Join the Midwest Trust Center and Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art for the 2025 Light Up the Lawn Concert Series featuring some of the best live music Kansas City has to offer. Bring your blankets, lawn chairs, and picnic baskets for these free, fun events!

Beth Watts Nelson

Recently ending a twenty-year career as a choral director in public schools, Beth Watts Nelson can now be found pursuing her muse in various projects throughout the Kansas City area. Her newest group, Little Miss Dynamite, combining the acoustic forces of some of KC’s finest musicians (Betse Ellis, Brandon Day, and Caleb Gardner) released its debut album, ‘Grow Up’ in May 2024. Beth also sings and plays the clawhammer banjo in the fiery old time string band, Catgut, and is a founding member of the Konza Swamp Band, a long-standing pillar of the local Bluegrass scene.  Her sweet and soulful duo, Beth and Brandon, plans to release an EP in 2025.  As a solo/duo performer, she performs original songs that sound as if they had been unearthed with the patina of decades in the songbook of Americana.  With a voice that cuts straight to your soul, and playing a vintage Martin guitar or clawhammer banjo, she will evoke smiles and tears – often at the same time.

Kelly Hunt

Memphis-raised singer-songwriter, Kelly Hunt, paints stories as old and offbeat as her Depression-era tenor banjo and parlor guitar, reimagining traditions of folk & old-time music with innovative vigor. Interweaving poetic lyrics, lilting melodies, and intriguing arrangements, Hunt casts a spell which No Depression describes as “the musical equivalent of a book you can’t put down, one you’ll want to revisit again and again to catch every nuance and turn of phrase.” Hunt’s 2019 debut album, ‘Even The Sparrow,’ was a finalist for the International Folk Music Awards “Album of the Year.” Her sophomore album, ‘Ozark Symphony,’ was recorded with Grammy-winning musician & producer Dirk Powell and released on Compass Records in 2023.