Jay Harvey Upstage

 A discarded euphemism of disappointment and annoyed surprise, once heard among old folks, runs: "Oh fudge!"  Mother-daughter bond renewed across identity issues. That usage could serve as a mantra for Phoenix Theatre 's new show, "The Rise and Fall of Holly Fudge." Set in 2020, it's a holiday contraption that vibrates against the rumble of the pandemic and social upheaval, as well as evolving notions of personal identity and its right to thrive. The old-fashioned expletive has the right muttered tones of evasion with which the settled older generation confronts change. Carol, the baby-boomer lead character in Trista Baldwin's contemporary Christmas comedy, finds it necessary to hold on to the high local reputation of the confection she calls "Holly Fudge." Her spacious living room is decorated to the nines for the season, from snow globes to a dazzling tree (upstage center in Lyndsey Lyddan's set for the Phoenix production). The candy'...

Terell Stafford and Indianapolis Jazz Collective in action The Indianapolis Jazz Collective, an all-star local band linked to and continually inspiring support by the Indianapolis Jazz Foundation , has a firm track record of working well with guest musicians. That tradition expanded with distinction Sunday night at the Jazz Kitchen , with trumpeter Terell Stafford filling out the front line along with IJF artistic and education director Rob Dixon on tenor sax. The rhythm section was no slouch in imparting star quality: Steve Allee, piano; Nick Tucker, bass; Kenny Phelps, drums. The first set lit the kindling with "Time to Let Go," a Stafford original and the title piece on his recorded debut as a leader. That was in 1995, and since then Stafford has added distinction to his resume as an educator. He directs jazz studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, whose stature in the music's history he's boosted through the Philadelphia Jazz Orchestra, founded in 2013. Staf...

With one of England's greatest composers being widely celebrated this year on his 150th birth anniversary, the Soloists Gerber, Zuber, and Muston for Martin's Petite Symphonie Concertante Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra  on Saturday night presented a program with different aspects of the composer represented in both halves. Ralph Vaughan Williams' distinctiveness as a rare English master first became apparent in 1910 with Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and his interest in the past of English music also encompassed vernacular styles, which "The Running Set" represented right after intermission. The latter piece, a straightforward evocation of folk-dance tunes, was a pleasurable rouser in the bright, balanced acoustics of the Schrott Center for the Arts at Butler University. It brought the excellent ICO winds into play for the first time in the concert. Their role was mainly filling out the tone colors of music not designed for individuation. That prismatic f...

With Dvorak's last quartet as an anchor, both for its foreign perspective and its nostalgia for old, familiar Aeolus takes its name from the Greek god of winds. milieus, the Aeolus String Quartet made its first local appearance Wednesday night at the Indiana History Center. "Inspired by America" was the concert's title. As the second group on Ensemble Music Society' s current season, Aeolus led up to the Bohemian master's String Quartet in G major, op.106, with three modern works by American composers — George Walker, Jessie Montgomery, and Ben Johnston. The prominent African-American Walker wrote a piece that became known as "Lyric for Strings" in its string orchestra version. As the second movement of his first string quartet, it sounds very much like apprentice work. The basic appeal of the material has allowed the piece to succeed, maybe not on the transcendent level of Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" (similarly lifted from a...

Rachel Barton Pine, a protean concert violinist with a compelling discography on Cedille Records , has Rachel Barton Pine champions black composers. done much more than give a nod to diversity in classical music. In addition to expanding her repertoire to bring black composers to the public, she set up a project through her foundation to redress the neglect of their music. That was more than 20 years ago, so she can't be accused of jumping on a bandwagon. Her latest investment as recording artist in this music is "Violin Concertos by Black Composers Through the Centuries" (Cedille). Despite its bland academic title, the disc makes an exciting case for music  by composers whose reputations are only recently gaining ground. Jose White Lafitte (1836-1918) Rooted in the emergence of cultivated music from the salon and court into the public concert hall, the work of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, enjoyed a vogue briefly in the 18th century, keyed to its composer...

Sunday's concert in the outsized magnificence of Carmel's Palladium needs no special pleading. There's an aura around Franz Schubert's chamber music that seems unlikely ever to fade. And the fact that the Wu Han and David Finckel have a decades-old partnerhsip performers of the two piano trios yesterday are illustrious in their fields, separately and together, promised great things. Commentary on this repertoire tends toward gushing enthusiasm. Of such works, the English critic William Mann wrote: "They are music to be loved, and they inspire an affection that in human affairs we accord to our closest relations and to those friends from whose company we are never long absent." So, if you weren't there Sunday evening at the Center for the Performing Arts , you'll have to be content with hugging those near and dear to you, even virtually. And if you were, you probably found your beloveds all the more huggable after hearing three master instrumentalists p...

Significant scenes from Indianapolis Opera's "Tosca" European power politics from more than two centuries ago don't bulk large in modern consciousness, but a classic juxtaposition of tyrannical power versus artistic and personal freedom will always hold the stage in the form of Giacomo Puccini's "Tosca." The opera opened Indianapolis Opera 's 2022-23 season Friday night at the Booth Tarkington Theater in Carmel's Center for the Performing Arts. Two performances remain: 7:30 p.m. today and 3 p.m. Sunday. Driving three audiences toward sell-out status at the 500-seat Tarkington is the presence of renowned local soprano Angela Brown as Floria Tosca. A famous singer portraying a famous singer is virtually guaranteed to get extraordinary attention. Tosca has star quality in circa-1800 Rome, and her story, transferred from a late-19th-century French drama to operatic splendor, carries weight displaying the difficulty of keeping celebrity status out o...

Sometimes the high pertinence of the  director's program notes gets in the way of how a play feels as it goes along in front of you. Clearly, "Natural Shocks" is "about" domestic violence and gun carnage, as Southbank Theatre Company 's artistic director Marcia Eppich-Harris and production director Eric Bryant point out in print. But as Lauren Gunderson's one-act, one-actor drama unfolded on opening night Thursday at Fonseca Theatre, I was caught up in both the literal and metaphorical significance of the approaching tornado that has caused Angela, an insurance agent of lofty accomplishment and, in her private life, an abused spouse, to shut herself away in her home basement.  Angela reenacts long-ago dialogue with her controlling mother. Carrie Ann Schlatter, as I've noted in past reviews, conveys in every role a sympathetic connection to audiences, no matter how odd the character she portrays. The oddness is often a crucial part of that rapport. I...

Akiko Aoki is active on the New England jazz scene. A Japanese singer with a solid inclination to interpret the American songbook displays her well-integrated versions with an adept small band in "Pure Imagination." Akiko Aoki studied at the Berklee College in Boston after coming to the United States, went back to her native Japan for a while, then returned to the U.S. permanently. She married, raised a family, and helped her husband manage a restaurant, where she also sang.  A widow since 2017, she has resumed focusing on her musical career. In this new release, she displays a charming manner, with the novelty of a Japanese accent being no obstacle to her putting across jazz and popular standards convincingly. On a couple of tunes, she duets compatibly with her daughter, Mari, notably "Moondance," the Van Morrison hit, and Charlie Chaplin's "Smile." Typically, there's an unforced flow to the pair's phrasing that retains a lively edge.  In the ...

Aspects of Paul Cornish with the Premiere Series trio Already the variety of competition finalists is consciousness-expanding: From the abstract-expressionist energy of Esteban Castro last month, followers of the American Pianists Association have been transported into the filigree and pastels of Paul Cornish, leavened with an earthy force in evocations of his jazz heroines: Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981) and Geri Allen (1957-2017).  The occasions have marked the start of the Premiere Series of monthly appearances by the 2023 finalsts for the  Cole Porter Fellowship of the American Pianists Awards . Attending the second set at the Jazz Kitchen Saturday night, I reveled in the adaptability of the format's accompanists, bassist Nick Tucker and drummer Kenny Phelps. They partnered with apparent ease to both of the first two finalists, as they are likely to do with the series' remaining three: Thomas Linger (Dec. 3), Caelan Cardello (Jan. 28), and Isaiah J. Thompson (Feb. 25)....

Stephen Hough is a favorite ISO guest soloist. Stephen Hough 's guest appearances in Indianapolis go back a long way, even including a church concert with an area youth orchestra. But this weekend is his debut local engagement sporting a knighthood. Over the summer, the venerable British pianist-composer became Sir Stephen Hough, so it was forgivable to imagine a new aura surrounding his return to the city  with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. The vehicle is the most expansive, and taxing, piano concerto in the standard repertoire: Brahms Second in B-flat major. The performance grandly took up the concert's whole second half Friday evening at Hilbert Circle Theatre. The program is due to be repeated at 5:30 p.m. today. The initial offering had the heartening presence of many young people, including a contingent of students from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and a cadre of young adults representing Forte, the ISO support group for their demographic.   Jose ...

Mari Evans: larger than life as she seemed to be in person An advantage of seeing short plays by different writers on the same evening helps to highlight the pluses and minuses of OnyxFest , an annual festival of new work by black playwrights. Back-to-back scheduling also allows the visitor to experience different views about what lifting up black voices in the theater means today: the festival's impactful title is "A Soulful Mosaic of Black Life on Stage." The meanings can be intense and clearly expressed to the understanding, but also may be without a consistent and well-integrated address as to how good theater is felt on our pulses. As opening night proceeded Thursday on the Basile Stage at IndyFringe Theater , allowances had to be made for a definite workshop feeling. Polished productions, both technically and artistically, might well have their place in the schedule through Nov. 12 (next weekend at IUPUI Campus Center Theater), but "Black Is My Color" and...

It seems like ages ago, like many events pre-pandemic, when Jeremy Pelt brought his quintet with the same personnel to the Jazz Kitchen .  That time, the inspiration was the visual arts, and the latest Pelt  recording was "The Artist."  In his return visit, with the well-honed  ensemble of Chien Chien Lu, vibraphone; Victor Gould, piano; Cover of the current CD: The quintet returns Vicente Archer, bass, and Allan Mednard, drums,  assisting him, the trumpeter cast a wider net with "Soundtrack," including the title tune. That had the most reliable order of solos, with engaging statements from Lu, Pelt, and Gould.  Lu, a native of Taiwan, showed again how compulsively watchable and listenable an artist she is. She is one of those to whom the cliche applies that she becomes the music she plays: "Who can tell the dancer from the dance?" as W.B. Yeats once wrote. The tendency of Mednard's apt drumming to cast a shadow over Gould, which I noticed in the quint...