Here are this week’s calendar picks from KC Studio editor, Alice Thorson. Tonight, see a free performance from the Ailey Trio, presented by Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey. Tomorrow night, celebrate the life and work of Martin Luther King with Grammy-winning pianist Ramsey Lewis. Through this weekend, Noah Geller will perform works by Bartok and Dvorak with the Kansas City Symphony. This weekend, Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre and Kansas City Actors Theatre premiere their latest productions. For more events this weekend, visit Kansas City’s most comprehensive arts calendar at kcstudio.org/events.
Ailey Trio Performance
January 12 @ 7:00 pm | Free
American Jazz Museum – Gem Theater
Ailey Trio is an engaging 60-minute presentation with three dancers from the internationally acclaimed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performing brief excerpts from its current repertory.
MLK Celebration with Ramsey Lewis
January 14 @ 8:00 pm | $45
American Jazz Museum – Gem Theater
NEA Jazz Master and three-time GRAMMY® Award winning pianist Ramsey Lewis has been an iconic leader in the contemporary jazz movement for more than 50 years. He brings the sound of the Chicago jazz scene to this special concert commemorating the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Perhaps best known for his career-defining ‘Sun Goddess” album released in 1974, Lewis was also the long-time disc jockey of the nationally-broadcast Legends of Jazz radio program as well as the host of the 13-episode Legends of Jazz PBS television series. He has recorded some 80 albums and has collaborated with groups ranging from Earth, Wind, and Fire to the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The concert is part of a series of events in connection with the commemoration of Martin Luther King Day by the Kansas City chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Kansas City Symphony Classical Series – GELLER plays BARTÓK plus DVOŘÁK’S FIFTH
January 13 & 14 @ 8:00 pm
January 15 @ 2:00 pm
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts
Back by popular demand! Concertmaster Noah Geller returns to center stage for Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto — a work of austere beauty, emotional depth and spirit. Lyricism flows freely in the first three movements of Czech composer Dvořák’s Fifth Symphony. By contrast, the bring-down-the-house finale teems with energy and fire. Bartók’s friend and compatriot, Zoltán Kodály, composed his Concerto for Orchestra for the 50th anniversary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This compelling piece melds Baroque structure with Hungarian folk melodies. Tickets for this Kansas City Symphony program start at $25.
Masterworks & Bravo Series
My Old Lady
January 11 – 29
H & R Block-City Stage
Witty, wise, romantic, and oh-so-French. Kansas City Actors Theatre introduces an acclaimed but neglected playwright with this, his love letter to France. When a failed American novelist inherits a luxurious but crumbling Paris apartment, he’s sure his fortune has turned…until he learns that the apartment comes with a nonagenarian tenant and her spinster daughter. Not only is this a Kansas City premiere, but it is the first time an Israel Horovitz play has been professionally produced here in nearly 25 years.
Photograph 51
January 12 – January 28
Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre
By Anna Ziegler
“It’s a perfect science-history play, with all the hurtling momentum of a race towards discovery, all the step-by-step deductions, competition and backhanded betrayals.”
– Variety
