Jay Harvey Upstage

Thumb's up from pianist-composer Ozone Highly anticipated reacquaintance with a guest soloist rarely presents itself to me in an Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra season. Looking forward to Makoto Ozone as this weekend's piano soloist resembled slightly a reunion with a school sort-of-friend you didn't know well but have some pleasant memories of. So, Ozone wasn't exactly an old jazz chum of mine. When he was active in this country, I never heard him live, but I have two of his recordings: an LP from 1986 titled "After," when he was in his mid-20s and just past his American education in jazz at Berklee in Boston, and "Pandora," a 2000 CD when his American career blossomed as he headed a classy trio with eminent young sidemen, bassist James Genus and drummer Clarence Penn. Listening to them again a couple of days ago, I was struck by the access of maturity and individual style in records issued 14 years apart. But the spread of his talents and artisti...

No matter to what degree you take J.S. Bach's settings of the gospel accounts of Jesus' suffering and death (the Passions) as confirmations of faith, esthetically they are shrewdly constructed to unify the narrative and spiritual centrality of the narrative and its durable meaning. The dogma of resurrection is strongly implied, of course, but the journey through the betrayal and capture of the figure Christians assert was God's anointed both raises and settles questions about the significance of his sacrifice for humankind. Straightforward leadership from McGegan Human promises of undying loyalty to the Savior are undercut by Jesus' isolation in the  Garden of Gethsemane, as the disciples fall asleep after declaring their intention to stay watchful. In a new recording conducted by Nicholas McGegan featuring Cantata Collective (issued in April on Avie Records ) , among the excellent features is the singing of bass-baritone Paul Max Tipton as Jesus. At the point just al...

Under Matthias Maute' s genial guidance, the festival mood is bound to be uppermost anytime that Ensemble Caprice graces the schedule of the Indianapolis Early Music Festival . Thus it was especially footloose and fancy-free Sunday afternoon as it mounted "Baroque Summits," starting and ending with Antonio Vivaldi in sunny Italy. Janelle Lucyk lent vocal brilliance to the concert. Particularly welcome in this return visit was the participation of Ensemble Caprice's new  soprano, Janelle Lucyk, who was showcased in a cantata and a motet by Vivaldi. In addition to a pure, focused, and resonant tone, easily filling the welcoming acoustic space of the Basile Theater at the Indiana History Center , Lucyk lent particular character to the tortured woes of love in "All'ombra di sospetto" and the equally passionate, but devout, focus of "In furore justissimae irae."  Like Ensemble Caprice, Lucyk is Canadian, and is artistic diretor of an early-music gr...

Mahler in a characteristic mood of intense focus on his work Gustav Mahler was well aware of the fragility of success  and  simple happiness, and that apprehension had to find a place in his music. No more so was it brought forward and sustained than in his Symphony No. 6 in A minor, nicknamed "Tragic," accurately if not with the composer's authority. The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra devoted its next-to-last concert in the current Classical Series solely to this work, which it will repeat at 5:30 p.m. today. Music director Jun Mä rkl clearly saw the difficulty of finding a suitable program partner for the piece, whose performance lasts some 80 minutes. Preparation according to his high standards presumably also accounts for the Sixth existing in splendid isolation this weekend at Hilbert Circle Theatre. The score demands extraordinary forces, including eight horns (magnificent to see standing for the section-by-section curtain call at the end) and likewise thorough exp...

The Hampton Sisters made the most durable link with Indianapolis jazz longevity till the end of the last century. Sisters Aletra and Virtue Hampton were the last local remnants of the family band started by their father in Ohio and reflective of the variety-show aspect of regional African-American entertainment, sometimes touring in the Jim Crow South, in the early 1900s. Clark "Deacon" Hampton brought his family to Indianapolis in the 1930s and the city became its home base. Hampton Family Band in its heyday about 80 years ago It seems it was time for an onstage recall of their stature a quarter-century or so past the sisters' prime. So Pharez Whitted, Chicago trumpeter and son of bassist Virtue Hampton-Whitted, took up the center position at the Jazz Kitchen Sunday evening to pay tribute via the Indianapolis Jazz Collective.  That ongoing "house band" for various shows in this case provided the rhythm section: pianist Steve Allee, electric bassist Jonathan Woo...

Round-number anniversaries decorated the pre-season concert of the Indianapolis Early Music Festival Sunday afternoon. The festival's 60th season counted it as an appetizer, and  Mark Cudek was marking his 20th anniversary as artistic director. But wait — that's not all, as the shopworn commercials say. The concert celebrated a half-century since Cudek made his professional debut "to showcase my insecurities," as he modestly told the audience. Mark Cittern had lots to celebrate Sunday. The Basile Opera Center attracted a capacity audience to its resonant space for Mark Cudek and Friends, a rubric that embraced the participation of soprano Mara Jaffee, baritone Michael Manganiello, and lutenist William Simms. The concert's tantalizing title and subtitle cast a wide net over the carefully cultivated repertoire: "Pastime With Good Company: Politics, Substance Abuse, and Improvisation in 17th-century England, France, and Italy." The program's breadth an...