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Kansas City Symphony Opens Classical Season

Baltimore-based composer Jonathan Leshnoff
Baltimore-based composer Jonathan Leshnoff

The Kansas City Symphony opens its classical season this weekend featuring new music written as a "curtain-raiser" by a gifted American composer and a violinist, a former child prodigy, who won her first Grammy at 18, and her second, about a decade later, in 2008.

By Laura Spencer

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/national/local-national-928086.mp3

Kansas City, MO – KCUR's Laura Spencer talked to composer Jonathan Leshnoff about the process of creating a new work, and violinist Hilary Hahn about how to play a familiar work, as if it's new.

Note: musical excerpts of Leshnoff's "Starburst" performed by the Kansas City Symphony, at rehearsal; excerpts of Sibelius's concerto, performed by Hahn on her CD "Schoenberg / Sibelius: Violin Concertos"

Friday, Oct. 8, and Saturday, Oct. 9, 8 pm
Lyric Theatre
1029 Central St, Kansas City, Mo.
Sunday, Oct. 10, 2 pm
Yardley Hall, Johnson County Community College
12345 College Blvd, Overland Park, Ks.

Jonathan Leshnoff "Starburst" (Kansas City Symphony co-commission and Kansas City premiere)
Sibelius "Violin Concerto"
Ravel "Valses nobles et sentimentales"
Stravinsky "Suite from The Firebird (1919)"

Free Kansas City Symphony violin
lecture/demonstration with Hilary Hahn
Saturday, Oct. 9, 10:30 am - 12 pm
Lyric Theatre
1029 Central St., Kansas City, Mo.
Sign up for the lecture/demonstration here.

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Laura Spencer is staff writer/editor at the Kansas City Public Library and a former arts reporter at KCUR.
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