Here are this weekend’s calendar picks from KC Studio editor Alice Thorson. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the Kansas City Symphony performs Beethoven and Brahms at the Kauffman Center. Friday night, The Friends of Chamber Music present storyteller, singer and harpist Ben Bagby at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral. An exhibition of Janet Cardiff’s Forty-Part Motet sound installation opens Saturday at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Friday night, celebrate a decade of dance at a fundraiser for Owen/Cox Dance Group, or see NewEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble at Central Methodict Church. For more events this weekend, visit Kansas City’s most comprehensive arts calendar at kcstudio.org/events.
Kansas City Symphony Classical Series A VIVID AUTUMN: BEETHOVEN and BRAHMS
November 18 @ 8:00 pm
November 19 @ 8:00 pm
November 20 @ 2:00 pm
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts
Like a vibrant display of fall color, this Kansas City Symphony program combines intense soundscapes with timeless appeal. Beethoven’s Egmont Overture is a stirring portrayal of one Dutch nobleman’s heroic life and death. Brahms’ radiant Second Symphony overflows with memorable melodies and familiar lullabies, culminating in one of the grandest, most uninhibited and thrilling finales the German composer ever wrote. In the tradition of such legendary pianist-composers as Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt and Rachmaninoff, Daniil Trifonov’s Piano Concerto reveals both his staggering technical talent and lyrical gifts. Tickets start at $25.
Sequentia
November 18 @ 8:00 pm | $35
Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral
The gifted story teller, singer and harpist, Ben Bagby, brings to life an era when there were no printing presses… a time when histories, biographies, and stories were kept alive through the art of music and storytelling. He reaches into the deep riches of time to regale us with tales of heraldry, bloodlust, and honor, when men destroyed whole cities for love of a woman, where Hades was understood as another continent, and artworks as delicate as a feather spoke of man’s inner universe. No one in the world knows more about these deep veins of history than Bagby. He understands that poems are the reliquaries in which precious wisdom and cherished understanding is kept in spite of the mutability of the world, that a poem is an enshrined memory whose music defies death. This may be one of the most entrancing experiences of your life.
Janet Cardiff: Forty-Part Motet
November 19, 2016 – March 19, 2017
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Artist Janet Cardiff’s contemporary sound installation emits polyphonic choral music written in the mid-1500s by Thomas Tallis. Called “Achingly beautiful” by the New Yorker and “Transcendent” by the New York Times, Forty-Part Motet is an immersive experience not to be missed.
The installation consists of 40 speakers arranged in a large oval turned inward. Sung in Latin and a cappella by the Salisbury Cathedral Choir, one singer’s voice comes from each speaker. Visitors are invited to enter and move amongst the configuration of speakers to discover what the artist describes as “walking into a piece of music.” The first of its kind at the Nelson-Atkins, Forty-Part Motet is a new way for visitors to engage with contemporary art.
A Decade of Dance
November 19 @ 7:00 pm | $100 – $125
Nicol House
Join Owen/Cox Dance Group to celebrate a DECADE OF DANCE in the exquisite Bruce Goff-designed home of Rod Parks. Enjoy wines by Doug Frost, a signature Owen/Cox cocktail, decadent food by Californos, and a special performance by Ensemble Iberica’s Beau Bledsoe and Jordan Shipley. A live art auction will feature such celebrated artists as Anne Austin Pearce, Peregrine Honig, and Lester Goldman, and a silent auction will offer some of Kansas City’s finest goods and services.
Consider purchasing a VIP TICKET for a private performance by Beau Bledsoe and Jordan Shipley, early auction access and a private home tour led by Rod Parks.
Impressions in Wood
November 19 @ 8:00 pm
Central United Methodist Church
Pre-Concert talk at 7:15
Program:
Rocking Mirror Daybreak – Toru Takemitsu
For an Actor – Shulamit Ran
Trumpets – Oliver Knussen
Anthèmes 1 – Pierre Boulez
light years – Scott Unrein
