Kansas City jazz legend Marilyn Maye is ‘The Talk of the Town’ at this performance

In April, Kansas City vocalist Marilyn Maye celebrated her 95th birthday with a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. I wrote about it, and bemoaned the fact that although Maye regularly performs in New York and Europe, no local arts organization had invited this legend to perform in her hometown lately.

Well, Maye will perform with the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra conducted by Clint Ashlock in a program called “She’s the Talk of the Town” Oct. 27 and 28 at the Folly Theater. If I had anything to do with this, I will consider it my singular achievement of 2023.

Maye appeared with the jazz orchestra on its debut concert in 2003, so it’s entirely fitting that this Grammy-nominated singer returns to join this top-notch band. Expect lots of laughs, lots of stories and lots of selections from the Great American Songbook.

8 p.m. Oct. 27, 2 p.m. Oct. 28. Folly Theater, 300 W. 12th St. $20-$100. 816-225-4949 or kcjo.org.

Minería Symphony Orchestra with Gabriela Montero

Gabriela Montero is a dazzling pianist. The acclaimed Venezuelan musician is noted for playing a difficult concerto with an orchestra and then, as an encore, asking for a theme from the audience and performing a set of brilliant variations on it.

We’ll see if Montero does that when the Harriman-Jewell Series presents her with Minería Symphony Orchestra of Mexico City conducted by Carlos Miguel Prieto on Oct. 23 at Helzberg Hall.

Montero and Prieto are quite the team. They won best classical album” in 2016 at the Latin Grammys for their recording of Rachmaninoff and Montero’s own music. Prieto is fantastic.I’ve heard him conduct the Kansas City Symphony in Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, and it was one of the most thrilling concerts I’ve attended.

The program will feature a couple of the greatest works of Latin American classical music: Symphony No. 2 “Sinfonia India” by Carlos Chávez and “The Night of the Mayas” by Silvestre Revueltas. There will also be works by Montero, including her “The Latin Concerto.”

7 p.m. Oct. 23. Helzberg Hall, Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. $12.50-$90. 816-415-5025 or hjseries.org.

Kansas City Symphony — ‘The Phantom of the Opera’

Lon Chaney’s “The Phantom of the Opera” is one of the masterpieces of silent cinema, and to see it with live organ accompaniment is a real treat, especially this time of year. Organist Dorothy Papadakos will play Helzberg Hall’s Casavant organ as the Phantom does his thing Oct. 25 at Helzberg Hall.

Papadakos has made a specialty of performing with “Phantom of the Opera,” and knows how to bring out all of the movie’s pathos, romance and horror.

7 p.m. Oct. 25. Helzberg Hall. $29-$80. 816-471-0400 or kcsymphony.org

Friends of Chamber Music — Quartetto di Cremona

Friends of Chamber Music will present Quartetto di Cremona on Oct. 28 at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral. The name refers to Cremona, Italy, where the quartet was founded in 2000 at the Accademia Walter Stauffer, but also Cremona is revered for its violin makers, who have been working there since 1560. Antonio Stradivari is one of the city’s most famous native sons.

The quartet will present an eclectic program that opens with some sunny Italian music, Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade. Following that is Ravel’s gorgeous String Quartet in F Major. To me, its pizzicato second movement sounds like the pitter-patter of raindrops.

The program will conclude with Beethoven’s String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132. The quartet reportedly inspired T.S. Eliot to write his Four Quartets. Eliot wrote to a friend, “There is a sort of heavenly or at least more than human gaiety about some of his (Beethoven’s) later things which one imagines might come to oneself as the fruit of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering; I should like to get something of that into verse before I die.”

7:30 p.m. Oct. 28. Grace & Holy Trinity Cathedral, 415 W. 13th St. $44. 816-766-1096 or chambermusic.org.

Musica Sacra

If you don’t know the choral music of Mendelssohn and Rheinberger, you’re really missing out. You have an opportunity to hear both composers when Musica Sacra conducted by Timothy McDonald presents its fall concert Oct. 22 at Arrupe Hall Auditorium.

Mendelssohn and Rheinberger are both 19th century German composers, but Mendelssohn’s music has elements of the classical and romantic styles, while Rheinberger’s music is full-on romantic.

The program will feature Mendelssohn’s Psalm 42, which the composer regarded as “my best sacred piece … the best thing I have composed in this manner,” and as a work “I hold in greater regard than most of my other compositions.”

7:30 p.m. Oct. 22. Arrupe Hall Auditorium, Rockhurst University, 1100 Rockhurst Rpad. Free. rockhurst.edu/center-arts-letters/musica-sacra.

You can reach Patrick Neas at patrickneas@kcartsbeat.com and follow his Facebook page, KC Arts Beat, at www.facebook.com/kcartsbeat.