Music

Missouri Theater Center for the Arts

The Missouri Theater building, in Columbia, Missouri, began life in 1928 as an upscale vaudeville palace. With a design based on the Paris Opera and architectural details such as Belgian marble wainscoting, stained glass, and an 1800-pound Italian chandelier, its construction cost a staggering $400,000. That's nearly $5 million in 2009 dollars. (Thanks to this website for the conversion.) It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

By the end of the 1980s the advent of multi-screen cinema complexes had rendered the Missouri Theater obsolete as a movie house. In 1988, the old building began a new life when it was purchased by the Missouri Symphony Society (MOSS) and in 2002 it became the home of the Missouri Theater Center for the Arts (MTCA).

Today the Missouri Theater is the premiere fine arts venue for central Missouri and is home to nearly a score of organizations, including the Missouri Symphony Orchestra, the Women's Symphony League, the MOSS Children's Chorus and the MOSS Youth Symphony, the Missouri Technical Theater Institute, Missouri Contemporary Ballet, the "We Always Swing" Jazz Series, the Boonslick Chordbusters and the Show-Me Opera.

Missouri Theater Center for the Arts. 203 S. Ninth Street, Collumbia, MO 56201.

Kansas City Symphony

The Kansas City Symphony was founded by R. Crosby Kemper, Jr., in 1982, to fill a void left by the dissolution of the Kansas City Philharmonic a few months earlier. This nationally recognized symphony consists of 80 musicians under the direction of Michael Stern. Steven Jarvi, Bruno Walter Associate Conductor, conducts the Family Series and Symphony Pops and Charles Bruffy is the Director of the Kansas City Symphony Chorus.

In addition to its 42-week concert season, the KCS performs with the Kansas City Lyric Opera and the Kansas City Ballet. The Kansas City Symphony maintains a strong focus on the community, especially in terms of encouraging and supporting music education for area youth. Some 14,000 people attend the Young People's Concerts and KinderKonzerts performed for area schoolchildren annually, and the KCS Support Music Education program stages benefit concerts in area schools where ticket sales directly benefit the host school district's music department.

The Symphony has released CDs of their performances and taped two PBS specials, as well as appearing on NPR's prestigious SymphonyCast series. KCUR-FM 89.3, Kansas City's National Public Radio affiliate, broadcasts highlights of classical performances on Thursdays at 9 p.m.

Kansas City Symphony. 1703 Wyandotte Street, Suite 200, Kansas City, MO 64108

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

Like the Missouri Theater Council for the Arts, the St. Louis Symphony is housed in a restored vaudeville theater that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Powell Hall was built in 1925 as the St. Louis Theater. It is an elegant, European-style building modelled on the royal chapel at Versailles. For forty years it served as a vaudeville house and movie theater, until the St. Louis Symphony acquired it in 1966. When it re-opened as the home of the Symphony in 1968, after an extensive, $2 million renovation, famed violinist Isaac Stern compared it favorably with Carnegie Hall in New York and Symphony Hall in Boston.

Saint Louis Symphony. 718 N. Grand, St. Louis, MO 63103

KCP&L Entertainment District

The Kansas City Power and Light Entertainment District is a renovated nine-block area of bars, restaurants and theaters in downtown Kansas City, between the Convention Center and the new Sprint Center. I have to confess that, even after googling it, I don't really understand what the deal is with the KCP&L District. I'm mentioning them here anyway because they are host to a variety of summer music concert series in musical styles ranging from rap to country to classic rock to salsa. The concerts are free, but you must be over 21 to attend. See their website here for details.

Ragtime

Scott Joplin wrote some of his first and best-loved ragtime numbers while living in Sedalia, Missouri, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Now Sedalia remembers him every year with the annual Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival. The festival is over for this year, but 2010 marked the 30th year, so it's a pretty safe bet they'll be back in 2011. Visit the Scott Joplin International Ragtime Foundation website for details.

Branson

Starting sometime in the 1970s or early '80s, Branson, Missouri has grown into a center for country music and various strange forms of entertainment such as performances by Yakov Smirnoff and a Titanic Museum. (Seriously! We're landlocked here! What's the deal?) Think of it as kind of a cross between Nashville and Las Vegas, but without the casinos and instead of giant, tacky hotels shaped like pyramids, we have giant, tacky motels shaped like log cabins with neon rocking chairs on the roofs and an overabundance of pictures of people smoking corncob pipes.

If I sound less than enthusiastic, forgive me. Branson isn't really my thing. There's a phony, tourist-trap side to it that plays on the old stereotypes of the Ozarks "hillbillies" and that really gets on my nerves. On the other hand, Silver Dollar City is a seriously cool, 19th century-themed amusement park. Also, there are a lot of antique malls and flea markets, if you like that sort of thing.

Some of the other main attractions in Branson include Shepherd of the Hills, which I'm not really sure exactly what it is, but it's based on the novel of that name by Harold Bell Wright (which is now in the public domain and is available from Project Gutenberg as a free ebook), Baldknobbers Jamboree, and the Dixie Stampede, which is apparently dinner theater with horses.

For more information on Branson attractions, you can contact the Branson Official Tourist Site.