Tagged: KC Currents

By Adam Allington

By Bryan Thompson

By Sylvia Maria Gross

Kansas City, MO – The Royals played their season-opener this week against the Red Sox. They started off winning unexpectedly, 7-1 on Tuesday . . . but just as the weather chilled in Kansas City, so did the Royals luck. And they lost the next two games. But the games themselves were overshadowed by the major league pitching debut of a Japanese superstar . . . Daisuke Matsuzaka. He's becoming known in the US as Dice-K.

Charles Gatschet released his second album Step Lightly earlier this year. About half the album is made up of what Kansas City Star jazz critic Joe Klopus called "thought-provoking originals," including a bebop tune dedicated to Charlie Parker and a bossa nova for anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan.

By Lee Ingalls

For three years, singer Toni Gates has organized a show at Unity Temple on the Plaza, called the One by One Concert Series, which brings together a number of musicians who originally met as teachers at Paseo Academy of the Arts, like sound engineer Tom Ransom and percussionist Clarence Smith.

By Sylvia Maria Gross

In almost six decades as a professional musician, Kansas City saxophonist Ahmad Alaadeen has performed with jazz greats like Billie Holiday and Miles Davis and Motown stars like Gladys Knight and Smokey Robinson. In his most recent album -- And the Beauty of It All -- Alaadeen is working with a group of musicians most of whom are less than half his age.

By Lee Ingalls

Kansas City, MO – KCUR's Lee Ingalls spoke with Ahmad Alaadeen about the new album and its somewhat deceptive subtitle: Ballads.

Soon after choreographer Mary Pat Henry moved to Kansas City to teach at UMKC's Conservatory, she suggested a friend move here too. Leni Wylliams was in his early 30s and already an accomplished veteran of the modern dance world. Together they founded a company to perform not only their own work, but pieces by some of the country's premier choreographers. Their collaboration was cut short in 1996, when Wylliams was brutally murdered.

By Sylvia Maria Gross