Romeo and Juliet with the Kansas City Symphony
Symphony goers, symphony goers, wherefore art thou, symphony goers?
They will be schmoozing at the Kansas City Symphony’s new, breezier concert format—the Friday Symphonic Piazza Series that debuts March 14 at 8:00 p.m. at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.
Gemma New is the guest conductor, while oboist and Shirley Bush Helzberg Chair Kristina Fulton performs Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů’s Concerto for Oboe and Small Orchestra. And the Kansas City Symphony will wax romantic with selections from Sergei Prokofiev’s music for the ballet Romeo & Juliet. With a glass of wine in hand and the chance to mingle with other music-lovers, it’s like a cocktail party with wonderful music.
If you prefer the classic concert format, sitting down, not to worry. On March 15 and 16, the symphony returns and adds another piece to the program: Die Windsbraut by British-Russian pianist and composer Alissa Firsova.
Tilting at Windmills with the Kansas City Ballet
The beloved Don Quixote, the man from La Mancha, leaps onto the stage via the Kansas City Ballet from March 21 through 30 at Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.
Miguel Cervantes’s age-old tale follows chivalrous Don Quixote and his loyal squire Sancho Panza in a sunny romp through the Spanish countryside. Dynamic choreography and colorful costumes provide a visual feast. And, of course, there is a budding romance between the beautiful Kitri and the handsome Basilio, with plenty of humorous characters along the way.
Many consider Don Quixote to be the first modern novel, written over 400 years ago. In the picaresque tradition, the main character wanders the land having adventures, much like Cervantes’s own life, in which he fought in a Spanish duel, escaped to Rome, was injured in battle, abducted by Barbary pirates, held for ransom, and lived to tell the tale.
Choreographed by Anna-Marie Holmes with music by Ludwig Minkus performed by the Kansas City Symphony, this delightful ballet will charm all ages.
Lucia Vidales: Hambre at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
Through July 13, the commissioned works of artist Lucia Vidales vividly fill the Atrium of Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art for the museum’s ninth annual Atrium Project, curated by Erin Dziedzic.
The theme is hambre, or hunger. Born in Mexico City, Vidales takes on many interpretations of hunger in both drawing and painting. In the iconic Last Supper, we see the apostles reacting to Jesus telling them that one of them would betray him. And there are more pictorial representations of dinner scenes, past and present, some in surrealist contexts.
Says Vidales, “In Mexico, where I live, as in other parts of Latin America, mealtime and after-dinner conversations are culturally very important and privileged spaces for social life. The time spent cooking, preparing meals, and all the activities that go into preparing a gathering are what is usually considered in the realm of female activities, and often part of unseen and unacknowledged labor. Those are also spaces for building close connections, solidarity, and enjoyment, gossip, confessions, and skill building.”
It’s all about who is preparing the meal for whom, when, where, why, and how. Together, Vidales’s paintings and drawings encourage us to consider historical imagery and how that could expand in contemporary art and life.
Breakthrough Listen at Linda Hall Library
Is there Life beyond earth? It’s a question that humans have asked throughout time, and the subject of an ongoing exhibit at Linda Hall Library.
It’s also the genesis of a lecture on March 27 at 7:00 p.m. by Andrew Siemion, of the SETI Institute (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence). This nonprofit research organization, located in the Silicon Valley near the NASA Ames Research Center, continues to investigate the possibility of other life forms beyond our planet.
Astrophysicist and director of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, Siemion is also the lead investigator in UC Berkeley’s Breakthrough Listen program, which aims to decipher data from the Green Bank Telescope, with the help of interested people in the world’s largest citizen science projects. If you have a home computer and you want to start getting data from the telescope, you can sign up for SETI@home (visit seti.berkeley.edu/listen for information).
In Breakthrough Listen:The Search for Ourselves Among the Stars, Siemion will describe recent advances in astronomy and astrobiology that are propelling us toward the answer, including the most comprehensive, sensitive, and intensive search for extraterrestrial intelligence in history—Breakthrough Listen.