Jay Harvey Upstage

Claire Daly brought her hearty sound on baritone sax to Indianapolis for the first time Friday night, presenting a program largely devoted to Thelonious Monk. The venerated composer-pianist (1917-1982) left behind a body of challenging work — easy to enjoy, hard to play. Formidable instrument (left) and Claire Daly The New York-based quartet Daly travels with is the one that recorded "Baritone Monk" (NCB Jazz). In two sets at the Jazz Kitchen, the band sounded thoroughly imbued with the Monk aesthetic. The humor, assertiveness and occasional tenderness characteristic of Monk had been thoroughly absorbed, and given a fresh direction. That didn't mean unimaginative idolatry, however. Monk has his imitators, but pianist Steve Hudson sported a style all his own. It's compounded of chains of close-order chordal marching interspersed with long, single-note runs to either end of the keyboard, plus cryptic phrases and swinging pauses that evoke the master's quirki...

You can dependably bring a diverse crowd of jazz-lovers together with a well-chosen program of classic tunes based in hard bop and reaching into the fusion styles of the 1970s. And that's the kind of approach you need when you're seeking to attract a busy September public to the annual Indy Jazz Fest. Masterly guitarist Bill Lancton was also a genial emcee. Accordingly, Bill Lancton and colleagues took care of business Thursday night in the DeHaan Fine Arts Center at the University of Indianapolis. The guitarist led the Indy Jazz Fest Band in nine tunes of the jazz-party sort, and his own first-class professionalism was upheld by his six sidemen. They were Allen  'Turk" Burke, piano and organ; Rich Dole, trombone; Tom Clark, saxophones and flute; Mark Buselli, trumpet and congas; Scott Pazera, bass, and Vince Jackson, drums. Hits from the 1960s and 1970s were on the menu. Solos were typically crowd-pleasing sojourns unfolding from a few understated phrases ...

 Here they are, the semifinalists in the 2014 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis: Nancy Zhou Yu-Chien Tseng Ayana Tsuji Tessa Lark Jinjoo Cho Stephen Waarts Stephen Kim Ji Yoon Lee Ji Young Lim Kristi Gjezi Yoo Jin Jang Bomsori Kim Suyeon Kang Ji-Won Song Dami Kim Christine Lim  What follows is unchanged from what I wrote within the past hour: Launching this post without yet knowing how the jury decided whom to pass on to the semifinal round, I don't expect to change much here once I learn.  I've not played any hunches on which of the 37 participants I'd like to see designated as semifinalists, so I won't try to tweak any judgment I made without knowing who the also-rans turned out to be. The music ended with Richard Lin 's suave playing of Gershwin's Second Prelude, as arranged by Jascha Heifetz. That bluesy morsel had its lyrical side stressed in this performance with pianist Chih-Yi Chen,  yet any violinist who didn't...

Mozart's two-movement sonatas for violin and piano (K. 301-305) don't present the interpretive challenges that the unaccompanied violin works of Bach and Paganini do. That is, they aren't the same kind of interpretive challenges that must be addressed by the 37 participants in the ninth quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. They aren't simple pieces, despite their clarity and graspable forms. They are sometimes flecked in mood with nagging uneasiness in the midst of their sunniest moments.  It was astonishing to feel how much freshness could still be brought forward after the umpteenth iteration  of the Sonata in G major, K. 301. And most crucially, the competition's requirement that one of them be played in the preliminaries  makes of this stage a miniature chamber-music round. How well can a violinist craft something of a credible blend with a pianist? Talented fiddlers who go their own way when there's a piano behind them won...

When Walt Whitman sent his post-Civil War edition of "Leaves of Grass" out into the world, he included a small verse apologia starting with the imperative "Shut not your doors to me proud libraries," claiming a place among more conventional authors and giving this advice to readers: "The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing." I thought of this as applied to music over the course of the second through fourth preliminary sessions of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis at the Indiana History Center. What will distinguish the 37 participants during four days of brief recitals — and pass 16 of them on to the semifinals — will be how well they catch the drift of the music they're presenting. Allowing for characteristic Whitmanian hyperbole, the words of his book are by no means "nothing," just as the notes written by Mozart, Bach, Paganini and an array of "encore piece" composers and arrangers can...

There are many directions in which to take the human voice artistically, and Roomful of Teeth is an ensemble devoted to all of them — and capable of projecting and blending the result. Roomful members let FB fans know where they are in 6-week tour. The eight-voice ensemble showed some of its range Saturday night at DePauw University in Greencastle.  The members' training and experience encompasses both "mainstream" vocal art and the sort of vocalism they explore together in Roomful of Teeth, which was founded in 2009 by Brad Wells and this year won a Grammy Award for its debut CD. Since its founding, Roomful of Teeth's members annually clear space on their schedules to gather at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art to study various kinds of singing under the tutelage of masters. The range of compositions they draw upon, much of it by members of the group, embraces throat singing from the Inuit and Tuvan traditions and a host of other influences. ...

A collectively run band of great dynamism and purpose proves that an all-acoustic small group bursting with forthright thematic statements and energetic solos isn't necessarily channeling the Golden Age of Blue Note Records. The Cookers are fully 2014 in freshness and mode of address. A formidable septet building a 21st-century version of hard bop. Trumpeter David Weiss, the band's chief arranger, joins spirits with saxophonist Billy Harper, the group's other major arranger, to make the best possible presentation of nine tunes by the two men and Cecil McBee, George Cables and Billy Hart. The personnel certainly comes close to that much-abused label "all-star": There are some redoubtable senior citizens of straight-ahead jazz in this ensemble, whose other members are trumpeter Eddie Henderson and saxophonist Donald Harrison. The blend of stateliness and fire is notable right off the bat. "Sir Galahad" launches the disc and features a typical a...