Jay Harvey Upstage

"Something to Point To" the cast indicates in the finale Chicago radio guru Studs Terkel could talk to anybody, and just about anybody seemed to pour secrets and out-loud perspectives into his tape recorder. His receptivity and shrewd selection of the results generated several books, one of which is bluntly called "Working." How do Americans earn their livings, and how do they feel about it? he wanted to know. An updated musical version with the same title concludes Actors Theatre of Indiana 's 2021-22 season at the Center for the Performing Arts ' intimate Studio Theater. With a host of  mostly well-known songwriters underlining his perspectives, the show makes clear that Terkel's sympathies, though they covered the spectrum, could fairly be described as left-of-center. He cast a jaundiced eye at the upper crust and tended to find virtue, often wrung from necessity, in the lives of the working class and those struggling to climb the social ladder as whi...

  At home with bright decor, the Moderator scrutinizes her prospects. The questions that "No AIDS, No Maids" raises create a kind of pre-echo  that anticipates the personal issues raised by Dee Dee Batteast, the playwright.  Society's current irritations about race and sexuality are percolating in our minds from the start; how they are handled in this one-woman show follows closely behind. The new Phoenix Theatre production  reflects the show's origins in a fringe festival (Washington, D.C.'s). Befitting the one-hour limit of the format and each show's need to register quickly with potentially distracted audiences, there's a message, pointed and definitive, to match the fringe-theater vibe. The title signals it in absolute terms. The author underlines it in censorable fashion with the subtitle: "Stories I Can't F*ckin' Hear No More."  Performed by LaKesha Lorene at the Phoenix, "No AIDS, No Maids" is explicit and forceful in ...

Musical theater steeped in rock and soul genres seems a natural way to adapt 'Twelfth Night." Southbank Theatre Company 's new production enters lustily into this version of Shakespeare's manic Illyria , the setting of a comedy of mistaken identities, both deliberate and accidental.  With music and lyrics by Shaina Taub, based on the conception she forged with Kwame Kwei-Armah, the show is a surprisingly successful adaptation of a mature Shakespeare comedy far from the two-dimensional framework of the early "T wo Gentlemen of Verona," which received successful musical treatment a half-century ago . In a preview performance Wednesday night on the Playground at Indy Fringe , the cast directed by Max McCreary had the momentum right for the frantic action, with the ancient mask of comedy firmly in place. The catchy songs help the story float along and conveniently keep the play from going too deep into the verbal weeds.  Failing suitor Sir Andrew confronts skep...

 The subtitle "Revolutionary Works for Oboe and Piano" could be slightly misleading, but it's in the good cause of showing how different composers respond to threats at the micro and macro levels. "When There Are No Words..." ( Cedille Records ) gathers 20th-century pieces that deserve a hearing not because they are in themselves revolutionary, but because they seem to upset any pristine apple carts that purport to advance music in some kind of pure, self-referential condition. Alex Klein works well with pianist Phillip Bush.    Alex Klein, principal oboist emeritus with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and now holding down the first chair in the oboe section of the Calgary Philharmonic, teams once again with pianist Phillip Bush to put across a program of music by Paul Hindemith, William Bolcom, Pavel Haas, Benjamin Britten, Jose Siqueira, and Klement Slavicky. In addition to the wide spectrum their styles cover, the six composers faced challenges from the world...

Harry Chin uses talismans of his heritage to learn from its ghosts. We've all become used to documentation for the sake of safety and access. Since the pandemic, proof of vaccination has become the "open sesame" to let us into many places we could formerly enter for the price of admission or without charge. Ever more official credentials are required to allow us to vote. Only the arena of guns seems to have been cleared of most legal obstacles in recent years. Imagine the attempt to live securely as an immigrant when your right to be in this country was subject to close interrogation, with wrong answers  speeding you toward deportation. This is the odd legacy that, in the form of the Chinese Exclusion Act, complicated the already fraught adjustments  that immigrants from China had to make here between 1882 and 1943. Legal requirements to admit getting around the law prevailed until 1966. Family life was subjected to sanctioned disruption as it had not been since the day...

Music produced out of despair at wartime destruction with an overlay of shame made the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra' s performance of Richard Strauss' "Metamorphosen" timely Saturday night. World War II was more of a cataclysm than Russia's current assault on Ukraine, so analogies must be tentatively applied. Strauss' reputation, long under a bit of an unjustified shadow because he remained in his native Germany throughout the Third Reich, has always had the benefit of reconciliation with the civilized world, thanks to this expansive showcase for 23 strings. Charles Conrad's program note sets Strauss' lack of complicity with the Nazi regime in a true light, without forced special pleadings. ICO music director Matthew Kraemer capped a program featuring an excellent soloist – cellist Sterling Elliott — with the late Strauss work, the long-honored composer's response to the devastation both caused and endured by his homeland. The variation of textur...

  Ruth Reinhardt impressive in warhorse and  exotic pieces For all the comfort food Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade" provides to the appetite for music that stimulates the pictorial imagination, it is also an exhibition of genius in orchestration. The Russian composer wrote a book on that subject, a kind of inside-baseball landmark of the craft he put on public view so often.  The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra' s return to this masterpiece Friday night, under the guidance of guest conductor Ruth Reinhardt, painted its essence in vivid colors. Conspicuous excellence in the solos threaded throughout the 50-minute expanse lifted the Hilbert Circle Theatre performance to the cheering ovation it deserved at the end.  Chief among them, of course, is the concertmaster's impersonation of the title character, the sultana who spins tale after tale to forestall her fated execution by a jealous husband.  In that role, Kevin Lin shone throughout. His initial solo was a bl...

Major-label fadeaways from jazz decades ago can explain why a 1972 engagement of the Charles Mingus Sextet at Ronnie Scott's fabled London club has remained hidden till now. Columbia Records, at one time a stellar presenter of jazz, started overemphasizing the bottom line under Clive Davis, and the temperamental genius of the double bass and extensive small-ensemble music was among the victims. The gig was expected to generate the next Mingus album on Columbia, but Davis put the kibosh on that plan. So runs the narrative that's part of the abundant gathering of reminiscence and analysis that fills the booklet accompanying a new three-disc set: "Mingus: The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott's " ( Resonance Records ). LP versions will become available Saturday on Record Store Day . The range of energy, commitment, and insight from Mingus and his sidemen, chiefly alto saxophonist Charles McPherson, is impressive. In his remarks to the audience, it's clear the sometime...

It was no April Fools' joke but a harbinger of long-term survival in a tough business when the Steve Allee Big Band inaugurated the Jazz Kitchen on April 1, 1994. Steve Allee taking care of business at the keyboard. The ensemble headed by the master bandleader and father of proprietor David Allee has made an annual tradition out of lighting the birthday candles at the now-venerable jazz club with hot music. On Saturday night, the Jazz Kitchen's properly focused observance of Jazz Appreciation Month continued with the highly anticipated return of the senior Allee's 17-piece ensemble. Catching the second set, I was moved by the concise attention to history, with shoutouts to significant contributors, shared from the bandstand in remarks by Steve Allee and club manager Frank Steans. Allee has long acknowledged his forebears on the Indianapolis music scene in his compositions. Both people and places are worth commemorating musically, he has long felt. Thus the set opened with...

Sean Imboden (upper left) led a new group. Sean Imboden has displayed his remarkable gift for composition and leadership of large-ensemble jazz, so great things could be expected out of his appearance Friday night heading a new sextet. The group was part of an intensification of special programming at the Jazz Kitchen to help put across Jazz Appreciation Month locally in a way only the city's principal venue for the music can do.  It's rewarding to hear new ensemble jazz with well-distributed solos set in the midst of structures that do more than nail down the "head" at the beginning and end of a string of solos. The sextet offered a generous set playing such music, with John Raymond on trumpet, Joel Tucker on guitar, Cassius Goens III on drums, Nick Tucker on bass and Steve Allee on piano. There were also unusual shifts of meter and more than the usual rhythmic complexity. Yet it was all very attractive at first hearing and didn't require deeper understand...

Melissa Aldana solos (backed by Abadey). Melissa Aldana is among the jazz musicians who have taken the lingering pandemic as the catalyst for new music to make up for the decline of working before the public. As often in normal times, going into the studio with the creative result has taken on special importance before going on tour. The 31-year-old tenor saxophonist, a native of Chile, likes to base her compositions on cultural influences outside music. From "Visions," the Motema CD that first acquainted me with her music, she turned from visual art to the esoteric mysteries of tarot, a kind of playing card long regarded as a way to seek personal direction into the unknown. The occult can be a spur to art regardless of a creator's depth of belief. Tarot weaves its way into T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," and occult knowledge had a long-lasting effect on W.B. Yeats' titanic poetic career.  For Aldana, "I took the lockdown as an opportunity to learn ...

  Krzysztof Urbanski in action as music director The key to the transcendent feeling that overtakes Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor in the fourth movement is the vigorous response of the lower strings to brief recollections of the first three. I've never heard such ferocity in that episode as that produced by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra 's cellos and basses Friday night at the urging of Krzysztof Urbanski in the former music director's return to Hilbert Circle Theatre. During the tremendous ovation the performance received at the end from the capacity audience, the four vocal soloists and the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir received due and repeated recognition. But the conductor pointedly cued a collective solo bow from that string contingent. It called particular attention to an interpretive detail that was characteristic of the appropriate stress Urbanski elicited from time to time during the performance, the first of two this weekend. The significance of ...

Creative artists have had all sorts of responses to the pandemic. Especially crucial has been having to address the difficulty of securing work as performances dried up, starting two years ago.  When they were not bringing their art to the public, they had more time than usual to go to the woodshed and work on new paths forward. Melissa Aldana looks out from a position of self-trust. Melissa Aldana, whose 2019 CD "Visions" stemmed from her responses to visual art, chiefly that of Frida Kahlo, has drawn on a different inspiration this time. "12 Stars" draws upon tarot cards, as a way to learn about individual destiny and choices. Both directions, toward interpreting either the Mexican artist or  tarot,  require engagement with a special symbolic world. The tenor saxophonist, born in Chile and now living in Brooklyn, has a group on this recording that's different from this tour, coming here at the end of the week.  When she plays two sets at the Jazz Kitchen on S...

The St. Lawrence Quartet in a soberer setting Making something extra special for the local return of the St. Lawrence Quartet had to take into account the disruptions of the pandemic. But four years after the idea came forward at the instigation of John Failey, a concert covering Joseph Haydn's epochal six quartets designated Opus 20 came to fruition Sunday afternoon. The cool, sun-drenched April day turned out to be perfect for the presenting Ensemble Music Society to take up temporary residence at the Woodstock Country Club. On the program, aptly enough, were all six of the so-called "Sun" quartets. The nickname derives from the title-page illustration of a 1779 Amsterdam edition of the masterpieces, seven years after their composition. An ensemble with a distinctive profile involving extraordinary collective elan, this quartet seems well-positioned to extend its reputation for capturing what's essential about Haydn's foundational contribution to the genre. In...

Joshua Weilerstein whipped up energy with a purpose. The last time the Sibelius violin concerto was played in an Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra concert, the choice of symphony on the program also ended with several widely separated orchestral stabs. But there aren't many other resemblances between William Walton's First Symphony and Jean Sibelius' Fifth. Both are important landmarks in their composer's careers. The better-known Sibelius at the end of Friday's program (to be repeated at 5:30 this afternoon) put a crown upon the Finland installment of this season's thematic series of "postcards" from different nations. The representation this weekend had those two Sibelius works companioned by a slight piece of picturesqueness by Ida Moberg ("Sunrise") and Einojuhani Rautavaara's "Cantus Arcticus."  The secondary works reinforced  Finnish admiration for nature in the northernmost parts of the planet. Guest conductor Joshua Weile...