The KCCK Featured Album for July is “Bossas and Boleros” from bassist Gabriel Espinosa, who recently retired after 27 years as the Director of Jazz Studies at Central College in Pella,. The title of the disc honors the music that Gabriel grew up with as a teenager during the Sixties in Yucatan, Mexico, and his …
Larry Baker managed and owned movie theaters in Oklahoma before moving to Iowa and writing novels. His seventh book, “Harry & Sue,” takes place in just such a theater, populated by a variety of ghosts you will know, such as Marilyn Monroe, Harry Chapin, Mark Twain, Patsy, Cline, and Harry Houdini. But the ghosts, particularly …
Community Concert organizations were created in the 1930s, as smaller communities worked to bring musicians and entertainers to towns of all sizes, not just big cities. The Cedar Rapids Community Concert Association has been doing that very thing for 93 years. Board member John Haack says because the group is all-volunteer, they can keep ticket …
This is arguably the biggest week of the year for Cedar Rapids Municipal Band, as the patriotic-themed concerts around Independence Day are always popular. But Muni Band director Steve Shanley says the program will not only include expected favorites like America The Beautiful (featuring the Cedar Rapids Concert Chorale), Stars & Stripes Forever, and Armed …
Hey, Jazz fans! Be sure to tune in this week as we celebrate the birthdays of composers Richard Rodgers and Frank Loesser, singers Lena Horne and Tierney Sutton, pianists Elmo Hope and Andrew Hill, trombonist Julian Priester, bassist Stanley Clarke and more. We’ll also mark the recording anniversaries of Duke Ellington’s “Ellington Uptown” (1952), Nina …
Trumpeter John Daversa and pianist Tal Cohen are back in Eastern Iowa as faculty for the annual Cedar Rapids Chamber Music Festival, June 26-30 on the Kirkwood campus. They’ll bookend their week here with two “Art of Duo” shows, June 25 at CSPS Hall, and July 1 at the Sound Conservatory in Rock Island. Five …
Steve Shanley, after being out of the country for the first two weeks of the Cedar Rapids Municipal Band season, picks up his baton this week for a program that features his friend and mentor David Lang on euphonium. Also, music from Disney’s “Brave,” a Phantom of the Opera medley, and a song with the …
Cedar Rapids Opera brings two comedies to the Brucemore outdoor stage June 22-24, “American Gothical,” a delightful take on the creation of Grant Wood’s masterpiece, from the pen of Cedar Rapids native and award-winning composer Robert Lindsay Nassif, and Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi,” in which a family must enlist the help of a scoundrel to help …
