KCAI’s Current Perspectives lecture series continues with Distinguished Alumnus Bill Brady. Brady graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1991 and went on to attend the Skowhegan Residency Program in Skowhegan, Maine. Drawn to New York and its lively art scene, Brady attended graduate school at the School of Visual Arts. He worked at the Guggenheim Museum of Art…
Stimulus overload will be in effect tonight at Davey’s Uptown (3402 Main, 816-753-1909) when the New Orleans Sunken City Circus rolls through midtown. The touring performance-art troupe brings together local artists, bands and freaks for a circus hosted by Colby “Kole Bastard” Watkins. On the evening’s bill: fire dancer Hell Fire Kitt; Guinness World Record sword swallower Johnny Mayhem (who…
See Second City’s national touring production, “Deface the Nation,” featuring native KC comedian Jason Sudeikis. The performance is a fundraiser for Gilda’s Club, which offers support to cancer patients and their families. Fri., April 24, 7 p.m., 2009 Tags: Gilda’s Club Worldwide, jason sudeikis, Night & Day, Second City Inc.
Last year’s inaugural Chalk Walk Festival in the historic Northeast drew more than 2,500 attendees, putting a spin on the tradition of 16th-century European street painting and benefiting the youth arts organization Mosaic Brain. With a goal of 100 chalk “squares,” the festival is anchored by four major works — completed by a seasoned professional, a street artist, an emerging…
Radio just isn’t big enough for Ira Glass, who has won two Emmys for the televised version of his 19-year-old radio show. The Norman Rockwell of hipsterdom steps up to the big screen tonight for a live on-screen broadcast of This American Life, satellite-beamed to 400 movie theaters nationwide. Six area theaters, including Cinemark Palace on the Plaza (500 Nichols…
Today, take a cue from the theme of a 21-year-old local event and “Don’t Just Stand There.” Walk! Walk for about 3.5 miles alongside people who look like you and people who don’t — teenagers, men, women, children, blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians, gays, straights — all marching together to combat a disease that doesn’t discriminate: AIDS. Event director Michael Lintecum…
Rockhurst University’s Musica Sacra Chorus & Orchestra lays its season to rest tonight with Handel’s breathtaking “Funeral Anthem on the Death of Queen Caroline: The Ways of Zion Do Mourn” (no, really — try saying that in one breath) and Haydn’s missa brevis (Latin for actually pretty short as these things go) in F. England’s King George II commissioned Handel’s…
Author Dalton Conley discusses his latest book Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety. Thu., April 23, 6:30 p.m., 2009 Tags: BlackBerry Mobile Devices, Dalton Conley, Night & Day
Kansas City composer Xinyan Li will present the world premiere of her emotional and striking work, Convergence, in the Chinese temple. The performance is a collaboration between the Museum and the UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance. The goal of the concert is to combine the visual and performing arts within the spaces of the Museum to offer the public…
Harry S. Truman is alive and well and will be filmed before a live audience tonight at 6:30 at the Central Branch of the Kansas City Public Library (14 West 10th Street). Performer Ray Starzmann — who first met the real Truman as a college student in the 1960s — will stay in character as the 33rd U.S. president as…
For Craig Aikman, a talented actor and director with Minds Eye Theatre, a return to the Age of Aquarius isn’t necessarily all about the astrology. “Even though we are 40 years from the love-in era, we are still fighting many of the same social and political wars,” Aikman says. “In many ways, 2009 feels like 1969.” Onstage it should, too….
German violinist Julia Fischer is a virtuoso at her instrument, and she’s beautiful to boot. See the master fiddler perform Mozart’s Sonata for violin and piano No. 1 C Major, K 296; Prokofiev’s Sonata for violin and piano No. 1 F minor, Op. 80; Beethoven’s Sonata for violin and piano No. 8 G Major, Op. 30/3; and Martinu’s Sonata for…
Haven’t been on a date all year? Change that tonight by going on 20. Stacy “Reach” Smith and Udochi Wilson, organizers of NieuVeau Speed Dating, are getting 20 guys and 20 gals, between the ages of 25 and 35, together at the Record Bar (1020 Westport Road) tonight at 7. “Every woman will get to date every guy in the…
Tall, lanky artist Kar Woo, who has run his own art and interior-design business, J.M. Porters, for decades, only began connecting young artists with social causes two years ago. He created a nonprofit group, Artists Helping the Homeless. Every Sunday, Woo is joined by students from MidAmerica Nazarene University (and occasionally, Woo says, from the Kansas City Art Institute) in…
Pansy Division was never much for subtlety. The openly gay punk band has given fans such lyrics as He’s in his PJs giving BJs to DJs while working the Gay Pride Festival circuit. The band’s touring schedule has slowed since 2003, allowing guitarist and singer Jon Ginoli time to write a memoir titled Deflowered: My Life in Pansy Division. As…
Among the vast array of cinematic offerings at this year’s Kansas City FilmFest, films by local filmmakers will also be on display. In addition to Lawrence resident Kevin Willmott’s revisionist Western, The Only Good Indian, the festival will also host the first-ever public screening of the supernatural thriller Last Breath, written and directed by Kansas Citian Ty Jones, making his…
Like vinyl, VHS is a charmingly antiquated format, beloved by collectors because some great works never made the transfer to disc. (For example, 1979’s Skatetown, U.S.A., in which Scott Baio tries to reason with roller-skate-gang leader Patrick Swayze, circulates only through bootleg videotapes.) Unlike vinyl, VHS is inferior to next-generation options in terms of quality. But the ’80s enthusiasts in…
Rainstorms, tornados and freaky weather be damned. Spring is here, and that means it’s sittin’-outside time — preferably during a sweet happy hour. Wondering where to head for the best in patio-plus-happy-hour combos? Try midtown’s Martini Corner (31st Street and Oak). The Velvet Dog (400 East 31st Street, 816-753-9990) happy hour runs from 4 to 7 p.m. and includes $3…
We’re anticipating that The Master and Margarita is going to be an event. It’s the latest KC play to be directed by Barry Kyle, of the Royal goddamn Shakespeare Company (and UMKC Theatre Department). Adapted from Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, one of the most abundantly inventive satires of the 20th century, The Master and Margarita is what transpires when the devil…
Lee Tisdale, aka Mott-Ly, the late curator of the Momo Gallery and an early resident of the Crossroads Arts District, died in May 2007 from complications of HIV, which he had acquired from a blood transfusion as a teenager. Few knew of his illness, and Mott never complained; area artists and gallery owners remember him as a great friend and…
Brooklyn, New York, in terms of hip-hop, is a universe unto its own. Big Daddy Kane, Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, Mos Def — these Brooklyn-bred rappers make up an all-star roster of the genre’s most influential and talented MCs. Though remaining determinedly underground, Talib Kweli continues his borough’s stellar legacy. From his membership in the late-’90s duo Black Star, with partner…
The kids are most definitely not all right in The Informers, directed by Gregor Jordan from Bret Easton Ellis’ 1994 novel and set in haute Los Angeles during the early years of the Reagan era. The Informers is mainly a spectacle of privileged, pretty young people (and youthful actors) acting badly. Nights of omnisexual anomie, days of robotic synth-music videos,…
Parallax Error Beheads You, the third album by London’s Max Tundra, is dizzying in its excess. Sophisticated chamber pop morphs into acid-house raves; paranoid new-wave riffs give way to frenetic electro-funk interludes; and Ben Jacobs, the virtuoso multi-instrumentalist behind it all, calmly orchestrates the digital jubilee with mannered English observations on his love interest’s MySpace profile or his obsession with…
No one has doubted the Riverboat Gamblers’ ability to entertain, thanks to frontman Mike Wiebe’s rafter-climbing acrobatics and frequent forays into the audience. The group’s bristling garage-pop punk races like a nitro funny car, recalling the Supersuckers’ artery-bursting pulse. Despite earning a higher profile with 2006’s To the Confusion of Our Enemies, the Texans returned from tour burnt worse than…
