Jay Harvey Upstage

Swing fans remember the Benny Goodman Quartet's exciting version of "Avalon," but this new song parody adopts the wistful approach of the Al Jolson original to focus on the Fishers-Indianapolis pitch to Amazon to locate its massive new headquarters somewhere around here.

Jean-Yves Thibaudet is fully engaged with Gershwin's Concerto in F. The two lengthy works on the first program of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra' s Classical Series are masterpieces about which their composers were doubtful. (No such doubts seem to have clung to the creation of the program's first piece, Mozart's "Magic Flute" Overture, of which the ISO delivered a statuesque, well-thought-out performance.) It's hard to imagine, especially with the ISO's scintillating performances Friday evening of Gershwin's Concerto in F and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 in E minor, just what vexed their creators. But Tchaikovsky wrote that he felt he had to prove with the work that he wasn't played out as a composer, and he allowed that maybe the resulting symphony had merit. After its premiere, however, and a performance he conducted in Prague, the always self-censorious composer said "there is something repulsive about it." Gers...

There's a charming clumsiness about the title of Indiana Repertory Theatre' s season-opening show. Quite subtly, it ushers Christopher confronts the London Underground in his search for his mother. audiences into a different way of looking at the world, a clumsiness that speaks to both the maladjustment and insights of autism. "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" sounds like genre fiction, and indeed there is an air of murder mystery about how events unfold at first from the discovery in an English middle-class garden of a dead dog with a pitchfork in its side. By the end of the first act of Simon Stephens' play, however, the "whodunit" aspect has been settled. We are left with a deeper focus on the pathos of autism and its effects on those who have the condition as well as on their loved ones. Mickey Rowe is the first American actor with autism to play the role of Christopher in this deeply affecting drama, charged with surrealis...

John Keats (1795-1821) John Keats wrote about a "knight at arms" (alternatively a "wretched wight") in thrall to a mysterious female spirit he called La Belle Dame Sans Merci. After too much time wasted on my iPhone one day, I felt like that lonely fellow, somewhat drugged by fleeting digital attractions and a little depressed, alarmed at the pull of these devices, satisfying but ultimately alarming. Where have I found in my reading such a dangerous pull toward separation into a fantasy environment  whose haunting peril is lent such mastery? There was one source only on which to attempt a modernized reflection on such matters. So I've updated  the English poet's visionary ballad "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" Well, what can mess you up, old guy,      Alone and palely loitering? Your iPhone hosts a flock of tweets      And no birds sing. So what's your trouble, lazy man,      So haggard from long scrolli...

Drew Petersen played an all-American recital. It was a kaleidoscope of interpretations that struck the ear most when in April the finalists in the American Pianists Association's season-long contest played Judith Lang Zaimont's "Attars ," the commissioned work of this year's classical piano competition. And that was just one of the ways in which Drew Petersen made his mark on his way to winning the 2017 contest. Despite my reluctance to choose favorites while a competition is in progress, Petersen had won me over last January with his revelatory performance of Robert Schumann's problematic "Humoreske." The announcement of the Christel DeHaan Fellowship win brought news of an additional honor for the APA winner. On Monday night, Petersen launched a two-year residency at the University of Indianapolis with a solo recital in the Lilly Performance Hall of the DeHaan Fine Arts Center. The arrangement will bring him to the Southside campus for on...

 Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra at work; the photo from its website shows different personnel, in part, from Sunday's concert. A little over a month from now, half a millennium will have passed since Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the church door in the German city of Wittenberg. Assertions of the true nature of penitence, in Luther's view, and thus the young priest's objection to the Roman Catholic Church's sale of pardons ("indulgences") were only the starting point (Oct. 31, 1517).  His quarrel with Rome lasted several years and involved a few more provocative writings before the breach became final with Luther's excommunication and Christianity's most consequential schism. How appropriate, then, that the concert presented Sunday at Indiana History Center by Indy Baroque and the Beecher Singers (of Second Presbyterian Church) opened with the best-known concerto by J.S. Bach, "Brandenburg" No. 5 in D major!  Why appropriate,...