Jay Harvey Upstage

A Far Cry is the oddly named string chamber orchestra with a high degree of polish and sense of adventure to it that will appeal to many.  Based since its 2007 founding in Boston, it's now up for a classical Grammy Award for "Dreams & Prayers" (Crier Records). A Far Cry seeks a niche all its own in the chamber-orchestra gallery. The 20 musicians include International Violin Competition of Indianapolis ' silver medalist Tessa Lark and other fine string players of her generation. Regardless of whether "Dreams & Prayers" gets the award for best chamber music/small ensemble performance, those curious about or already familiar with the group can catch it at the Palladium on March 27, when it will appear with pianists Leon Fleisher and Katherine Jacobson . The program includes the piano duo performing Mozart with the orchestra. Curator and Crier member Miki-Sophia Cloud says that the new disc explores "music as a passageway between the ...

In an age when a $10-million-a-year network anchorman can get away with a repeated lie, we are usefully reminded how, even among ordinary folks, lies are a foundational element in the conduct of everyday life. They aren't fragile outgrowths from the bedrock of truth on which we build our lives. We can deplore them in particular cases, but we can't deny how much they may protect something approaching civic harmony and lend meaning to individual lives starved for options. In "The Cripple of Inishmaan," there is precious little such harmony on the surface. The isolation of the middle-sized of the Aran Islands has allowed familiarity to breed contempt, and playwright Martin McDonagh buries the bonds of affection well beneath the surface. Billy contemplates his image doubtfully. Cripple Billy, the young man of the title, is perpetually reminded how odd and probably worthless he is because of birth defects that cause him to limp and shuffle when he walks and tuck hi...

Al fresco here, Michael Lowenstern sounds good indoors, too. Playing an orchestral instrument that's just to the side of the core orchestra repertory, Michael Lowenstern is hardly to be blamed for creatively applying a wide-ranging musical taste so that he can put his instrument front and center. Presented by Indianapolis Opera and IUPUI, he brought a generous sample of his self-generated music for bass clarinet and electronics to the Basile Opera Center Tuesday night, and charmed a large audience with a pulsating array of samples and sequences, manipulated and layered around his deep-voiced wind instrument. Lowenstern's compositions draw significantly on popular music, particularly the kind that supplies the middle term of his peculiar genre — ClassicoFunkTronica. His improvisational esthetic seemed to have free play among the sounds he has planned and/or set down in advance. Conspicuous examples Tuesday included "Ariel's Hands," which involved a repeate...

You can hold evil at arm's length by laughing at it, but only temporarily, and perhaps at the cost of a broken arm — as Sony Pictures' misadventure with "The Interview" demonstrated recently. Between the world wars, Alfred Hitchcock toyed with the free world's attempt to thwart growing tyranny through a clever contrivance of mystery, feints and hair's-breadth escapes known as "The 39 Steps" (1935). The threat is more explicit in the stage adaptation by Patrick Barlow, which opened over the weekend in an Actors Theatre of Indiana production. At the same time, the laughter — lightening the Hitchcockian theme of an innocent man trying to clear his name — is blown up to monstrous proportions. A monstrosity so thoroughly processed to engage our delight and admiration through humor can be well nigh irresistible. So it proved Saturday night at the Studio Theatre at the Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel. By Act 2, when Ian McCabe erupts through...

With the music director taking off the middle week of "Fantasy, Fate and War: A Midwinter Russian Music Festival," a near-exact contemporary of his mounts the podium of the Hilbert Circle Theatre to conduct works by Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky. Han-Na Chang makes her ISO debut. Han-Na Chang is also a colleague of Krzysztof Urbanski's on the artistic side of the Trondheim (Norway) Symphony Orchestra. After making a sensation as a precocious concert cellist, the South Korean musician switched to conducting in her late teens, and most of the 32-year-old maestra's career has been devoted to wielding the baton. Since last season, Chang has been principal guest conductor at Trondheim, where Urbanski was appointed chief conductor in 2010. On Friday night, Chang made her Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra debut. She showed herself to be a thoroughly schooled conductor with pinpoint control over what the musicians in front of her were doing. In Tchaikovsky's Symphony ...

"He that hath ears to hear, let him ear."  -- Jesus This is the first blog post I've ever opened with an epigraph from the Bible, but it seems fitting when addressing "A Love Supreme," the John Coltrane masterpiece that enabled him to set a seal upon his spiritual journey away from addiction and his musical journey away from standard musical forms. Rob Dixon plays "A Love Supreme" (photo by Mark Sheldon) And the quote also applies to the importance of the tenor saxophonist's outreach to listeners. He was not the only musician in the post-bop era to see the need to reverse the narrowing of the jazz fan base. But he was the most suited to the task — at least in this ambitious sense: "When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups." Evidence is that the 1965 recording indeed reached well beyond the typical jazz audience, and in fact...

For about six years, Zach Lapidus brought his own Portlandia vibe, transmuted and refined by an Indiana University jazz education , to the Indianapolis music scene — with wonderful results. I think I first heard him with Frank Glover outdoors on an electric piano at Eagle Creek Park.  The pleasant setting was far from ideal for appreciating a new player, but Lapidus struck me as someone special. From promise to mastery: Zach Lapidus conveys certainty and adventure. Twice during his time here (2008-2014), he was chosen to be a finalist for the Jazz Fellowship Awards, competing for the title of Cole Porter Fellow of the American Pianists Association . The second time was for the current competition, at which I was one of the preliminary judges. Saturday night was my first chance to hear any of the finalists in the Premiere Series of trio performances at the Jazz Kitchen . One more series concert in the same club setting remains — Kris Bowers' on Feb. 28. The whole series ...