Jay Harvey Upstage

 For a bargain price at the metropolitan area's arts palace in Carmel, Sophie Faught and her all- Sophie Faught led a distinguished quartet. star quartet delivered with panache some of her recent and older compositions for about an hour Friday night. There were many empty seats at the Palladium, but the size of the audience was enough to give a more than adequate response, confirming the esteem in which the saxophonist-bandleader and her colleagues — pianist Steve Allee, bassist Nick Tucker, and drummer Kenny Phelps —are held in central Indiana and beyond. The seven Faught compositions enabled the band to represent the stature of what she writes and how congenial it can be for elaboration by sensitive artists. The concert opened with Allee offstage, as a piece for trio saluted the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, a distinguished figure in world literature best known for the novel "Things Fall Apart." Bass and tom-toms established an elemental pattern for the tune. The absen...

Stuart Lewis and Paige Robinson in "Ravel Piano Concerto," with guest pianist  Drew Petersen in background. When they are successful, showcases that bring two performing-arts groups together feel like a boon to the whole scene. So, without taking away from many other indications, "Music Moves" not only represents Dance Kaleidoscope and the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra well; it also confirms the area's artistic re-emergence from the worst phases of the pandemic. We had a live-streamed appetizer for the feast David Hochoy has made of Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major just over a year ago, when the first movement was presented . The world premiere of the complete work happened Saturday at Butler University's Schrott Center, t he ICO's 475-seat home. The site has a great floor and a wide spectrum of lighting capability, showing off the dancers as well as the ingenuity and aptness of Laura E. Glover's designs.  At the back of the stage, the ...

Jaime Martin had good points to make.  You don't often find a neat thematic tie-in between a concert program containing a symphonic warhorse and quite recent contemporary music. But that's what the Indianapolis  Symphony Orchestra is offering this weekend as its "Greetings" series approaches its end along with the 2021-22 Classical Series season. Spanish guest conductor Jaime Martin bridged any gap successfully Friday night at Hilbert Circle Theatre, drawing from the ISO a brilliant performance of Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 in E minor ("From the New World") that can sustain comparison with any in my experience. (The program will be repeated at 5:30 this afternoon.) This is true despite a few awry moments. The first of several chords introducing the "Largo" second movement was ill-coordinated. This series is a perfect introduction to the English-horn solo on one of the repertoire's most famous themes. Like many passages in this famili...

 The second International Violin Competition of Indianapolis will always bulk large in my memory because it provided the immediate reason for my hiring by the Indianapolis Star. In performance, intensity and good taste are blended. So the chance to see and hear the winner of that 1986 contest in recital was not to be missed. Kyoko Takezawa has built on her victory that September to mount a significant international career. The recital with Indianapolis pianist Chih-Yi Chen had to be delayed, then rescheduled, as one of the many inconveniences caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.  The current Laureate Series headed toward its conclusion Tuesday evening at the Indiana History Center. The violinist's regard for Indianapolis as a "second hometown" was signaled by the presence in the audience of her host family from nearly 36 years ago and her dedication of Chopin's Nocturne in D-flat, op. 27, no. 2 (in transcription) to the memory of Ania Beczkiewicz (1943-2018), the wife o...

Chances are that the name "Florence Price" has dropped firmly into the consciousness of music-lovers Michelle Cann applies her artistry as a Florence Price advocate. where not long ago the name meant nothing, and her music was seldom heard. Michelle Cann , having finished her education at the Cleveland Institute of Music with two piano-performance degrees just over a decade ago, in 2016 discovered the work of Price (1887-1953) and has made advocacy a major part of her subsequent career. She spread the word further under the auspices of the American Pianists Association Sunday afternoon at Indiana Landmarks Center to conclude the organization's "Grand Encounter" series for 2021-22. Price was represented in the program's centerpiece by her Piano Sonata in E minor.  In three movements, the conventional structure and the mood-painting suggested by the Scherzo: Allegro finale were steeped in African-American music. The difference between such a piece and Price...

David Danzmayr is to the manner born. Music-lovers can hardly feel they've been greeted from an exotic location when a symphony program focuses on Austria. So much of the core repertoire was produced and often premiered in and around Vienna that the options are generous when it comes to bringing forward the Austrian capital, which was once an imperial power in both cultural and political terms. What's more, an Austrian guest conductor is on the Hilbert Circle Theatre podium this weekend to lead the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in a program of major works by Erich Korngold and Gustav Mahler. The first of two performances (the other is at 5:30 this afternoon) of "Greetings from Austria" showed David Danzmayr drawing upon an immense reservoir of energy and attention to detail.  All that came to the fore in Mahler's Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor. Before intermission, the conductor's resources were fully committed to Stefan Jackiw 's pristine interpretatio...

Michael Francis is visiting again this weekend. International politics took a bite out of a season-long theme in the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra 's classical season when "Greetings from Russia" was deleted from the "postcard" designation that has honored several nations so far, with three more to come. Presumably, Russia's continuing assault on Ukraine was responsible, but it's hard to see why some authentic 20th-century products of the Russian muse should fall victim, in a marketing sense, to Vladimir Putin's 21st-century tyranny and aggression. Guest conductor Michael Francis gave excellent program notes from the stage Friday night before the concert's replacement headliner, Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances. Along with Sergei Prokofiev and Sofia Gubaidulina, the program's other composers, Rachmaninoff's life was deeply affected by the Soviet era, largely in a way comparable to Putin's apparent desire to emulate Josef...

From left, Martin, McBride, Allen, Wilson and Wolf in full cry   A marvelous midweek spike in Jazz Kitchen audiences could only be explained by an outstanding engagement, and that was four sets over two evenings by Christian McBride and Inside Straight . I caught the final set Wednesday, and it lived up to the online raves that had come my way, especially about the gig's Tuesday night launch. A seasoned bandleader, McBride has added to his already considerable acclaim as master of the double bass with his smooth, charming broadcast work, including in 2016 co-hosting the American Pianists Association 's competition finals. He is a multiple Grammy Awards winner. From the stage, McBride credited Warren Wolf, a spectacular vibraphonist he first encountered years ago at the Aspen Festival, with the very existence of Inside Straight, the touring quintet that also includes Carl Allen, drums; Steve Wilson, saxophones, and Peter Martin, piano.  That ensemble delivered outstanding vers...