Jay Harvey Upstage

 From the stage of Hilbert Circle Theatre Friday night, two of the three founding members of the "garage- Nick Kendall, Ranaan Meyer and Charles Yang make up Time for Three. band string trio" known as Time for Three heaped praise on Indianapolis' contribution to their development as an ensemble during the decade they spent here as ensemble in residence for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Ranaan Meyer, who plays double bass superbly, even credited the ISO and local audiences with deserving some of the glory shed by Tf3's Grammy win this year. Mutual admiration was indeed well-distributed as the guest artists played one of the recent concertos written for them and commissioning orchestras: "Contact" by Kevin Puts. In four movements, with alliteration running through its titles, "Contact" made a hit with the first of two audiences Time for Three is entertaining here this weekend. A repeat performance of the program, which also includes Prokofiev...

I might be something of a moldy fig when it comes to what I like about Kurt Elling's singing. Based on his Portrait of a versatile vocalist: Kurt Elling recordings about the turn of this century, and dating up to his featured appearance at a jazz-piano competition here in 2019, here's the portrait of the artist that's been engraved in my mind: A personal, virtuosic extension of swinging crooners like Frank Sinatra and Billy Eckstine, with a valuable side trip to Johnny Hartman , blended with the verbal facility and scat mastery of Mel Torme and Jon Hendricks. Miles Davis had a salty putdown of fans baffled by his stylistic changes. "So, m-f, am I supposed to wait for you to catch up?" is what I remember reading about his acid riposte to a disappointed fan.  (You can bet that "m-f" is not an exact quote.)  Fair enough: I have not caught up with Elling's transition, though what I heard as he fronted the band SuperBlue  at the Cabaret sounded like a ...

Though there have been frequent mentions here of the 100th anniversary of Wes Montgomery's birth, a Russell Malone turns 60 in November. fellow guitarist's return to town after seven years recalled for me a guitar summit in honor of the Indianapolis guitarist in 2016. Russell Malone then helped celebrate Montgomery (1923-1968) at IUPUI in performance and a panel discussion . His encore engagement here put him in the spotlight at the Jazz Kitchen in the front line of the Indianapolis Jazz Collective. The occasion was one of the more intimate components of the current Indy Jazz Fest . The compatibility of the band jelled quickly in the second set, in which the guest star seemed increasingly to be enjoying himself, going comfortably beyond the 90-minute norm. His sidemen were pianist Steve Allee, tenor saxophonist Rob Dixon, drummer Kenny Phelps, and (brought in from New York) bassist George DeLancey.  When Malone dialed his instrument up to an electric blues jam at the end, it ...

Joshua Bell's history with "my hometown orchestra" goes back to when he had his first professional solo With Bruch as vehicle, Bell and Nelson re-establish their old rapport.  gig at 14 with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra at Conner Prairie. As seen Saturday evening for the ISO's Opening Night Gala from Hilbert Circle Theatre's dress circle, the world-famous violinist looked not hugely  older. The Bloomington native will in fact turn 56 in December.  Apparently having sipped from some unimaginable Fountain of Youth, he strode onstage to join former music director John Nelson for a performance of Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor. His playing had that silky smooth command, with gently arched phrasing and judiciously applied vigor, that I first became acquainted with during the orchestra's German tour in the fall of 1987. Nelson was just starting his last season as the ISO's fourth music director. Far from internationally known, Bell'...

The only book I've ever owned and read based on a Time magazine review is Richard Holmes' "Shelley: The Pursuit," a biography that garnered much praise upon its publication on in 1975. I think I was especially impressed by how the review ended, which went along these lines: Percy Bysshe Shelley's three decades of existence were less a life than a haunting . At about the age the poet was when he died by drowning, I just had to read such a ghost-saturated biography. The truth of that interpretation comes home when the poet's life is seen through the independent authorial stature of his beloved second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley. Though her life settled into the status of Keeper of the Flame, Mary's experience as continually bereaved mother and premature widow is transmuted through a sustained haunting — one marvelous adolescent creation, "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus."  Victor Frankenstein applies himself to work, organ by o...

Returned to his home base, Sweeney Todd celebrates the tools of his trade. Is a grisly drama based on the "penny dreadfuls" of Victorian England perhaps Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece? The sweep that "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" has made across the theatrical world, including adoption by opera companies, has been astonishing over the 44 years since its premiere. That's   no surprise, considering its artistic stature and the opera repertoire's receptivity  to implausible stories. Main Street Productions has mounted a suitably thrilling production of the show at its home in Westfield to open the 2023-24 season. On opening night, the prerecorded accompaniment found the singers well-matched in music that is intricately put together with Sondheim's witty lyrics; musical director Laura Hicks deserves kudos. Andrea Odle's stage direction is trim, forceful and vivid, realizing Sondheim's vision, which is established and sustaine...

  Of all the books about music I've read, Alex Ross' "Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music" is the only one that got me thinking: "Sure, music is important, but it's not THAT important."  Elisabeth gives vent to her exasperation with Friedrich. That private response is no knock on Ross, a much-admired music critic who garnered well-deserved praise for this exhaustive 2020 study. Rather, the idolatry of Wagner and his music-drama had a kudzu-like spread well into 20th-century Western culture, and tempts one to think that no music should be assigned that kind of quasi-religious significance, absorbing and elevating a wealth of regrettable biases into the bargain. Ross' attention to this phenomenon is itself wholly admirable.  Among the most famous early acolytes of the Wagnerian message was Friedrich Nietzsche, the subject of Marcia Eppich-Harris' new play, "Seeking Nietzsche," which opened Thursday night in Shelton Auditori...

G (Senaite Tekle) and B (Diego Sanchez-Galvan) connect. The ambiguities in the relationship of the girl and boy verging on young adulthood in "Sanctuary City" are stunningly illuminated in its second act. And there's enough mystery left over to shadow the play's final lines. But it's the quality of the acting in the first act that makes the ambiguities so moving, even ennobling.  In American Lives Theat re's production of Martyna Majok's play, the performances of Senaite Tekle and Diego Sanchez-Galvan give the relationship of G and B (the Kafkaesque meaning of mere initials being clear enough)  a stature far above the uncertain status "dreamers" face here. Defining people as "legal" and "illegal" according to who they are is among the many sorrows of identity politics when misapplied to its official victims.  The practical dilemmas that must be worked through are complicated by the actual lives of the people in question. These...