Kansas City Symphony: Jane Glover - Handel's Messiah

Kansas City Symphony: Jane Glover - Handel's Messiah at Helzberg Hall - Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

One solo voice, then a chorus in full flight: Handel's Messiah makes room for intimacy and grandeur, and Jane Glover conducts the Kansas City Symphony through that exhilarating contrast.

Glover conducts the Symphony alongside the Symphony Chorus, directed by Betsy Burleigh, bringing soloists, chorus and orchestra together for this Baroque oratorio. Soloists Andriana Chuchman, Clara Osowski, Eric Ferring, and Brandon Cedel each deliver the intimate arias and recitatives that tell the story, while the massed voices transform the hall during the choruses. That contrast—between one singer's tender phrase and the entire ensemble's power—gives Messiah its dramatic sweep.

The Hallelujah chorus is one of Messiah's most familiar moments, a burst of choral grandeur with its own place in December tradition. But the appeal doesn't rest on recognition alone: following a solo line and then hearing the chorus take up the musical argument gives the evening its pull. Handel's writing invites you to notice how many different voices contribute to one work.

At Helzberg Hall in Kansas City, Missouri, listen for the exchange between the four solo voices and the Symphony Chorus as Glover brings them together with the orchestra. The contrast offers more than a familiar holiday highlight: it's a chance to follow the Baroque oratorio from its intimate passages to its choral scale.

Tickets for Jane Glover and the Kansas City Symphony's Messiah let you step into that progression yourself, following Handel's architecture from first note to final amen.