Jay Harvey Upstage

The experience of having streaming access to theater under the current pandemic conditions presents nagging temptations to critic and patron alike. Granted media access to cover Indiana Repertory Theatre' s season, I have a time-limited opportunity to see such a show as "The House That Jack Built," a new production of playwright-in-residence James Still's 2012 drama, the first of a prize-winning trilogy. A paying patron might well take advantage of repeat viewings, in whole or in part. For me, it's almost a matter of conscience: Shouldn't I allow myself only one real-time exposure to a play before writing about it, just as I would have to do when I used to attend opening nights in person? But then, memory is imperfect and first impressions have an unevenness or a teasing ambiguity to them. Why not go back and firm up anything that might be blurry in recollection? Isn't that more responsible? Exit full-screen mode, take the mouse and swipe left, picking up ...

The high arts have recently been taken to task because new "product" sometimes fails to indicate how Laura Kaminsky draws upon nature and human events. engaged it is with present difficulties of consuming interest outside the arts. Does new art deserve a place in our current conversations if it follows self-contained agendas? It's not easy to specify what responsibility creators or performers must shoulder in order to indicate that they, too,  furrow their brows about world issues before sending new material out into that world. It's a bonus when they can show that their extra-musical concerns are vital in shaping new works. Fortunately for her ability to resonate with the Zeitgeist, composer Laura Kaminsky explicitly cites matters like climate change and social unrest as formative. This alone can't justify performers taking up her music, but it must help.  The movements of nature, particularly water, can readily be given musical expression, sweeping before them t...

  American Pianists Association has adapted its presentation of finalists in its 2021 Classical Awards to our Mackenzie Melemed opened the APA recital series. troubled times, with live-streaming of the solo recitals in addition to the opportunity to attend the performances in person. The first of the series was Mackenzie Melemed 's appearance Sunday afternoon at the Indiana History Center. The presentation clearly brought forward the finalist's musical personality while not greatly refracting a variety of music through a distorting individualized prism: The distinctiveness of Bach, Bartok, Schumann, and Laura Kaminsky (composer of the competition piece) was projected throughout with unflagging commitment and deep understanding.  Hearing it online, I was especially interested in what Kaminsky's "Alluvion" sounded like, in light of a recently received compact disc focusing on her piano music in the estimable interpretations of Ursula Oppens. I will post a review of...

Ray Gallon brings well-honed  preparation to his debut. With a resume including alliance with a wide range of jazz instrumentalists and singers, Ray Gallon has arrived at a signature style at the piano that prizes melodic invention and absorption of tradition in service to originality. The works for piano trio on "Make Your Move" ( Cellar Live ) not only offer showcases of his elegantly surefooted articulation and skill at subordinating improvisation to composition, but also emphasize arrangements that ensure prominence of bass and drums. His compatible colleagues are David Wong, bass, and Kenny Washington, drums — like Gallon, both native New Yorkers. Gallon's originals often have pre-existing songs in mind, and their conceptual freshness makes the new pieces occupy parallel terrain to what inspired them. The mainstream style sets some performances in the context of small-group swing, such as the disc opener, "Kitty Paws." The Gallon piece called "That...

Joshua Weilerstein, ISO guest conductor  Constrained though its concert presentation has to be because of the pandemic, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra nonetheless can do its part to sweep aside continuing anxiety, given its renewed vim after 14 months away. On Saturday night, Joshua Weilerstein , conducting the orchestra in the second "Spring Inspirations" concert marking its return to performance for audiences at its Hilbert Circle Theatre home, brought that spirit of revival and zest to a concert capped by Beethoven's ecstatic Symphony No. 7 in A major. Like its predecessor on Thursday, the concert was dedicated to the memory of philanthropist Christel DeHaan. The concert opened with an overture in symphonic form by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a composer sometimes called "the black Mozart." He is among the composers of color lately being brought to the fore in the intensified diversity quest that pervades the world of classical music. His ...

Raymond Leppard, the late conductor laureate of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra , used to speak from the stage of music the ISO was about "to play to you." Guest conductor Peter Oundjian The phrase, a British usage among those the naturalized American citizen delightfully retained from his native England, seems particularly apt when considering the ISO's return to performing in front of an audience seated in its home hall, Hilbert Circle Theatre.  "Play to you" emphasizes the directness of communication to be treasured especially now; it's as straightforward as "talk to you." The concert-giving norm can be glimpsed as the pandemic gradually comes under control. It's for us as well, of course, but seems especially to us as it resumes. With guest conductor Peter Oundjian on the podium Thursday night, the ISO played to us actually (and virtually via livestream)  for the first time since March 2020 — 429 days, by the reckoning of James Johnso...

'Mrs. Harrison': Classmates' encounter reflects uneasiness from the start. The great American literary critic Lionel Trilling somewhere observed that we are read by the books we read. He was presumably talking about the great novels upon which he focused his best work. The statement, typical of Trilling's moral earnestness, can readily be applied to the plays we see and the stories that are told to us. Both present us with narratives, imaginatively peopled, in a linear form that we process over time. And if we are somehow read, or seen, by such art, it must mean more than a recognition that we sympathize with one or more characters, or find that the story strikes deep. It must mean that what is being presented is interpreting our lives in some way, that we are the object of some scrutiny instead of being just a witness, however sympathetic. We end up with a version of ourselves that we perhaps had never acknowledged. What we stake out as essential to our experience may ...

 Surely in the top rank of violinists to come out of Indianapolis, Robin Scott returned this week under The Ying Quartet celebrated return to live action here. Ensemble Music Society auspices as first violinist of the Ying Quartet. He's held the position since 2015, about as long as his two immediate predecessors combined.  His presence nowadays has an air of permanence about it, as only founding member Timothy Ying played with his siblings in the eminent American string quartet longer than Scott. Certainly the mutual rapport of the players was evident in performances Thursday evening of two major Beethoven string quartets: Opus 59, No. 3 ("Razumovsky") in C major and Opus 131 in C-sharp minor. The response of the pandemic-restricted audience at Glick Indiana History Center was ecstatic. To take up the less problematic work first: the Third Razumovsky is an elfin, volatile delight. The tense first-movement introduction gives little hint of the buoyancy to come, but it w...

Last year, there was "Doctone," a much-admired tribute album devoted to Kenny Kirkland as a composer. Noah Haidu shows how personal and fresh paying tribute can be. That allowed Noah Haidu to effect an homage that gave free rein to his own manner of jazz piano.  This time around, a new recording is another oblique way of avoiding mimicry: Haidu honors Keith Jarrett by revealing how inspiring the retired pianist's trio style has been for him, especially when playing standards. Kirkland, whose most notable late-career association was with Branford Marsalis, died at 43 of congestive heart failure in 1998; Jarrett, who turns 76 tomorrow, has announced his retirement after suffering two strokes. In "Slowly: Song for Keith Jarrett" (also a Sunnyside release), Haidu pares the assisting personnel down to bassist Buster Williams and drummer Billy Hart and eschews electronics.  The sidemen get some compositional exposure, with Hart's "Lorca" being the most ...

 The venerable local impresario for visiting chamber-music groups has boosted a return to classical concerts for in-the-hall audiences  by welcoming the Horszowski Trio and the Ying Quartet this week.  Ying Quartet returns for the first time since Robin Scott joined. Ensemble Music Society set a three-day festival on the fulcrum of a joint appearance by both ensembles Wednesday evening at the Glick Indiana History Center. The groups shared the stage at the intermissionless concert for Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's expansive, passionate Septet, following the Horszowski's luminous account of Beethoven's Piano Trio in E-flat, op. 97 ("Archduke"). The Horszowski Trio is festival guest in Zwilich and Feldman works. The landmark Beethoven work, which occupies the summit of music for the combination of piano, violin, and cello, gave the guests a chance to show their command of mainstream repertoire. The night before, the Horszowski had met the unorthodox challenges of Morton ...

Among the signs of concert revival in Indianapolis is the splash Ensemble Music Society is making this  week with its May Music Festival.  Jesse Mills, Rieko Aizawa, Ole Akahoshi The plunge was bracing enough as the festival opened Tuesday evening with a performance of Morton Feldman's "Trio" by the Horszowski Trio . The listener was as much exposed as a perceiver of musical meaning as the performers were charged with delivering a score that, in this performance, requires a two-hour span.  Unaccustomed as I am to musical skinny-dipping, I found the experience both inviting and enthralling on the one hand, trying and exhausting on the other. Often I was riveted by every note and gesture; elsewhere, I confess, I kept fighting to stay focused and avoid mental wandering. Despite the invariably slow tempos and soft dynamic levels, it's to the credit of Feldman's characteristic procedures that I was never close to falling asleep; the performers as well stimulated my att...

"Nascentia" means birth, and what has happened through a lengthy pandemic gestation is a slew of new Steve Slagle heads compatible pandemic studio band. works from saxophonist Steve Slagle, who gives a new disc that title after its centerpiece suite. He has a great ensemble to help him put it across, with a rhythm section (present throughout the disc) of Bruce Barth, piano; Ugonna Okegwo, bass, and Jason Tiemann, drums. He fills out the front line of horns with trumpeter Jeremy Pelt and trombonist Clark Gayton.  "Nascentia" is in five parts, with the full band up to the hopeful, vigorous task in the odd-numbered sections, with short interludes for drums, then bass, in sections 2 and 4. The suite tails off somewhat in the finale, which is letdown from "All Up in It" (No. 1) and "Agama" (No. 3), partly from Slagle's decision to do without the trombone. That makes for a questionable imbalance in an otherwise attractive multi-movement piece. The...