Time once again for weekend calendar picks from KC Studio editor, Alice Thorson. Tonight, the Midwest Poets Series presents poet Edward Hirsch at Rockhurst University. The Goldenberg Duo (pictured above and featured in our March/April 2016 issue) will be performing at William Jewell College, as well as on Saturday at Olathe Public Library and Sunday at St. James Church. Friday night, The Friends of Chamber Music present pianist Arnaldo Cohen at the Folly. Oct. 7-9, Kansas City Ballet performs Midsummer’s Night Dream at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, and Musical Theater Heritage presents a collection of LGBTQ-themed plays. for more ideas this weekend, visit Kansas City’s most comprehensive arts calendar at kcstudio.org/events.
Midwest Poets Series: Edward Hirsch
October 6 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm | $3
Pedro Arrupe, S.J., Hall Auditorium at Rockhurst University
The Midwest Poets Series will open its 34th season with a reading by Edward Hirsch, a past MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient and the current chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 6 in the auditorium of Pedro Arrupe, S.J., Hall on the Rockhurst University campus.
In addition to his MacArthur Fellowship, Hirsch has received a Pablo Neruda Presidential Medal of Honor, the Prix de Rome, and an Academy of Arts and Letters Award for his work. His first collection of poems, 1981’s For the Sleepwalkers, received the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University and the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets. Wild Gratitude, his second collection published in 1986, won the National Book Critics Award.
Describing the art form itself in How to Read a Poem, Hirsch invites readers into the life of poems, imploring them to “say them over to yourself in the place where silence reigns and the din of the culture… has momentarily stopped.”
Hirsch is the president of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.
Tickets to the event are $3 at the door. Books will be available at the event, with a reception and book signing following the reading. For information, call 816-501-4607. Parking for the event is available in the north parking garage at 52nd Street and Troost Avenue, and in all lots, even those restricted, accessed through the campus entrance at 54th Street and Troost Avenue. For more information, visit rockhurst.edu/campus-map.
The Goldenberg Duo
October 6 @ 5:30 pm
William Jewell College
October 8 @ 2:00 pm
Olathe Public Library
October 9 @ 7:00 pm
St. James Church
Susan, is a violinist with the Kansas City Symphony. William, her brother is Distinguished Professor of Piano at Northern Illinois University. Composers will include:
- Schubert
- Sibelius
- Frank Bridge
- Oscar Peterson
- William Bolcom
- Gershwin
- Scott Joplin
- Nathaniel Dett
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
October 7 & 8 @ 7:30 pm
October 9 @ 2:00 pm
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts
Thanks to William Shakespeare this classic comedy of mischief and mystery between mortals and fairies has delighted audiences since its premiere in 1985. Mistaken identities, romantic misadventures and fairy-dust magic entwines two mortal couples, the king and queen of the fairies, and a small troupe of amateur actors – all tricked by the mischievous Puck. This hit ballet includes the full company along with 50 Kansas City Ballet School students and live vocalists.
Arnaldo Cohen, piano
October 7 @ 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm | $35
Folly Theater
When one is compared to Claudio Arrau and Martha Argerich, what else is there to say? There’s plenty when you see this program.
60 Variations on a theme. It is monumental. It is death-defying. Hear, again, one of music’s greatest achievements, played by a genius: Arnaldo Cohen returns to Kansas City to perform the Busoni piano arrangement of Bach’s famous Chaconne solo for violin. Cohen pairs the Busoni-Bach Variations with another formidable set of variations, written nearly 200 years after Bach wrote his Chaconne, Brahms’ bold Variations on a Theme by Handel. You cannot imagine our surprise when we then learned that Cohen intended to play, on the same program, Chopin’s four Scherzos! Only 15 years ago, when this was done for the first time, the piano world was electrified. Now you can hear this extraordinary program, a true tour de force, this fall. We promise you will remember this concert for the rest of your life.
Alphabet Soup: Stories from Queer Voices
October 7 & 8 @ 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm
October 9 @ 2:00 – 4:00 pm
$15
Musical Theater Heritage
Just in time for National Gay & Lesbian History Month, Whim Productions is bringing to the stage the 2nd annual “Alphabet Soup: Stories from Queer Voices” short play festival.
Six plays, six different voices, six very unique experiences from LGBTQ life!
Plays include:
Two Provincetown locals passin’ time in a post office
A look at the politics of lesbian potlucks
A drag queen visiting his father in the hospital while in full drag
The age old experiences of summer camp
Check out our fantastic writers!
Cynthia Hardeman
Diane Hightower
Kevin King
Jamie Mayo
Jesse Ray Metcalf
David Wayne Reed
Parental Guidance is suggested due to some adult themes and sexual situations. As Ira Glass says, some of the plays “acknowledge the existence of sex.”
