Jay Harvey Upstage

Based on a recital project that the violinist Jennifer Koh completed last year, "Limitless" gathers her duo performances with eight contemporary composers ( Cedille Records ). The result is both a tribute to a virtuoso's magnanimity and to the inexhaustible expressive possibilities of the solo violin. The two CDs cover immense territory of artistic perspectives and partnerships in sound. Koh has long had notable breadth in her repertoire, much of it generated from commissions and specialized projects. Growing up in a Korean-American family accustomed to poverty and mistreatment, the violinist in "Limitless" draws explicit acknowledgments from several of the composers of her resilience and the artistic value of surmounting prejudice and marginalization. In that vein, the most challenging piece for me was "Give Me Back My Fingerprints," a closely interwoven duo with vocalist Du Yun that features the composer's raw voice, plaintive and deliberatel...

CD cover: Avital (from left), Jackson, and Goldberg The exclamation point in this piano trio's name carries a lot of weight. The assertion of the right to swing without  apology or compromise is basic to the ensemble concept that pianist Aaron Goldberg, bassist Omer Avital, and drummer Ali Jackson bring forward in "Groove du Jour" ( Jazz & People ). The French label has captured this forthright American piano trio in a host of originals plus a jazz favorite, Jackie McLean's "Dr. Jackle" and the Great American Songbook standard "I'll Be Seeing You." The trio's approach to that Sammy Cain and Irving Kahal song etches the group's profile indelibly: lots of underlining the groove, a bluesy cast to the melodic treatment, and the dominance of the drums. After a dreamy start, this "I'll Be Seeing You" wraps up the wistful feeling with a high-register bass solo, then becomes increasingly funky. Jackson lands on two and...

The Colombian percussionist Samuel Torres brings to the delightful genre of the "little big band" (10 players, in Samuel Torres displays imagination from congas to ensemble. this case) a sensibility rooted in Latin rhythms and song forms and fully conversant with his desire to present jazz with a sunny face in "Alegria" (Blue Conga Music). The title means "joy," and Torres has the imagination and skill as both composer and bandleader not to allow the positive vibe to mean thin comfort food. There's plenty of sustenance on hand over the course of eight tunes. Torres resists the piling-on that's sometimes part of the Latin jazz genre. The pieces are assertive, with pungent soloing, but the gestures of invitation are consistent. Having sidemen of the expressive range of Marshall Gilkes, trombone; Joel Frahm, saxophones, and Luis Perdono, piano, certainly helps. The importance of dance in the popular culture of Latin America comes to the f...

Dor Herskovits takes artistic breadth seriously. In the debut recording of his quintet, drummer Dor Herskovits has created a true album — to revive that nearly discarded description of what was once applied to 78s in bound paper sleeves in unified packages for our grandparents. The Israeli musician, now living in Boston, thinks of "Flying Elephants" ( Endectomorph Music ) as an integral artistic package, in which the music one hears connects essentially to poetry and artwork in the booklet. The 10 pieces the quintet plays aren't so much a suite, though, as signposts on what Herskovits conceives as an artistic journey. If you fly with his notions as well as his elephants, what results is a new concept of Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk applied to original 21st-century jazz. For better or worse, "Flying Elephants" is an album. A totemic pachyderm from Herskovits' Facebook page. I found that the music led me to desirable mental places that the other ar...

Ensemble Music president John Failey took note of the unusual placement of the society's second concert of the season Wednesday as he introduced the Dover Quartet to the audience at the Glick Indiana History Center . The Dover Quartet, shown here in a New York radio studio appearance Finding a date, he said, to bring to town this string quartet, based at Northwestern University, and the busy Israeli-born New York pianist Inon Barnatan meant the holiday-season scheduling of a program without a whiff of Christmastide about it. Inon Barnatan was crucial to an outstanding Shostakovich performance. No matter: Despite the minor mode signaled in the title, the piece bringing the five players onstage had the catchy tunes of the Scherzo and the Finale to buoy the spirits. Dmitri Shostakovich, who husbanded his cheerfulness carefully and sometimes wryly, sent the capacity crowd away happily via this stellar performance of the Piano Quintet in G minor, op. 57. Barnatan spark...

Michelle Louer showed "Messiah" mastery in sophomore outing with the IBO. Last year's initial collaboration on Handel's "Messiah" between the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra and the Beecher Singers of Second Presbyterian Church was so satisfying I just had to return for the deuxieme Sunday afternoon. It was well worth it. Buoyed by Second Presbyterian's fine acoustics, the 15-voice choir and the 18-piece orchestra (for the most part no larger than the body of singers, since timpani and two trumpets are sparingly used) worked seamlessly together, as they did in 2018. Director Michelle Louer's selection of soloists from the choir seemed even more inspired than it did last year. And there was plenty of mostly secure ornamentation in the solos, often with an apt flourish at slowed final cadences, starting with tenor Blake Beckemeyer's picturesque "rough places" in the oratorio's first aria. The performance enjoyed the contrib...

Let me back into this review of "Winston's Big Day (A Very Phoenix Xmas 14)" by relaying a story about me that might honestly cast light on my perspective, which entered its second weekend Friday night at Phoenix Theatre. Years ago, when I was still on the staff of the Indianapolis Star, an editor and I conferred about an upcoming story. The subject of a personality piece was under discussion, and, to indicate the importance of the feature, my boss informed me: "He's really a rock star." I knew the description was intended as a figure of speech, because whoever we were discussing did not perform rock music for a living, as far as I knew. But my immediate response to the editor's description was probably stunned silence, because I was thinking: "Really?!  What did he do ?" With ample support, Winston (Dave Pelsue) morphs into the rock star of his dreams. Turns out the identifying phrase was meant to impress me positively, and the edit...

Mezzo-soprano Mitzi Westra The American art song hangs on to a corner of high musical culture, and there are so many distinguished examples of it that you have to wonder what market forces keep its profile so faint across the land. An unusual example of a local composer providing a set of art-song showcases for a superb singer came our way Tuesday night at Butler University, when Mitzi Westra, assisted by Greg Martin at the piano, performed music of Frank Felice, a composer on the faculty and the mezzo-soprano's husband. The Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall was nearly full for the program. I suspect that the gratifying attendance can be attributed not only to the strong reputations of performers and composer, but also to the excitement among many music-lovers at the prospect of a December concert with no connection to Christmas. Three song cycles and a setting of a Hildegard von Bingen antiphon made up the program,  representing Felice's work over a 30-year span. The ope...