Place Description: Dee Ban is a musician, teacher, and historian. She combines all three when she takes her autoharp into classrooms. Dee teaches history and other subjects by way of musical intelligence and primary source music. Lively discussions ensue as students encounter differing points of view passionately expressed in music. History comes alive as students learn that there are many voices of the past and they do not always agree. Her topics include: The American Revolution, Lewis and Clark, the Civil War, Black History: Slavery through Civil Rights, Songs of the Slaves, Immigration, the 1904 World’s Fair, 1960’s Civil Rights and Peace Movement, American Women’s History, Missouri History, Voting and Election Rights, Biography in Song, Reading/Library Week, Earth Day and Ecology and more. For more than a decade Dee sung in many venues including: The Missouri History Museum, St Louis County Libraries, National Park Sites, Missouri Botanical Garden, schools, educational conferences, folk life festivals, independent living senior centers, historical societies, and churches. With enough lead-time, Dee is happy to research and prepare new programs. Resume and brochure are available upon request.

Place Description: Dave is a folk musician who plays guitar, banjo, and a singer of traditional songs with an emphasis on Missouri traditions as they evolve. Dave worked with his late wife, Cathy Barton, for more than 40 years presenting traditional song and instrumental music, and produced more than a dozen albums. Dave has been the artistic director and performer at the Big Muddy Folk Festival in Boonville for 28 years. He plays in a couple of contra dance bands, and in 2019 scraped up a few friends for duos and trios on various steamboats as they were then playing America’s rivers.

Place Description: This fun and diverse ensemble traces the evolution of Cuban music from its African origins to modern days and styles of music, in a range of rhythms from Rumba, Son, Bolero, and Salsa. Its repertoire includes Spanish, Brazilian, and English songs, classics arranged with a very heavy Cuban touch, and also original material. It’s a perfect choice in different formats, from an intimate event to a fun dance party. Michael McClintock, Founder/Director of Cubanisms, has been invited two years in a row to perform at the Jazz Plaza International Festival in Havana, Cuba. The invitation was extended in 2019 for Cubanisms. The band had the chance to perform as part of the Festival in two of the most important venues of the island “Fábrica de Arte Cubano” and “Centro Cultural Bertolt Brecht”. Cubanisms has received 3 nominations in 2018 & 2019, by The Pitch and KC community: Best Local Band, Best musician (Michael McClintock) and Best Vocalist (Fedra Cooper, 2018) and (Bruno Bessa 2019)

Place Description: City in Motion Dance Theater has been part of Kansas City’s cultural fabric since 1985 comprising of a professional company, a school and a producer of dance.  Their mission is to foster the development of high-quality contemporary dance programming and expand the dance audience in Kansas City and surrounding areas. City in Motion will bring a balanced combination of high quality technique and artistically driven choreography striving to ensure that dance concerts demonstrate a wide range of themes from comedies to abstract commentaries on social, political, and human reflections. The movement varies from high energy physicality to soft fluid dynamics that suspend, release and travel across the stage in smooth spatial patterns. The tour will consist of new works and repertoire pieces from a group of professionally trained dancers.  City in Motion is available for outreach, formal performance settings, charities and can also offer workshops in creative movement, modern, improvisation and ballet for teens and adults.

Place Description: Chris Stephens is a multi-instrumentalist like no other. It’s difficult to explain what he does with his instruments – the Arabic Oud, Persian Tar, Indian Sitar, and Chinese Pipa – but however you describe it, he’s crossing musical boundaries and fostering connections between distant traditions. A true master musician and innovator, his music is based on the historic music from the world’s oldest cultures. His specialty is in the family of instruments known as “lutes,” which are the ancestors of the guitar. Chris’ performances are both an homage to these classical traditions and an exploration in contemporary improvisation. His main focus is to share these historic art forms with new audiences and to engage those who are familiar with them by honoring the old traditional styles and compositions. Each concert creates an enchanted musical scenery never to be heard again. Performances can go from melodic and meditative to rhythmic and explosive at any moment creating a rich and unique tapestry of sound that all can enjoy. OPEN STRINGS EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM: Chris Stephens is a multi-instrumentalist performer and educator with over 20 years of experience as an artist and educator. His music showcase, “Open Strings,” is a unique educational program that allows students to hear and learn about traditional musical instruments from the Middle East and Asia. This captivating performance blends music, history, geography, and language studies. Chris is known for his mastery of a diverse collection of historic stringed instruments from across the globe, including the sitar (India), oud (Middle East), saz (Turkey), tar (Iran), pipa (China), shamisen (Japan), and the American banjo. This program—part performance, part demonstration and participation—gives students a chance to experience some rare and underrepresented forms of music from around the world.