Jay Harvey Upstage

Steve Smith is at the center of Vital Information, Steve Smith says he wants to add some muscle to the piano-trio tradition, and the drummer has signaled the intentional transition  by titling his Wounded Bird release "Time Flies." The title picks up the bebop pioneer Bud Powell's "Tempus Fugit," the familiar Latin phrase that means the same thing. The Powell tune is one of several by composers outside the Vital Information personnel, which includes keyboards player Manuel Valera and bassist Janek Gwizdala.  George Garzone sits in on several tracks, lending the extra heft of his lusty tenor sax. A second disc, focused on this quartet configuration, centers on a loosely integrated suite, with compositional credits shared by all players. "A Prayer for the Generations" comprises eight parts. Those divisions don't carry titles, leaving the listener to interpret how the free-flowing sections fulfill the suite's ambitious title. I found "A Pra...

Bands less than big but not within small-group parameters have special attractions, eschewing the Kent Hickey leads nine-piece band with Alex Shanafelt sectional contrast and tussle of timbres of the bigs but giving room to a wider range of textures and harmonic variety than the combo. Another plus that totally lifts up the jazz spirit in such groups is the natural blurring of lines between solo and ensemble. "If writing is to be jazz writing, it should fuse the elements particular to its own tradition -- the beat, improvisation within a disciplinary frame, and its own unique feeling," arranger/baritone saxophonist Manny Albam told liner-note writer Burt Korall for the issue of "Manny Albam and the Jazz Greats of Our Time."  The title is a touch of hyperbole on this Coral LP, which I acquired as a teenager (wowed, I admit, by the all-star lineup*) circa 1960. I can't find any reference to it in either of the huge books on jazz recording I own, but I've alway...

Thomas Wilkins heads conducting at IU's Jacobs School. Thomas Wilkins, this weekend's guest conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra , prefaced the second half of Friday's concert with some gently impassioned words about music that celebrates breathing — even the sanctity of breath as a measure and sustainer of our health. His focus was on the work the ISO was about to play, Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 8 in G major. His remarks implied that we need this kind of music — its geniality, its appearance of effortlessness — especially today.  The performance delivered on meeting this need, even if the first movement felt a little more straitlaced than necessary. Let's consider this a runner's breathing, going all out. There could be no doubt of the performance's  rhythmic crispness. The ingratiating manner of the whole work was introduced, despite the presence of somberness that could be felt as a holdover of the Czech composer's tragic Seventh Symp...

Osmo Vänskä points the way toward 21st-century Mahler. An impressive 2020 release of the full Tenth Symphony, completed by Deryck Cooke from Mahler's manuscripts, built up big expectations for Osmo Vänskä 's Ninth with the Minnesota Orchestra . The recent issue of Mahler's last symphony to be solely his work fulfills those expectations in music inevitably interpreted as a premonition of death. Not intended as a goodbye to life, despite Mahler's knowledge of his doubtful health in middle age, the Ninth quickly took on posthumous stature. That there is substantial work in his own hand on a No. 10 indicates that the composer was not bound by a superstitious fear of going beyond Beethoven's venerated nine symphonies.  This recording ( BIS -2476) will attract extra interest among music-lovers who believe that only the first movement of the Tenth should remain in the repertoire as Mahler's final symphonic statement. There's a genuine farewell aura to this release,...

Fidelio (Leonore) protects Florestan from Pizarro's revenge. Although opera draws its principal strength from a theatrical milieu, it is striking how complete a version of "Fidelio" can seem when semi-staged, as the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra presented it Saturday evening. Beethoven's opera fits well into such a presentation, with the melodramatic libretto highlighting the composer's  idealistic concept of romantic love and hatred of tyranny. With costuming reduced to simple suggestions of character in context and props that can be used or ignored, except as conveniences for group positioning (as temporarily released prisoners do around the furniture), the simple outlines of the story remain intact. The disguise of a political prisoner's wife with a rescue plan as a newly hired male servant to the warden — too absurd? Not when the dramatic illusion doesn't have to be very plausible. Even better, and in such a small hall as the Schrott Center at Butler...

Taking intimate history a step away from staged documentary into essential theater, Jennifer Blackmer's "Predictor" lays bare the role of power relationships in trying to obstruct medical advancement. There are many ways of telling a real story in theatrical terms, and this new play plunges boldly and imaginatively into a tale of  cultural and marketing breakthroughs, focused on women's health care. The struggle to make widely available a home pregnancy test turns out to reveal social truths even more unpalatable than the laboratory exploitation  of animals that preceded it. Meg gets used to new work environment. American Lives Theatre 's production, which I saw Friday as its second weekend started on the Basile stage at Phoenix Theatre , is vivacious and funny as well as informative. Under  the direction of Bridget Haight,  the cast is headed by Brittany Magee as Meg Crane, a freelance graphic artist who was absorbed and nearly neutralized after she started worki...

Unaccustomed as it is to fully staged opera, the Tobias Theater at Newfields accommodates most of the Everyone's a winner: The full cast in reconciled finale of Indianapolis Opera's "The Magic Flute" essentials in Indianapolis Opera' s production of "The Magic Flute." The cast sang at a pretty high level, and the acting, while varying from character to character, had a long measure of authenticity. As seen Saturday night, the small orchestra was conducted ably by Scott Schoonover, and coordination with the singers faltered only in some passages by the offstage chorus. It was understandable that a unit set would have to serve multiple purposes, and thus presented a kind of a jumble to the eye. But all of the Mozart opera's settings are fanciful to begin with, so to see the arches of the temple representing the triumph of enlightenment amid the rocky landscape into which the hero has wandered in the first scene wasn't hard to absorb. Special effect...