Studios of the 1910s loved nothing more than wrapping an actress in mystery, and Theda Bara became their most elaborate invention. For Cleopatra (1917), publicists launched an enormous campaign claiming she was the Egyptian‑born child of a French actress and an Italian sculptor, raised in the Sahara beneath the Sphinx before blossoming into a Parisian stage star—none of which was true. They dubbed her the Serpent of the Nile, fed reporters tales of mysticism and the occult, and built an aura of exotic danger around her. Film historians often point to this moment as the dawn of two enduring Hollywood institutions: the studio publicity office and the professional press agent, precursors to today’s public relations machinery.

Theda Bara’s recently rediscovered Salomé is a feverish blend of biblical spectacle, orientalist fantasy, and Bara’s signature vamp persona. Long thought lost, the surviving footage reveals her sweeping, stylized gestures, jeweled costumes, and a performance pitched halfway between ritual and provocation, offering a rare glimpse of how Fox sought to build her into a figure of exotic danger. The film’s recovery restores a missing chapter of silent‑era iconography and deepens our sense of Bara’s craft, showing her command of movement, pose, and atmosphere.

In her final years, Theda Bara lived quietly with her husband in Los Angeles, far removed from the exotic persona studios once manufactured for her. She made no attempt to revive her screen career, instead spending her time reading, hosting friends, and enjoying a private domestic life. When she died in 1955 at age 69, she left behind only a handful of surviving films but an outsized legacy as one of early Hollywood’s first great mythic creations.

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

Marcel Duchamp, that sly saboteur of seriousness, spent his life loosening the bolts on Western art until the whole machine rattled delightfully; he was one of the instigators of Dada, the early‑20th‑century anti‑movement that prized absurdity, chance, and a gleeful distrust of cultural solemnity.

Duchamp’s Anémic Cinéma (1926) is a whirling little prank of a film, a spinning‑disc hallucination in which optical spirals—his rotoreliefs—twist hypnotically while a series of French puns flicker across the screen, each one a linguistic booby trap designed to collapse sense into nonsense.

Later in life, Duchamp drifted from galleries to the quiet geometry of chess, devoting himself so fully to the game that he competed internationally and claimed it offered a purity of thought no museum could match—a final, elegant gambit from an artist who always preferred the unexpected move. The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City has a wonderful example of his chess art.

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

This preview brought to you by the Choral Foundation

Summer in Kansas City has its own tempo. The air slows, the calendar thins, and many ensembles take their seasonal rest. But for William Baker and his Choral Foundation, July and August are not a lull. They are a second season, built on openness, community and the simple pleasure of gathering people to sing.

“Summertime is a time of relaxation and sitting back and chilling,” Baker said, “but not for us.”

The Choral Foundation’s Summer Singers now span multiple states, but Kansas City remains its most concentrated hub, with four concerts unfolding over three weeks: three Summer Singers ensembles and the Summer Ringers Academy.

These groups are non‑audition, but the musicianship is anything but casual. Many singers are teachers or professors who can only perform in the summer; others are seasoned choral veterans keeping their voices active; still others are stepping into ensemble singing for the first time. The blend gives the concerts a particular energy, a sense of shared purpose that is both relaxed and serious, rooted in the idea that good music belongs to everyone willing to show up and work.

Baker shared a story from a past season that captures this spirit. It happened during a performance of Haydn’s Creation, as the ensemble surged into “Sing to God, ye hosts unnumbered.”

“There was a 16-year-old girl singing in the group, and I caught her face during that moment when there’s so much excitement, and tears are going down her face,” Baker said. “That was 15 years ago. She wrote me a letter and said that that music and that moment changed her life and put her on a new course. And now she’s a high-school choral director.”

Baker was obviously moved, recalling this teenager’s epiphany. For the Choral Foundation, the kind of transformation she experienced is the quiet engine behind the work.

Summer Singers of Lee’s Summit: Gospel That Moves the Room

The season opens Sunday, July 26 at 4 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Lee’s Summit, where the 45‑voice Summer Singers of Lee’s Summit will present an all‑gospel program centered on Robert Ray’s Gospel Mass. Ray (1946–2022) was an American pianist, composer, and educator who taught at the University of Illinois and later at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, where he also founded and directed the St. Louis Symphony’s IN UNISON Chorus.

Ray’s Gospel Mass began as a one‑off experiment after Vatican II, written for a single vigil service. Ray “didn’t think anything would become of it,” Baker said. But the response was immediate and overwhelming. The piece was repeated, then published and it has since become one of the most beloved sacred works in the African American gospel tradition.

Baker speaks about gospel music with love and respect. “It is as powerful, and as beautiful and as worthy of scholarship as anything from the Western European masters,” he said. “And… it’s an awful lot of fun.”

The program also includes Richard Smallwood’s Total Praise and Keith Hampton’s Praise His Holy Name, pieces that carry their own unmistakable lift. Baker told the ensemble he wants people driving past the church to see the building “swaying while we’re singing.” It’s not hard to imagine.

Summer Ringers Academy: First Notes, First Discoveries

There is something bracing and clarifying about the sound of bells. Negative energy seems to dissipate in the presence of their beautiful sound. On Wednesday, July 29 at 7:30 p.m., also at St. Paul’s, the Summer Ringers Academy offers something different: a handbell concert by musicians who, in many cases, have never rung a bell before. Directed by Amy Chinnery Valmassei with associate director Robbert Abbott, the Academy functions as both workshop and ensemble.

“Most of the people in the Summer Ringers Academy are musicians,” Baker explained. “They’re pianists, or singers, or instrumentalists, but they haven’t done handbells.” The result is a kind of musical first contact — the moment when someone accustomed to melody or harmony suddenly becomes responsible for a single pitch, waiting for its exact entrance.

The enthusiasm “is off the chart,” Baker said. The concert has the feel of a shared experiment, open and welcoming, with the pleasure of discovery built into the sound.

Northland Summer Singers: Schubert in Early Bloom

On Sunday, August 2 at 2 p.m., the Northland Summer Singers bring an all‑Schubert program to Second Baptist Church in Liberty. Directed by Daniel Baker — “not related to me, but I wish he were,” William Baker said — the ensemble was founded in 2025 and has quickly grown into a confident 50‑voice chorus.

The centerpiece is Schubert’s Mass in G, written when the composer was just fifteen. The piece carries the clarity and directness of youth, but also the unmistakable lyricism that is the hallmark of Schubert‘s style.

“For my money,” Baker said, “Schubert is probably the greatest songwriter in the history of music.” The Agnus Dei is especially moving, he added, while the Gloria “explodes with joy.” Schubert’s Masses are not often performed live, so this is a rare opportunity to hear this music sung by a full chorus in a resonant sanctuary.

Summer Singers of Kansas City: Haydn’s Fire and Light

The season concludes Saturday, August 15 at 6 p.m. at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, where the 125‑voice Summer Singers of Kansas City, full symphony orchestra and soloists including Victoria Botero will perform Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass and the exuberant Te Deum in C. Baker will also conduct Haydn’s Symphony No. 88.

The Te Deum is, in Baker’s words, “a blowtorch of joy.” The Lord Nelson Mass — originally titled Missa in Angustiis (“Mass in Troubled Times”) — was written during the upheavals of the 1790s, when Napoleon’s campaigns were reshaping Europe. Its nickname emerged only later, after Admiral Nelson’s victory and after Nelson himself attended a performance in 1800.

Baker speaks of Haydn with deep admiration. “There’s not one note that is not for great purpose,” he said. “Every single note of the piece is beautiful and glorious.”

Symphony No. 88, written during Haydn’s mature middle period, shares instrumentation with the Mass and radiates the same inventive clarity. It opens with a dignified slow introduction before moving into an Allegro built almost entirely from a single melodic idea. The slow movement, a set of variations featuring oboe and solo cello, was so beautifully crafted that Brahms reportedly said, “I want my Ninth Symphony to sound like this.”

Hearing the symphony and the choral works together offers a rare glimpse into Haydn’s creative world — bright, balanced, and full of life.

Why These Concerts Matter

Summer Singers keeps music alive when the city’s concert halls go quiet. It gives singers a place to gather, whether they are seasoned professionals or first‑timers. And it creates the possibility — always present, always unpredictable — that someone in the room will hear something that stays with them.

For families, these concerts are an invitation. Bring children. Let them hear voices rising together. Let them feel the shift in the room when a chord locks into place. You never know which moment will be the one that opens a door.

“I’ve had two good ideas in my life,” Baker said. “One was asking my wife, Laura, to marry me, and the other was Summer Singers.”

Concert Dates at a Glance

• Summer Singers of Lee’s Summit — July 26, 4 p.m., St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

• Summer Ringers Academy — July 29, 7:30 p.m., St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

• Northland Summer Singers — August 2, 2 p.m., Second Baptist Church, Liberty

• Summer Singers of Kansas City — August 15, 6 p.m., Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

For tickets and the full season lineup: jccc.edu/mtc

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

Born in Moravia in 1860 and raised within the Catholic Church, Mucha absorbed the sensuous pageantry of Catholic ritual early on—kneeling for hours as an acolyte before a flower‑laden tomb of Christ, an experience he later recalled with vivid, almost trance-like intensity. That devotional atmosphere inspired a lifelong spiritual curiosity that moved far beyond orthodoxy.

By the fin de siècle, Mucha had become a participant in the era’s occult revival. He explored Freemasonry, Slavic pagan heritage, Hermetic symbolism, and theosophical ideas—an eclectic blend that shaped both his private philosophy and his most esoteric works. Scholars note that his floral and feminine imagery, often dismissed as decorative, is charged with symbolic meaning tied to nature mysticism, the occult, and spiritual syncretism.

His 1899 masterpiece Le Pater stands as the clearest expression of this inner world: a visionary reinterpretation of the Lord’s Prayer that merges Catholic devotion with Masonic concepts, sacred geometry, and Hermetic cosmology. Mucha’s French commentary for the book drew criticism from clergy for its feminine titles for God, revealing how boldly he departed from conventional Catholic symbolism. Only 510 copies of Le Pater were published. It was a work that Mucha said he “poured his soul into.”

In 2019, Century Guild published a sumptuous reproduction of Le Pater. It is truly a wonder of Art Nouveau and mysticism and well worth getting your hands on.

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Mucha was not merely as an Art Nouveau stylist, but a spiritual seeker—someone who fused Catholic ritual, occult philosophy, and Symbolist mysticism into a unified, luminous vision.

If you live in Kansas City, you have until August 30 to view an amazing exhibit of Mucha’s art at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. The exhibit also feature works by artists that were inspired by Mucha. For more information:

https://nelson-atkins.org/art/exhibitions/timeless-mucha/

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

Runge, alongside Caspar David Friedrich, is widely considered one of the central painters of the German Romantic movement. Art historians often draw parallels between Runge and William Blake, though Runge’s brief decade of work resists easy comparison with Blake’s long, multifaceted career. By contemporary accounts Runge possessed a strikingly agile mind and a deep command of the literature and philosophy circulating in his era. He wrote letters with unusual frequency and intensity, sustaining lively exchanges with figures such as Carl Ludwig Heinrich Berger, Friedrich, Goethe, Schelling, Henrik Steffens, and Ludwig Tieck, all of whom helped shape the intellectual world in which his art emerged.

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

Schwabe is regarded as one of the central illustrators of the Symbolist movement, a period when artists were turning toward dream imagery, allegory and emotional suggestion rather than realism. He created notable illustrations for major writers of the era, including Zola’s Le rêve, Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande, and Samain’s Jardin de l’infante.

Critics often divide his work into two broad phases. Before 1900, his images are more exploratory and closely tied to Symbolist idealism; after that, he leans toward more traditional allegorical scenes drawn from nature. Across both periods, his depictions of women remain central — sometimes as figures of death or sorrow, other times as sources of creativity and inspiration.

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian modernist artist, photographer, and visionary educator whose restless curiosity helped redefine the possibilities of art in the twentieth century. Born in 1895 and later a central figure at the Bauhaus, he championed a radical fusion of technology and aesthetics, arguing that artists should embrace new materials—light, metal, plastics, and the camera itself—to meet the modern world head‑on. His experiments in photograms, kinetic sculpture, and typographic design shaped the language of avant‑garde visual culture, while his founding of the New Bauhaus in Chicago carried those ideals into American art education. Moholy-Nagy’s work is a testament to the belief that creativity thrives when it engages directly with the tools and rhythms of contemporary life.

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

“My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad's alcoholism, but as I said, we just didn't have the time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don't-give-a-damn that helps them through all the stress.”

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

Corot, a French painter working across landscape, portraiture, and occasional etchings, stood at a midpoint in 19th‑century art. His work keeps the structure and calm of the Neo‑Classical tradition, even as his attention to outdoor light and atmosphere edges toward Impressionism.

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–1669) was a Dutch painter and printmaker whose portraits, biblical scenes, and etchings shaped the visual language of the Dutch Golden Age. His work is marked by a steady deepening of chiaroscuro and an unusually candid attention to human expression, moving from the polished clarity of his early Amsterdam years to the sober, psychologically attentive canvases of his later life. He experienced both commercial success and financial hardship, yet across those shifts he maintained a distinctive focus on the human face—unidealized, attentive, and grounded in observation—which remains central to his legacy in European art.

"Rembrandt is so deeply mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language. Rembrandt is truly called a magician... that's not an easy calling." — Vincent Van Gogh

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

Hour of the Wolf (1968) is Bergman’s starkest descent into artistic and psychological unease. It follows a painter whose isolation on a remote island causes him to slip into hallucination and dread. The film moves between waking life and nightmare with gothic visions that emerge from the artist’s own feverish mind. Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann give amazing performances that ground the film’s more surreal passages. Hour of the Wolf remains one of Bergman’s most unsettling works —and that’s saying something. Watch the trailer above, and see what I mean.

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

Otto Wagner (1841–1918) was a pioneering Austrian architect whose career helped Vienna’s transform from a traditional imperial capital to a hotbed of modern design. Trained in the classical and eclectic traditions that shaped the Ringstrasse, he gradually broke from revivalist styles in the 1890s, becoming a central figure in the Vienna Secession, Austria’s principal expression of Art Nouveau. His major works, from the elegant stations of the Vienna Stadtbahn to the radically spare Postal Savings Bank have a crisp, proto‑modern clarity that influenced generations of European architects.

Perhaps Wagner’s magnum opus is the Church of St. Leopold (1902-1907) (Kirche am Steinhof), built to accompany a large new psychiatric hospital constructed on the edge of Vienna.

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

This Preview brought to you by the Friends of Chamber Music.

There’s nothing like going on a road trip with friends, stopping at diners, having conversations both witty and profound, and exploring new landscapes along the way.

That’s what Friends Of Chamber Music have planned for its 2026-2027 season. Landscapes is going to be the ultimate musical road trip. You’ll explore wondrous vistas like Bach’s complete Musical Offering, early music that sounds brand new, keyboard music performed by piano superstars and chamber music galore.

A Season Built as a Journey

Cellist Dmitri Atapine and his wife, pianist Hyeyeon Park, the co-artistic directors of the Friends Of Chamber Music, never simply assemble a list of concerts. Each season is shaped as a narrative, with each concert connecting to the other. This year’s theme, Landscapes, explores the emotional, cultural, and geographic vistas that chamber music can evoke.

“Every concert is like a chapter of a beautiful book,” Atapine says. “We want the audience to feel compelled to explore things they’ve never heard before alongside familiar repertoire. And we want a sense of progression from the beginning of the season to the end.”

The road trip starts with American Landscapes, a celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary. It features Samuel Barber’s youthful Opus 1 Serenade for String Quartet, Amy Beach’s sweeping Piano Quintet, and Dvořák’s beloved American String Quintet. Atapine and Park will join a roster of distinguished artists including violists Scott Lee, Chad Hoopes and Masumi Rostad, and violinist Danbi Um for the season opener.

Beach’s quintet, in particular, is a work Atapine champions. “It’s an absolute romantic masterpiece,” he says. “More profound than some of the deepest Fauré you could hear. There are resonances with Brahms, but also this incredibly unique voice she developed against enormous odds.”

From there, the season travels widely. On Oct. 21, Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero brings a program of Spanish and Latin American works to the Folly. The concert will include composers from Soler and Scarlatti to Albéniz and Alicia de Larrocha. Montero is celebrated for her electrifying artistry and her rare gift for spontaneous classical improvisation. Trained in Caracas and London, she’s become a major voice on the world stage, known for performances that fuse virtuosity with emotional immediacy. Piano recitals too often focus on the standard repertoire. This concert will give audiences a chance to experience the rich literature of Spanish music for the keyboard.

“The vastness of piano repertoire is astonishing,” Atapine says. “No wonder it’s the king of instruments.”

Speaking of pianists, the acclaimed Sir Stephen Hough arrives from London on Jan. 30 with a satchel full of miniatures, ranging from Schubert and Brahms to Stockhausen and Beethoven’s bagatelles. Atapine is especially excited for Hough’s own arrangement of the Mary Poppins Suite. “This is a bold and traveling program,” he says with a grin.

Hough is a true Renaissance man: a pianist of staggering refinement, a composer of crystalline imagination, and a writer whose essays move with the same elegance as his phrasing at the keyboard. He’s one of the few classical musicians ever awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, a nod to the rare combination of intellect, curiosity, and artistic daring that defines his work.

Early Music, New Music, and Everything Between

Early music has long been one of the Friends’ defining strengths, and this season offers a particularly rich array. The great a cappella ensemble Voces8 returns Oct. 3 with Towards Paradise, a program of Croce, Purcell, Mendelssohn, Casals, Lotti, and Gibbons. “We want to transport our audience into this beautiful landscape of paradise,” Atapine says. “And we want them to remain there for the rest of the season.”

The Jupiter Ensemble’s program Nov. 20 draws from Baroque operas and instrumental works inspired by the legendary women warriors of the Amazon. Based on the ensemble’s acclaimed Amazone project, it blends sinuous arias, storm‑tossed sinfonias — complete with wind machine and thunder sheet — and tender laments sung by the exquisite mezzo soprano Lea Desandre. It’s exactly the kind of bold storytelling the Jupiter Ensemble brings to early music with such flair.

The Jupiter Ensemble performs Nov. 20 at Atonement Lutheran Church.

Cappella Pratensis and Piffaro perform together on March 5 at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. The two groups have a beautiful complementary partnership, each ensemble illuminating a different facet of early music. Cappella Pratensis specializes in Renaissance polyphony sung directly from historical facsimiles, giving their performances the feeling of attending a liturgy in a fifteenth‑century chapel. The Piffaro ensemble brings the vibrant colors of shawms, dulcians, sackbuts, recorders, and bagpipes, the very instruments which once surrounded and supported sacred vocal music. Together, they create a richly textured soundscape, offering audiences a rare chance to hear Renaissance repertoire in something close to its original sonic environment.

They’ll perform a true rarity, the Mass for Manila, a luminous reconstruction of music written for the Manila Cathedral by the Spanish Renaissance composer Francisco Guerrero. It’s a fascinating work shaped by migration, empire, and the meeting of European sacred practice and the devotional life of early colonial Philippines.

Another highlight is Bach’s Musical Offering, performed by seven artists including harpsichordist Kenneth Weiss. It’s a brilliant labyrinth of canons and fugues spun from a single theme, a work that reveals Bach’s contrapuntal imagination at its most daring. Conceived after Frederick the Great challenged him with an intricate melody, it unfolds as a kind of sonic puzzle where each movement deepens the sense of intellectual play.

“It’s one of the most profound and intellectually revealing works Bach ever composed,” Atapine says. “A compendium of invention.”

The program will also include works by Bach’s sons, Johann Christoph, Carl Philipp Emanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann. The concert on Dec. 15 at the Folly Theater is the perfect early Christmas present for Bach fans and a festive holiday treat for any music lover.

A more intimate early music concert will take place March 19th at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral when violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte and lutenist Thomas Dunford (Artistic Director of the Jupiter Ensemble) turn seventeenth‑century English melancholy into something strangely seductive. Their program, “Mad Lover,” reimagines that titular figure as a member of Charles II’s court, his emotional turbulence unfolding through music by John Eccles, Henry and Daniel Purcell, Henry Eccles, and Nicola Matteis. Infused with the exuberance and freedom Italian musicians brought to Restoration England, melancholy never felt so good.

The season also champions new music. On Oct. 16, the Modigliani Quartet will perform Debussy and Schumann alongside the United States premiere of Kryštof Mařatka’s AMEDEA—visage de jeune fille, a haunting, psychologically charged portrait of a young girl. On February 6 at the Folly, the Espressivo Piano Quintet presents Joy Steppin’, a new work by Nokuthula Ngwenyama. An American composer born in Los Angeles to Zimbabwean and Japanese parents, Ngwenyama’s music blends spiritual inquiry, ecological awareness, and a vivid sense of sonic color. That concert will also include works by Mozart and Brahms.

The Balourdet Quartet concert on Feb. 24 is part of the New Horizons series at the 1900 Building. Atapine described their appearance as an invitation into “a bold, new vision of chamber music as an art form that’s alive and well,” a program built around repertoire that is both challenging and deeply rewarding. He emphasized that New Horizons is designed for listeners who relish adventurous music, noting that “some people have that incredibly spicy taste in music and we are already gaining more devotees.”

He placed the Balourdet within the season’s larger arc, where tradition and innovation meet: “What’s important to us is presenting the full array. You understand the roots of chamber music in Beethoven and Brahms and Mozart, Haydn, and then you connect to the voices of present day young composers who are actively exploring new terrain but always rooted in tradition. That conversation between centuries is essential.”

This extraordinary season will conclude with works by two meat and potatoes composers but it’s repertoire rarely heard live: the Mozart and Brahms Clarinet Quintets. There is something about the sweet combination of clarinet and strings that can just make you melt. Clarinetist Sebastian Manz will perform along with musicians from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, an organization with which Atapine and Park have a long and warm relationship.

Why Chamber Music Matters

Kansas City’s artistic life is unusually rich, and Atapine sees chamber music as a vital part of its cultural health. “To have a chamber music organization like the Friends entering our fifty‑first season is truly a jewel in the crown of this city,” he says. “Not every community has access to world‑class chamber music, and yet it’s one of the most transformative art forms I know.”

He’s especially passionate about its impact on young musicians. The Friends’ Young Artists Project nurtures emerging ensembles, including the Tesura String Quartet, which recently participated in the Juilliard String Quartet Seminar. “When young players discover their ability to influence each other, to cooperate, to synthesize ideas, it brings them to a level of understanding of what human community can do,” Atapine says. “It’s not just chamber music. It’s knowing how to be a better member of society.”

Atapine’s enthusiasm is infectious, and he knows it. “The news of chamber music not being the greatest art form has been greatly exaggerated,” he says with a laugh. “One of our missions is to make people realize how much fun, how much beauty, and how much communion this music can bring into their lives.”

He hopes audiences will not only attend concerts but share their experiences. “Post about how much you love chamber music,” he says. “Help us stay true to our mission, which is to make more friends of chamber music.”

Friends of Chamber Music Present

Landscapes

For tickets and a look at the complete season:

816-561-9999 or www.chambermusic.org

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

Whistler was an American‑born painter who built his career in Britain during the Gilded Age, arguing firmly for “art for art’s sake” and steering clear of moral messages in his work. He signed his paintings with a stylized butterfly — part delicate emblem, part sharp‑edged persona — a neat summary of the contrast between his refined art and his famously combative public life. He often drew parallels between painting and music, titling works as arrangements, harmonies, and nocturnes to stress tonal balance over narrative. His best‑known canvas, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (1871), widely recognized as Whistler’s Mother, has become both a revered image and one of the most frequently reinterpreted portraits in modern culture.

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.

Wolverton was one of the great horror and science fiction comic book artists, but he's probably more famous for his work for MAD magazine. He became known for meticulously drawn grotesques, faces warped, exaggerated, or oddly endearing in their distortion. He even leaned into the joke with the self‑applied title “Producer of Preposterous Pictures of Peculiar People who Prowl this Perplexing Planet,” a line that captures both his precision and his dry humor. In 1941, he was baptized into Herbert W. Armstrong's Radio Church of God and eventually illustrated a Bible for the church. See illustrations below. Contemporary cartoonists Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman are both admirers of Wolverton‘s art.

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com

In the 1990s, that changed: new MIDI‑driven reconstructions made Antheil’s original, unplayable battery of 16 player pianos feasible and Paul D. Lehrman’s restoration work finally allowed the film and score to be brought together in a coordinated version, later refined through Bruce Posner’s archival reconstruction. Today, Ballet Mécanique stands as Antheil’s best‑known piece, remembered for its bold sonorities, its improbable instrumentation and the long, winding path that led to its first true realization. In performance, the “ballet” has no human dancers; instead, the motion comes from the machines themselves — player pianos, airplane propellers, electric bells — arranged across the stage and moving in their own mechanical rhythm, giving the work its visual presence and its unmistakable character.

And who’d have ever imagined this? In 1941, the glamorous Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr and Antheil devised a wartime invention that anticipated modern wireless technology. Drawing on Antheil’s experiments with synchronized player‑pianos, they developed a frequency‑hopping system that allowed radio‑guided torpedoes to switch signals rapidly, preventing enemy interception. Though the Navy dismissed the idea at the time, the underlying principle later became foundational to spread‑spectrum communication—the backbone of Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS—making their unlikely partnership one of the most consequential creative alliances of the twentieth century. (HT: Tom Borengasser)

Breakthrough: Ideas that changed the World - George Antheil & Hedy Lamarr

George Antheil’s legacy rests on the audacity of his imagination: a composer who treated sound as a volatile material to be pushed, provoked, and re‑engineered. His later reinvention as a writer and film composer showed the same restless curiosity, a willingness to shed one identity and slip into another. And his partnership with Hedy Lamarr—an unlikely leap from avant‑garde music to wireless innovation—secured his place as a figure whose influence radiates far beyond the concert hall.

KC Arts Beat is sponsored by Get Well KC, which offers a body‑mind approach to health and healing, helping individuals alleviate pain and optimize their overall well‑being. Learn more at www.getwellkc.com.