Jay Harvey Upstage

  The predecessor to the Jazz Kitchen was aptly named in the case of alto saxophonist Jim Snidero : The Place to Start was where he appeared with organist Brother Jack McDuff 43 years ago, he told the audience at his latest return visit Sunday night. Steve Allee, Peter Washington, Jim Snidero, and Jason Tiemann in action Sunday evening. It was indeed close to the start of his durable career, shortly after he established himself in New York. Being in McDuff's band vaulted him to familiarity among jazz fans when he was starting out. "I was 12," he added drolly. Now in his mid-60s, Snidero has had a number of illustrious associations over the years, and is well-represented in recordings. His latest, "Bird Feathers," lies behind his current tour, which takes him around the Midwest with bassist Peter Washington and drummer Jason Tiemann. Indianapolis stalwart pianist Steve Allee completed the group at the Jazz Kitchen stop. The tribute focus to Charlie "Bird...

Master of intricate but clarifying arrangements for big band, tenor saxophonist-composer   Sean Imboden ranges over a wide emotional and sonic landscape in "Communal Heart." Scheduled for release on April 26, the new recording is hard to summarize briefly, but two neighboring tracks in the middle can be described to give some idea of the music's expanse, and the outstanding quality of the Sean Imboden Large Ensemble (SILE).  Sean Imboden builds his band's fine book. "Certified Organic," whose title suggests both authenticity and unabashed virtue-signaling, moves quickly into attitude with trombone-section moans and edgy, repeated notes. Joel Tucker lays down a scorched-earth guitar solo, and with a key change, the kind of shift Imboden is fond of; John Raymond remains pesticide-free and nurturing in his trumpet solo, yielding finally to an ensemble climax that's lent extra energy by Cassius Goens' drums. Imboden steers clear of sentimentality in the ...

The venerated sixth music director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra once gave a Baroque specialist Nicholas McGegan newspaper interview in which he casually labeled what he and the orchestra were up to as "entertainment." Raymond Leppard never hesitated speaking his mind publicly, but after reading that interview I asked him why he labeled the art of classical music a form of entertainment. He shrugged: "It was just to epater le bourgeois," he said, using a phrase connected with decadent art movements in the late 19th century that translates as "to shock the middle class." He knew he was striking a blow against stuffiness. To consider high art as designed to entertain is much more acceptable to me now than it used to be.  The evolutionary cognitive scientist Steven Pinker concluded that music had no adaptive purpose in human development and pungently described it as a treat developed for the purpose of pleasure: "auditory cheesecake." I...

In the cross-hairs of the #MeToo movement is the issue of academic integrity and the special status of higher education under withering 21st-century scrutiny. Peer education: Getting into the sensitive-guy thing. Though most recently the target has been the limits of free speech with respect to the Middle  East conflict, permissible talk slides over into questions of permissible action on American college campuses. That's where "Sensitive Guys" trains its sights.  With the deliberately abrasive casting of women and non-binary actors as college students identifying as men or women, MJ Kaufman's play opened this past weekend in a Theatre Unchained production at the IF Theatre , where it will continue through March 15. The comic potential of such a show is never hidden or obscured by the serious issues of personal identity and autonomy. The long one-act play may have you laughing ruefully at times, but that's because it's so stirring, especially on the matter of...

We can easily dismiss as a matter of coincidence the presence of two Russian masterworks on an Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra program introduced on the day the prospect of the United States becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Putin's Russia burst onto the scene. So much for world politics, I hope. It does seem unusual, however, that the ISO is returning to Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade" in just under three years . Both times have featured female guest conductors, as the ISO joins a trend encouraged by pioneering maestra Marin Alsop. It's no longer rare to see a woman on the podium of a major symphony orchestra. In 2022, Ruth Reinhardt conducted "Scheherazade" here; this weekend it's Valentina Pelegg i, an Italian trained in Europe and now music director of the Richmond (Virginia) Symphony Orchestra .  Valentins Peleggi makes local debut this weekend. Both reconnect the ISO with Rimsky-Korsakov's tone poem inspired by the "Arabian Night...

Albert Einstein tries to take the measure of an inquisitive visitor. With the recurrent controversies about biopics and their devotion to the truth on their subjects, it was tempting for me to "work up" Albert Einstein before seeing "Relativity," an absorbing one-act play that opened at Shelton Auditorium Thursday night in a production by Southbank Theatre Company. I chose rather to see how the narrative constructed by Mark St. Germain would wash over me, allowing the full dramatic arc of "Relativity" to take hold and shape my response to it. Only today did I connect with a factual account of Einstein as physicist, celebrity, and person through the Encyclopedia Britannica.  St. Germain is a practiced adapter of famous lives to stage treatment, and "Relativity" in this production gives a gripping account of the nagging mystery about Einstein's life, specifically about a daughter who seems to have disappeared. In "Relativity," she sh...

 The plethora of excellent string quartets can put its signature on an immense literature, Goldmund Quartet: Wide-ranging, yet fond of Bavarian roots drawing upon relatively neglected works as well as familiar treasures of the repertoire.  In making its local debut Wednesday night under Ensemble Music Society auspices, the Goldmund Quartet intrigued immediately on paper with the placement of Edvard Grieg's only string quartet occupying the concert's second half alone. With a decent amount of widespread respect, the Norwegian composer has been hemmed in by a reputation as an exquisite nationalist with limitations suggested by his achievement in short-form composition. In contrast, there is chiefly the well-established piano concerto, often honored by its inclusion on the LPs of yore with Robert Schumann's counterpart in the same key of A minor. But it's worth considering that his craftsmanship could come up with the expansive splendor of  the String Quartet in G minor...

Angie Zhang also favors the fortepiano. As she wrapped up the American Piano Awards Premiere Series Sunday afternoon, Angie Zhang sought to place her program deliberately in the time and place of its performance. Both in the selections and the way she presented the music in oral and written program notes, the 28-year-old finalist put in the foreground a uniqueness she hoped would be captivating. Much of the evidence that it indeed captivated the Indiana History Center audience was loaded onto the ovation that ended the solo half of the program. Zhang had shrewdly arranged that by requesting no applause after the first three pieces. All three underlined the American label the competition carries. When the more familiar fourth piece led up to intermission, the audience was primed to burst out in enthusiasm. Chopin's Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante, op. 22, is full of the dash and enchantment that has helped earn its composer major status, despite his almost exclusive...

Does the Muse descend upon creative musicians, enabling them to set down music they Gloria Cheng; Grammy and Emmy winner otherwise would lack access to?  Or does it sometimes lead them halfway up Mount Parnassus and meet them there, suggesting things otherwise unavailable to them, and do  those things emerge as spur-of-the-moment creations? That's the age-old polarity dividing premeditated and set-down music from the spontaneous kind, which is summed up for most people as largely the province of jazz. Gloria Cheng is a pianist long active in new music who has reached out to improvisationally focused ccomposers for the works on "Root Progressions."  Related to jazz but often winging free of its styles are the composiers represented on this new recording (Biophilia Records ). The visionary modernist Anthony Davis exhibits his keyboard fancy in "Piano Heaven," linking vernacular styles of piano-playing. "Spheroid" is a detached, pointillistic prelude to...

Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons: "Walk Like a Man" Though a deeply shadowed triumph takes hold in "Jersey Boys," the staged musical story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons also delves into the complications of career-building in popular culture amid interpersonal tensions and personality flaws. The Tony Award-winning show opened on Valentine's Day at Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre , where it will run through April 13. As seen Sunday night, "Jersey Boys" retains its dazzle in a production directed and choreographed by Candi Boyd, who played the role of femme fatale Mary Delgado in the Broadway show. Thus, there is an apparent "laying on of hands" to inspire B&B's show, and it's brightly Frankie: Gian Raffaele DiCostanzo displayed in the pace and detailed presentation of this pioneering "jukebox" musical. In the cast, the key to success in "Jersey Boys" is to have a smoothly produced, sometimes pleading...

 It must be a first for a substantial 21st-century work to lead off an Indianapolis Symphony Daniel Raiskin guest-conducts again today. Orchestra Classical Series program. That's the case this weekend with guest conductor Daniel Raiskin 's illuminating commnad of Julia Wolfe 's "Pretty." Heard Friday night at Hilbert Circle Theatre, the challenging 20-minute work made for more than a curtain-raiser ahead of Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2, op. 102, and Tchaikovsky's Suite No. 3 in G major. I'm not sure I was supposed to recall immediately the line from "T'he Wizard of Oz" that the Wicked Witch of the West directs at the frightened Dorothy: "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too." The composer's program note triggered it with a sentence beginning: "My Pretty is a raucous  celebration — embracing the grit of fiddling, the relentlessness of work rhythms, and inspired by the distortion and reverberati...

Kent Hickey Quintet sails through Dorbam-Henderson. One of the classic front lines in small group post-bop was surely Kenny Dorham and Joe Henderson. Trumpet-sax plus rhythm section was a durable combination from the 1940s bop revolution on.  In the following decade, groups fronted by that trumpeter and tenor saxophonist achieved the smoothest blend of horns possible in unison and harmony alike. Yet each man established by his soloing that he could always put his signature on the music, thanks to the Blue Note label's receptivity and promotion. On Tuesday night, a series of tribute shows to great jazz musicians of the past century continued with distinction. The Kent Hickey Quintet had that trumpeter in partnership with tenor saxophonist Sean Imboden to re-create the Dorham-Henderson magic. The rhythm section consisted of Shawn McGowan, piano; Jesse Wittman, bass, and Chelsea Hughey, drums.  The first excitement came after the first chorus of "Una Mas" went down smoothl...

Many years ago, an Indianapolis Star colleague gave me a mixtape he had put together focusing on Nina Simone.  To be sure, Mpozi Mshale Tolbert and I didn't know each other well, but his iconic status as a leading light of urban culture has long been clear to me. I was surprised and grateful for the gift, yet this open-hearted photojournalist and DJ had a reputation for such gestures. Like points of the compass, four women define a world in new IRT production. The label of '"iconic" has been overused recently, but Mpozi justifiably retains that status to this day, partly as a result of the shocking erasure of a memorial mural  in Broad Rippl e honoring him, then  its restoration years later.  He struck a chord that still resonates. Certainly "Mpozi Lives" made no idle, defiant graffiti appearance along the way. He died young, at 34, having moved to this city in 1990s and quickly grown in stature (he was already quite tall physically). I put that mixtape in...

A new work commissioned for the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra carries a heavy load of extramusical meaning that it managed to approach on its own terms through a range of color and expressivity in its premiere performance Saturday night at the Schrott Center. Jorge Muñiz' s "Solidarity Symphony" declares its bias in its very title, and through slide projections supplements its musical message visually. With accompanying photos, the words of black poets Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Langston Hughes were read in recording as the texts were exhibited. Jorge Muñiz's hope for a better world shines through.  This meant that the import of Muñiz's score was unmistakable, especially as a universal message against racial division and other kinds of oppression and in favor of removing all barriers to human solidarity. The support of such a work by Classical Music Indy must clearly be a boon to its community profile here. The score is for string orchestra, including w...

  The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra this weekend welcomes the return of the multifaceted Joseph Young connected well in a Romantic program. Awadagin Pratt as piano soloist for a program conducted by Joseph Young , music director of the Berkeley (Calif.) Symphony, who is making his local debut. Friday's concert was a display of solid rapport between the guests, as well as a display of the ISO's fitness to respond as it enters a period of solid partnership with its eighth music director, Jun Märkl. A large, youthful crowd got initial exposure to a Romantic work by the biracial British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The 1898 piece, Ballade in A minor, op. 33,  encompasses the emotional drift and implied narrative of the fantasy-rooted form that provided the work's name.  It makes a full circle from an assertive opening, engaging the full orchestra, before passing through a gorgeous violin tune and some frisky episodes. The orchestra responded well to Young's large-g...