The orchestra's current music director is Matthias Pintscher, as of the 2024-2025 season. Michael Stern, the orchestra's music director from 2005 to 2024, is music director laureate of the orchestra. Since July 2019, the orchestra's current executive director is Danny Beckley.[2]
History
In 1911, the first iteration of the Kansas City Symphony was formed for Carl Busch. The city's first symphony orchestra, it ceased operations at the start of World War I, as many of the musicians were sent to military service. Kansas City's second symphony orchestra was the Kansas City Philharmonic, founded in 1933 and dissolved in 1982. In the same year, businessman and philanthropist R. Crosby Kemper, Jr. and other Kansas City businessmen, including Hallmark Cards chairman and chief executive officer Donald J. Hall, Sr. and H&R Block co-founder Henry W. Bloch, provided funds for the formation of the second iteration of the Kansas City Symphony.[3] The orchestra gave its concerts at the Lyric Theatre.
In 2005, Michael Stern became music director of the orchestra. During Stern's tenure, the orchestra moved to the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in 2011.[4] The orchestra and Stern have made several commercial recordings. These include a recording of Gordon Chin's Formosa Seasons on the Naxos label, and two settings for Shakespeare's Tempest (by Arthur Sullivan and Jean Sibelius) with Reference Recordings. The orchestra is also featured on the recording Britten's Orchestra (2009), a Vaughan Williams and Elgar disc from 2013, and a Hindemith, Prokofiev, and Bartók in 2014 also with Reference Recordings.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone live with the Kansas City Symphony
In 2023, controversy arose after the orchestra denied tenure to Josh Jones,[5][6] the orchestra’s first Black tenure-track musician who had originally been appointed to the orchestra effective with the 2020-2021 season.[7]
Stern concluded his tenure with the orchestra at the close of the 2023-2024 season, and now has the title of music director laureate of the orchestra.
In March 2023, Matthias Pintscher first guest-conducted the orchestra.[8] On the basis of this appearance, in May 2023, the orchestra announced the appointment of Pintscher as its next music director, effective with the 2024-2025 season, with an initial contract of five seasons.[9][10]
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