Jay Harvey Upstage

Beethoven's 250th birthday will be observed next year. The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra will be explicit about embracing the role of host next season. It's developed the marketing slogan "You're invited!" for pops and classical concerts at Hilbert Circle Theater, its home on Monument Circle since 1984. At a reception for donors and other supporters this week, the orchestra unfolded its schedule for 2019-2020, with a number of novelties in addition to reliable repertoire for arousing the public interest. Long ago an ISO staff member told me, off the record, that the industry standard of attracting 2 percent of the public to any year's total of symphony orchestra offerings seemed a remote goal. "Around here," he lamented, "I wonder if 1 percent is more realistic." So there's an understandably constant battle to keep as much of the central Indiana populace interested as possible. Who knows what will work, especially in rapidly c...

Veteran bandleader and superlative trombonist John Fedchock As adaptable as local sidemen can be working with traveling guest stars, it's always a  great treat to hear a strong, seasoned working band on the Jazz Kitchen stage. On Sunday night, it was the John Fedchock New York Sextet on  the bandstand for one generously proportioned set. Led by a highly respected trombonist whose New York Big Band has long been a magnet for the top players in that perpetual jazz center, the small group shows the same sense of scale, balance, and inspiration as the large ensemble. The arrangements were illuminating and well-grounded, and the solos followed suit. That was evident from the opening number on — "This Just In" (a tune built on the harmonic structure of "Just in Time"; a contrafact, as the bandleader explained). I especially liked the logical progress of tenor saxophonist Tom Christensen's solo, and the neat yet adventurous episode trading eights between ...

Local fans of the quadrennial American Pianists Awards in Jazz have had the opportunity to become familiar with Emmet Cohen over a longer time than usual. Emmet Cohen in a portrait reflecting his impulsive and thoughtful sides. At 29, the New York-based musician is back for the third time as a finalist in the quadrennial American Pianists Association jazz competition — unprecedented in its history, according to APA CEO and artistic director Joel Harrison, who introduced Cohen Saturday night at the Jazz Kitchen . The Miami native concluded the Premiere Series, in which the APA presents five finalists in trio settings over the course of a season, accompanied by local musicians Nick Tucker, bass, and Kenny Phelps, drums. From here on out, the contestants will be judged during Discovery Week in April, with the result that one of them will be named the Cole Porter Fellow in Jazz and thus taken under the APA wing for two years. Heard in the second of two sets, Cohen struck me as ...

It was meat-and-potatoes repertoire for the first short Classical weekend of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's 2019 schedule — an Austro-German focus with three of the four pieces well-known. Conductor Christoph K ö nig's career is based principally in Europe. Friday's concert at Hilbert Circle Theatre, reviewed here, will not be repeated; a partial preview was offered in Thursday's Coffee Classical series, conducted by Christoph König , music director of the Solistes Europeens Luxembourg. For both concerts, the guest soloist was mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught , also making an ISO debut. The Irish singer put across a steady interpretation of Gustav Mahler's "Rückert Lieder," five songs set to poems by the 19th-century German writer Friedrich Rückert. Her voice blossomed expressively at the right times, though more intensity was needed at the climax of "Liebst du um Schönheit." The missing fiery glow was supplied in the final song of the...

As David Hochoy told a preview audience at intermission Thursday evening, Mozart is a notoriously difficult composer to set choreographically.  He's too perfect, Hochoy explained, so that there's not much left to fill in in dance terms. Add to that the difficulty of coming up with amusing choreography that succeeds, and you realize that Hochoy and Dance Kaleidoscope are putting forward a big self-challenge this weekend with "Funny Bones" on the upper stage of Indiana Repertory Theatre.   Committed by this program to tickling those funny bones, what does the trick?  Precise timing helps immeasurably, Hochoy's mentor Martha Graham told him long ago. DK has learned that lesson well. Approaches to injecting dance with humor were undertaken by members of the troupe in the program's first half, reprising the troupe's contribution to the 2018 Indy Fringe Festival. After intermission the showcase was focused on Hochoy's new work (though the program pinpoin...

A combination of well-known music and novelties puts an extra shine on the luster of Matthew Lipman' s debut recording on Cedille.  Optimistically titled "Ascent," it has the locally significant enhancement of accompaniments by his duo partner, Henry Kramer , a laureate in the 2017 American Pianists Association competition. Matthew Lipman received a coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2015. Concert artists playing the viola are relatively rare, and the instrument's central position in the symphony orchestra and string quartet only allows its familiarity to extend so far. As a solo voice, it mimics the cello in its low register and as it ascends, it sounds like a beefier violin." Ascent" is a good name for the recording, and not just because various versions of rising, in spirits, pitch, and movement, bear central significance to the program. By the time the listener reaches the last track, Lipman's arrangement of Franz Waxman's "Carmen...

Diarist Anne exults in her spring awakening. "The Diary of Anne Frank ," besides being a monument to human resilience under monstrous threat, is in its very title a tribute to the power of words. As full of life as the Amsterdam teenager evidently was before she and her family were rousted out of their hiding place for transportation to the death camps, it's what she left behind on paper that has hewn her path to immortality. This is the miracle of the document that has given the world the most focused and celebrated account of the Holocaust. As  staged by the Indiana Repertory Theatre , the full humanity of a couple of Jewish families in hiding, joined by a dentist forced to separate from his Christian wife, continues to stand for whatever bulwarks can be erected against obliteration and oblivion. Those bulwarks are not as strong as most people might like them to be, as the current resurgence of antisemitism makes clear. And what Anne Frank's diary has to ...

Northwest passage: CD cover of Adderley gig One of the exciting historic jazz releases of 2019 so far has been a selection of pieces from four nights of two gigs Cannonball Adderley and his quintet played for radio broadcast at Seattle's Penthouse in 1966 and 1967 (Reel to Real Recordings). It was the era of "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," the infectious groove work of Adderley's pianist, young Joe Zawinul, that was to lift the alto saxophonist into a high plane of popularity that in some ways obscured the gifts he was to bring to the alto saxophone — separating that instrument finally from its modern-jazz bondage to Charlie Parker. "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" is mercifully absent from this disc, but Zawinul is on hand, lending grit and lyricism all his own to band. Of course, the front line enjoys the partnership of Cannonball and his brother, cornetist Nat.  Filling out the band is Victor Gaskin, bass, and Roy McCurdy, drums. Co-producers Zev Feldman and Cory W...

Based at the University of Indianapolis, the Indianapolis Quartet introduced itself to the north side. Despite the advice of St. Paul, we don't necessarily need to "put away childish things" if they can deliver retrospective benefits once we're all grown up. That was amply demonstrated by the Indianapolis Quartet' s performance of Frank Felice' s "Five Whimsies for Non-Grownups" at the ensemble's Butler University concert Tuesday night. Felice, associate professor of composition, theory, and electronic music at Butler, based the work on five of his favorite children's books, each of its movements titled by a quotation from the book. "Five Whimsies" is the product of a commission from the New Century String Quartet in 2010. All sorts of credit must go to the composer for taking a risk that "whimsy" deserves stature as a formal label in the tradition of a capriccio. Frank Felice spake again as a child in "Fiv...

Dwuan Watson and LeKesha Lorene play deeply committed lovers. Unlike another famous ballad that strikes deep into black folklore, "The Ballad of Klook and Vinette" is not about love gone wrong through any doomed straying on the part of one partner. "Frankie and Johnny" offers a timeless warning of the sometimes fatal consequences of infidelity. In contrast, Ché Walker' s emotionally involving story of African-American lovers in the contemporary big city describes a strong romance that goes wrong because of an external threat and bad luck. The bond that Dwuan Watson and LaKesha Lorene forge in this one-act drama with music has the audience pulling for the romance's staying power. The Fonseca Theatre Company 's first show of the New Year is a love letter whose power will extend through Valentine's Day weekend at the company's temporary home, Indy Convergence. Walker's script is often ornate, weaving together high-flown talk with stree...

David Sanborn has one of the most distinctive sounds among veteran jazz saxophonists. That has helped give him a saving difference from the "fusion" genre with which he has been associated by reputation since the 1980s. He brought a quintet with heavy-hitting integrity to the Palladium Friday night. The new group, with a crackerjack rhythm section backing up a front line of trombone joined to the leader's alto sax, exemplifies the authentic jazz tradition of a small-group dynamic that relies on the maximum individuality of its members. This set-up not only allows Sanborn to maintain his stature away from "smooth" jazz, but prudently gives a few concessions to age insofar as the 73-year-old maestro can husband his resources.  In two sets before a large audience at the Carmel arts palace, Sanborn poured out his patented intensity and sassiness in measured amounts. Perhaps the phrasing is less torrential these days, but the signature tone remains deeply root...

Daniele Rustioni displayed exuberance and discipline in US debut. Last spring after an Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra concert, I modulated my overall praise of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, one of his most popular works, with some quibbles about parts of it, starting with the first movement. I can be more wholehearted about the Third (in A minor, op. 44), though it doesn't reach the totally disarming, energetic heights of the Second. The A minor puts a nice cap on the full ISO program this weekend. The second performance will be at 7 tonight. Guest conductor Daniele Rustioni, appearing in the United States for the first time here this weekend, conducted Ottorino Respighi's "Fountains of Rome" to open the Hilbert Circle Theatre concert Friday; filling out the first half was Dmitri Shostakovich's Cello concerto no. 21 in E-flat, op. 107, with Julian Steckel the soloist. The ISO and Rustioni had the opportunity to prepare the Rachmaninoff symph...