Jay Harvey Upstage

After I first encountered Walt Whitman's poem "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" in my teens, I thought it supported my defensive posture about science. My initial enchantment with stars and dinosaurs several years before was fading against the challenge of actual high-school science classes, getting simple experiments to come out right and all that. So I took the poet's departure from an astronomy lecture to contemplate the heavens unaided as superior to studying them; it wasn't the only time in adolescence I grabbed onto something in order to justify an immature perspective. I felt confirmed especially by the line "How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick." The women of "Silent Sky" celebrate astronomical advances. The poem is quoted at a crucial place in "Silent Sky," the stunning inaugural production of Summit Performance Indianapolis, which I saw in preview Thursday night at Phoenix Theatre 's Basile The...

At the beginning of Herbie Hancock 's career, technology had only a small role to play in the creation Herbie Hancock has a lot of music to contemplate. of new jazz. The plugged-in part of the music was largely restricted to setting the desired studio conditions, with wizards like Rudy Van Gelder influencing the sound of jazz as the wider public encountered it on recordings. Hancock's representation in the old Blue Note catalogue is still a part of his long legacy worth cherishing. But  the pianist quickly turned his fascination with electronics into a myriad of ways to communicate musically. Some of the flowering of this involvement was evident, both positively and otherwise, throughout a two-hour concert Tuesday night at Hilbert Circle Theatre. Presented by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (which did not appear), Hancock was accompanied by Lionel Loueke, guitar; James Genus, electric bass, and Trevor Lawrence Jr., drums. Hancock divided most of his attention betw...

From J.S. Bach to Mozart: Ensemble from Tempesta di Mare Music from the collection of three remarkable Jewish sisters who were well assimilated two centuries ago in upper-class Berlin formed the program that Tempesta di Mare brought to the Indianapolis Early Music Festival Sunday afternoon. The link between J.S. Bach and Felix Mendelssohn in the seamless web of German musical culture had much to do with the advocacy and nurture of Sara, Fanny, and Bella Itzig, as members of the Philadelphia baroque orchestra demonstrated for an audience at Indiana History Center. The program's bookends helped frame the concert as an exercise in late 18th-century/early 19th-century household music-making, but pitched at a high professional level. As Tempesta di Mare re-created that cultural milieu, the most eminent Bach made for an obvious start to the concert; the Itzig sisters were devotees. In this arrangement of Trio Sonata No. 5 in F major, six visiting Tempesta di Mare members parti...