Jay Harvey Upstage

The upper size limit of chamber-music ensemble is nine, and on that conventional pinnacle the opening Laureate Series concert Chin Kim has had a full career since competing with distinction here in 1986. of the 2017-18 season concluded Tuesday night at the Indiana History Center. Bohuslav Martinu's Nonet for Wind Quintet, Violin, Viola, Cello and Double Bass was the vehicle for maximum display of the Ronen Chamber Ensemble, with 1986 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis laureate Chin Kim representing the IVCI series, which continues independently from here, as will the Ronen season. A 60-year-old Korean-American whose eminent teachers have included Josef Gingold, founder of the IVCI, Kim was among the six finalists in the second competition, all designated laureates. On this return visit, he was joined in a scintillating performance of the Martinu by Ronen co-founders David Bellman, clarinet, and Ingrid Fischer-Bellman cello, plus Mike Chen, viola; Alistair Ho...

A salutary look at cultural and environmental loss, flecked with characteristic humor, put into David Bellman came back to town to play with current Ronen members and guests. perspective a deeply resonant pair of pre-modernist English works Sunday aftternoon as the Ronen Chamber Ensemble opened its season's finale at St. Paul's Episcopal Church . Michael Schelle's "Kurashikku" was like auditory cataract surgery, clarifying the vision of a few classic themes dear to composers and painters for centuries. The title is Japanese for "classic," and those time-honored themes are "Old Buildings," "The Babbling Brook," "Deep Dark Forests," Rainbows and Sunsets," and "Furry Four-legged Friends." Each movement has a parenthetical subtitle of its own, pointing to a 21st-century undercutting of the sentimental attachments artists make to such images. For the first movement, we learn we ought to regard "old buildings ...

The nature theme was lightly applied in the Ronen Chamber Ensemble's season-opening concert in Hilbert Circle Theatre's Wood Room Tuesday evening. Christoph Nils Thompson A horn tune always places the listener in a forest, as co-artistic director Gregory Martin reminded a capacity audience before the performance of the program finale, Brahms' Horn Trio, op. 40. And Till Eulenspiegel answers "a call of nature" briefly in Richard Strauss' "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks," an arrangement for violin, horn, bassoon clarinet and contrabass, which opened the concert. Touching more substantially on the natural world was the piece being premiered, Christoph Nils Thompson's "Borchert Quintets: Five Poems for Woodwind Quintet." Thompson, assistant professor of music media production at Ball State University, read each of the poems in the original German and his own English translation before the corresponding quintet was played. Th...

When a long-established concert series can make a smooth transition and gradually personalize new artistic leadership, the prospect for continued success becomes brighter. "Celebrating Connections" is thus an apt title for one group's current season.  Alistair Howlett drew upon friendship for a new work.  The latest sign was the modest novelty that opened the second program of Ronen Chamber Ensemble' s season.  Alistair Howlett, one of Ronen's four artistic directors, reached back toward his roots in Australia and his friendship with a former orchestra colleague, a bassoonist-composer named Ben Hoadley. Howlett engineered the commissioning of  a piece for the artistic leadership, and so "Porch Music" received its first and second performances over the weekend. I heard the second of them, which opened a sparsely attended but well-received concert Monday evening at Indiana History Center. Howlett, playing alto flute, was joined by Jennifer Christen, oboe; ...

With two outright masterpieces shoring up the program, the Ronen Chamber Ensemble held on to its celebration of Indianapolis' Sister Cities with a salute to Giuseppe Tartini, a native of Piran, Slovenia (known as Pirano when it was part of the Venetian empire of his day (1692-1770)). The Concertino for Clarinet and Piano is Gordon Jacob's arrangement drawn from a couple of Tartini violin sonatas. It was played with the zest of a well-prepared appetizer to main courses of Mozart and Beethoven on Tuesday night at Indiana Landmarks Center . The slow-fast-slow-fast layout of the work made for satisfying contrasts of textures and tempos for the duo of David Bellman and Gregory Martin. The clarinetist's passagework was unfailingly smooth and even in the Allegro molto; in the other fast movement, a sometimes brutally rapid finale, the difficulty for the clarinet to match the notes-per-second capability of the violin occasionally became evident. Zachary DePue, Gregory Marti...

A background of flags offered an unusual visual enhancement to the Ronen Chamber Ensemble 's season-opening concert Wednesday night in the Hilbert Circle Theatre's Wood Room. Sextet acknowledges applause at conclusion of Ludwig Thuille piece. The display signaled the theme of season-long programming related to Indianapolis' Sister Cities , eight of them to date. Two were represented by composers featured at the concert: Campinas, Brazil, by Jailton de Oliveira; Northamptonshire, United Kingdom, by Malcolm Arnold. The program was filled out by a substantial, evocative Sextet for Winds and Piano by Ludwig Thuille and Robert Schumann's Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, op. 63. The concert's first half put the formidable flutist Alistair Howlett in three different contexts. He had the honor of enunciating the program theme unaccompanied  in "Sertonancias" No. 2 for solo flute. Essentially a lyrical piece with some well-placed interruptions of its flow, th...

Michael Schelle howls at the muses in his new Ronen piece. Who else but Michael Schelle would be likely to take the Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps to Parnassus) by an unmarked trail, raising a ruckus and paying personal tributes along the way? While on the mountain, however, the Butler University composer in residence disports himself as he riles the beasts in "The Wolves of Parnassus," the latest of four commissions dating back nearly three decades from the Ronen Chamber Ensemble. Ending its 2014-15 season Tuesday night in Hilbert Circle Theatre's Wood Room, the Ronen premiered the wide-ranging, six-movement piece with exhaustive gusto. Gradus ad Parnassum, a late Baroque treatise on composition much admired by the Viennese classicists, was mentioned by Schelle in oral program notes before the performance. He was pleased to admit violating as many of its precepts as he could manage. Schelle's wolves are pack animals and predators upon musical order, particular...

Gregory Martin (from left), David Bellman, and Ingrid Fischer-Bellman. The absence of co-founder David Bellman was felt keenly, but the Ronen Chamber Ensemble forged ahead with the planned program largely intact Monday night at the University of Indianapolis. It was a rare occasion to focus locally on chamber music by African-American composers in honor of Black History Month. The Voices of Worship Choir from the university was on hand to wrap things up in spirited fashion with two gospel numbers under the direction of Geoffrey Kelsaw. No mention was made of the reason for Bellman's absence; his mother died a few days ago, and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra principal clarinetist was in Albuquerque. Consequently, Ronen's part of the program required the elimination of a movement from David Baker' s Duo for Clarinet and Cello , a Ronen commission. Also, Christina Martin substituted in the clarinet chair for a performance of Anthony Kelley 's "Grist for...

From Haoming Xie, violin showpieces plus chamber-music meat and potatoes. A formidable 19th-century violinist who found time to compose prolifically provided a brilliant capstone to Tuesday's concert featuring Haoming Xie, a 2010 Laureate of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, in a co-presentation with the Ronen Chamber Ensemble. Louis Spohr's Nonet in F major, op. 31, had Xie in the principal chair for a four-movement piece offering continual interaction between his violin and the viola of Li Li, the cello of Andre Gaskins, the double bass of Ju-Fang Liu, the oboe of Jennifer Christen, the flute of Tamara Thweatt, the clarinet of David Bellman, the bassoon of Kelly Swensson, and the French horn of Darin Sorley. That's about the largest feasible ensemble falling under the one-to-a-part rubric of chamber music. Spohr manages this combination with no hint of unwieldiness, except perhaps in the finale, where he turns aside from what sounds as if it w...

 "Galore" is one of those odd adjectives that's always used postpositively, instead of in front of the noun it modifies (like "attorneys general," though some no longer consider "attorney generals" a mistake).  "Galore" is from the Irish and it means "abundant" and "plentiful," so let's concede that three quartets making up a full concert program are enough to justify the title "Quartets Galore." It opened the Ronen Chamber Ensemble 's 2023-24 season Monday night at the Indiana History Center. And, if you'll forgive the pun, I intend to post positive thoughts here about the performance I heard. Music-lovers who missed it ought to put a repeat of the program on their schedule: October 30 at Second Presbyterian Church. Gregory Martin talks about Schumann at "Quartets Galore."  In addition to pieces for four players by Schumann and Mozart, there's another quartet involved: Ronen now has fou...

 Returning to town a year after his first post-competition engagement here, Luke Hsu , 2018 bronze Luke Hsu applied an engaging personality. medalist in the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, has made the most of a delayed duo appearance with a fellow laureate, Mélanie Laurent , 2019 gold medalist in the USA International Harp Competition. "French Soundscapes" was the title of a program originally scheduled for last March. Wednesday's concert at the Indiana History Center marked the end of this season's Laureate Series. The partnership worked superbly. Besides duo and solo performances by the two top-prize winners, the concert took in a collaboration with the Ronen Chamber Ensemble in Saint-Saens' "Introduction et Allegro" for harp, flute, clarinet, and string quartet — plus the Pavane from Ravel's "Mother Goose Suite" as a soothing encore. In his 2019 recital, a more conventional program with assistance at the piano fro...

Co-artistic directors Gregory Martin, David Bellman, Ingrid Fischer-Bellman Overshadowed by the even greater level of carnage and atrocity of World War II, the "Great War" — which began a century ago this year — probably defined the modern era in Western Civilization more crucially than the cataclysm that followed a generation later. The 1914-18 conflict certainly disrupted or destroyed millions of lives, upset a long-lasting sense of security and values, and set the arts on several new courses — redefining, and sometimes casting aside, definitions of "masterpiece." For "In Memoriam: The Great War," the Ronen Chamber Ensemble played two outright masterpieces by composers deeply affected by World War I. Maurice Ravel's "Le Tombeau de Couperin" (in an arrangement for woodwind quintet) and Arnold Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1, op. 9 (arranged by the composer's illustrious student Anton Webern) represented the program's...

The most surprising of major-composer interactions, judging from the contrast of their mature styles,  temperaments and the genres they practiced, may be  Ralph Vaughan Williams' study with Maurice Ravel in 1907-08. Those lessons in Paris seem to have spurred an advance in the English composer's forging of his mature style. The association amounts to a milestone in the long history of artistic interaction across the Channel between the ancient political and cultural foes. David Sadlier came from Texas to sing "On Wenlock Edge" One of Vaughan Williams' signature accomplishments in his immediate post-Ravel phase was the song cycle "On Wenlock Edge," an insightful setting of six poems by A.E. Housman from his milestone collection of gemlike lyrics, "A Shropshire Lad."  Completed in 1909, the piece was the crown jewel of Ronen Chamber Ensemble 's second concert of the 2025-26 season, titled "Across the English Channel," which will be ...

The Ronen Chamber Ensemble marked the conclusion of its current Sister Cities Project season with a focus on Norway that benefited from the participation of two first-class Norwegian musicians. Chamber-music masterpieces performed by locally connected musicians constituted the two substantial works at the program's start and finish at Indiana Landmarks Center Tuesday evening. Adept pianist Einar R ø ttingen Paying immediate tribute to its guests, the Ronen program opened with Edvard Grieg's Violin Sonata No. 2 in G major, op. 13.  Violinist Jayna Park was joined by Ronen pianist/artistic director Gregory Martin in a work typical of its composer in melodic charm contrasted with energetic dancelike episodes. The recitative-like opening statement by the violin first grabbed the attention, performed as if in confirmation that the minimizing label of "nationalist" composer sits uneasily upon a creator with fresh things to say in absolute music. The florid phrase...

The  sizable 20th-century ensemble pieces that ended each half of Monday night's collaboration between University of Indianapolis and the Ronen Chamber Ensemble presented a polarity that might be found throughout the history of music. On the one hand, the exploratory, extroverted muse of Luciano Berio was represented by his "Folk Songs" (1964). On the other, there was the focused expression of singular personality in Francis Poulenc's Sextet for Piano and Wind Quintet (1931). It's almost tempting to put forward an analogy to the ancient Greek aphorism made popular by the 20th-century thinker Isaiah Berlin: "The fox knows many things; the hedgehog knows one big thing." The fey charms of Poulenc's music don't sit easily with the idea of knowing "one big thing," but the variety he pursued thrives within a small range, bound on one side by his religious devotion, with its touch of sentimentality, and on the other by his insouciance a...

Whether your idea of a seasonal story involves Hanukkah, the Nativity narrative, or "A Visit From St. Nicholas,"  as the year nears its end you are never far from being reminded of your connection to beloved stories. The Ronen Chamber Ensemble got into that spirit in the second concert of its 30th season Tuesday evening with "'Once Upon a Time," featuring three contrasting compositions, all calling upon the storytelling imagination. The sources ranged from a Hans Christian Andersen adaptation to one composer's  recollections of boyhood to a third composer's purely abstract evocation of how fairy tales make us feel. David Bellman, clarinet The Indiana Landmarks Center's Grand Hall made a perfect setting for the concert, particularly in the festive nostalgia of Leos Janacek's "Mladi" (Youth),  a wind sextet that blossomed in  this setting. Co-founder and co-artistic director David Bellman, clarinet, was joined onstage by Rebecca A...

Music continues to fight for its life in public education, though few of its enemies use the word "frill" anymore. In higher education, music's stature is more secure. John Berners, composer of "Praeludium" In the annual collaboration between the Ronen Chamber Ensemble and the University of Indianapolis, the opportunity to put music forward as a branch of knowledge is inescapable. It was more pronounced than ever Monday night in a program called "Science, Math & Music." With pop culture having pegged music as entertainment only, the art's ancient links to the nature of reality (including the abstract, internally consistent reality of mathematics) are often obscured. Gregory Martin, artistic director of Ronen along with founders David Bellman and Ingrid Fischer-Bellman, was at pains to restore that link as it has been forged from ancient times to the present day. He wrote a script, chock-full of scholarly references, that was  delivere...