arrangements of Ziegler’s compositions and those of other tango legends.
Park University International Center for Music — An Evening of Russian Music
April 2 @ 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm | $10
Graham Tyler Memorial Chapel-Park University
Highly acclaimed Russian cellist Arkadi Kuchynski will be the featured performer in the next performance of the Park University International Center for Music’s 2015-16 concert season series. The concert, billed as “An Evening of Russian Music,” will be held Saturday, April 2, in Graham Tyler Memorial Chapel on the University’s Parkville Campus starting at 7:30 p.m.
Kuchynski, who has served as associate professor of cello at Tunghai University in Taiwan since 1995, has been playing the cello since the age of 7. He was the laureate of the Belarus National Cello Competition and International Cello Competition of Estonia in 1976, and the Latvia International Cello Competition in 1982. He served as the principal cellist for the State Chamber Orchestra of Belarus from 1982-94, and as a member of the Belarus State Piano Trio and Classic Avant-Garde Chamber Ensemble from 1987-90. He is also founded and conducted the AKSO String Orchestra, and continues to perform as a soloist and chamber musician.
The concert will include the following selections, all accompanied by Lolita Lisovskaya-Sayevich, ICM collaborative pianist:
“Cello Sonata in C Major, Op. 119” composed by Sergei Prokofiev
“Nocturne, Op. 19, No. 4” composed by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
“Seranade Espagnole, Op. 20” composed by Alexander Glazunov
“Romance, Op. posth.” Composed by Alexander Scriabin
“Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello in D Minor, No. 1, Op. 32” composed by Anton Arenski (Ben Sayevich, ICM professor of music/violin, will join on the piece)
