If you\u2019ve ever had one of those dreams where you\u2019re suddenly pulled from the crowd at a concert or a sporting event and become the star of the moment, you might relate to Ryan Marquez\u2019s dreamlike experience earlier this week.<\/p>\n
The Kansas City native was driving from St. Louis, his home for the past two decades, to join his parents at Tuesday evening\u2019s performance of \u201cMorgan Freeman\u2019s Symphonic Blues Experience\u201d<\/a> at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts when he received a phone call. The pianist was sick, and they needed a replacement for the show featuring the Oscar-winning actor<\/a>, the KC Symphony and blues musicians from Mississippi.<\/p>\n Although the curtain would rise barely five hours later, Marquez jumped at the chance to go from audience member to stage performer. He drove directly to the Kauffman Center and hurled himself into a fate-defining experience.<\/p>\n \u201cI went and got dressed and met the musicians like maybe an hour before the show, and it was off to the races,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was no rehearsal. It was totally flying blind.\u201d<\/p>\n He briefly went over the musical charts for the evening and met Freeman, who greeted him with, \u201cSo, you\u2019re the hero.\u201d<\/p>\n Morgan Freeman, the star of the show, greeted Ryan Marquez by saying, \u201cSo, you\u2019re the hero.\u201d<\/p>\n Then Marquez found himself at center stage surrounded by the Kansas City Symphony. Playing with the Mississippi Delta musicians who make up the Ground Zero Blues Band, he and both musical groups performed classic blues songs to original arrangements as Freeman narrated a video telling the history and impact of blues music.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first time that I heard the songs and the arrangements was as we were performing them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Of course, unlike that dream of yours, Marquez was completely ready for the moment. Having been immersed in music since the age of 5 while growing up in the Indian Mound neighborhood of Northeast KC, he\u2019s now a professional pianist, composer and producer. He has worked with some big names in blues, jazz and hip-hop.<\/p>\n Still, he had never experienced anything like this.<\/p>\n \u201cPlaying the blues with the symphony, when I was a kid I never would have thought that would even be possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a moment, once I was standing next to Morgan Freeman and the lights were all dimmed backstage and I heard the crowd like roaring and stuff, I was like, \u2018OK, this is real. This is actually happening. I\u2019m about to go out there and play a whole show, no rehearsal.\u2019 And I just had a blast.\u201d<\/p>\n So did his parents, Ramon and Donna Marquez, who along with a couple of aunts, an uncle and a sister, bragged to everyone in their Kauffman Center section about Ryan\u2019s unlikely starring role.<\/p>\n He isn\u2019t shy about bragging a bit himself, saying he would rate his performance, which included a solo, \u201c11 out of 10. I think I smashed it. Everybody gave me nothing but love and flowers.\u201d<\/p>\n It was good enough that the \u201cSymphonic Blues Experience\u201d company invited him back for its second KC show Wednesday night.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt completely in my element,\u201d Marquez said. \u201c\u2026 I put all my heart and soul into it and gave everything I could in the name of the hometown team.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s totally a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you\u2019ve ever had one of those dreams where you\u2019re suddenly pulled from the crowd at a concert or a sporting event and become the star of the moment, you might relate to Ryan Marquez\u2019s dreamlike experience earlier this week. The Kansas City native was driving from St. Louis, his home for the past two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2001011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[27885,363705,310650,363703,363704,345971],"class_list":["post-2001010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-blues","tag-classic-blues-songs","tag-kansas-city","tag-kauffman-center","tag-kc-symphony","tag-morgan-freeman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/How-a-Kansas-City-native-went-from-audience-to-\u2018hero.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2001010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2001010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2001010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2001011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2001010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2001010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2001010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/div>\n