Jay Harvey Upstage

Ju-Fang Liu is also active as a teacher. Ju-Fang Liu made a strong national impression early in her tenure as principal bass of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Alex Ross, the distinguished music critic of The New Yorker, touring major orchestras around the country, praised Liu's playing of the famous double-bass solo that opens a movement of Mahler's First Symphony.  She has built upon her fortuitous elevation to national media prominence by leading her section with aplomb in more than two decades since. Along the way, she got acquainted with  music by former colleague James Beckel , who retired as ISO principal trombonist in 2018. Beckel's compositions have ranged across symphonic pops repertoire as well as contributing to "serious" modernism of a conservative bent. Across this spectrum, his style communicates well on first hearing, and he clearly knows orchestral sonority from the inside out, attesting to his near half-century as a first-chair player.  The...

Honing its craft over the past decade-and-a-half, the Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra spreads its wings Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra further in "Mixed Bag" ( Summit Records ). The eleven pieces are drawn from the leader's muse as well as the library of dependable standards (e.g., "Body and Soul" and "Django"). A trombonist compelled to stop playing because of "embouchure dystonia," McGuinnessnow has  to rely on his band charts individualized with occasional vocals to hold on to his performing acumen. McGuinness' arrangements can cast a chiaroscuro light over their themes. "The Dark Hours" is relaxed but slightly gloomy, yet a lengthy sax solo by Tom Christensen convincingly lends a vital glow to the wee-amall-hours atmosphere.  The solos are dependably well-placed throughout the set. Chris Rogers' flugelhorn gets additional flair from the way the ensemble supports it in his "Rebecca," even though the band almost ...

The way the Phoenix Theatre production of Terry Guest's "Oak" enfolds the play in all respects makes a strong case for a piece of theater that manipulates its audience comprehensively. Pickle shouts her frustration to Big Man, her brother. But that's typical of the mystery/horror genre, which requires investment in its premise that every situation that tests a realistic grasp of life also invites engagement with the supernatural. Neutralizing incredulity has to involve some overstatement in the presentation of character. Set in the deep south, far in spirit and somewhat geographically from the modern urban sprawl of Atlanta, which beckons like a distant gateway to mecca, "Oak" focuses on a malign spirit pervading the tree of the title and its nearby creek. Phoenix Theatre' s black-box stage (Basile Theatre) is the multi-media setting of the production, which runs through June 8. Attendees walk into a darkened space with swampy growths dangling from above...

Derrick Gardner and the Jazz Prophets in full cry at the Jazz Kitchen  A common understanding of prophets is that they predict the future. But prophecy also encompasses telling the truth, as Old Testament prophecy reminds us. So Derrick Gardner's longstanding name of his bands as the Jazz Prophets surely wants to lay claim to the truth-telling function. It's doubtful any creative musician wants to trumpet to the world: "My music may be insincere, but it's pretty good." Truth provides the heartbeat. So we can take Derrick Gardner and the Jazz Prophets as truth in labeling. The fact is substantiated by a couple of discs that originated here a few decades ago during the the heyday of Owl Studios.   And it was further confirmed Friday with the band's return to the Jazz Kitchen. The sextet is directed by Derrick, a fiery trumpeter, with his brother Vincent as first-class trombonist. Completing the front line is saxophonist Rob Dixon, whose local prominence was salu...

I don't often embed conductors' names in my memory if there's no clear evidence I will see Keitaro Harada displays a splashy style on the podium. them in action again, but I made an exception years ago when Keitaro Harada led the Cincinnati Opera production of Missy Mazzoli's "Song from the Uproar."    A striking chamber opera with a theme that's become even more pertinent in the years since  — free choice of individual  identity— the 2017 Cincinnati production was conducted by Harada, a task that he executed faithfully given a piece that must have been difficult to put together.  Going back to my review (linked above), I was hoping to find blurbable language about Harada, but  I was impressed with him in the context of the production's success, especially the composition and the star's show, mezzo-soprano Abigail Fisher. So I was prepared to be impressed Friday night by Harada's debut at the Hilbert Circle Theatre, where he conducted the Ind...

A salutary look at cultural and environmental loss, flecked with characteristic humor, put into David Bellman came back to town to play with current Ronen members and guests. perspective a deeply resonant pair of pre-modernist English works Sunday aftternoon as the Ronen Chamber Ensemble opened its season's finale at St. Paul's Episcopal Church . Michael Schelle's "Kurashikku" was like auditory cataract surgery, clarifying the vision of a few classic themes dear to composers and painters for centuries. The title is Japanese for "classic," and those time-honored themes are "Old Buildings," "The Babbling Brook," "Deep Dark Forests," Rainbows and Sunsets," and "Furry Four-legged Friends." Each movement has a parenthetical subtitle of its own, pointing to a 21st-century undercutting of the sentimental attachments artists make to such images. For the first movement, we learn we ought to regard "old buildings ...

  There's a bunch of classic American plays that probe family life, usually scrutinizing love that's genuine but contains toxic elements. Those charge the drama, enlisting the audience's emotional engagement. Among them are "Long Day's Journey into Night," "The Glass Menagerie," "Death of a Salesman" and "All My Sons." The set of "The Humans," a present-day Chinatown apartment "The Humans," with a week more to run in an American Lives Theatre production at Phoenix Theatre , stands out for me because it goes a step further: The bond of love is genuine, and non-toxic, but is poignantly shown not to have a great chance of winning out. Written in a style that mirrors intimate conversations among  people with a long mutual history, playwright Stephen Karam shows how crippling accidents of sickness and circumstance wound people and threaten genuine reciprocal regard.  With an endlessly able cast, director Matthew Ree...

Reveling in the breadth and depth of his prospects as the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra 's eighth music director, Jun M ä rkl will step off the Hilbert Circle Theatre prodium for a month after this weekend. Friday night he displayed his acumen for filling out the symphonic spectrum with a program of Mozart and Mahler.  When he is back to end the Classical Series in June, he will conduct concerts vividly marketable with two visionary masterpieces: Berlioz's "Symphonie fantastique" and Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor "("Choral"). This weekend, the visionary aspect is concentrated in Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4 in G major, which concludes with a folklorically inspired vision of heaven, its text drawn from "The Boy's Magic Horn." Oh, how alluring apt alliteration's artful aid can be! The ISO touts this weekend by promoting "a program that proceeds from the harem to the heavens." That's a tasteful, accurate...