Jay Harvey Upstage

"He dreams, yet his idea has body," Georges Bizet wrote in praise of Beethoven, marveling at how thoroughly worked the German master's inspirations seem — nothing tossed off or nonchalantly soliciting easy applause. Hans Graf The composer of "Carmen" was not referring to Missa Solemnis, op. 123, in particular. But no piece by Beethoven is more representative of a genius' imagination harnessed to struggle and earned triumph. That was evident in the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra 's performance of Missa Solemnis Friday night at Hilbert Circle Theatre. The concert was under the seasoned guidance of guest conductor Hans Graf, with the ISC prepared by its scrupulous, insightful artistic director, Eric Stark. Four guest soloists put in a hard evening's work as well: soprano Cyndia Sieden, mezzo-soprano Julia Boulianne, tenor Colin Balzer, and bass-baritone Nathan Berg. Everyone was dreaming the same sub...

Listening on NPR to a pair of experts examine the respective stances of the United States and Russia on dealing with Syria, I was puzzled by a couple of words new to me: "deconflict" (verb) and "deconfliction" (noun). From context, I inferred these terms have to do with the problem NPR's reporter had identified minutes earlier: getting the two nations' militaries "to talk to each other so that they can stay out of one another's way." George Orwell, guardian spirit of language This may well be the only area of agreement and cooperation apparent as Syria continues to be violently riven and subject to an endless civil war in which the influence of the Islamic State — anathema to both the U.S. and Russia — continues to grow. My online dictionary finds "deconflict" to be military language for "reduce the risk of collision between aircraft, airborne weaponry, etc. in an area by coordinating their movements." As they attack I...

The conditions were well nigh perfect — the best acoustical environment for a jazz concert as I've ever had the pleasure to bask in at the University of Indianapolis . The sound was balanced, crisp and well-blended among the four musicians. Even better, of course: the music Monday night in the Lilly Performance Hall of the DeHaan Fine Arts Center was first-rate. The occasion was Freddie Mendoza 's local debut in the spotlight, though he's made some local appearances as a sideman going back several months. Mendoza is a trombonist and euphonium player from Texas who has succeeded Harry Miedema as UIndy's director of jazz studies. Having just taken up his duties there, it was fitting that he also make a public display of his credentials as a player. Freddie Mendoza, new at UIndy. He was accompanied by Steven Jones, piano; Nick Tucker, bass, and Kenny Phelps, drums. He praised this team in both halves of the two-hour concert, saying they "made my job easy....

It always seems a gala occasion when the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra gets native son Joshua Bell on the schedule as soloist. As often as he has returned here, he's been solid gold at the box office. Joshua Bell is always good for business at the ISO. So much the better that on an officially Big Deal program — the annual "Opening Night Gala" — the Bloomington-born and Indiana University-trained superstar violinist graced the stage of a packed Hilbert Circle Theatre. The ISO was conducted by Krzysztof Urbanski, beginning his fifth season as music director, and ensemble-in-residence Time for Three  shared the spotlight with Bell. The vehicle for his guest appearance with the ISO was a work written with him in mind by William Brohn, "West Side Story Suite." Leonard Bernstein's well-known score is treated in this work to a transformation that highlights musical (specifically violinistic) values rather than the arc of the drama, and that's how i...

The title character of Richard Bean's "One Man, Two Guvnors," Francis Henshall is one of life's "overwhelming underdogs," to borrow a phrase from the late Yogi Berra. Francis Henshall points to someone of absorbing interest. A washed-up washboard player in a skiffle band who accidentally becomes a bantam-rooster bodyguard, Henshall ends up in the employ of two men (one of them only apparently so), both of whom have secrets they strive to hold close. He is forced to keep his divided loyalties firmly divided.  But his craftiness is applied more with  desperate energy than cunning. To this assignment Nathan Robbins brings exuberant vitality, as seen in Phoenix Theatre' s opening-night performance Thursday. Robbins displayed the physical skills — part mime, part acrobat — of the great silent-film comedians. The scene in which Henshall's argument with himself becomes a knock-down, drag-out fight was an astonishing tour de force. In addition, t...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/books/c-k-williams-poet-who-tackled-moral-issues-dies-at-78.html Satirical Elegy In Memoriam C.K. Williams C.K. Williams found his second and third thoughts as valid as his first. The death of another honored American poet, of course, does not put much of a dent in the American preoccupation with the sort of thing that irritated him no end And I do mean "no end," as this was a bard who could seem to go on and on even in a short poem, especially one that was cast in long lines Even looser and baggier than Walt Whitman's (his idol's) at his loosest and baggiest. He was capable of discipline, but distrusted it as if there was something dishonest about leaving things out, so that focus for him meant only that stuff (read: "everything") Which lay in or near the path of "this entity I call my mind, this hive of restlessness, this wedge of want my mind calls self, this self which doubts so much and...

A local landmark of the start of each musical season is the Gala Opening Concert at the University of Indianapolis, conducted by Raymond Leppard, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra conductor laureate and a city resident since his days as its music director, starting in 1987. His international reputation was well-established by the time he came here, through his long association with the English Chamber Orchestra, his many recordings, and his sometimes controversial adaptations of early Baroque operas. Now, with nearly a third of his long life associated with Indianapolis, Leppard's rare podium appearances carry a perceptible aura. Ordinary music-making becomes transfigured; "on the threshold of heaven, the figures in the street / Become the figures of heaven," as the poet Wallace Stevens notes in the first lines of "To an Old Philosopher in Rome." Raymond Leppard turned 88 in July. "The figures of heaven" figure largely in Antonio Vivaldi's ...