Jay Harvey Upstage

Unlikely new friends Chris and Rob think they're connecting.  It only takes flying into Aspen, Colorado, once to embed the town's image as Shangri-La in your brain. No doubt it's a kind of cliche that many have applied to the experience before me. With mountains all around, Aspen seems the sort of place for which the word "nestled" was invented. It's nestled in its wild and cultivated setting and immediately conveys the sense of a special place worthy of hosting the well-to-do for either summer or winter visits; the people who work there and cater to them can barely afford to live there. Many years ago, I sampled the town in the summer, mainly for the music . In retrospect, the Aspen Ideas Festival seems custom-made for its location, an obvious partnership between high-flown talk and elevated environment. My stroll around its scarcely imaginable neighborhoods had the lilting accompaniment of fresh-water streams sculpted into front-lawn trenches. The wonders o...

"Beyond Ballet," a production refreshed yearly for presentation at the Indianapolis Theatre Fringe Festival, continues to be an eagerly anticipated feature of the annual performance panorama centered in the Mass Ave cultural district. The festival is now celebrating its 20th anniversary, running through August 25. Indianapolis Ballet gets the opportunity to showcase shorter works placed with savoir faire in an intermissionless program that stretches somewhat beyond the stipulated hour format. On the first night of the 2025 festival, just a day after the preview appetizer, the current "Beyond Ballet" had the feel of launching the festival. Something both novel and familiar was promised, and the promise was fulfilled attractively Thursday night in the first of three company performances on the District Theatre's main stage. It was fun to make reacquaintance with "Scherzo Appassionato" right off the bat. Kristin Young Toner's setting of the substant...

  Kitchen cooks:  Steve Allee Big Band observed release of two CDs  The Saturday appearance in two sets of the Steve Allee Big Band celebrated a milestone in the large-ensemble output of an Indianapolis jazz master, who's been a fixture here for decades as bandleader, composer-arranger, and pianist. I heard the first jam-packed set at the Jazz Kitchen to mark the release of a pair of recordings made last year: "Naptown Sound" and "Full Circle." Nearly all the 16 selections are Allee originals, and the few that aren't adhere to the theme of paying tribute to Indianapolis jazz and many of its acknowledged masters. The first set was a well-paced sample, departing only at the end with a spectacular trip through Freddie Hubbard's "Hub Tones," rapid in tempo and chock-full of solos. The glistening trumpet-section display alone will stay with me for a long time. The trades were intense, particularly along the front line of saxes plus clarinet.  The 17...