Jay Harvey Upstage

Rarely does an encore confirm with such insight a performer's artistry as in Wednesday's debut appearance The street-wise Isidore String Quartet here of the Isidore String Quartet under Ensemble Music Society auspices. You could see the value in how the group uses the first fugue in J.S. Bach's "Art of Fugue" as a way to reconnect in rehearsal with its characteristic identity and in sound checks before concerts. (It must be a successful habit: The Isidore this year won an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and last year the Banff International String Quartet competition in Canada.) That's the rationale that cellist Joshua McClendon offered the capacity audience at the Indiana History Center. The successive entries of the four instruments (which is also the arrangement used by Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in a controversial recorded orchestration of Bach's final work) prioritizes mutual listening from the first note onward in each

Fond memories of the "old" Phoenix seasonal show give a buzz like rum in the holiday entertainment egg nog. That treat has been newly spiked by Ben Asaykwee and Claire Wilcher in "A Very Phoenix Xmas Returns." Unlike the much-missed founder Bryan Fonseca's annually curated anthology of sketches by a variety of The cast in full cry for the season's joys and otherwise writers, the new show relies on the creative fecundity of the two collaborators and their zest for performing, with the cast filled out by Carlos Medina Maldonado and Shawnte P. Gaston.  As seen in the second performance Sunday afternoon on the Phoenix Theatre Cultural Center' s Basile stage, the show refracts Hoosier holiday phenomena through a satirical prism. The humor is broad and goofy, with a large admixture of trenchant wit. The show is not without heart, however, chiefly in the implied advice to take what remains significant to you in how Christmas is celebrated and tolerate the res

Wes Montgomery reflecting the joy he brought to his music.  Zev Feldman's restorative efforts on mainstream jazz from decades ago have yielded several CD albums on the Resonance label representing Wes Montgomery, the most enduring and influential jazz figure to have come from Indianapolis. The latest, "Maximum Swing," representing the guitarist at New York's Half Note with the Wynton Kelly Trio, is the third that I'm familiar with. I'm fond of "Echoes of Indiana Avenue" for its connection with Montgomery's roots in his hometown. Here I want to use as a point of comparison "Live in Paris: The Definitive ORTF Recording,"   the product of a concert engagement in March 1965 with pianist Harold Mabern as the main collaborator. Filling out the central group before a highly receptive French crowd are bassist Arthur Harper and drummer Jimmy Lovelace, with a special appearance by tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin on "Full House" and &q

Meadow Bridgham's program notes on a new CD by Richard Ratliff, emeritus professor of piano at the Meadow Bridgham University of Indianapolis, make explicit their* debts to musicians they've known directly and remotely.  Such explanations are an aid to encountering new music. They might make it difficult not to overdetermine a response to it. But over the course of Ratliff's performance, the composer's unique personality shines through; it's not a web of derivations. "Seventeen Years & Other Works" comprises Bridgham compositions for solo piano. Those who access the recording (www.bridghammusic.com) will get an apparently first-rate introduction to a composer of deep Indianapolis roots.  A tribute to a piano teacher, the late John Glennon, goes by the intimate name of "John's Dream." It sets out an open-ended feeling with some implicit characterization of a hard-to-reach personality. The music rises to a plane of peacefulness while still

It's been less than three months since I heard the Steve Allee Big Band at home in the leader's son's Steve Allee: rapport with the public in word and deed durable club, but I missed it already. Absence not only makes the heart grow fonder; the musical appetite salivates as well. It was time for a pre-Thanksgiving feast.  So, with a full house at the Jazz Kitchen Saturday night, I luxuriated in the latest from the 17-piece ensemble. Midway through the second set, I thought here's a big band with the collective chops of one of those West Coast aggregations with personnel seasoned in lucrative studio work (at least in the days before synthesized cinema pablum) who seem ever ready to let loose delivering jazz. Think of Gerald Wilson, Terry Gibbs, Bob Mintzer, and even the Tonight Show band under Doc Severinsen.  I know those only from recordings, but here we have that performing glory among Hoosiers (a few of them honorary) with the advantage of drawing from the stellar

Ryan King and Nancy Ambrose King, concerto partners with the ICO.  The Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra took on extra players Saturday night for a program featuring a work by its current composer in residence, the prolific Miguel del Aguila.  Besides the temporary hires, two guests were on hand solely for that piece, "Concierto con Brio": oboist Nancy Ambrose King and clarinetist Ryan King, two prominent Michigan musicians who happen to be mother and son. Music director Matthew Kraemer chose program mates for the double concerto that made good use of the extra players, ending with a mixed spectacle by Jacques Ibert, a 20th-century Frenchman with a kind of a one-hit wonder status as the composer of "Escales" (Ports of Call), an attractive Mediterranean travelogue. More about his "Tropismes pour des amours imaginaires" below.  As for the del Aguila piece that centered all this robustness of concert personnel, it brought the duo rapport of the guest soloists im

Many indications of how Brooklyn Rider stands out from the abundance of young string quartets were  confirmed for me by how they managed to make two discs of Philip Glass interesting. Brooklyn Rider in an upbeat pose at the opposite pole of the Schubert it played. That was several years ago, and to my ears, the preparation — to the point of artistic triumph — of music of "repetitive structures" (which the composer prefers to "minimalism") must pose almost more of a challenge to players than even the high modernism of Elliott Carter and others. To this listener, the challenge never went away, but I have been  moved to great admiration of this ensemble out of its commitment across broad musical terrain. The musicians (Colin Jacobsen and Johnny Gandelsman, violins; Nicholas Cords, viola; Michael Nicolas, cello)  put both old and new music into personalized contexts, allowing for maximized expressive distinction over time.  Brooklyn Rider's name puns on "Blau

Deft arrangements for a nine-piece band, sparkling with capable solos and a bulk of new pieces, have Hickey-Shanafelt 9ollective (with slightly different personnel) outside Jazz Kitchen so far in its young life consistently characterized the Hickey-Shanafelt 9ollective (pronounce the "9," but see it as a stand-in for "C"). On Sunday night, its fourth appearance at the Jazz Kitchen introduced "Kaleidoscope Suite" to the club's patrons. The climax of the set began when Kelsey Behl approached an easel set up on one side of the bandstand and started work on a blank surface as the band also got to work.  With the random, bright-colored patterns of kaleidoscopes as inspiration, she introduced parts of the spectrum, guided by the designed progress of the suite written by co-leaders Alex Shanafelt and Kent Hickey. Dominance passed from yellow ("Alchemy") through red ("Ardent Passage") to blue ("Liminal Current"), capped by a sum

Carmen's body language works on Don Jose's soul. There could be more of an issue deciding whether Georges Bizet's "Carmen" might better be titled "Don José" than the minor matter of whether the "j" in his name should be pronounced the Spanish way or in the French manner, like the "s" in "pleasure." (The latter is correct, by the way, given the French libretto.) As Layna Chianakas, the director of Indianapolis Opera' s current production, points out in her program note, the action and the musical development highlight changes in the love-besotted Spanish corporal's character, while the tempestuous gypsy remains the same throughout. The fascinating puzzle about Carmen is whether her oft-proclaimed devotion to personal freedom has a chance against the recurrent, and decisive, power of fate. This show uses a few telling gestures indicating Fate is boss. The flower that the combative cigar-factory girl flings at Don José

When monarchy was in flower,  tangles of succession disputes embroiled nations and changed history. They tended to revolve around family tension and personal ambition. James Goldman's "The Lion in Winter" scrutinizes the challenges a strong 12th-century English king faced with kinship difficulties to the point of family dysfunction and hegemonic decay. Southbank Theatre Company opened a riveting production of the play on Thursday night in Shelton Auditorium . The language is elaborate, with many barbed, witty exchanges. Becky Schlomann has brought out of her three-dimensional cast thorough commitment to the relentless maneuverings of characters close to Henry II, who in 1183 is approaching the end of a thirty-year reign and trying to steer the way to a succession that will preserve his kingdom. Troubles of his own making have centered on his womanizing appetites and emotional distance as a King Henry II roars his need for control to the heavens. family man.  The crucial

A recent discovery new to this continent makes the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra 's pre-Yuletide Celebration program this weekend especially exciting. Nadia Boulanger's Fantaisie variee for Piano and Orchestra had been performed in North America by only  Dariescu strives to represent women in repertoire. one orchestra, the Houston Symphony, before Friday night's Hilbert Circle Theatre concert. Its champion, Romanian pianist  Alexandra Dariescu , is on hand as soloist, as she was in Houston. The final performance is this afternoon at 5:30. The French composer (1887-1979) is best-known as an influential teacher, whose Paris studio attracted many young American musicians about a century ago, including Virgil Thomson, Elliott Carter, and Aaron Copland, and continued to provide a sort of finishing school for composers internationally for decades. Fantaisie variee was composed in 1912, and over its 20-minute length shows an eclectic gift for blending aspects of French romant

The body, twinned source of Plato's perpetual mind-body problem — and, coached by death,  the eventual Joe struggles to move crate left on his front porch. winner in that tussle — provides the title of a new play by Steve Moulds that opens Phoenix Theatre' s 40th season. "What do you want to do with the body?" may be the ultimate question any parent dreads hearing. Even worse is coming up with an answer. The painfully extruded answer in one fracturing family occupies the whole of this one-act show, made especially creepy by the technical wizardry available on the Russell Stage. Dire physical realities accomplish their inevitable mind screw-ups, which theater rushes to realize. Mike Lamirand's sound design grabs the attention before the first speeches of the two characters, anxious stepfather Joe (Bill Simmons) and nine-year-old Abby (Paige Elisse), offspring of Joe's wife's previous marriage. Their initial dialogue is deliberately sit-com bland, evoking

In a position both personally and historically to celebrate Sergei Rachmaninoff's 150th birth anniversary, Olga Kern delivered powerfully her own tribute to the Russian composer Sunday afternoon at Indiana Landmarks Center. American Pianists Association opened its season with a visit from the Russian-American pianist, who in 2001 became the first woman ever awarded the Gold Medal (shared with Stanislav Ioudenitch) in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition .  Olga Kern distinguished herself in competition and now has her own.  Putting a prominent stamp upon everything she played at Indiana Landmarks , including three encores, Kern could be summarized in her choice to give voice to "Sphinxes," a movement of Schumann's "Carnaval" that the authoritative voice of Clara Schumann recommended never be played.   Kern made maximum use of her strong command of the Steinway's bass to make a brief rumble of chords out of what the composer notated as three

After a customary and unsolicited compliment to Carmel's Palladium, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields chamber ensemble got down to business as it opened its current North American tour with Carl Nielsen's Serenata in vano . The Danish composer's playful quintet, composed in pre-war 1914 and reflecting the golden twilight of the romantic era, is scored for clarinet, bassoon, horn, double bass, and cello. It made an ingratiating start to Saturday's concert in the Center for the Performing Arts ' Classical Series. Hornist Stephen Stirling's droll introduction from the stage, including that praise for the hall, was also apt for the implied scenario it set behind the three-movement piece. The unusual instrumentation in particular allowed each instrumental voice to stand out and display the Palladium's fine acoustics for unamplified music. The strings and winds frolicked conversationally in the interplay of the finale, a movement that implied the vainly ser

The issue of whether to segregate new music by dedicating concerts to it has been settled in favor of putting it shoulder to shoulder with acknowledged classics. That seems to reflect a "both-sides-now" marketing at the symphony-orchestra level, the perpetual mainstay of public presentation of classical music. Thus, there are Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra programs like this weekend's "Brahms and the Alexander Shelley was a welcoming host and advocate. American Spirit," which I heard Friday night and will be repeated this afternoon at Hilbert Circle Theatre. It is presided over with the useful attitude of salesmanship by guest conductor Alexander Shelley . Attendance seemed sparse, which might indicate that this sort of blended programming is no guarantee it will draw relatively better than conventional programming without a conspicuous mixture of old and new. Shelley, an affable communicator both in the Words on Music presentation and remarks from the podium

 "Galore" is one of those odd adjectives that's always used postpositively, instead of in front of the noun it modifies (like "attorneys general," though some no longer consider "attorney generals" a mistake).  "Galore" is from the Irish and it means "abundant" and "plentiful," so let's concede that three quartets making up a full concert program are enough to justify the title "Quartets Galore." It opened the Ronen Chamber Ensemble 's 2023-24 season Monday night at the Indiana History Center. And, if you'll forgive the pun, I intend to post positive thoughts here about the performance I heard. Music-lovers who missed it ought to put a repeat of the program on their schedule: October 30 at Second Presbyterian Church. Gregory Martin talks about Schumann at "Quartets Galore."  In addition to pieces for four players by Schumann and Mozart, there's another quartet involved: Ronen now has fou