Kansas City.

American city. Although in Missouri, about half of its metropolitan area lies across the state line in Kansas. The city was incorporated in 1850 and there are records of musical activity from that time onwards. With the opening of the Coates Opera House in 1870, touring opera companies began visiting; operas, plays and concerts were presented there until it burnt down in 1901. Other early venues were the Butler Standard Theater (from 1900), the Gillis Opera House (1902–17), the Shubert Theatre (1906–35) and Convention Hall (1899–1935), rebuilt after a fire in 1900 to seat 15,000.

During the first half of the 20th century the city’s position as a communication centre for the south-western and mid-western states, combined with four decades of lenient government under the political machine of the Pendergast brothers, gave it an extraordinarily active night life, providing ideal conditions for the development of ragtime and jazz. Among important ragtime figures were Euday L. Bowman (12th Street Rag, 1914), James Scott and Charles L. Johnson (Dill Pickles, 1906). In the 1920s and 30s Kansas City had as many as 500 nightclubs, ranging from small bars featuring blues musicians to large dance halls such as the Sunset, Subway and Reno clubs, all noted for their highly competitive after-hours jam sessions. Of the many jazz bands based in the city, those led by Bennie Moten (1918–35), Andy Kirk (1929–48), Harlan Leonard (1931–46) and especially Count Basie (founded 1935) developed national followings and contributed to the style known as Kansas City or South-west Jazz. The city also had a strong tradition of blues shouters (Big Joe Turner, Jimmy Rushing and Walter Brown) and a notable concentration of jazz saxophonists, culminating in Lester Young, Ben Webster and Charlie Parker. Between 1936 and 1940 the most important bands moved to Chicago and New York; the collapse of the Pendergast machine and with it the city’s night life meant the eclipse of the local jazz tradition. In 1964 Kansas City Jazz, Inc., was formed to preserve and re-create that tradition through research, concerts and festivals. From 1976 some of the former jazz venues were restored, and a Women’s Jazz Festival was held from 1977 to 1985.

The conductor, composer and teacher Carl Busch, a Dane who arrived in 1887, founded the Kansas City SO (active 1911–18). Its successor, the Kansas City PO, was founded in 1934 by Karl Krueger, who conducted it until 1943, followed by Efrem Kurtz (1943–8), Hans Schwieger (1948–71), Jorge Mester (1971–4) and Maurice Peress (1974–80). It was dissolved in 1982; a new Kansas City SO was formed under the aegis of the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, whose director Russell Patterson conducted the orchestra until 1986, followed by William McGlaughlin. The Kansas City Chamber Orchestra (founded 1987) and the Kansas City Camerata (1991) are both professional orchestras.

Lyric Opera of Kansas City was founded in 1958 to present opera in English. Along with the standard repertory, the company has given early performances of many American operas including works by Samuel Barber, Carlisle Floyd and Lee Hoiby. Both the Lyric Opera and the SO perform at the Lyric Theatre, a Masonic temple of the 1920s reconfigured as a theatre seating 1600. Since 1951 Starlight Theatre has produced Broadway musicals in its outdoor amphitheatre in Swope Park. The Performing Arts Foundation sponsored performances of operas by Handel and Purcell in 1965–6.

In 1897 W.H. Leib organized the Oratorio Society, which continued until 1917 under Carl Busch; at its peak it had about 1000 members. Other choral groups have included the Apollo Club (founded 1899), the Schubert Club (1912), the Haydn Male Chorus (1925), Choral Arts (1982), the Fine Arts Chorale (1972), the Kansas City Chorale (1981) and the Kansas City Symphony Chorus (the last three still active).

Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral (established 1868) has long had an active music programme. The world headquarters of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in nearby Independence, has two large and outstanding organs, by Aeolian-Skinner (1959, in the auditorium) and Casavant (1993, in the temple). Handel’s Messiah has been performed in its auditorium annually since 1916.

Other musical organizations include the Kansas City Athenaeum (established 1894), the Kansas City Musical Club (1899) and the Kansas City Chapter of Young Audiences (1962). The William Jewell College Fine Arts Program (begun 1965) and the Friends of Chamber Music (1975) bring soloists and ensembles to the 1100-seat Folly Theater (originally the Butler, restored 1981) and the 2400-seat Music Hall. Concert series are also given nearby at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, and at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. The Kansas City Conservatory of Music was founded in 1906 and the Horner Institute of Fine Arts in 1914; the two were joined in 1926, and in 1959 they merged with the music department of the University of Kansas City. The latter became a unit of the University of Missouri in 1963.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C.W. Whitney: Kansas City, Missouri: its History and its People 1808–1908 (Chicago, 1908)

N. Shapiro and N. Hentoff, eds.: Hear me Talkin’ to ya (New York, 1955/R), 284ff

F. Driggs: ‘Kansas City and the Southwest’, Jazz, ed. N. Hentoff and A.J. McCarthy (New York, 1959/R), 189–230

M. Crabb: A History of Music in Kansas City, 1900–1965 (diss., U. of Missouri, Kansas City, 1967)

G. Schuller: Early Jazz: its Roots and Musical Development (New York, 1968/R), 279–319

C.W. Scherrer: ‘Jazz in Kansas City’, Music Journal, xxviii/5 (1970), 28–9, 60–61, 64–5

E.C. Krohn: Missouri Music (New York, 1971)

R. Russell: Jazz Style in Kansas City and the Southwest (Berkeley, 1971/R)

L. Ostransky: ‘Kansas City: the Development of its Spirit’, ‘Kansas City: the Jazz Development’, Jazz City: the Impact of our Cities on the Development of Jazz (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1978), 123–72

‘Kansas City Revives Jazz Landmark’, New York Times (2 May 1985)

M. Williams: ‘Jazz: what Happened in Kansas City?’, American Music, iii/2 (1985), 171–9

N.W. Pearson: Goin’ to Kansas City (Urbana, IL, 1987)

JACK L. RALSTON/SCOTT CANTRELL, J. BRADFORD ROBINSON