Jay Harvey Upstage

When Michael Francis had to withdraw from this weekend's Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra concerts because of injury, Taiwanese-born Mei-Ann Chen stepped in. Distinguished from the start of her 25-year U.S. residency by having been the first musician to earn simultaneous master's degrees from New England Conservatory in violin and conducting, Chen has accumulated other honors since. Chen displayed an acute rhythmic sense and interpretive exuberance in a program of Bernstein, Prokofiev and Delius Friday night.  The marketable theme is the imperishable story of Romeo and Juliet as set down by Shakespeare in the romantic tragedy of the playwright's early maturity. ISO guest conductor Mei-Ann Chen Two of the pieces attest to the play's adaptability to other circumstances besides the Montague-Capulet feud in Renaissance Verona. Young love against rustic social strictures in the opera "A Village Romeo and Juliet" lies behind Delius' "A Walk to the P...

Benjamin Britten's delightful post-war comedy "Albert Herring" won't close the Indianapolis Opera 2013-14 season after all. The organization is taking a breather to establish a new "business model," a phrase more and more often heard in the arts world to indicate that an arts organization can be run like a business. That required the axing of an opera about a small English town's frustration at finding a suitably pure May Queen at the turn of the 20th century for its annual spring celebration. A mild-mannered grocery clerk, the title character, saves the day (reluctantly) by being dragged into prominence as a precedent- setting "King of the May." Along the way, with some complications, he finds an inner strength and identity that had long been mother-smothered. "Albert Herring" was to have played at the company's soon-to-be-permanent home, Basile Opera Center, six times between April 25 and May 4. IO general manager Carol Ba...

IVCI bronze medalist Benjamin Beilman "If you build it, they will come" can be adapted to music festivals as well (if they are run well). And if you record it, many who couldn't come will be able to share the experience of those who did. An estimable chamber-music series in the attractive setting of the Menlo School in the Bay Area community of Atherton, Calif., can boast an unusually polished way for music-lovers everywhere to access what happens at the annual festival. Music@Menlo LIVE 's "From Bach," its title indicating the foundation of chamber-music repertoire today in the German master's works, consists of eight CDs. All of but two of them open with music by J.S. Bach and fan out from there to a broad range of standard repertory up through Bartok, Britten, and Shostakovich. For the Bach selections, and given the focus of the invited artists, modern instruments are the rule, of course, which will disturb some devotees of authentic-instrum...

Ensemble Music Society presented  the Artemis Quartet You wouldn't think a string quartet's instrument position being a couple of feet higher than normal would make that much difference. But among the excellence o report about the Artemis Quartet 's Ensemble Music Society concert Wednesday is the acoustically relevant detail that it plays standing up (except for cellist Eckart Runge, perched on a wooden box). That peculiarity did wonders for the resonance and projection of the music, giving a heightened dimension to  the Indiana History Center's Basile Theater's already satisfying acoustics. And who knows how healthy it is for the two violinists and the violist to stand up to play, what a boon it is to proper breathing? Teachers emphasize it for individual practice. It's a little odd it isn't more common on the concert platform. Based in Berlin, the Artemis was founded in 1989. Runge, who also served as ensemble spokesman, is the sole remaining origi...

Translation is betrayal, runs an old Italian saying, the idea being that even smart, benign attempts to preserve integrity from one language to another are doomed. Will Mobley, Anne Allgood, Lawrence Pressman, and Paige Lindsey White in IRT's "Other Desert Cities." A family's painfully lived experience is like an original language, too. Events coalesce around idiomatic ways of doing things and relating to one another. How much greater a betrayal can underlie the translation of such experience into written, then published, form! In "Other Desert Cities," that's what faces the Wyeth family of Palm Springs, with its Hollywood pedigree and glitzy social connections set against the long-ago disappearance of a brother and son who descended into a haze of drugs and jerrybuilt ideological fervor, then was implicated in an ugly crime. Something is truly about to be lost in translation as daughter Brooke, visiting on Christmas Eve from the East Coast, co...

In more than 20 years of attending University of Indianapolis concerts featuring professor of piano Richard Ratliff, I've found it's a given that the programs will be interesting, well-balanced and varied. As usual, Richard Ratliff held the interest. The tradition continued Monday night with his solo recital at DeHaan Fine Arts Center titled "From Bach to Berners," the alliterative allure of which only hints at the range he covered. For one thing, "Bach" designated not Johann Sebastian, but his most distinguished, if eccentric, composing son, Carl Philipp Emanuel.  In the middle of Ratliff's opening set came C.P.E. Bach's Rondo in C minor, a work full of wit and surprises. The recitalist seemed fully sympathetic to the quirkiness of this music, highlighting it by his pervasively staccato and leggiero handling of the theme. The daring separation of the piece's phrases gave it both a tentative feeling and a bravura mood. Ratliff seemed co...

Ronen Koresh is fond of alluding to the side-by-side mixture of cultural influences that characterize life in his native Israel, which explains why his choreographic signature never follows one stylistic track for long. The result manages to be an unambiguous personal style whose rapidly changing components achieve remarkable cohesiveness. His Koresh Dance Company concluded a two-night stand Saturday at the Tarkington at the Center for the Performing Arts with a program of short pieces that eventually attained some breadth with "Bolero," which concluded the performance. Ravel's famous score, full of dance predecessors going back to its premiere in 1928, becomes in Koresh's hands something both playful and driven — but not driven by sensuality or even a hint of seductiveness. Instead, Koresh's troupe of ten dancers emerges in small groups from darkness at the back and sides of the stage, heralding each musical transition. There's always the element of s...

Prolific as he's been in the recording studio and active as a touring artist, Pat Metheny apparently applies such stamina to individual shows as well — if his appearance fronting his Unity Group Friday at the Palladium is any indication. Chris Potter (from left), Antonio Sanchez, Pat Metheny and Ben Williams are the Unity Band. He came on alone just after 8 to play a long introspective solo on a mutant guitar with strings set at various positions in addition to the normal one along the instrument's neck. Soon joined by his sidemen, Metheny kept churning out music on several guitars for over two hours without a break. He looked as smilingly relaxed at the end as he had at the beginning. It's not far-fetched to suppose that the Missouri native, who will turn 60 in August, still loves music. When a performer conveys that love to an audience so generously, it's no wonder that his career has such staying power. Reportedly nearly all 1,200 seats made available for ...

Working together on a school project rarely involves such obstacles as those Lauren Gunderson sets up for two high-school students in "I and You," a play making the rounds of three theaters across the country under the auspices of the National New Play Network. Anthony (Eli Curry) and Caroline (Katherine Shelton) collaborate in "I and You" Phoenix Theatre 's production opened Thursday night on the Basile Stage, a perfect space for the necessarily small audience to look in on the thoroughly lived-in bedroom of Caroline, forced by a potentially fatal disease to stay away from school for months at a time. It's a strictly controlled world, and just how hemmed in it is we don't really discover until the surprise ending. Trying to keep victimhood at arm's length, Caroline reacts angrily to the sudden intrusion of Anthony, a popular classmate who has mysteriously chosen her as partner for a literature project. It's a study of the use of pronouns...

Kenny Phelps believes more needs to be done to promote musical cross-pollination here. As a business,  rippleFX: Studios in Broad Ripple focuses on music for advertising, but on March 10 its promotional emphasis was wider-reaching and more idealistic. The idea? Throw a party and jam session and thereby get the sometimes balkanized Indianapolis music scene to form both social and artistic bonds. So early Monday evening, musicians of all ages and various genres poured through the doors of the sprawling two-story building, roomier inside than it looks from Ferguson Street. Hank Hankerson (sax) and Nick Tucker (bass) at Monday's session. "We should talk to each other," said drummer and studio co-owner Kenny Phelps, briefly interrupting the music-making. "It starts with us coming together. This is a group of like-minded people. We want it to be something (in these sessions) that can bring musicians and club owners in." The marketability of a wide span o...

The ISO's guest solo artist, Anna Vinnitskaya The predictable enthusiasm that the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra roused in the course of its concert Friday got a built-in boost from the presence of Honor Orchestra of America members and their parents in the audience. So the Hilbert Circle Theatre rafters rang with a good measure of youthful cheering after performances of Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain," Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and Stravinsky's 1945 Firebird Suite. The Honor Orchestra, a national youth ensemble with headquarters in Indianapolis, had played a short program of works by Glinka and Shostakovich beforehand, making for a lengthy all-Russian evening. The ISO's regular subscription concert opened with the Mussorgsky tone poem, evoking a folk superstition that a witches' sabbath was observed every St. John's Eve (June 23) on a mountain near Kiev, a city that is more in today's consciousness than ...

In the spirit of the inspiration with a popular music genre that made "Super Soul" such a success a few seasons ago, Dance Kaleidoscope is turning to Nashville this weekend for "Kings & Queens of Country." Dancers in "Ring of Fire" segment of "Heart's Desire." (Crowe's Eye Photography) The show, seen in a preview performance Thursday night at Indiana Repertory Theatre, is certain to make new friends for the contemporary-dance troupe among country fans who may be uneasy about the art of dance in general. The program consists of two appealing world premieres, opening with "Heart's Desire," choreographed by frequent DK guest Cynthia Pratt, and concluding with David Hochoy's "Deep in the Heart of Country." The heart-healthy titles signal the importance of love's joys and trials in country music. They also seem to convey a recognition that, even when layered with sophisticated production, the genre s...

Gary Walters was master of Second Pres' pre-Lenten revels. Jazz is not naturally at home in churches, despite owing part of its history to the influence of African-American Christianity. But the music, now in full maturity, is adaptable for many situations, including a pre-Lenten celebratory program at Second Presbyterian Church on Tuesday evening. Pianist Gary Walters , leader of the Second@Six jazz trio, welcomed a partishioner vocalist, Erin Benedict, and guest reedman Michael Strickln to the front of the chancel for an hourlong set. Other trio members are Chris Pyle, drums, and Steve Dokken, electric bass. Benedict was an apt interpreter of such wistful numbers as Johnny Mandel's "Where Do You Start?" and Michel Legrand's "You Must Believe in Spring," whose first few phrases drew laughter from the winter-weary audience. According to Walters, Benedict was responsible for the arrangements of the songs she sang. Among them was an effective pa...

A century and one month ago, the first actor to embed his persona in the new art of the motion picture appeared onscreen for the first time. As the glitz and tension surrounding the annual Academy Awards lie a few hours ahead of us, it's irresistible not only to celebrate Charlie Chaplin but also to reflect on the appeal and the shortcomings of Hart Crane, the American poet who first paid tribute to the great film comedian in verse. Pre-tramp Charlie Chaplin in his movie debut, "Making a Living." I can't help blogging now and again about literature, the art I know best, but this time it's for the sake of touting the most durable and widespread of the performing arts: the movies. Of course, since each film is set as one well-considered amalgam of performances (leaving aside director's cuts and the avenues they open to seeing other versions besides the marketplace original), it is a performing art with an asterisk. But motion is its stock in trade, and o...

For Gorecki, Shara Worden put aside her pop persona as My Brightest Diamond If you can manage it, it helps to dial back your nervous system — to access those alpha waves —in order to get the most out of Henryk Gorecki's "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" (No. 3). Expectations that a 53-minute symphonic work will be full of incident and a spectrum of moods have to be set aside. The piece, notoriously a best-seller on record in the 1990s but still a rarity in the concert hall, requires the kind of in-the-moment attention that successful meditation does. Krzysztof Urbanski made the work the focus of an all-Polish Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra concert Friday night at Hilbert Circle Theatre. That spotlight might have been taken by a new work, an ISO commission, by Wojciech Kilar, if the composer had lived long enough to complete it.  His death on Dec. 29, however, kept his young admirer Urbanski from being able to premiere "Pastorale e capriccio." In its place...