Jay Harvey Upstage

Twice this season the composer Augusta Read Thomas has come down from Chicago to hear new Two major works by Augusta Read Thomas have been heard this season here. works performed at Hilbert Circle Theatre.  This weekend it's the turn of "Toward a Secret Sky," a cantata commissioned by the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir, which is giving the premiere in two performances, along with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra . The second is at 5:30 p.m. today. The ISO in February gave the local premiere of her piece titled "Sun Dance," co-commissioned with other orchestras. Indianapolis audiences have thus had ample opportunity to become familiar with Thomas' bright, detailed, sometimes ecstatic manner of composition for large forces. In "Toward a Secret Sky," using texts from the medieval Sufi poet Rumi, Thomas has come up with musical settings, in nine movements without interruption, that strive to capture a spirituality reassuring everyone of its permanent,...

  Joseph Lulloff, storyteller Many classical fans have a smattering of acquaintance with the saxophone (almost always the alto) as a classical instrument, even if that rarely goes beyond "The Old Castle" in Ravel's orchestration of "Pictures at an Exhibition." But the eminence of Adolphe Sax's invention in pop and jazz is bound to weigh heavy in the general sound-world, making virtuosity in written concert music a rarity. Joseph Lulloff is part of that classical tradition, and in "New Stories" (Blue Griffin Recordings) lends his artistic mission to music that has  narrative resonance. He is assisted in effective partnership by Yu-Lien The at the piano. The composers represented reveal contrasting creative personalities. None of them follows in the recent tradition of high modernism, in which how you organize facets of musical construction to seem self-sufficient may be about adhering to academic rigor. Yu-Lien The, duo pianist Frequently represente...

Out of many, one grand characterization: comical suspense. Special effects envelop you as you settle into your seat for "Clue" at Indiana Repertory Theatre . The distant and persistent sounds of thunder, lights flickering both onstage and throughout the house, the set heavy with lowering, baronial dark wood. Memories of playing the board game of Clue will be evoked, and the cliche of a "dark and stormy night" is no longer as associated with apprehension and the thrill of fear as with something playful, even trivial. You have picked up your token and you're ready to go. You will pass the time using your smarts to deal with what the luck of the die brings you. IRT's season-ending production is built upon the game through the tweaking of a stage adaptation of the screenplay of the movie of the same name. Adaptation is the point, and the murder mystery as a genre is an essential inspiration, but somehow at a great remove. Farce is the obvious direction into whic...

Isaiah J. Thompson showed range of expression, swung hard. Although several appearances this season fed into evaluation of the five participants in the 2023 American Pianists Awards , recency bias and the sense of occasion that clings to the gala finals lead me to focus on Saturday night's performances by Isaiah J. Thompson, who was awarded the Cole Porter Fellowship in Jazz about 11 p.m. in Hilbert Circle Theatre. Already an active professional on the New York scene, building upon his academic credentials (two Juilliard degrees), the 25-year-old crowned his Indianapolis season with renditions of the Kern-Hammerstein "Nobody Else But Me" (with guest vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant ) and Randy Weston's "Hi-Fly" (with the Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra ). The jury chose him over four other finalists: Caelan Cardello, Paul Cornish, Thomas Linger, and Esteban Castro. It's a great distinction, and its recent past was vividly recalled with  a video salute f...

Fejérvári masters countryman's last concerto . In the lively Words on Music presentation Friday before the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra concert, guest soloist Zoltan Fejérvári pushed back against host Su-Han Yang's characterization of the piano as a percussion instrument. Of course, it's clear that membership in that family isn't entirely misplaced, since hammers striking strings account for piano sound, and it's natural to emphasize that where the style of Bela Bartók is concerned. But just as we can be reminded that the tomato is botanically a fruit, we prepare it and eat it and taste it as a  vegetable. Similarly, the percussive character of the piano is just one aspect of its sound and aesthetic. Its lyricism is well-established, and piano technique is well-grounded in sostenuto expression, ways of counteracting the inevitable decay of each tone. With Debussy, the idea of the "piano without hammers" is put forward, in contrast to Bartok's prov...

Estragon, Lucky, Vladimir, and Pozzo in Butler production, with Rob Koharchik's set and lighting design Frustration is treated to an extended comic turn as 'Waiting for Godot' gets under way in Butler University' s just-concluded production of the Samuel Beckett classic. The drifting wanderer Estragon appears alone as a solitary struggler trying to get a boot off. Doing so  involves an unspoken promise to provide some relief; it proves to be more trouble than it's worth. Every effort in this milieu seems in vain. Estragon's bootless struggle is the herald. As William Fisher directs the scene and Chris Figueroa plays it, the playwright's concise stage direction is elaborated into a scena worthy of opera. It's one of the production's several salutes to the silent and early-sound film comedies of yore. An episode of accelerating exchange of hats between Estragon and Vladimir, his itinerant buddy and parody intellectual with whom he's locked in plac...

Demarre McGill: nimble articulation, expressive warmth The music of Kevin Puts has had some standout displays in recent years, both in Indianapolis and not so far away. Saturday night it was the turn of his Flute Concerto, as the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra welcomed Demarre McGill as guest artist for a concert labeled "Musical Postcard." The label had plural resonance, because the idea seemed to be to hop around the globe to a few places where regionally characteristic music emerged and has been celebrated by classical composers. Matthew Kraemer put together a charming program of works by Gyorgy Ligeti (whose centennial year has occasioned a burst of representation in concert schedules), Manuel de Falla, and Miguel del Aguila. To sum up the Puts history in the region: Cincinnati Opera mounted an emotionally engaging production of his "Silent Night," romantically built upon a famous spontaneous truce between foes along First World War front lines at Christmas 191...

The conventional image of Switzerland has a few parameters of high order. They can make the brief Journeys in action at a venue with elaborate lighting, description of Journeys as "the best of Swiss jazz funk fusion" on its website seem a contradiction in terms. Consider: well-crafted timepieces, neutrality, secret bank accounts, skiing and mountain climbing, William Tell, Roger Federer. From the chalet to the shimmy might seem an incalculable distance. But on Friday night, Journeys was there at the Jazz Kitchen bridging the gap. It was a return visit after eight years that the band was explicitly grateful for. A packed first set, the audience filled out with a last-minute offer of free admission (a rare JK offer for a first set), was mutually thrilling — from the bandstand to the tables and back again. With 20 years of experience together, Journeys has what's required to undertake on a short, strenuous tour. It goes to Atlanta today, having come from New York the day be...

A scene from OTSL's 2013 "Champion" Having seen the world premiere of Terence Blanchard's "Champion" ten years ago in St. Louis, for the curious I provide a link below to my review of the original production.  Sure to become a hit, a more expansive version has been mounted by New York's Metropolitan Opera.   As I first encountered the work via  Opera Theatre of St. Louis , "Champion"  seemed rich in pathos but oddly deficient in dramatic momentum and too neatly dressed up in climactic choral robes. https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/8403568589757394965/1119708901938021281

  Pianist-bandleader Steve Allee is an amiable institution Steve Allee remembers having to round up more chairs for his initial appearance at his son David's new club 29 years ago. That was the first sign that the Jazz Kitchen would be drawing from a pool of fans ready for a successor to the Place to Start at the same address, and more distantly to the bevy of bars and nightclubs featuring the music in the halcyon days of Indiana Avenue. The Jazz Kitchen  has been cultivating that public ever since April 1994. One of those long-gone places was the Hub-Bub, after which Allee named the second piece of a set of originals he led with a first-rate big band Saturday night. The performance was a typical reminder of Allee's ability as a composer-arranger to create a specific atmosphere in his tunes and flesh it out with expert musicians. The tune had a bustling ebb and flow while settling for an energy level appropriate for evoking the heyday of the city's post-war jazz center, ch...

Curt Miller is at the helm of Las Vegas Boneheads.  Among my favorite old records -- an inspiration to me as a teenage trombonist —was the trombone octet J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding put together for an appealing Columbia LP in the 1950s. How blendable outsize trombone ensembles with rhythm section could be in jazz was proven to me by this issue, with snappy arrangements and concise, impactful solos. I loved gazing at the whimsical cover by master cartoonist Arnold Roth as I listened. Now a group with a history extending back almost to that era, the Las Vegas Boneheads, has released its second CD since it was reconstituted a dozen years ago after a quarter-century hiatus. "Sixty and Still Cookin'" ( Curt Miller Music) is a project shepherded by Curt Miller, who is joined by colleagues working the Strip for this banquet of ten tunes, a few of them originals and all with fresh arrangements by Miller and other band members. It has the same appeal as what grabbed me in my di...

Veteran clarinetist: John Bruce Yeh joined CSO at 19. Chicago chauvinism casts a permanent shadow over much of the Midwest. True, the Indianapolis variety makes its presence felt in my neck of the woods, but with somewhat less authentic glory. Cedille Records has a large part to play in boosting the Windy City's accomplishments in classical music, chiefly through documenting performers from the metropolis and spreading their art to the world. "Chicago Clarinet Classics"  trumpets both its composers and one performer in particular. John Bruce Yeh, assistant principal clarinet in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, masterminded the program for this disc, and for those pieces not for clarinet alone, collaborated mainly with the CSO's principal keyboardist, Patrick Godon. On one of the disc's premiere recordings, Teresa Reilly's "The Forgiveness Train," the collaborator is his spouse, the composer. It's a suite with a dream basis and a response to the pa...

Falling right into place to mark the sesquicentennial birth anniversary of Sergei Rachmaninoff will be George Li: both nimble and deep-delving the second Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra performance this weekend of the Russian composer's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini." That's no April Fools' Day joke. It would be a pretty lame one if it were. The repeat will happen at 5:30 p.m. today. Heard the evening before at Hilbert Circle Theatre came George Li' s first performance as an ISO soloist in a work that has always been among the public's favorites by Rachmaninoff.  Calling it a rhapsody might seem to signal a formless exploitation of the Paganini theme, the Italian violinist's 24th caprice for solo violin. But it is in fact a cunning set of variations, whose rhapsodic element is most striking in the way the piece begins, taking an oblique approach to the original. There's also the conspicuous use of the "Dies irae" chant of medieval ori...