Jay Harvey Upstage

"A Christmas Carol" deserves a satirical poke.   For nearly two decades, we've gotten used to the nutty fruitcake style of "A Very Phoenix Xmas," a workable blend of ingredients from various sources under curation by one or two certified artistic minds.  These staples of the Phoenix Theatre schedule are never  in the style of something that is surreptitiously regifted, like the stale fruitcakes of legend. Each production stands on its own, and the variety of casting since the aughties has made return visits mandatory amid the welter of "Nutcracker"s and "Christmas Carol"s and "Yuletide Celebration"s.  Vondrell Sisters audition inappropriately. The new version, titled "Sleigh, Queen, Sleigh," takes a turn toward the auteur theory of film-making, with director/playwright Zack Neiditch at the center.  The creative team spotlights the Zach&Zack pairing (with Zach Rosing as sight-and-sound guru)  known from Fringe product...

It's pure coincidence that this post involves significant landmarks involving the number 2 followed by one zero or more. Johann Sebastian Bach's achievements include the frequently mentioned one that he fathered 20 children.  But wait, there's more! This review of Sunday afternoon's "Bach Heritage" concert by the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra i s the 2,000th post on my blog, jayharveyupstage. Nearly all of them are reviews of the performing arts in central Indiana, so I need to express gratitude to many arts presenters who have given me access to events from the start (May 2013). Barthold Kuijken playing the traverso flute Moving quickly to the legacy of J.S. Bach, I can't put it in context better than the Oxford Companion to Music: "Providing the most remarkable array of musical talent ever chronicled within a single family group, [over 70 Bachs] served at some time as professional musicians...from the early 16th century to the 18th."  Of Joha...

Celebrity status to performers on the classical guitar is rare.  Sharon Isbin is one of the few since Segovia Sharon Isbin showed her luster as classical guitarist. to claim that status. On Saturday night at Butler University she shared her aura with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra. under the direction of Matthew Kraemer. The main vehicle for Isbin's artistry was Karen LeFrak's "Miami Concerto," whose three movements carry Spanish names reflecting the character of each. The atmosphere is sunny and relaxed, reflecting the  colorful Miami of Miami Beach more than the overbuilt metropolis choked with high rises.  The work is less a showcase for the soloist's virtuosity than a rich canvas on which guitar and orchestral colors are shared. The rhythmic heft of the guitar, with its percussive articulation, was joined neatly with the percussion section in its outer movements. The contrasting slow movement allowed the guitar's lyrical quality to shine, and when it...

  The master returns for six shows. John Scofield 's visits to Indianapolis have been just infrequent enough to whet the appetite for his next return to town, and this time the guitarist and his quartet, dubbed Combo 73, are in the middle of three nights at the Jazz Kitchen . But in between there is always enough new Scofield music on record to keep fans engaged and not reliant on good memories alone. Seeing the first show Saturday night in the jam-packed dining room, I was impressed by the easy internal rapport of the quartet, whose other members are Gerald Clayton, piano; Vicente Archer, bass, and Bill Stewart, drums.  Note for note, Scofield has one of the strongest personalities among current guitarists. Though he is generous in acknowledging his sidemen and visibly appreciative of their contributions, it's worth remembering that one of his inspired CD titles is "Works for Me." The colloquial heft of that expression includes an offhand acceptance of one's envi...

Indianapolis Opera: Rigoletto entertains the Duke As Giuseppe Verdi started to evolve from the operatic structures he inherited from bel canto , he individualized the musical signatures of his characters, removed some of the cliches of presentation, such as big final ensembles, and musically deep-mined the verbal and dramatic material at hand.   The middle-period landmark of "Rigoletto," which is being produced this weekend by Indianapolis Opera at Tarkington Theater in Carmel, is a striking example of what the Italian master had embraced as his mission took shape. A perpetual hit with audiences since its premiere in 1851, "Rigoletto" lends musical rigor to the melodrama written by Victor Hugo.  The composer loved the story, and it's not surprising that there seems to be nothing offhand about how he treated Francesco Maria Piave's forthright yet romantically brilliant libretto. I'm probably not the only one who, after seeing a performance like the one p...

 Not just a good idea, but a flawlessly executed one: the first-time collaboration between Ensemble Music Society and American Piano Awards , who presented pianist Sean Chen and the Escher String Quartet at Indiana Landmarks Center Wednesday evening. The program of French music from three centuries had every part in place, building to heights in the second half with the Piano Quintet in F minor by the Belgian native Cesar Franck, who lived most of his life in Paris and exerted deep influence on his era's music. Sean Chen won at APA 2013. His career was based on playing organ at Sainte-Clotilde Church in the French capital for three decades. The monster never breathes, Igor Stravinsky once exclaimed about the organ. Indeed, Franck's way of weaving thematic mottos and recycled melodies into his instrumental works maximizes the impact of organ music's connectedness. His once overfamiliar Symphony in D minor is prime evidence of that skill in thematic tapestry and resourcef...

Francis Fullana caught the seasonal spirit. "The Four Seasons," a landmark in the solo concerto genre, the earliest of its type to still be in the mainstream 300 years after its premiere, occupied the main position in this weekend's Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra schedule. I heard the final offering of 2025 in the Classical Series Sunday afternoon as the orchestra departed from its Friday norm because of Halloween. It was the best kind of matinee concert: ingratiating, vivid, and celebratory of waning daylight hours upon the return of standard time. Hilbert Circle Theatre felt amply inviting even without the holiday decorations soon to come.  Jeannette Sorrell was the copacetic host, a conductor-harpsichordist fully versed in Baroque repertoire. Jeannette Sorrell, conductor She was a charming guide to Antonio Vivaldi's four picturesque violin concertos, introducing each one with the orchestra's help in presenting brief illustrations of the Italian composer's...

Without trying to be so eclectic as to strike audiences as a grab bag of Halloween weekend treats, Indianapolis Ballet put a full autumn harvest into "Eclectica!" The District Theatre proved once again that its wide, shallow stage can accommodate expansive choreography, with movement that gracefully avoids running into the walls or the audience. At the same time, it can look as if full-bore energy can be zestfully applied to the task in a limited space. I caught the show Saturday in its next-to-last performance. Shining light on its educational function as well, the company is observing the 20th anniversary of its school — the foundation of the revival that Victoria Lyras and her associates have lent to generating and sustaining professional ballet in Indianapolis.  Carmon: Saying it all in "Words Are Missing" "Eclectica" thus worked in two troupes of tap-dance students into a program that was crowned by ballet dancers holding principal and artist position...

The most surprising of major-composer interactions, judging from the contrast of their mature styles,  temperaments and the genres they practiced, may be  Ralph Vaughan Williams' study with Maurice Ravel in 1907-08. Those lessons in Paris seem to have spurred an advance in the English composer's forging of his mature style. The association amounts to a milestone in the long history of artistic interaction across the Channel between the ancient political and cultural foes. David Sadlier came from Texas to sing "On Wenlock Edge" One of Vaughan Williams' signature accomplishments in his immediate post-Ravel phase was the song cycle "On Wenlock Edge," an insightful setting of six poems by A.E. Housman from his milestone collection of gemlike lyrics, "A Shropshire Lad."  Completed in 1909, the piece was the crown jewel of Ronen Chamber Ensemble 's second concert of the 2025-26 season, titled "Across the English Channel," which will be ...

  Roland Barber plays big horn, and is big with the spoken word as well.  Of all the brassmen-bandleaders I've seen over the years at the Jazz Kitchen , I've never come across one so fond of talking as Roland Barber , who played last night fronting his current quintet  — almost putting the music to the side as illustration of what he had to say. No question that he engaged the capacity audience during the first set. He bantered with the crowd about how they viewed relations between the sexes as well as what moods they wanted the group's music to express. Everyone ate it up, right down to agreeing that the set had plenty of appeal to both jazz newbies and seasoned fans.  Tenor saxophonist Greg Tardy joined the trombonist in the front line, holding his own with his forceful tone and compact improvisational ideas. The rhythm section worked as a cohesive unit and distinguished itself in solos: Clay Perry, piano; Jack Aylor, bass; Joshua Cook, drums. Of the half-dozen tu...

Rebecca Tong leads an inspired ISO program. The European wars of the 20th century, with the rise of Nazism between them, fed immigration to the  United States, sometimes of distinguished artists glad to escape and re-establish their careers.  The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra this weekend concentrates on three of them, adding a young countrywoman of the guest conductor, Rebecca Tong of Indonesia.  All four can claim substantial parts of their lives in America: Eunike Tanzil is a 27-year-old resident of Los Angeles, the metropolis that earlier attracted Erich Korngold and Igor Stravinsky. The latter shares a Russian origin with Sergei Rachmaninoff, and both were already well-known before they settled here. Korngold, a native of Austria, was a wunderkind in his homeland until forced into exile by the Nazi ascent. Here he hit his stride in Hollywood as a major film composer. His Overture to "The Sea Hawk" opened Friday's concert. "The Sea Hawk" is an Errol Fl...

Long celebrated for its blend of history with contemporary issues, "The Crucible" is one of Arthur Miller's most enduring plays. It occupies a position of timeliness in Southbank Theatre Company' s current schedule.  Betty Parris cries out from sickbed as influencer Abigail Williams looks on. It does so in two respects: It echoes a national political crisis of the era when it was first produced (1953), summed up in the term McCarthyism, when credulity about Communist infiltration of society was at its height. Today's widespread fear and anxiety in the face of a more centralized move toward autocracy makes a 2025 production especially relevant. The other benefit is that staging a play in which the supernatural is a crucial element fits the Halloween season like frost on a pumpkin. Believing their values to be threatened by evil forces, most centrally Satan himself, the late 17th-century town of Salem, Massachusetts, gives in to mass hysteria. Before the present tim...

The well-traveled Rosamunde String Quartet Internationally involved through orchestra employment in the United States and Europe, the  Rosamunde String Quartet has been together for a decade, traveling and performing as a unit. On Tuesday evening at Indiana Landmarks Center , the ensemble made a stop on a brief tour presented by the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and  Ensemble Music Society .   It was more than a highly anticipated continuation of the two organizations' annual collaborative concert. It was also a homecoming for Indianapolis native Nathan Vickery, the Rosamunde's cellist and a member of the New York Philharmonic. (Brother Peter is associate concertmaster of the I ndianapolis Symphony Orchestra. )  String quartets are a regular feature with Ensemble Music, whose concerts date from 1945. IVCI laureates have been brought back under the collaborative aegis of recent years: The connection this time is through the competition-j...

Nearly everybody has gone through crises in earning a living that shout the unwelcome message: "You are all wrong for this line of work." To an actor seeking security in a highly competitive field, being "true to yourself" can lead you down false paths. Under consideration must be the possibility that maybe you're just a jerk. Told-you-so moment: Jeff (Tyler Belo) drops F-bombs on Michael as Act Two opens Michael Dorsey (Jonathan Cobrda), the lead character of "Tootsie," the new show  at   Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre ,   is such a practiced, self-wounding  loser. He's the despair of his agent, Stan (Jeff Stockberger), who fires him after another audition failure. When he discovers a ruse that might save his career, Michael must be prepared for upending his personal life as well. That desperate swerve turns the actor into Dorothy Michaels, and Dorsey lands a female role his neurotic girlfriend Sandy (Payton Reilly) wants badly. Dorothy turns ou...