Jay Harvey Upstage

Creativity across artistic divisions rarely goes from yearning and admiration to a substantial result that seems Jeremy Pelt displayed authenticity and fire as composer-trumpeter. more than mere tribute. Jeremy Pelt's "Rodin Suite" may be an honorable exception. The trumpeter-bandleader and his quintet introduced Indianapolis to the work, the centerpiece of his latest recording, "Jeremy Pelt The Artist," Wednesday night at the Jazz Kitchen . He explained it all just after hitting the bandstand for the first set. When he travels, he likes to visit museums. In Paris, he enjoys returning to the Rodin Museum , whose focus is the genre-shattering sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1919). Observing burgeoning artists making sketches on site, Pelt figured that making musical sketches while looking at Rodin's art might be worth doing. The five-part suite that resulted formed the bulk of the Pelt quintet's performance here. The work of his band was exemplary...

An eminent American string quartet is celebrating its silver anniversary by evoking a golden age its genre enjoyed, thanks to three of its predecessors who became well-known to music lovers across the country. John Largess, the Miro Quartet's violist The Miro Quartet will visit Indianapolis Wednesday under the auspices of Ensemble Music Society , playing the same program the Kolisch Quartet did in 1935 when it made its American debut. The Miro's heritage from the Kolisch is particularly strong, since its violist, John Largess, was coached as a teenager by the ensemble's violist. The Hungarian-born Eugene Lehner was able to provide Largess and his young colleagues with insights into the Bela Bartok work that the students decided to take up. A member of the viola section of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for nearly 40 years, Lehner had known his countryman composer well. The boost he gave the teenagers in suburban Boston over nearly a year of working on Bartok's Qu...

The sublime is a notion that has come down in standing somewhat, so that we can rave about a good dessert as "sublime" and no one will look puzzled — unless they tried the same dessert and didn't like it. It's one of many ways we use to intensify kudos, like the currently fashionable "incredible." I tend to think that in the title "Women Sublime" something beyond pure bliss and supreme delight is intended, calling upon the word's once lofty meaning. True, the word continues to have overwhelming positivity about it. And so it should here, because the Dance Kaleidoscope program of a piece each by Cynthia Pratt, Mariel Greenlee, and Kiesha Lalama raises up the spirit, despite much dealing with conflict and the underside of awesomeness. But to our ancestors, "sublime" had somewhat unsettling religious and literary connotations, as if what was being experienced as sublime was beyond wonderful, too much for us, more than a little disori...

Austrian conductor shows knack for dark-lively and light-lively music Mood swings in classical music provide a partly hidden through-line in the history of programming. The convention in symphony-orchestra concert planning is to move from light to heavy. This weekend's Indianapolis Symhony Orchestra concerts go in the opposite direction — not strictly innovative, but somewhat unusual and refreshing. The concerts (the second one is this afternoon at 5:30) open with one of the most formidable mainstream concertos: Brahms' Violin Concerto in D major. Friday night's performance by Richard Lin   plunged immediately into the mood of gravitas, as that long orchestral introduction to the soloist's initial entrance unfolded securely under the baton of guest conductor Christian Arming. To end the concert, the audience would be beguiled by four of Dvorak's Slavonic Dances, popular hits of the 1870s and '80s whose ingratiating qualities remain alive today. In betwee...

Brian G. Hartz as Hamlet: To be or not to be Opening night of Indy Bard Fest at the IndyFringe Theatre brought forward a "Hamlet" that seemed daringly sparing of cuts. Thus, the sprawling nature of Shakespeare's most diffuse heroic tragedy was honored, even if the production is being marketed as an adaptation. Apart from the modern dress costuming, which soon can be absorbed without thinking much about it, and the assigning of a few male roles to women, the production Doug Powers directs for the annual festival is pretty scrupulous about treating the text fully. That means emphasizing the large-picture significance of events that are concentrated on the woes of the Danish royal family. The young Prince Hamlet, returned from his university studies in Germany amid a family upheaval whose underlying horror he can only guess at, is saddled with the responsibility for acting upon information thrust upon him by the ghost of his royal father. But the kingdom is threaten...

Fans of Dance Kaleidoscope a re being asked to bring notes of appreciation to Mariel Greenlee to mark her retirement from the company after performances of "Women Sublime" Oct. 17-20. This is a great idea that has been used once before to mark a previous milestone: the transition of Liberty Harris from active dancer to educational outreach/rehearsal director. Greenlee will continue to make her mark around the dance and theater community as a teacher and choreographer; her "State of Grace" will be one of three works in "Women Sublime." But her onstage presence in DK programs has been the aspect of her artistry most embedded in our memories. Here's an annotated list of her stellar performances from the last several years. This is my note of appreciation. I tried to stop at ten, but who's counting? I'll start with her skill at partnering. She has been half of a number of striking male-female duets in a variety of programs, and she always...

Lots of fun though it may be in its grotesque, fantastic way, "Little Shop of Horrors" makes a challenging choice for a theater whose formula involves putting a stage performance on top of comfort food for its patrons. But Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre displays its usual appetite for high-spirited entertainment with its production of the breakout 1982 collaboration of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. Fortunately, the musical comedy about a failing flower shop that turns a mysterious flesh-eating plant into a gold mine is too buoyant to have people fretting about the possible revenge of the vegetable kingdom upon hungry human beings. Of the production seen Saturday, Beef & Boards now sets out the lion's share of nearly 40 performances remaining. The roots of the show in cheesy sci-fi cinema are not far beneath the surface, and it ends up with its genre's scare tactics fully exercised: Earth has been invaded by something that makes the Venus flytrap look li...

Friday's concert by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra began with explicitly picturesque music and ended Pablo Sainz-Villegas showed flair and personal commitment in Rodrigo. with an abstract symphony that has extramusical connections for some listeners. In between came a concerto whose middle movement may have called up images for many, since  the Adagio of "Concierto de Aranjuez" was used to sell the Chrysler Cordoba for many years in TV commercials. It was typical of automobile marketing in seeking to tie our vehicles to our dreams. The explicitly picturesque muscled onto the scene immediately as guest conductor Robert Spano gave the downbeat for "All Things Majestic" by Jennifer Higdon. The initial chord of the first movement, "Teton Range," was marred by a burble in the brass, but the choralelike ensemble soon became solid. Massive sonorities assembled as if to represent the rigors of mountain climbing — or the effect of simply looking u...

Thanks to a mixture of quirky originals and one each from the jazz-standard and the pop-standard book, "Live in Brooklyn" (Smith Tone Records) renews hope that a distinctive personality, expressed through a small group, can demolish the insistence that jazz must always "advance." Perry Smith is a guitarist with good taste in sidemen, to start with. This helps his quartet achieve a unity that honors both parts of the repertoire here. His partner in the front line is tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, and often their compatibility is expressed through unison statements of the theme, as in set-opener "Starlit Skies." In addition to the Smith/Aldana soloing, my admiration for drummer Jay Sawyer took root immediately with the soft, effective variety of his patterns with brushes. Perry Smith is a canny guitarist-bandleader. The adeptness of Smith and Aldana, however, keeps riveting the attention as the program proceeds. In "Premonition" (anoth...

The Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra gathers for a group portrait. The solo concerto has become such a fixture on concert programs that today's symphony orchestra schedules  can hardly be imagined without a succession of guest stars featured in such works. Early displays of acclaimed virtuosity tended to come from violinist-composers, so it's no surprise several of them were responsible for the emergence of the concerto as an essential part of the repertoire. It all began with the idea of a small group of soloists contrasted with an accompanying orchestra in the form, developed in Rome in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, known as the concerto grosso. A well-managed survey of this kind of work opened the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra season Sunday afternoon at the Indiana History Center. Barthold Kuijken, the ensemble's artistic director, conducted four works, starting with the foundational concerto-grosso contribution of Arcangelo Corelli. The program progres...

As if meeting as a committee of the whole, Collectif9 gathers for a portrait. Adaptation is an old game in the art of music, long obscured by the dominant privilege that printed scores enjoy in both scholarly reputation and performance practice. Bach adapted Vivaldi, Stokowski adapted Bach, Handel adapted himself. On and on it goes. Collectif9 is playing the game anew for the 21st century by reconfiguring classical music for a nine-piece string ensemble (four violins, two violas, two cellos, and double bass). As displayed in a concert Friday night at the Center for the Performing Arts, something closer to the music of gypsy ensembles is perhaps the most natural fit for what the Montreal-based group is all about. Music for that kind of orchestra took up a couple of generous portions of the Palladium program. The folk-derived music, bristling with lively dance rhythms, blended with the classical tradition in the concert finale, an interpretation of Bartok's Romanian Dances, ...

There is an explicit sociopolitical context behind drummer Antonio Sanchez 's music, guided with fire from the drum set and carried out by an intense quintet called Migration. Fortunately what the band plays doesn't depend Antonio Sanchez focused on music from new album "Lines in the Sand." overmuch on its extramusical significance. it delivers powerfully across a vivid tapestry of sound. In remarks to the audience, the Mexico City native indicated his distress at the demonization of immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers at our Southern border. But with his gratitude for his American career declared, the drummer-bandleader wants to make clear that Migration's music bears a positive message, suggesting that the United States will get past this dreadful unwelcoming phase. "Long Road," with which the band opened its first set Wednesday night at the Jazz Kitchen , featured a protracted introduction from keyboardist John Escreet, slow and heavy-foo...