The most peculiar thing about the quintessential Spanish opera Carmen may be its composer — Georges Bizet, a sickly, depressive Frenchman who never laid eyes on Spain. At its premiere, Carmen met with such harsh reviews that the theater had to give away tickets to fill seats. But the show was championed by Debussy, Tchaikovsky and Brahms, and became the…
If you can’t carry a tune or you have restraining orders on your two left feet, you can live vicariously through a reality-TV show. Starting this month, Fox’s popular So You Think You Can Dance goes on the road. At 7:30 p.m., the dance competition sashays from your flat screen into the Sprint Center (1407 Grand, 816-949-7100). Finalists from this…
Paintings and artwork by well known regional artist Gale W. Stockwell will be featured in an exhibit in Park University’s Campanella Gallery. The Campanella Gallery is located within the University’s McAfee Memorial Library on the Parkville Campus. Mondays-Thursdays, 8 a.m.-9:30 p.m.; Fridays, 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Sundays, 4-9:30 p.m. Starts: Aug. 30. Continues through Oct. 15, 2010…
Walking or jogging is good for your health, but how about maybe working those muscles for the betterment of someone else? This time of year, lots of charities host events that combine exercise and philanthropy. A few of them happen this week.• The Light the Night Walk is a leisurely stroll Friday through Corporate Woods (9401 Indian Creek Parkway, Building…
Both a sculptor and a printmaker, John Buck works with two interrelated bodies of work: carved wood, assemblage and bronze sculptures and large, multicolored woodblock prints. Since beginning his collaboration with Bud Shark in 1983, Buck has explored the expressive possibilities of woodblock in more than 40 different prints. Buck lives in Montana and Hawaii and has shown his woodcuts…
Walking or jogging is good for your health, but how about maybe working those muscles for the betterment of someone else? This time of year, lots of charities host events that combine exercise and philanthropy. A few of them happen this week.• The Light the Night Walk is a leisurely stroll Friday through Corporate Woods (9401 Indian Creek Parkway, Building…
Someday we’ll recall as ridiculous what’s now the norm: faces frozen by Botox, the resurgence of leggings worn as pants, the orange glow of spray tanner. Oh, and women earning an average of 23 percent less than male counterparts on the job — almost half a century after the Equal Pay Act. But women comprise nearly half the American workforce, so…
Three acclaimed comedy groups will make a rare Kansas City appearance. Starting off the evening is Omega Directive, recently returned from the Chicago Improv Festival.Also appearing is Dictionary Soup, a two-person show that appears in three exclusive festivals this month alone, including KCIF: X and Philadelphia’s Duo-Fest. Rounding out the evening is Deep Space Emily, an improvised SciFi serial whose…
The zombie is not only a common icon or figure in some of my favorite movies, but an analogy for the greedy and the gluttonous. These creatures live for no other reason but to feed and destroy and are relentless in their pursuit of a full belly. To top it off, they are completely unaware of what they are doing….
SHOUT! The Mod Musical is a non-stop journey through the infectious and soulful pop anthems and ballads that made household names of stars like Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield and Lulu. Fri., Sept. 24, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., Sept. 25, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., Sept. 26, 2:30 p.m.; Thu., Sept. 30, 7:30 p.m.; Fri., Oct. 1, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., Oct. 2, 7:30 p.m.;…
Barclay Martin Ensemble’s new album is called Pools That Swell With the Rain. Appropriately, water is also the theme of the band’s 8 p.m. CD-release event at the Folly Theater (300 West 12th Street, 816-474-4444). The evening features a visual spectacle by performance group Quixotic Fusion. Martin’s socially conscious jazz-folk-rock group — which includes Giuliano Mingucci, Rick Willoughby and 2010…
Lawrence streets swell with visual and performance art as the Downtown Lawrence Arts District hosts its second Final Fridays event from 5 to 8 p.m. A recently inaugurated monthly happening, Final Fridays aims to draw in both the art-savvy and the uninitiated. Exhibitions take place in galleries, restaurants, retail spaces, banks and abandoned storefronts on and around Massachusetts Street. More…
There was a time when traveling into the American West meant disappearing into an exotic, wild land of the imagination, the way European explorers once thought of the Far East. When painter Alfred Jacob Miller joined an expedition, it was with the intention of visually documenting the landscape and people for the edification of his less adventurous contemporaries. Miller traveled…
UPDATE: Aretha Franklin will not perform at this event. Chaka Khan will. Heck, if she’s good enough for the presidential inauguration, she’s good enough for us. Grammy winner and queen of soul Aretha Franklin performs for the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts’ 1Year2Go Countdown Celebration at the Power & Light District Live Stage (14th Street and Grand), showing that…
The Miller Nichols library at the University of Missouri–Kansas City is installing a robotic storage and retrieval system that will house 80 percent of the facility’s books while plotting to DESTROY ALL HUMANS, as any competently programmed robot should. To celebrate — and attempt to set a Guinness world record — the school hosts what could be the world’s largest…
Prairie Day will showcase the natural forces that created the tallgrass prairie and woodland ecosystem, and how this natural resource has changed as it helped sustain people through the centuries. The Missouri Department of Conservation’s restored grassland and savannah areas at Burr Oak demonstrate the beauty and importance of prairies today. Sat., Sept. 25, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., 2010 Tags: Missouri…
To a bargain hunter, $35 might seem a bit steep to watch the Kansas City Royals. Never mind the team’s stats. Why pay that much when tickets start at $9? Because this game feeds the hungry — if you’re the one who’s hungry. For a handful of games this season, Kauffman Stadium (Interstate 70 and the Blue Ridge Cutoff) has…
Was our Almost Famous reference bad? Not everyone likes an Almost Famous reference — or at least my Almost Famous reference. Today’s post about 18-year-old Matt Fritzie’s unfortunate dive into a pool at the Phi Gamma Delta (FIJI) house were met with a couple of unhappy letters from readers. The best (i.e., most coherent) was from Bob Beachy. His…
Raymond Stockton didn’t confess to raping a young girl. “Marcus,” one of his multiple personalities made him confess. This was one of the defenses offered at Stockton’s trial last week, a crazy story the Lawrence Journal-World has tracked. A jury didn’t buy it, convicting Stockton of three counts of raping a child younger than 14 and one count of indecent…
There’s a secret show at the Brick tonight. We’ve heard that it’s going to be the Beautiful Bodies, playing for the first time in over a year, before their big unveiling at 96.5 The Buzz’s Beach Ball concert this Saturday with the Smashing Pumpkins and Cake. (Alicia Solo is making a ssh face next to tonight’s billing on the Brick’s website,…
Insane Clown Posse — and their cult-like following known as juggalos — is arguably one of the most hated groups in music. The A.V. Club exhaustively interviewed Violent J, half of the Detroit horrorcore duo, about what makes ICP tick. Check some of the weirder excerpts of the interview after the jump. (If you forgot what a juggalo looks like, you…
The xx — the vaguely goth British band of 20 year-olds writing sparse, furtive pop music — has exploded in the past year. Now, they’re cashing in on success (for Amnesty International, that is) by auctioning off one of their minimalist shtick: one of the X lightboxes used in the band’s live set. In the past year The xx have…
To whet your appetite for The Pitch’s annual Best of Kansas City issue, we’re counting down our favorite Top 50 dishes each weekday until October 7.If beer is the bread of life, then give me a thick slice of Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale with every meal. Boulevard Brewery introduced Tank 7 into its Smokestack Series lineup last year, and since…
After Craigslist pulled down its “adult services” section, it was only a matter of time before attorneys general targeted Backpage.com. Time’s up. Missouri AG Chris Koster and Kansas AG Steve Six joined 19 attorneys general in a letter to backpage.com yesterday, calling for the classified-ads website to end its “adult services” advertisements. The Pitch’s parent company, Village Voice Media Holdings,…
