Harriman-Jewell Presents: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with Isata Kanneh-Mason
After making her Kansas City recital debut in 2022, pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason couldn’t resist coming back with the renowned Royal Philharmonic Orchestra as part of the Harriman-Jewell Series. Her debut album on Decca Classics, Romance–the Piano Music of Clara Schumann, drew popular and critical acclaim, entering the UK classical charts at No. 1.
On the evening of Tuesday, January 23, Kanneh-Mason takes the stage in Helzberg Hall at the Kauffman Center with Vasily Petrenko, the orchestra’s new music director, conducting.
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in London in 1946, travels the world performing classical music. They are recognized as being the UK’s most in-demand orchestra and count passion, versatility, and uncompromising artistic standards as hallmarks and are celebrated as one the world’s most open-minded, forward-thinking and accessible symphony orchestras.
The evening’s program will include Claude Debussy’s Danse; Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26; Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27.
Hangama Amiri: A Homage to Home
Beginning January 26, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art welcomes a new exhibit by Afghan Canadian artist Hangama Amiri, who fled Kabul with her family in 1996 when she was 7 years old. Her family lived a nomadic life in numerous countries before they settled in Canada in 2005, when Amiri was a teenager.
Her work combines painting and printmaking techniques with textiles, weaving together stories and images from her homeland with her own experience of diaspora, leaving everything familiar to start a new life in a new place. Amiri’s mother taught her to sew. Her uncle was a tailor. Amiri sources her materials from an Afghan-owned shop in New York City, with fabrics and colors she remembers from the bazaars and streets in Kabul.
Amiri’s large works reflect a layering of fragments, some frayed at the edges, representing memory, loss, and hope, as well as the struggle for women’s rights in Afghanistan and around the world.
Hangama Amiri: A Homage to Home is organized by Amy Smith-Stewart, chief curator, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, where it debuted in February 2023.
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City performs at the Folly Theater on January 20, in a concert presented by the Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City.
Chamber music, played by a small group of musicians in a chamber or room, usually brings to mind the classics. But if you are expecting Beethoven and Bach, you might be surprised.
The early years of the 20th century saw the emergence of a new approach to composition. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Reynaldo Hahn, Eugène Ysaÿe, and Ernest Bloch all brought exciting and pioneering approaches to the piano quintet, the etude, and the sonata, much as the world of fiction embraced stream-of-consciousness in the work of Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf.
In the more intimate setting of the Folly Theater, you can hear this new/old music as it was meant to be heard. The program includes: Hahn’s Quintet in F-sharp minor for Piano, Two Violas, and Cello; Coleridge-Taylor’s Four African Dances for Violin and Piano, Op. 58; Ysaÿe’s Sonata in D Minor for Violin, P. 27, No. 3, Ballade; and Bloch’s Quintet No. 1 for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello.
The musicians of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center bring it all to life: Gloria Chien (piano), Yura Lee (violin/viola), Kristin Lee (violin), James Thompson (violin), and Dmitri Atapine (cello).
Senior discounts are not the only advantage to getting older. The Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City, known as The J, offers arts classes to adults 55 and older in a low-stress environment practically guaranteed to boost your mood, perfect for the winter months. You can see if a class fits your schedule, if a spot is available, then sign up, and you just go. You don’t have to be Jewish or a member.
You can try painting with a palette knife, creating thick ridges of paint in impasto. If you’ve always wanted to tell your family’s story—or your own story—in art, you can take Artistic Storytelling. Learn how to hand-build ceramics or draw with graphite and dry materials. Experiment with mixed media. Paint on silk or take much better photographs with your phone.
A qualified local art instructor leads each class, and the cost of materials is included in the class fee. The art studio is equipped with enhanced lighting, a ceramics kiln, potter’s wheels, and all the art supplies you could wish for.
A new round of Heritage Adult Art Classes will begin again in late January and early February, with options for mornings, afternoons, and evenings.