Posts

Showing posts from January, 2025

Weighed in the water: ALT's 'Red Speedo' focuses on fraternal ambition, pressures of competition

Image
Money is the fantasy chlorine in the swimming pool of American aspirations. All four characters in "Red Speedo," an absorbing one-act play by Lucas Hnath, seek subsidized fulfillment while dragging behind them anchors of dependency amid visions of personal wealth. Chief among them is Ray, a competitive swimmer with Olympic possibilities dangling in front Cody Miley as Ray contemplates what's next. of him. But Ray (Cody Miley) has a disturbing history with illicit drugs, and his brother Peter (Alex Oberheide), a lawyer entangled in his own desires, wants to be his professional representative on the big world stage of swimming success.  That's focused on the swimwear sponsorship summed up in the play's title. And that depends on his making the U.S. team, of course, which unfortunately is a goal that for him seems to rely on doping. It's upended his relationship with a drug-compromised ex-girlfriend, Lydia (Paige Elisse), and involved him in an ethical conflict ...

Carmel Palladium return: J@LC Orchestra sharpens its image amid outpourings of skill and energy

Image
View of most of the Jazz at Lincoln Center ensemble, with nearly all players shown having played the Palladium concert. Artistic director Wynton Marsalis is at the upper left. Ten years ago last month, Wynton Marsalis led the Jazz at Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra i n concert at the Carmel Palladium. Of course, the theme was Christmas music , but somewhat removed from conventional treatment and a predictable play list. As the band returned to the Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts Saturday night, I was not  surprised to encounter a totally different program, since holiday music gets a welcome rest for several months. And it's evident that J@LCO has built a sizable book over 30 years in the business under the trumpeter-composer's direction. Thus it has much to offer, as well as a mix of relative newcomers and old-timers in the personnel to play it all. Two of them — trumpeter Ryan Kisor and baritone saxophonist Paul Nedzela — were featured in an unusual dip into the...

A full-spectrum pianist with pertinent ideas: Eliot Wuu in APA Premiere Series

Image
With scintillating performances from Elliot Wuu Sunday afternoon, American Piano Awards neared the Elliot Wuu brings charm and expertise to APA. end of its Premiere Series of solo recitals linked to concerto performances at the Indiana History Center. The fourth of five finalists in the 2025 competition built upon his past success (most notably, 2018 Gilmore Young Artist) when judged against his peers, thanks to his individualistic command of works by Debussy, Schubert, and Chopin. He had something distinctive to say about each. His program-note teasing about the identity of the best-known piece in Debussy's Suite Bergamasque didn't make much sense, since Clair de Lune was explicitly mentioned in the program. Putting that aside, this concise "greatest hit" received a fresh interpretation Sunday. Taking it quite slowly and maximizing its dreamy resonance, the recitalist made the most of the piano's inevitable tone decay. Only the pedal lengthens that process, wh...

Keeping the flame of their homeland's music alive: Fanoos Ensemble plays at the Tarkington

Image
Devoted to the music that speaks to and from their souls is the mission of the family ensemble that played Fanoos Ensemble performed at the Tarkington, with attractive photos on a screen. Saturday night at the Center for the Performing Arts' Tarkington Theater. Those attending concerts of the Fanoos Ensemble on tour in the U.S. can only marvel at and deplore how a consequential shift in the government of Afghanistan erased the study, appreciation and performance of music in 2021.  With the Taliban in control imposing a conservative interpretation of Islam, now that heritage must be maintained by Afghan musicians abroad, including those concentrated at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music' s adopted home in Portugal.  The four members of the band —father Ahmad Fanoos, sons Elham and Mehran, and "brother by another mother" Sohail Karimi — entertained with two generous sets a large, responsive audience. Behind them, a wealth of slide projections conveyed titles ...

Concerto as an ISO concert theme ascends naturally to a Bartok summit

Image
Bela Bartok (1881-1945) I'm uncomfortable with sports-arts analogies, especially with the domination of musical competitions as career builders. And predictions are rife in athletic endeavors, fueled by the global betting mania. But in the sphere of my interest and feeling locked in to the accomplishments of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchesetra under Jun Märkl , I readily gazed into the crystal ball. I confidently expected Friday's performance of Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra to be spectacular. I would not be going out on a limb of local patriotism to put my money (figuratively) on a reassertion of the excellence I had heard on January 17. The performance of the Hungarian composer's crowning masterpiece was bound to confirm my astonishment at the promise of a virtuoso orchestra, which the ISO offered last weekend in Manuel de Falla's "The Three-Cornered Hat." The animated rhythmic precision, the wealth of color, the warmth of tone, and the smoothl...

Dance Kaleidoscope "Nothing Is Forever, Darling" displays range from intimacy to abstraction

Image
The world premiere on Dance Kaleidoscope 's 2025 debut checked the high spirits and romantic cachet of Joshua Blake Carter, DK artistic director the company premieres in the show's first act, which played upon themes of intimacy and estrangement, and moved to the stark formal design of a world premiere in the second act. The program, whose run ended  today at the Schrott Center, is named after the initial work, "Nothing is forever, darling." Joshua Blake Carter calls the piece contrary to usual title style, with no capital letters after the first word. It's designed for the sentiment expressed to seem offhand. The clue is that it's a remark that Rufus Wainwright, three of whose songs are set by DK's artistic director, made in a magazine interview when he was asked about what future he intended with his current lover. The wave-of-tbe-hand statement is an affectionate rejoinder to anyone interested, a reminder that close relationships can't be expected ...

Invitation to the dance: Officially, ISO's eighth music director is off to a brilliant start

Image
Jun Märkl attends to detail and to the big picture.  It's understandable that Jun Märkl's official debut as Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra music director has been marketed as "Jun Märkl Conducts Beethoven's 7th," but the firm indication that he is putting his stamp on the orchestra came first in Friday's night's concert with Manuel de Falla's "The Three-Cornered Hat." Not to take anything away from how Symphony No. 7 in A major, op. 92, crowned the program, as expected. But to delay my commentary on that for a bit, it was stunning how Falla's ballet score presented the ISO as a virtuoso ensemble of unlimited potential under his guidance of the 65-year-old Japanese-German maestro. His popularity as a guest conductor over many years here had been well-established before he became music director designate a year ago . Falla's complex setting of choreography, derived from a pantomime based on a Spanish novel, plays with cuckoldry, tempt...

Ensemble Music Society's 2025 opens with a spirited return by Imani Winds

Image
With the Indiana History Center audience swelled by young people because of the guest ensemble's recent residency at Butler University, the Imani Winds did not forget "auld acquaintance" in its New Year's appearance Wednesday night for Ensemble Music Society . Enthusiastically received from the moment it walked onstage, the quintet delivered an effervescent performance supplemented by pianist Michelle Cann . The program's substantial novelty involved her in a piece by Imani co-founder Valerie Coleman, who was its flutist before retiring to concentrate on composition.  Imani Winds: Kevin Newton (from left), Monica Ellis, Brandon Patrick George, Toyin Spellman-Diaz, Mark Dover. In  Coleman's "Portraits of Langston," bassoonist Monica Ellis took on the narration, for which she was well-suited. The poetry of Langston Hughes was interspersed among the five movements, which were played by Brandon Patrick George, flute, and oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboe...

Beef & Boards opens season: Legendary train travel blended with glamour, murder

Image
Poirot discovers a gun, to Bouc's and Countess's astonishment.  Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre has a sometimes surprising capacity to make stagings of breadth work on its cozy thrust stage.  A production of such a range of action across a large cast opens the 2025 season with Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express," as adapted for the stage by Ken Ludwig. Marc Robin shrewdly directs a company brimful of eccentric characters subject to the lab-scientist scrutiny of Hercule Poirot, the author's signature detective, who's imagined from the play's start as a celebrity in mid-1930s Europe. He's among the passengers on the legendary conveyance known as the Orient Express, with a history that ran a century-and-a-quarter and posh terminals in Istanbul and Paris. His friend Monsieur Bouc, charged with operating the line and upholding its sterling reputation, has arranged to get him a place aboard the sold-out train. It will turn out to be a poten...