Jay Harvey Upstage

Multiple views of Steve Allee addressing Saturday's audience It's always a treat, and there's always new material jostling with old favorites when the Steve Allee Big Band returns to the Jazz Kitchen . The pianist-bandleader is forever writing, it seems, and when he speaks about "our new composition" it doesn't come across as "the royal we," but rather a way of emphasizing his sturdy zest for collaboration with excellent musicians. That was consistently evident in the band's second set Saturday night. The 18-piece ensemble always rivals the cookin' going on in the club's actual kitchen: Mouth-watering, palate-pleasing, and both easy and stimulating to digest. That prevailed from the well-knit opener, "Doppelganger," which settled into a full-ensemble riff behind the solo partnership of the pianist and vibraphonist Rusty Burge, to the deceptively chaotic "Bus to Belmopan," one of the old favorites. There were a few visi...

 Events that turned Detroit into a war zone in the summer of 1967 resonated with me as a Michigander in far-away Cambridge, Mass., where I was a graduate student.  I went to a newsstand in Harvard Square known for its stock of newspapers from major cities, only to find the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press sold out. I had to play catch-up with the cataclysm in an era that now seems so remote when it comes to the way news is disseminated. I caught up with TV news on the fly, but typically for a student, I had no TV of my own. "Detroit '67" is an imaginative look into the ways in which the summer turmoil wrenched from its moorings family life in the inner city. Attempts to restore civil order slid into violations of civil rights, continuing a pattern that has scarred African-American life to this day, as it had from emancipation on. In 1967 indignities that seemed matters of Motor City habit became both intensified and concentrated. Dominique Morisseau's lengthy two-...

Mythology rears its puzzling head in the very title of Ricardo Melendez's play "Angel on Eros," whose run of three performances closed on the last day of IndyFringe Festival' s opening weekend.  Yet the play  is an enthralling exploration of a love affair with the transactional burden of many a real-world relationship. Angel (pronounced An-hel) doesn't descend from on high to consort with the ancient Greek god of Brezdyn La Dieu and Ricardo Melendez in "Angel on Eros." passionate love. He is a Hispanic painter, perhaps Puerto Rican like his creator Melendez, who plays him with fervor and a twinkle in his eye. Sunday's performance had the creator's zest operating at full force. Melendez, formerly active as an Indianapolis actor-dancer,   is now producing director of Actors' Workshop of Virginia.  And, true to the mischievousness of the deity the Romans called Cupid, Angel is open and "on Eros" to the seduction carried out by an unha...

Of the six places where IndyFringe  Festival shows are available this year, my favorite may well be the IndyEleven theater. That's the addition to the church-building focal point of the Fringe operation at 719 E. St. Clair St. Audrey Johnson sings her way through women's struggle to vote. Whether attendance in that small space is full or sparse, the venue conveys the sense that your presence is special, that the intimacy of the experience is welcome (though less so to the performer if there are lots of empty seats). Fitting the scope of the production in two instances on the first festival weekend were performances I saw of "Breakneck Romeo and Juliet" and "We've Come a Long Way, Ladies: A Musical Celebration of the Women's Suffrage Movement." Both solo shows connect with aspects of our cultural heritage that are likely to be familiar to festival patrons. The historical impact of the fight for the 19th Amendment to the U.S. constitution registers on ...

As a way to showcase the choreographic visions of its dancers, Dance Kaleidoscope 's annual visit to the Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival always offered insights into the company's wealth of creativity. This time around, with the transition to new artistic directorship having just taken place, the public is afforded a bridge to the future.  Introducing himself artistically to the public, Joshua Blake Carter also spoke engagingly to the audience Saturday afternoon in the Athenaeum's Basile Theatre. Having been in Indianapolis just a month as the DK's artistic director, Carter shares the program's content with retired artistic director David Hochoy and associate artistic director Stuart Lewis. The message of continuity is complete in "Diva Feva," which has two more performances next weekend. The divas of the title are vocalists brought forward in the works selected, one of them indirectly. "How Long Has This Been Going On," the Gershwin classic...

 I can't help thinking of a long-defunct San Francisco nightclub when I take in a solo show at the Fringe Festival. (A hit Kingston Trio LP was once in the family record collection.)  Each such act embodies and celebrates "the hungry i," the stress and bravado that the ego assumes when it wants something beyond itself for validation.  At its best, the emotional need joins forces with imagination and hard work to yield something that suits fringe festivals well. Friday night I found that doubly true as I attended "Inner State Stories" at the Athenaeum and "Big Dad Energy" at Indy Eleven.  The genres of storytelling and standup are well-represented by those two shows, respectively. Jamie Campbell builds on the Fringe tradition of first-class standup comedy in "Big Dad Energy." Unpacking the title to provide a through-line to his show, Campbell riffs on the childlessness of himself and his equally middle-aged wife, exploring the "what-if...

 "Being Rob Johansen" is an IndyFringe show designed to celebrate Defiance Comedy 's sustainability through the tensions generated by the celebrity of one of its veteran members. It opened Thursday at the District Theatre mainstage as the 2023 festival got under way. The title character (the word is chosen for its manifold resonance) is the well-known actor himself in a show written and directed by Defiance's Matt Kramer. Johansen interacts with his colleagues in a manner that requires a maximum amount of self-exposure and manic, targeted teasing in a musical-comedy setting. It takes a strong man to play to many men's secret wish to be a public phallic symbol. But that's only one frame within which "Being Rob Johansen" is placed: the catalyst is the rehearsal process for a piece called "Dick Ninjas," soon to be jettisoned because of the putative Rob's huge ego.  From there comes a significant segue into the cult hit film "Being Jo...

For many years I've counted Bob James as being on questionable territory when it came to the jazz I was interested in. He was part of the "smooth-jazz" subdivision that emerged during an era of jazz's marginalization after the metastasized rock revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Was he approachable to a fault for the masses? Was his music a watered-down amalgamation of rock, soul, and the jazz tradition? Being sampled by hip-hop artists in recent years hasn't helped settle the question. Bob James is showing local audiences he knows his way around the piano.     Clearly, how to get a purchase on Bob James has been a problem. The encyclopedic editions of Morton and Cook's "Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD" don't give him an entry, though his name appears in several places as a sideman, according to the index. He apparently never caught the ears of the New Yorker's Whitney Balliett, whose "Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954-2001" does...

Bandmates Nick Tucker and Kenny Phelps focus on Zach Lapidus. It seemed a perfect start to a reunion session with special guest Zach Lapidus and Kenny Phelps. On Sunday night at the Jazz Kitchen , Phelps laid down a drum pattern at first unaccompanied, with a snare drum emphasis as the pianist entered. There was something mercurial about how both musicians played, yet the quirks always worked together, as they continued to do when bassist  Nick Tucker joined, setting up a solo during which, contrary to the cliche, nobody in the nearly full club talked.  The audience atttention remained steady and enthusiastic over the hour-plus set. Opportunities to hear American Pianists Association competition finalist Lapidus live here have been rare since he left town in 2014. The solo set the tone for much of Tucker's playing in solos that were strongly defined and firmly phrased, intense but never cluttered or frantic. The piece was "Windows" by Chick Corea, and a smooth segue t...

 In an expansive project interrupted by the pandemic, Chuck Owen directs the WDR Big Band in his arrangements and compositions on "Renderings" ( MAMA Records ). Before the worldwide interruption fell, he invited over  Sara Caswell, a violinist who has raised her Bloomington background and Indiana University jazz training to national prominence, for a couple of pieces included in the eight-piece recording. A year and 10 months separate the two sessions that make up "Renderings."  Meeting of minds: Sara Caswell and Chuck Owen In his booklet notes, Owen goes into considerable detail on how "Renderings" came together. There are some arrangements revised from their original contexts, one new piece, a standard, and compositions by members of the German ensemble, which was established after World War II at a Cologne radio station, Westdeutsche Rundfunk (WDR).  Caswell is featured on Chick Corea's "Arabian Nights," and clearly sets the mood for an ...