Jay Harvey Upstage

Shannon Lee impressed the IVCI jury in 2018. As compatible as pianists working with IVCI participants have long been, new competition terrain in true duo partnership was explored Tuesday night with the Indianapolis return of Shannon Lee, a laureate in the 2018 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. For five years, the Canadian violinist has been collaborating with Russian-born pianist Arseniy Gusev. That's included two recordings that were reflected in the program they offered at the Indiana History Center. Composers have long emphasized equality between the two instruments in bringing their respective techniques and modes of expression into partnership. Works for violin and piano, many of them sonatas, abound in the repertoire.  It was like catnip to the acknowledged master Elliott Carter, an explorer of oppositions in music who found the instruments' physical differences — "between stroking and striking," as he put it — a delectable challenge in creatin...

Martinez plays Falla masterpiece with the ICO.   Marketing this month's Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra concert had the advantage of a glamorous guest soloist, and the organization even used most of the phrase in the title of the work Gabriela Martinez  played in labeling the performance.  "Gardens of Spain" was the concert's billing, highlighting the pianist's  performance with the orchestra in Manuel de Falla's "Nights in the Gardens of Spain." Still, the ICO didn't sell short the world premiere also on the program: a new work by the prolific composer Stacy Garrop, alluringly titled "Chroma," a six-movement salute to colors that the fine lighting system of the Schrott Center illuminated as the composition unfolded under the astute direction of Matthew Kraemer. I first became acquainted with Garrop's artistry in concert more than a dozen years ago with her folklore-linked "Silver Dagger." Since then, when the Lincoln ...

 "Howdy!" is the one-word greeting Branford Marsalis offered to the large crowd gathered to hear his quartet Friday night at the Payne & Mencias Palladium. He may have dropped the salute as something implicitly Hoosier, but it would be hard to interpret it as looking down his nose at us. Neither effusive nor tight-lipped in his commentary, the veteran saxophonist showed the friendly demeanor that has always contrasted with the lecturing stance of trumpeter Wynton, the other household name among the distinguished New Orleans musical family.  He led one long set at  the Allied Solutions Center for the Performing Arts jazz series, fronting a long- Branford Marsalis Quartet: By the third number, the jackets were off. intact group including Joey Calderazzo, piano; Eric Revis, bass, and Justin Faulkner, drums. Early in the performance came two catchy originals by Calderazzo, "Conversation Among the Ruins" and "The Mighty Sword." In between there was a zesty...

We are trained to believe in individual moral responsibility, but it's not making excuses to insist on the larger picture of understanding its limits. How are some of us more stamped than others by inescapable influences that rob us of agency? "Machinal" suggests strongly that for women, particularly a century ago, freedom of action is shaped conclusively by social limits affecting love, work, and family connections. The 1928 play by Sophie Treadwell is worth the expressionist revival that Southbank Theatre Company gives it through next Sunday at Shelton Auditorium. The theatrical style, conscientiously shepherded here under Marcia Eppich-Harris' direction, means that the feeling of events, especially protagonist-centered, is as important as the facts involved. There's no separation between what happens to the main character and how she processes her experience, symbolized and dream-linked as it is. Narrative orderliness is immaterial in this sort of storytelling...

Angela Brown, soprano from Indianapolis On the cultural high ground, no one minds departure from the formulas of presentation, at least when  there's something fresh about it. For symphony orchestras, the time-worn layout, in order, runs: overture, concerto, intermission, symphony. Some of that is intact this weekend as the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra 's Classical Series resumes at Hilbert Circle Theatre. The orchestra's first of two full-length concerts had an overture by a mainstream composer to start with and a symphony by a master to conclude.  To help support the overall feeling of novelty, the overture was the largely unfamiliar one to Weber's opera "Euryanthe," a poster child of good composition let down by a poor libretto. The symphony was the easy-to-overlook No. 8 in F major by Beethoven, a work memorably characterized by Schumann as "a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants" (the seventh and ninth symphonies).  The real novelty ...

Barthold Kuijken, conductor and traverso soloist   If there is plenty of evidence that progress in the musical flowering called the High Baroque can be justly considered "Towards Telemann," as   Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra' s concert Sunday was titled, a host of influences he absorbed must have been responsible. That was explored fruitfully in the program put together and led by its artistic director, Barthold Kuijken, at the University of Indianapolis.  Georg Philipp Telemann's breadth of musical creation was fed by his receptivity to French, Italian, and German styles, types of patronage, and modes of expression. His appeal to his contemporaries and shortly after his time (1681-1767) was straightforward and broadly based, thanks to a succession of courtly appointments that made him more widely known than his contemporary, J.S. Bach. And the theater bug bit him as well. His work as an impresario and composer of opera helped, giving him a reputation for facil...

Marc-Andre Hamelin doesn't impose his personality on a variety of music so as to build a cult following. This is unlike old Hollywood stars, who molded each role onto their public personalities and built their careers on offering the best new version of their marketed presentation, like John Wayne or Cary Grant or Katharine Hepburn.  But a personality need not be irrelevant or a distraction if the effort to probe deeply into a composer is sustained: the composer is revealed along with the individuality of the performer, and Hamelin does that to the level of wizardry. Thus a Debussy prelude as an encore has a veiled charm that the pianist seemed to view from the inside out, as though inhabiting the colorations and the linked, unsquare phrasing characteristic of the French composer. The demand to hear more, enthusiastically generated by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with whom he came to Carmel Saturday night, shed that kind of light. Marc-Andre Hamelin played Mozart with ins...

One of many good things said to come in threes (so far) is the collaboration between the Indianapolis Symphony   Orchestra and Indianapolis Ballet. The fairy-tale formula of the threefold charm fits perfectly with the current production of "The Sleeping Beauty." The Petipa-Tchaikovsky masterpiece tops all stage and screen versions of Charles Perrault's beloved fairy tale. In the first of three performancees Friday night in Clowes Hall, the guiding force was the company's interim director, Michael Vernon, succeeding the inspired founding director Victoria Lyras, who retired late last year. The production looked splendid, sets and costumes alike, especially in the first scene, The Christening, in which the traditional rite for infants at society's highest level is at the peak of splendor. Yoshiko Kamikusa danced the Rose Adagio on opening night. But of course, an error of royal etiquette, the seneschal Catalabutte's failure to invite the wicked fairy Carabosse,...

 George Bernard Shaw, one of a small handful of readable music critics of stature, once called  Mendelssohn's Symphony no. 3 in A minor "a work which would be great if it were not so confoundedly genteel."  A champion of blood-and-thunder Verdi and the spiritually titanic Wagner, Shaw maybe made such an assessment on the basis of undernourished performances he'd heard of the work nicknamed "Scottish" or "Scotch." The latter word is no longer applied respectably to anything much besides the venerated distilled whiskey from Scotland. In an essay on the composition, the beverage's distinctive flavor encouraged Michael Steinberg, one of the commentators on the "Scottish" symphony, to describe the dark coloration of its first movement as "peaty."  James Ehnes always makes a strong impression here.  Water over the region's peat beds lends the beverage its character — and by extension the kind of orchestration with which the ...

Walking into a packed Jazz Kitchen on a Sunday afternoon to hear a couple of string quartets, I can't Gary Walters and Peter Hansen had a matinee showcase. avoid recalling the old Monty Python introduction: "And now for something completely different." So it was, although the featured composers— Gary Walters and Peter Hansen — have distinguished records as creative and performing artists there, notably together in the early part of the century as members of the Icarus Ensemble. Formerly a contrabass player in the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Hansen invited four current members to perform his String Quartet No. 1 in E and Walters' "Bluesberry Jam." Besides its interlocking, punning title, Walters' piece, enjoying its first public performance, showed his high comfort level across several genres. Retired from the jazz faculty of Butler University, Walters keeps his composing and playing schedule judiciously crowded. "Bluesberry Jam," a de...

Programming concerts involves giving shape to a season, not just to individual concerts. As  music director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra for the past 17 months, Jun M ä rkl has displayed both kinds of skill. He is advancing the orchestra as well as its Classical Series patronage. In his current spate of Hilbert Circle Theatre podium appearances, he is exploring thematic compatibility as well as idealism, technical polish and expressive breadth. Next week he and the orchestra will take us to the Scottish Highlands; other kinds of summitry have been on view this weekend and last. The extraordinary demands of Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony gave an extra wow to Valentine's weekend. How do you avoid a feeling of letdown after that? He couldn't have done better than doubling down on Mahler's identity as "the song-symphonist" with songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn , then crowning that exploration with a Beethoven milestone, Symphony No. 3 in E-...

  Sirena Huang and Drew Petersen play Gabriela Lena Frank.  Drew Petersen and Sirena Huang made sure the rare opportunity for a musical reunion would be readily appreciated by a near-capacity audience Thursday evening at Indiana Landmarks Center. The pianist and the violinist, well-acquainted since they were students at the Juilliard School, opened their joint recital with a work they had studied at the New York City institution together: Beethoven's Violin Sonata no. 5 in F, op. 24 ("Spring").  The arrangement by which they could perform as a duo as young professionals was engineered by the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and the American Piano Awards . Each organization holds their achievement at the highest level as competition winners in 2017 (Petersen) and 2022 (Huang). Apart from the Beethoven work and their encore (Sarasate's "Zapateado"), the national significance of 2026 strongly suggested their program have an American cast. And s...

 Can you overdo it with a piece that challenges you to cheer and cry at the same time?  Music-lovers have Gustav Mahler at 5, wondering if life is worth it.  to answer that question for themselves, but the concert experience of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in D minor ("Resurrection") for me works out best with years in between in-person iterations.  My first exposure to joining a big crowd for such a performance was in May 1987, when John Nelson capped off his 11-year tenure as Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra music director with an interpretation that explictly spoke to his  religious orientation: "The sentiments that are in the text are my sentiments," he told the Circle Theatre audience. Certainly the second time I heard "Resurrection" almost effected a match between my sentiments and those of the texts the composer chose — from the folk poetry of Des Knaben Wunderhorn and "Resurrection," an ode by Friedrich Klopstock — plus a huge sup...

Julie Russel aloft in the propulsive "Takbuhan."  Dance Kaleidoscope premieres occupy most of the expanse of NOW, Vol. 2 "Arresting Momentum," which opened Friday night before an adoring crowd. The program was introduced by the welcome retrurn of "Restless Ordinary," a piece by Autumn Eckman which debuted last May .  DK's occasional performances in the Tobias Theater at Newfields  always carry a sense of occasion. There's a feeling of maximum wingspread when the company plays there. Upstage and downstage convey a vast perspective.  At the start, the steady front-to-back lineup of the company, with straight arms raising in varied rhythm, conveyed the mastery of space that was to be elaborated across the five works, with movement edge-to-edge as well, like abstract expressionism in painting. The bid for a DK seat at the big table nationally was the staging for DK of "Train" by Robert Battle , Illustrating the title: A "Train" scen...

 The lineup for Tuesday's show at the Jazz Kitchen looked so good it would have been tempting to go even if the event had been designed as a tribute to — oh, say, Guy Lombardo. But of course, the honor was more pertinently accorded Max Roach, a founder of modern jazz drumming. And it was under the direction of one of the reigning masters of the kit in central Indiana: Cassius Goens III. In a rare outing as a bandleader, he had put together a quintet comprising the collegial spirits of Christopher Pitts, Brandon Meeks, Jared Thompson, and Marlin McKay. For several numbers to acknowledge the importance of Abbey Lincoln in Roach's long career, vocalist Akili Ni Mali joined the band onstage. Goens spoke effusively of the role model that Roach (1924-2007) has been for him. It didn't take long to sense the affinity. Sensitivity to tone color and interlocking rhythmic patterns was notable in "Joy Spring," for example. A classic from the pen of Roach's early partne...