Jay Harvey Upstage

An intermission video presented a relaxed Jun Märkl introducing himself to Indianapolis, and that was Jun Märkl is a native of Munich, Germany, son of musician parents. capped by a short speech of gratitude at the start of the second half. The occasion Friday night was the historic launch of his five-year term as the eighth music director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra . It had all the hallmarks of a special occasion from the moment Märkl  entered the stage at the concert's start, looking immaculately elegant in traditional white tie and tails.  The conventional garb has rarely been seen in recent years here, but there can be no doubt that Märkl  will live up to that dressy standard in the likely polish and careful preparation of the ISO concerts he conducts. The energy of the overall narrative in "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks" was palpable from the opening atmosphere setting of a "once-upon-a-time" mood. The ISO performed with a full measure o...

It's not often that a trigger warning given by a play's director in advance comes close to being a spoiler. But that's just the start of specifics I need to avoid in writing about "The Minutes," the Tracy Letts play in one long act exploring city-council machinations in a prairie town with lots to hide. This review's title, borrowing a famous movie line , comes about as close as I dare. My main business must be to praise the strong ensemble performance Chris Saunders generated from his cast on opening night Thursday at Phoenix Theatre 's Russell Stage. "The Minutes" extends the impressive run of American Lives Theatre, of which Saunders is the founding artistic director. Dentist and new councilor Peel works hard to extract the truth. In its heyday in its old church home under the guidance of Bryan Fonseca, the Phoenix mounted an excellent production of Letts' most famous play, "August: Osage County." Two of his other plays, both p...

The annual collaboration between two well-run musical organizations that focus on individuality came off splendidly again Wednesday night at Indiana Landmarks Center . The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center , with two previous local engagements, both in 2016, was the marquee attraction as Ensemble Music Society and the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis  continued their partnership and combined their large loyal audiences for a program of Beethoven, Shostakovich, and Dvorak. Pianist Wu Han and cellist David Finckel were at the center of the concert. A married couple who also direct CMS and often perform together, they were in the spotlight for Dmitri Shostakovich's Cello Sonata in D minor. Their vivid performance of a composition from the Russian composer's middle period, during which the difficulty of creative freedom in the Soviet Union became severe, had the requisite sparkle and flashes of intensity. Wu Han and David Finckel: classical music's power ...

Jun Märkl: Master of detail as well as the big arc Between now and September 1, Jun Märkl will be deepening his already extensive connection with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra .  Newly signed to a five-year contract as the orchestra's eighth music director, the native of Munich, Germany, draws upon deep experience here and abroad to move from artistic advisor to a more complete and powerful status as director of the ISO's core musical mission, starting with the 2024-25 season. Speaking by phone late Tuesday afternoon after having got to work immediately, Märkl had just come from auditions at Hilbert Circle Theatre, the orchestra's home. For several years, the list of ISO musicians in every program book has included "Acting" in front of several principal and associate or assistant principal positions. "When you do not have a music director, many positions are on hold," the new music director explained, including section positions. "We schedule...

After an unprecedented break between music directors, the eighth man to hold the leading artistic position Jun Märkl cements his ISO association with a five-year contract. with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra was announced Tuesday morning at the orchestra's home, Hilbert Circle Theatre . Jun Märkl , a Japanese-German musician whose guest ISO appearances on the Hilbert Circle Theatre podium go back into the 1990s, takes the logical step upward from several years as "artistic advisor" following the pandemic-shortened tenure of Krzysztof Urbanski (2011-2021). As music director designate, Märkl will conduct the orchestra next weekend in two concerts of music by Richard Strauss . His five-year contract, to take effect at the start of the 2024-25 season, calls for him to  conduct nine weeks of concerts in Indianapolis each season, starting with six weeks the first season, in addition to other duties. Currently, he serves as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra...

His announced program shortened by a bout with flu, Kenny Broberg still left a sterling impression on a Kenny Broberg found a place for a favorite, Nikolai Medtner. near-capacity audience at the Indiana History Center Sunday afternoon, presented by the American Pianists Association. The 2021 winner of the Indianapolis-based American Pianist Awards Classical Fellowship, Broberg now anchors his professional activity with a teaching position at a conservatory in Madrid.  Transatlantic air travel from Spain may have triggered the pianist's having caught the bug, moving him to discard Sunday's intermission and lop off two of the three movements of Robert Schumann's Fantasy in C major, op. 17. It seemed a prudent choice. The Schumann Fantasy is a complex piece; in simplistic terms, you could label the second movement  technically challenging and the third movement spiritually so. The finale has two of those "goosebump city" moments for me – great buildups of tension ...

In 1936, about two years before the ghastly portent of Kristallnacht, a Nazi gang pulled down a statue of 2022 IVCI silver medalist solos in Mendelssohn. Felix Mendelssohn in Leipzig. So, even though he lived and died long  before Germany's accelerating descent into anti-semitic madness, the North German composer from a distinguished Jewish family counts as one of the "Silenced Voices" saluted in the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra 's concert Saturday night at Schrott Center. Taken as a significant harbinger of the Holocaust, widespread vandalism that flared up when Jewish shops and synagogues were torched and smashed left shards of glass on pavements, inspiring the designation of "crystal night." Destroying the Mendelssohn monument had given notice that even assimilated Jews of great contributions to German culture would be destined for elimination if they didn't manage to escape. Two other Jewish composers of historic importances in "Silenced Vo...

Early-music specialist Jeannette Sorrell guest-conducts ISO.   "I am the darker brother," Langston Hughes advised and warned his white (and unwilling to acknowledge) fellow Americans. Classical music has recently moved to extend such acknowledgment to its darker brothers and sisters, and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra follows the trend this weekend in putting Joseph Bologne (1745-1799), a biracial, multitalented aristocrat often known better via his French knighthood as the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, shoulder-to-shoulder with a younger contemporary, Wolfgang Mozart.  Hughes' poem, "I, Too," quickly brings in the compelled inferiority of his race through the imagery of having to "eat in the kitchen when company comes." Sometimes not feasting at the main table is posthumous as well: Hughes' poem implies that and the historical record can bear it out. The question remains as to how worthiness to take a better seat can be fairly judged, given the...

One of my favorite quirky websites on the Internet must be rendered on a family blog as Composers Doing Normal Stuff   because of its vast, varied collection of candid photos putting creators of musical sublimity and ultimate craft into connection with the common activities of those of us less gifted.  A recent visit, for instance, presented to me shots of Benjamin Britten as a curly-headed youngster playing with a toy boat in the sand, shirtless Duke Ellington eating several ice-cream pints in bed, Krzysztof Penderecki carrying a small, withered uprooted tree over his shoulder, and Vincent Persichetti dragging a freshly cut one behind him on the way to Christmas. One of the joys of contemporary dance is the way it turns normal activities and movement  to dance purposes, such that the line between "normal" and artistic purposes is imaginatively and indelibly crossed. The extra techniques available with film technology allow dance expression to become even more polyg...

There's not a chance anyone attending "Fannie" at Indiana Repertory Theatre will have to question: "Do I Collette Pollard's evocative set frames the action. really like this person?"  Relatability tends to be a major quality in the reception of any one-actor show, and Fannie Lou Hamer, as played by Maiesha McQueen, is a hugely appealing figure. Even a closet racist would be unlikely to object, like this, for instance: "Well, there's a lot to be said for segregation, especially if whites are in charge of it." (Okay, maybe such resistance is implacable, but mostly uttered from the closet, where it should stay.)   Theater fans who prefer a little more distance from a character, at least to allow time to forge a rapport with the sole person portrayed onstage, might be a tad uncomfortable with this kind of presentation. McQueen engages with the audience from the get-go. Whether in her kitchen or preaching at church, on the stump as a political can...

  Ensemble exuberance in "Stories from the Corner Bar" Joshua Blake Carter's curtain speech gave Dance Kaleidoscope 's opening-night audience Thursday a concise, graceful indication of how the transition from his illustrious predecessor as artistic director, David Hochoy, is settling in. Before "Divas A-New" took the stage, the audience at Schrott Center for the Arts (a new venue for the company) got brief exposure to DK's educational wing as two student troupes performed. That was a charming showcase for what's been possible since DK moved into a new permanent rehearsal and educational home in 2020. The solidity of the professional company no longer had to pose questions as to whether its growing profile was anything more than a castle in the air.  Setting aside what the hyphen in the program title must mean (since "anew" would seem to convey the idea), it's clear the "divas" idea builds upon the popular focus in earlier pr...

 "Change of Life" writes the ticket for "Menopause The Musical." Attending "Menopause the Musical" as a male senior citizen presents more than the usual challenge to relating to lives far from one's own — especially when biology dictates the difference. The challenge can be met through a reasonable exercise of sympathy with a crisis that men with female partners experience only secondhand as couples advance into middle age. The show is opening Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre' s 51st season, continuing through Feb. 4. The production requires the ultimate in change-of-life pizazz from its cast of four. When I saw the performance of Jan. 6 (putting aside the disturbing third-anniversary resonance of that date), it received that level of comic energy from Enga Davis, Melanie Souza, Nancy Slusser, and Kimberly Vanbiesbrouck.  Written by Jeanie Linders, "Menopause the Musical" follows a simple dramatic arc, from conflict through mutual underst...

 William Inge's breakout play, "Come Back, Little Sheba," was described in brief by the last mid-century's dean of theater critics, Brooks Atkinson, as "a bare, almost clinical character study" in his introduction to the widely circulated "New Voices in the American Theatre" (Modern Library). Bernie and Donnie carry off Vince as Sue tries to calm Claire. A key example of damning with faint praise, perhaps, but a clue as to the challenges and rewards of looking at the later Inge play that American Lives Theatre is currently presenting at IndyFringe .  "Natural Affection" scrutinizes a mother-son relationship with authentic overtones of Freud's Oedipus complex. If "character study" perhaps highlights the limitations of this kind of theater, the phrase applies with such resonance to American lives in the country's often rootless big cities that the antiseptic constraints of "clinical" are shattered. A failure in 1...

 I remember from my adolescent years as a Down Beat subscriber the damning with faint praise a release Cal Tjader had clear artistic vision. by Cal Tjader was likely to receive. As a result, I never parted with any of my meager disposable cash to buy an LP by the California vibraphonist.  From later acquaintance with Tjader's success as a Concord Records artist I sensed that there is indeed an easy-listening mist pervading his music. The Latin groove became influential and well-developed as a Tjader signature.  I suspect that the traditional Down Beat orientation toward the East Coast may have been behind the magazine's lack of enthusiasm for Tjader. Moreover, the influence of Latino giants purveying more excitable, jazz-oriented dance music, such as the popular mambo king Tito Puente, took over this mid-century jazz offshoot. And then there is Dizzy Gillespie's deeply informed ride on the idiom through most of the trumpeter's career.  "Catch the Groove — Live a...