Jay Harvey Upstage

In Mike Lew's "Tiger Style!,"  the pressures upon a model minority may lead it to become a mad (crazy as well as angry) model minority. From that madness and that anger can emerge the sort of frantic attempts to achieve fulfillment that pervade the play. The trenchant farce, brimming with social commentary and with a note of restful affirmation at the end, opened a three-weekend run Friday night at Fonseca Theatre Company . To go full Western or full Eastern are opposing missions the show's brace of heroes adopts. Neither attempt to escape their respective identities as they've been cultivated since birth is destined to be successful. Jordan Flores Schwartz, the FTC's producing director, directs an expressive five-person cast, three of Albert and Jennifer at sixes and sevens, with their parents in perpetual background. whom play several roles each.  The set's back wall features a prominent pen-and-ink drawing of the title's tiger, which also resonates ...

 Monika Herzig knows the Chick Corea book — in another sense, she wrote it ("Experiencing Monika Herzig: Chick's music Chick Corea") — so a tribute show at the Jazz Kitchen was bound to be a set of both breadth and depth. And so it was Sunday night, the pianist heading a group with Peter Kienle, guitar; Scott Pazera, electric bass, and Cassius Goens III, drums. On several numbers, Oliver Nelson Jr. stepped in with his flute and piccolo. The show had variety that commendably suggested the range of the prolific pianist-composer-bandleader over 50 years in the jazz spotlight. Herzig took a solo turn to play a piece from Corea's little-known "classical" suite. But she also put on the strap-held keytar with the ensemble in full cry to represent Corea's electric band and the Return to Forever legacy, a major feature in the fusion outgrowth of jazz. The climax of the show, with two examples of the substantial "Spanish tinge" in Corea's output, w...

 "A Midsummer Night's Dream" casts its appeal in several directions simultaneously, and rare is the production that is consistently balanced. Why is this masterpiece so attractive to theater companies? Maybe because they can catch the spirit of the piece while wrenching it here and there and seeing what settles. They can make it look whimsical and intricately planned at the same time — probably just what Shakespeare intended.  Titania cradles the enchanted Bottom. The love interest is split among three levels: aristocratic, supernatural, and raucously young adult. Then there's the nonsense, focused on the gimcrack show a clutch of blue-collar workers concocts to celebrate the aristocratic match, whose celebration rests upon conquest. The Bard supplied the chyron for this show, as he so often does: "The course of true love never did run smooth." About a year ago I saw the last local version before the one I got to on its second night at the Fort Ben Cultural ...

Aznavoorian (from left), Cunliffe, and Ruhstrat So much an ornament and future inspiration in Haydn's chamber music, the piano trio has been an enduring combination up to the present day. Commissioning new music as well as mining the inherited repertoire, well-honed professional trios  continue to refresh the inheritance. Based in Chicago and recorded by the Cedille Records organization based there, the Lincoln Trio has recently saluted the personal heritage of its members with the Grammy-nominated "Trios from our Homelands," in addition to several other Cedille recordings shared with other artists. A new recording meshes the group's professional activity with its hometown as closely as possible: "Trios From Contemporary Chicago" includes three premiere recordings of works written for Desiree Ruhstrat, violin; David Cunliffe, cello, and Marta Aznavoorian, piano. The Chicago connection is particularly inspired by three sites depicted in the opening piece. S...

A significant path to move beyond bebop, the lingua franca of modern jazz, has been how to make large ensemble statements with small groups. It's a shrewd test of arranger resourcefulness: pretend to be big and make the textures throb and expand, while allowing solo voices to poke through.  It continues in the 21st century without necessarily being derivative: it avoids the fusion trap of excessive homogenization, and it has long eschewed the formula of head-solos-head that bebop pioneered in its high-wire act, then wore to a frazzle. John Yao extends a tradition. The main exemplar was Charles Mingus and his Jazz Workshop bands, typically a half-dozen strong. The charismatic bassist showed others how ten or fewer musicians could straddle the divide between collective and individual energy. Less stellar examples made their points in the late 20th century: The almost-big bands of Manny Albam , the Canadian Rob McConnell's Tentet , and the Frenchman Martial Solal 's 12-piece D...

The welcome return of Kevin John Edusei to the Hilbert Circle Theatre podium Wednesday night was an extraordinary showcase for a guest conductor: a free concert presented by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra as a "thank you" to the public. Indoor classical concerts in the summer are rare in its schedule. The buzz grows that Edusei may be a favorite in the ISO's music-director search. Kevin John Edusei conducted Stravinsky's third 'Firebird' suite Wednesday. The hall was substantially filled for a concert ending with a predictable standing-ovation trigger: Igor Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite." But this was the Russian composer's 1945 revision, which is seldom heard. A stickler for clarity and sharply outlined tone colors, Edusei seems to have made a characteristic choice. The revision reflects Stravinsky's neo-classicism, a mid-career style that was to end in the decade after this "Firebird" version, when he adopted the 12-ton...

Soprano Arwen Myers, perhaps dreaming of love The lively program note to the recital Friday night by Arwen Myers and John Lenti sketched as wide a series of attitudes to romantic love in the early Baroque as would be constituted later by the American popular song. The topic of winning and losing in affairs of the heart never grows dull.  "Listen Up, Lovers!" as a title for a concert introducing a voice-centered weekend in the I ndianapolis Early Music Festival caught the durably imperative note in early 18th-century art songs: One addresses love as something one deserves, despite its disappointments. Musically, the repertoire rests on the towering achievements in Renaissance song literature, including the polyphonic supremacy of the madrigal in England and Italy.  The elaborated sentiments take love with enduring seriousness, even when the mood is flirtatious. The duplicities of love expressed verbally encourage cultivation of visual cues: "Love, that fickle little god...

 Returning to town a year after his first post-competition engagement here, Luke Hsu , 2018 bronze Luke Hsu applied an engaging personality. medalist in the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, has made the most of a delayed duo appearance with a fellow laureate, Mélanie Laurent , 2019 gold medalist in the USA International Harp Competition. "French Soundscapes" was the title of a program originally scheduled for last March. Wednesday's concert at the Indiana History Center marked the end of this season's Laureate Series. The partnership worked superbly. Besides duo and solo performances by the two top-prize winners, the concert took in a collaboration with the Ronen Chamber Ensemble in Saint-Saens' "Introduction et Allegro" for harp, flute, clarinet, and string quartet — plus the Pavane from Ravel's "Mother Goose Suite" as a soothing encore. In his 2019 recital, a more conventional program with assistance at the piano fro...