From its early days as a cowtown – a jumping-off point to the West and shipping center for meat and wheat – Kansas City not only grew into a Midwest manufacturing and commercial hub. It also blossomed into a cultural center. During a time of rapid change in popular music, the sounds of military marches gave way in the city to syncopated ragtime and lively jazz.

In a special musical presentation, the quartet Ninkasi illustrates the variety and vitality of that era in the city’s musical history. Members Thomas Aber, Greg Briggs, Mark Cohick, and Pat Alonzo Conway, all trained in a variety of woodwind and percussion instruments, perform 10 musical pieces composed and published in KC between 1895 and 1925.