Jay Harvey Upstage

Unlikely new friends Chris and Rob think they're connecting.  It only takes flying into Aspen, Colorado, once to embed the town's image as Shangri-La in your brain. No doubt it's a kind of cliche that many have applied to the experience before me. With mountains all around,  Aspen seems the sort of place for which the word "nestled" was invented. It's nestled in its wild and cultivated setting and immediately conveys the sense of a special place worthy of hosting the well-to-do for either summer or winter visits; the people who work there and cater to them can barely afford to live there. Many years ago, I sampled the town in the summer, mainly for the music . In retrospect, the Aspen Ideas Festival seems custom-made for its location, an obvious partnership between high-flown talk and elevated environment. My stroll around its scarcely imaginable neighborhoods had the lilting accompaniment of fresh-water streams sculpted into front-lawn trenches. The wonders ...

"Beyond Ballet," a production refreshed yearly for presentation at the Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival, continues to be an eagerly anticipated feature of the annual performance panorama centered in the Mass Ave cultural district. The festival is now celebrating its 20th anniversary, running through August 25. Indianapolis Ballet gets the opportunity to showcase shorter works placed with savoir faire in an intermissionless program that stretches somewhat beyond the stipulated hour format. On the first night of the 2025 festival, just a day after the preview appetizer, the current "Beyond Ballet" had the feel of launching the festival. Something both novel and familiar was promised, and the promise was fulfilled attractively Thursday night in the first of three company performances on the District Theatre's main stage. It was fun to make reacquaintance with "Scherzo Appassionato" right off the bat. Kristin Young Toner's setting of the substant...

  Kitchen cooks:  Steve Allee Big Band observed release of two CDs  The Saturday appearance in two sets of the Steve Allee Big Band celebrated a milestone in the large-ensemble output of an Indianapolis jazz master, who's been a fixture here for decades as bandleader, composer-arranger, and pianist. I heard the first jam-packed set at the Jazz Kitchen to mark the release of a pair of recordings made last year: "Naptown Sound" and "Full Circle." Nearly all the 16 selections are Allee originals, and the few that aren't adhere to the theme of paying tribute to Indianapolis jazz and many of its acknowledged masters. The first set was a well-paced sample, departing only at the end with a spectacular trip through Freddie Hubbard's "Hub Tones," rapid in tempo and chock-full of solos. The glistening trumpet-section display alone will stay with me for a long time. The trades were intense, particularly along the front line of saxes plus clarinet.  The 17...

The Cohen-Rutkowski Project in full cry  I suspected it would be good to catch the Cohen-Rutkowski Project again at the Jazz Kitchen , but I'd forgotten it had been so long ago as the Covid-emergent era of November 2021. It proved well worth a return visit, as this well-stocked, mutually supportive group commendably  held down the one-set Sunday night spot at the club yesterday. Co-leaders Rich Cohen, a hearty virtuoso on alto and tenor saxophones, co-leads the group with composer-pianist Chris Rutkowski. For this visit, a guest of star quality, Mark Buselli, helped Cohen fill out the front line. The trumpeter-flugelhornist also took a turn on congas, and it would have been a shame if those drums had been  onstage only for show, as this established jazz academic also sports a learned elbow and a sliding wetted finger to alter the pitch in solos.  The rest of the rhythm section consisted of equally capable drummer Chelsea Hughey  and  bassist Joe Tyksin...

A comedy that poses the immediate threat of a foreigner's execution has a steep hill to climb toward the happy ending everyone expects in the genre. That's why Shakespeare's title of this early play is an important signal of what's needed for the audience to process a parade of implausibilities. Among comedies, then, this one is in a class by itself: "The Comedy of Errors."  The saga of the twin Antipholuses displayed in IndyShakes production. The Indianapolis Shakespeare Company has lopped off the title's definite article, perhaps so the play will appear more loosely generic.  And when Act A Foo Improv Crew appears in the marketing, potential attendees are justified in wondering if this is some sort of adaptation of Shakespeare's play. riffing on the theme of mistaken identity undergirded by verbal and game-playing spontaneity.  Deliberate, rather than accidental,  mistakes of this kind have unfortunately become a serious matter. American citizens and...

Sam Rivers in action  It was understandable that Sam Rivers would be hailed as an elder statesman of jazz long before his death at 88 in 2011. He had a career of restless, inspired collaboration and his personality as both saxophonist and bandleader was firmly stamped on the vast realm of post-bop jazz. It was a fertile area for exploration, and Rivers affected a host of younger players, including, briefly, the well-established Miles Davis. He had a loose sense of form and ensemble balance, but it was by no means mindless free-for-all thinking that animated him. One writer described his big-band writing as a cross between Duke Ellington's range of work and John Coltrane's "Ascension," a superficially chaotic ensemble that included Indianapolis' Freddie Hubbard. The common bond (between Ellington and Coltrane) fed into Rivers' artistry partly through trust in the individuality of his sidemen as both ensemble members and soloists. With "Sam Rivers 100"...

Burning together: Sophie Faught Quartet at the JK  Steven Snyder's florid but grounded approach to the Hammond B3 makes him an ideal partner on his adaptable instrument for the breadth and passion of Sophie Faught' s honed technique and expression on the tenor saxophone.  You could say about the same for the other two members of the quartet the saxophonist led Sunday night at the Jazz Kitchen . This is a group thoroughly attuned to one another. Guitarist Joel Tucker and drummer Jason Tiemann, a Louisville musician who made a few Indianapolis appearances before relocating to New York City, are equally simpatico and capable of covering a wide range. The mythological symbolism behind Faught's "Ouroboros," which refers to the cycle of death and rebirth represented by a snake eating its tail, held up in performances in which the players fed into each other's renewal of energy. You feel they could go on and find freshness in any tune they might take up.  Fortunately...