Jay Harvey Upstage

 The "Bach & Beyond" series that the wide-ranging American violinist Jennifer Koh launched in 2012 has Jennifer Koh explores Bach et al. now finished with the third and final album ( Cedille Records ). Not surprisingly, it ends the series with distinction, setting on two discs J.S. Bach's solo sonatas Nos. 2 and 3 beside (respectively) Luciano Berio's "Sequenza VIII" and John Harbison's "For Violin Alone." To get to the Bach performances first: It's amazing how much lyricism she finds in the music. All the contrapuntal implications don't swamp the elucidation she gives to the composer's melodic savvy. Each sonata contains a demanding fugue, and there Koh clearly lays everything out, line by line. Her rhythmically secure playing avoids suggesting that her approach is either too calculated or too swayed by the moment. In the fugue movement of the A minor sonata, I  hope it's not too fanciful to hear in the repeated two- and t...

George Bailey's life is under angelic supervision.  The fast-paced backstage summary of Indiana Repertory Theatre' s new production of "This Wonderful Lfe" introduces virtual audiences both to the material, already familiar to fans of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life," and the play's sole actor here, the protean Rob Johansen . The performance is accessible online through January 3. Johansen, as the expression goes, needs no introduction, particularly to IRT audiences who have seen him in 48 company roles up to now. So all will recognize the actor's characteristic manner of bringing everything in his performances forward in intimate connection with an audience. It bursts forth from the start, as WFYI-TV's cameras follow him from dressing room through corridors and via stairways onto the main stage. All this revs up the nostalgia engine while he is rattling off bits from the script, inviting the viewer to become nearly as breathlessly committed...

The tour de force finale of the Indy Jazz Fest premiere We have all adopted adjustments to doing our usual jobs since mid-March, and blogging about musical events is no exception. Mine is a labor of love, which eliminates the kind of stress that paid jobholders are feeling. The necessary idleness has not hurt me as much as it has the many excellent people who make their living, at least in part, from music. So I leaped at the chance Friday night to cover the opening of the 2020 Indy Jazz Fest, well documented on video in daylight performances and in warmer weather at Garfield Park. The MacAllister Amphitheater was the audience-free site for the parade of local bands, with a lot of mix-and-match among the personnel. Among the pleasures, since I've brought up the site (of which I have a firm memories of concerts and plays in those fabled pre-pandemic days), was the camera work. There were recurrent shots from above the amphitheater looking toward downtown; they were breathtaking. It ...

Peter Hess with his other instrument: bass clarinet  Jazz musicians who play non-keyboard instruments probably don't have anything against pianists, but now and then they form bands that don't include them and achieve either enduring or occasional good results. A new entry in that niche field is the Peter Hess Quartet in "Present Company" ( Diskonife Records ). The disc comprises seven originals (by Hess, with a couple of collaborations thrown in) that make the most of the tenor saxophone, trombone, bass, and drums makeup of the band. The arrangements are lustrous individually, with clever distribution of material among the four musicians. The unaccompanied bass intro to "The Net Menders" yields to a soft-spoken, hymn-like theme for the horns.  Subsequently, we have some bowed bass from Adam Hopkins as commentary on what he has said before; then the horns (Hess, tenor sax, and Brian Drye, trombone) get wilder. I don't know if there's a biblical subte...

Cyrus Nabipoor is now based in Portland A young trumpeter based in Portland, Oregon, with a strong sentimental link to New Orleans (he's a magna cum laude graduate of Loyola University), Cyrus Nabipoor took a quintet into the former church in 2019 to play his compositions for a concert audience. "Live at the Marigny Opera House" (Nabipoormusic@gmail.com) documents that comfortable hometown visit to a cultural venue that was a Catholic church from 1853 until the diocese  closed it in 1997.  In its repurposed function, it has been called the Marigny Opera House since 2011 For 144 years, the Marigny was a church. The resonance in the recording is slightly churchy,  and the setting seems copacetic for the music. The venue's original use is alluded to in "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out," one of two tunes borrowed for a concert otherwise featuring Nabipoor compositions.  The comfort zone is settled into, but there's no resting in the hackneyed for these...

Gregory Tardy and his band etch midlife testament.  Many of us in and out of the arts have taken on what passes for wisdom with the need to reduce normal activity as the pandemic rages. For a mature jazzman like Gregory Tardy , this summing-up in midlife is captured by "If Time Could Stand Still" ( WJ3 Records ). Though recorded in 2019, the release of this disc last month is timely, as the music's reflectiveness suits the universal pause button that Covid-19 has pressed for everyone. Now at his home base in Tennessee, the tenor saxophonist went into a Brooklyn studio with his quartet (Keith Brown, piano; Alexander Claffy, bass; Willie Jones III, drums) for a program of all originals, except for the standard "Everything Happens to Me." (Trumpeter Alex Norris guests on two of the eight selections.) At 54, Tardy has behind him a wealth of collaborations in the wide jazz world, with associations including Elvin Jones, Andrew Hill, Tom Harrell, Nicholas Payton, and...

It's a been a long wait to see performing artists onstage at full strength in freshly minted performances. That's what Dance Kaleidoscope is offering to patrons through Oct. 31 with an artfully filmed program at its usual home, Indiana Repertory Theatre.  Puccini People Plus brings together a full-length piece from 1992, Puccini People , supplemented by excerpts from Food for Love , a work created for DK's residency 19 years ago at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and three solos by Jillian Godwin, the company's senior dancer, who is retiring after 17 years. Using mainly familiar arias from Giacomo Puccini operas, artistic director David Hochoy has built gut-wrenching solos deliberately removed from their operatic context. Puccini had no equal in making memorable art out of needy, emotionally wounded characters, and in this quality Hochoy finds common ground with the originals. Emily Dyson: A joyous leap of materialistic zest Even the blithest selection, Quando men vo...