Time for weekend calendar picks from KC Studio editor, Alice Thorson! A new exhibition exploring the history of forensic science (featured in our March/April 2016 issue) opens today at Linda Hall Library. Tonight, tomorrow, or Saturday, see Death, By Shakespeare by Heidi Van of Fishtank Performance Studio at the Greenwood Social Club. On Saturday, The Friends of Chamber Music and the Performing Arts Series at Johnson County Community College team up to present Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin at Yardley Hall. And on Sunday, catch American Voices, an intimate concert experience with the Lyric Opera at the Michael and Ginger Frost Production Arts Building. Or hear a jazz concert celebrating the centennial birthdays of jazz greats, JAZZ 100 (featured here), presented by Performing Arts Series at Johnson County Community College at Yardley Hall. For more ideas this weekend, visit Kansas City’s most comprehensive arts calendar at kcstudio.org/events
Connecting the Dots: The Science of CSI
March 16 – September 1 | Free
Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology
High-profile murder cases and popular television programs such as CSI, Bones, and Forensics Files have brought the laboratory work of forensic scientists into mainstream popular culture. Visitors to Connecting the Dots will explore the history of several disciplines within forensic science: fingerprints, chemistry, biology, firearms, photography, and trace evidence.
Visitors will also discover two important courts cases, Frye v. United States in 1923 and Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals in 1993, which have shaped how courts admit forensic science as evidence. In Frye, the admissibility of a lie detector test was at issue; it was not allowed because deception tests, according to the D.C. Court of Appeals, had not yet gained general acceptance in the scientific community.
Courts used this “general acceptance” standard for the next 70 years until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Daubert (a lawsuit alleging the morning sickness drug Bendectin caused birth defects) that, in addition to general acceptance, a scientific theory or technique should be tested, subjected to peer review and publication, has a known or potential error rate, and has standards controlling its operation.
The East Gallery will be a staged, interactive crime scene where visitors will match fingerprints, analyze DNA, compare shell casings and fibers, and weigh the evidence to “solve” the crime.
Death, By Shakespeare
March 16 – 18 @ 8:00 pm| $15 – $20
The Greenwood Social Club
A play by Heidi Van exploring the gratuitous deaths of five of William Shakespeare’s female characters narrated from the perspective of Sylvia Plath.
AKADEMIE FÜR ALTE MUSIK BERLIN
March 18 @ 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm | $25 – $40
Carlsen Center – Yardley Hall
Founded in Berlin in 1982 and recognized today as one of the world’s leading chamber orchestras, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, or Akamus, enjoys an unprecedented history of success. The ensemble, which performs regularly in Europe’s leading musical centers, has toured Asia, North America and South America.
For the co-presentation of Akamus between the PAS and Friends of Chamber Music-Kansas City, the program is “Foreign Affairs – Characters of the Baroque,” exploring the richness of the familiar and the foreign in culture through the means of music, sometimes exotic, sometimes ironic, but always diverting and highly musical.
Art Song Series: American Voices
March 19 @ 2:00 pm | $15 – $20
Michael and Ginger Frost Production Arts Building
Lyric Opera’s Resident Artists will close the first season of Explorations as they started it – with an intimate concert experience designed for you to get to know them further as artists. This time they’ll be singing some of their favorite song cycles by American composers, with selections from among the compositions of Jake Heggie (composer of the opera Dead Man Walking, a Lyric Opera 2016-17 season production), Lori Laitman, Robert Paterson, and Gabriel Kahane, and others.
‘JAZZ 100’ CELEBRATING CENTENNIAL BIRTHDAYS OF THELONIOUS MONK, DIZZY GILLESPIE, MONGO SANTAMARIA, AND ELLA FITZGERALD
March 19 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm | $25 – $40
Carlsen Center – Yardley Hall
Part of Winterlude, a series of concerts featuring local and international jazz and world music performers in the Polsky Theatre at JCCC.
Buy a package of tickets to all five Winterlude events.
Light 100 candles and celebrate the centennial birthdays of jazz greats, all born in the glorious year of 1917. “Jazz 100” centers on the musical direction of Danilo Perez, former pianist for Dizzy Gillespie, whose musical DNA also includes Monk and Santamaria. An A-list band and the deep, resonating voice of Lizz Wright will intertwine with those early strands of jazz history. Also featured are Chris Potter (tenor sax), Avishai Cohen (trumpet), Wycliffe Gordon(trombone), Ben Street (bass), Adam Cruz (drums) and Roman Diaz (percussion).
