Jay Harvey Upstage

Pavel Haas Quartet: multiple award-winner Identity politics and nationalism — so prominent recently in worldly matters — have left prominent monuments in the arts as well.  In music, some of this has to do with nationalities that tend to be overshadowed by forces of control, reputation, and the fight for freedom. Central Europe has been a focal point of such cultural and military conflicts for centuries.  The struggle for self-assertion, as well as preservation of their cultural roots, plays a large role in the lives and careers of two Czech composers played here Wednesday by the Pavel Haas Quartet,  a group of Czech musicians conspicuously honored in the outside world, chiefly via the UK's Gramophone magazine. The Ensemble Music Society presented the group at the Indiana History Center in a program that opened with some late-period Mozart, the String Quartet in B-flat major, K. 589. I was immediately impressed with the bold, almost hard-charging feeling the quartet showe...

  Unaccustomed as I am to weighing in on competition outcomes, I made clear in 2021 how much I liked Michael Davidman delivered on promise he showed in 2021. Michael Davidman's playing and expected great things from him in the crowded firmament of young classical pianists. Now after three years he's back to vie again for the top prize in the American Piano Awards . At the Indiana History Center Sunday afternoon he played his Premiere Series program. The format for all five 2025 finalists is one-half solo recital, one-half concerto performance with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra . In the chamber-music segment of the 2021 competition, Davidman enchanted me with the way he played the Cesar Franck piano quintet with the Dover String Quartet. The centerpiece of his recital yesterday was Franck's Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, another masterpiece conspicuously indebted to the composer's mastery of the church organ, specifically Paris' Sainte-Clotilde, where Franck serve...

Taylor Eigsti sat in with the Sean Imboden Large Ensemble. Building on  a reputation and a history that goes back to a muddy day eight years ago in Broad Ripple Park, the Sean Imboden Large Ensemble is on the verge of releasing its debut recording come spring.  Having gathered  $21,000 through a KickStarter campaign, the bandleader told a capacity audience Saturday night at the Jazz Kitchen that the 17-piece band will have a document of its achievement ready to supplement its successful live appearances featuring original music. The December 7 engagement had a special feature: guest pianist Taylor Eigsti,  a several-times Grammy nominee who's just returned from a tour of Europe with his trio. Eigsti has a flowing style with a gift for melodic improvisation, displayed especially in "Balcony," one of Imboden's original charts from 2016.  The bandleader took a well-articulated soprano-sax solo there, while most of his occasional solo turns were on tenor. Otherwise ...

We've long been accustomed to the commercialization of Christmas, which has been denounced from Kids hail top-hatted Frosty before the day heats up. pulpits so often that many of us could cobble together a suitable sermon on the topic as rapidly as AI might. Naturally, there's long been the spread of money to be made with the very imagery of the holiday, its meaning drummed into us by repetition. Through stage and screen and Coca-Cola ads, visions of merchandised sugarplums dance in our heads.  The latest production of "A Very Phoenix Xmas" packages the overload into "It's a Wonderful Die Hard Life Story Actually." It's seasonal carry-on baggage stuffed into the overhead compartment for the flight home. Expect some turbulence. Entertainment rituals rub shoulders with the religious kind. "The Christmas Story" in demonic TV repetition is the basis of one of "A Very Phoenix Xmas"s most haunting skits. As a culture, we have an obsess...

Steve Allee has shown his mettle in various contexts. It's surprised me a bit for 30 years now that I still enjoy "The Magic Hour," the CD that Steve Allee co-produced with Tom Borton in California. It may be the only music approaching "smooth jazz" that I've ever been attracted to repeatedly. I didn't know that as leader of the contemporary Magic Hour Band, the veteran pianist-composer was not all about re-creating that music with new personnel. What I heard Friday night at the Jazz Kitchen was a top-flight exhibition of jazz on the cusp between the mellow, plugged-in sounds of the old CD and the more aggressive contemporary acoustic mainstream that Allee has occupied with many other musicians. The second set allowed me to set aside my residual discomfort with smooth jazz while allowing some of its vibes to resonate. The extra keyboard sounds provided by Shawn McGowan provided a lot of that, in addition to the leader's having a small electronic key...

Charles Ives: Visionary Connecticut Yankee Opportunities to sample the music of Charles Ives in concert on his 150th birth anniversary have been rare in these parts. So I was immediately interested to learn the Philharmonic Orchestra of Indianapolis had scheduled a performance of his Symphony No. 2 as centerpiece of a program excitedly titled "America! America! Music of Change!" Taking in a concert of Indianapolis' adult volunteer orchestra was itself rare for me, as I had not heard the Philharmonic since shortly after moving to Indianapolis 38 years ago, when the orchestra's home was Caleb Mills Hall at Shortridge Middle School . Sunday afternoon at the Pike Performing Arts Center, longtime music director Orcenith Smith paid Ives the honor that professional Hoosier musical organizations seem to have passed up this year.  The Second Symphony is the product of Ives' post-university formative years. He was building restively on the tutelage of the conservative Ya...