Jay Harvey Upstage

The bated-breath response of the audience the last time the Isidore String Quartet was here turned out to be a feature of its return visit Wednesday night at the Indiana History Center . It has to do with the scrupulously laid-out alternation of tension and release of its characteristic playing. In both concerts, it was easy to get the sense that the capacity audience was hanging on every note, unwilling to miss a thing. This time, the patrons' sustained attention got the extra reward of a famous collaborator: Anthony McGill , Waiting for the sunrise: the Isidore String Quartet principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic. McGill played the Brahms Clarinet Quintet in B minor, op. 115, with the Isidore, in addition to "Humanity's Essential Gems," a work for the same instruments by contemporary composer James Lee III.  As I observed then about the Isidore's performance of an early Haydn quartet: "It was evident that the breadth of nuance the Isidore com...

  Adam Birnbaum wisely varied a program suitably titled "Holiday Jazz" to avoid giving any impression he Adam Birnbaum helped Juilliard launch jazz studies and Hoosier musicians Jeremy Allen and Kenny Phelps would offer seasonal Muzak. Heard in a second set Friday night at the Jazz Kitchen , the distinguished 2004 winner of the American Piano Awards, offering fresh jazz interpretations of some well-known favorites while also giving an example of his fascination with J.S. Bach preludes. There was also "Kat's Dance," an original ballad written in  honor of his wife. Throughout, he exemplified the full spectrum of skills that earned him the Cole Porter Fellowship 21 years ago. His improvisational ideas favor the graceful side of jazz pianism, and a full house saturated in anticipation of the holiday season was ready to receive them enthusiastically.  He is also imaginatively focused on melody, which served him well in a program including "What Child Is Th...

Having rung the changes on the time-honored seasonal bells of Charles Dickens' "Christmas Carol" two years ago, Ben Asaykwee returns to the District Theatre  with loftier bells on, starring in a more ambitious original production called "Wonders." With songs and dialogue taking shape often in rhymed couplets, Asaykwee further exercises his creative chops in the allegorical mode. He leaves a parodistic approach to Dickens behind.  I saw the show in a preview Thursday night, finding it full of signs not only wondrous but also grounded in the reality of needing more work. "A Christmas Carol" is brought in obliquely, shedding light on the underlying conflicts that make the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge so compelling and believable in Dickens' novella and the many stage shows and movies adapted from it.   Hope (Sarah Zimmerman) is indomitable. In "Wonders," the emotional conflicts,  entailing the moral conflicts to which our emotions con...