Twelve Minutes from Home-- Kansas City & the Arts

This past week three events stand out: I sat with my sister in the beautiful Kauffman theatre and listened to fabulous young voices sing Don Giovanni against a backdrop of film Noire sets and black & white costumes that almost shimmered with 1950s movie screen images.  I took a survey about children’s activities from the Kansas City Lyric Opera. I watched a North Kansas City elementary school choir sing two pieces for a school assembly. What do these three things have to do with each other in the scheme of the arts in Kansas City and why do they matter?

The first, somewhat obvious, is that we are fortunate in a city of our size to have such a beautiful performance hall available. The Kauffman Center is a jewell. It’s gorgeous, accessible, high tech and and literally shines in the middle of the city like a little diamond popped up in the skyline. I’ve seen two opera there recently, Tosca, last season, and Don Giovanni the current season opener. I've been pleased as punch with my ticket purchase. But the cool thing for me about Kansas City is that everyone goes to the Opera. It’s not a ballgame, I grant you, and tickets are not exactly petty cash. But I’m so excited to see people of all ages. Retirees, students and—to put it plainly—just regular folks. 

In the middle of the week, the KC Lyric Opera sent me a survey implying they would like to find a children’s audience. They were very thorough in the questions and I spent quite a bit of time with it. Then late in the week I went to an event in a North Kansas City elementary school and the music teacher had the chorus sing 2 songs. Both in 2 parts—and it’s only October. If you have never conducted a volunteer chorus that meets before school, you have no idea what a feat that is, but I was duly impressed and told the teacher so.

Now, how are these things at all connected? Well, I came back to the Kansas City area convinced that it is a center of incredibly intense arts activity. That the support for art and arts education here is really excellent and here is a great example of it. There is a quality performance, of Opera no less, twelve minutes from my far Northland Kansas City address. It’s a standard opera, performed hundreds of times, but it was directed with a new look and not at all dusty. The voices were outstanding. I felt, even as a highly educated musician, I got my money’s worth. I could take my family to that performance and their understanding of the arts would increase immediately. In addtion, the survey points out that this organization is reaching out to my family. They are LOOKING for a way to reach young students in the Kansas City area. Finally, when I go to the local elementary school I see music educators working hard, not just in their classroom, but before school, to make sure students are prepared to understand the kind of musical experience they might get if they went to a children’s performance at the Lyric Opera. 

Here is what I see: The community supporting the arts… building a beautiful venue, buying tickets to the opera, and other fine arts events, bringing their children early to school to go to choir and also, at this particular school district during the school day for band and orchestra. Finally, I see the arts reaching out into the community. Looking for how best to serve young people. Should they perform opera for students? Should they locate it in the city or elsewhere? I know it’s a marketing question, but they are asking us, the community, how best we can be served. It’s a perfect storm of arts enthusiasm as far as I’m concerned. And that matters to me.