Missouri Classical Music News and Notes

The Metropolitan Arts Council of Greater Kansas City: $25,000 to support its Collaborative Cultural Audience Development Imitative, intended to let arts organizations in the metropolitan area implement coordinated audience development strategies. . . . The Friends of Chamber Music: $12,500 for its International Chamber Music Series. . . . Opera Theatre of Saint Louis received $50,000 for the American premiere of “Jane Eyre” by Michael Berkeley and David Malouf.

Featuring selections from competition rounds to the gala concert, the Missouri Southern State University International Piano Competition has released a CD from the 2004 event.

"These are cuts from (the performers') semi-final round, their final round or their gala concert, depending on which went the best," said Peggy Musgrave, with the piano competition office. "We get a good mix of styles and periods such as romantic, classical and baroque."

The pieces were recorded live at the competition for the CD, which was recently made available to the public.

Justin Cowart, 18, of Lee's Summit . . . is one of 16 cellists chosen for the National High School Honors Orchestra that will perform at the American String Teachers Association conference in Reno, Nev., in February.

In letters of intent to the center, officials at the Kansas City Symphony, the Kansas City Ballet and the Lyric Opera of Kansas City have said they will sign 20-year leases to use the $304 million facility, renewable for up to four more 20-year periods. . . .

“It's an enormous economic development opportunity for this city. I think the bistate threw a glitch … but I also think people will rise up out of the ashes.”

Springfield's choral music community lost a teacher, scholar and friend Monday with the death of Chuck Facer.

Facer, 55, died Monday morning in his home, following a six-year battle with colon cancer.

Facer was a nationally recognized conductor and composer who took his choirs to Carnegie Hall and had several choral works published. He also held numerous positions in state and national music associations.

• Sunday, April 10: Faculty Recital Series, University of Missouri-Kansas City, White Recital Hall, 7:30 p.m. Free admission
  
  
• Friday, April 15: "Women in the Arts 2005 Series", University of Missouri-St. Louis, Music Building (recital + master class), Noon

Composer Georgia Stitt originally hatched the idea for the musical, wherein a cross-section of a small Missouri town's inhabitants gather at the local cafe one morning while the rainfall continues to raise the Onkeenton River's water levels. Soon, the community - confronted by the prospect of a flood - bands together to fight this natural disaster.

Tim Werenko (who actually lived through a flood himself) co-wrote the show's book with Jeff Hylton, who also penned the show's lyrics. And although the score has been described as "folky," Stitt disagrees with that assessment.

The writer who can encompass more than one realm is the one whose words will resonate longest. The best piece of music criticism I've read in a decade was Alan Hollinghurst's TLS review of the Bayreuth Ring in 2000. Why? Because he didn't write like a parochial expert; he wrote like the major novelist he is. In an ideal world, poets, presidents, painters, and priests would talk about music, and there would be no critics.