Jay Harvey Upstage

Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), as visionary a composer as the history of Western music affords, provides the generative power for the major piece on Indianapolis Ballet' s season-opening program, "New Works." The program runs through Sunday. A selection of the Russian composer's solo piano pieces for ballet thus lends a proper highlighting of founder-director Victoria Lyras' vision of her increasingly accomplished and stable company. It's been newly underwritten with sponsors throughout its personnel, though it's still seeking a regular performance home downtown. "Scriabin Suite": Making shallow space seem large enough. "Scriabin Suite" cheats a little bit on the implication of "new works," however, since the work has been previously performed, as Lyras told the opening night audience at the District Theatre Thursday. But she regards setting such a piece on different dancers as qualification to be called new. And that may ju...

Rich Cohen: saxophonic mass and energy from a former physics teacher "Copacetic" is one of those faux-fancy words that entered the language about the start of the Jazz Age (1919). Like jazz itself, its origin is unknown (says the dictionary), and its meaning ("very satisfactory") can also apply to countless jazz performances by adept practitioners of the music.  It was thus quite fitting that a piece of that title concluded a long Sunday night set by the Cohen-Rutkowski Project at the Jazz Kitchen. Like all of this band's book, it was composed by Chris Rutkowski, the pianist who co-leads the band with saxophonist Rich Cohen. And the peppy finale also got a little extra heat as one guest star (tenor saxophonist Rob Dixon) was joined by another (trombonist Freddie Mendoza) to make for a formidable front line. Opening with an infectious riff and settling into a Crescent City groove, "Copacetic" featured ripe solos by the two guests. It provided roomy acc...

A touch of modernism — self-consciousness about what a stage play is — helps redeem for today the topical tangle of Shakespeare's early comedy "Love's Labour's Lost." Indy Bard Fest negotiates the obscure aspects of a work that was probably intended for court performance, allowing for endless word play and larded with expressions that have disappeared from the mainstream. It's a style that would have baffled even the groundlings at Shakespeare's Globe. But reminders of the play's artificiality are relentless, and the implausible is no obstacle to making the action believable over the short term. Amateur archers:Rosaline and the Princess chat. Seen at the Cat Theatre Friday night near the end of its run, the production embraces the nonsensical premise on which the play is based — and everything that ensues from that: a royal whim to gather lusty, highly placed men around the monarch to abjure the company of women in favor of three years' worth of s...

Alex Norris plays the pandemic. Never being of the opinion that old ways of doing things need to remain set in the forms of their originators, I don't take what Alex Norris and his quintet do on "Fleet from the Heat" ( SteepleChase ) to be a retread of the Blue Note heydays of Art Blakey and Horace Silver. What use is genuine inspiration if the only result is to do something entirely different? The trumpeter-flugelhornist pays explicit tribute to those bandleaders and their styles in the booklet notes. Not that making his debt clear would excuse him if the music were lame. But "Fleet from the Heat" is fresh and avoids running merely in the well-worn tracks of his illustrious predecessors.  The main proof of this accomplishment is a suite straight out of the COVID crisis that won't seem to let go of us. "The Famous Original Pandemic Suite" in the middle of "Fleet from the Heat" comprises four pieces with distinct personalities. The entire ...

 Clown and sage, pixie and guru, loyal frontline Horatio to a thousand jazz Hamlets, the trombone has led a protean existence in the music's century-plus history. Those several personas — except the farfetched Shakespearean one — are suggested by veteran trombonist Ed Neumeister in his quizzically titled new CD, "What Have I Done?" ( MeisteroMusic ). The question resonates in common usage as an expression of regret and remorse, but also as a way of probing the mystery of our acts, particularly in creative fields. One answer to the question in this case is that Neumeister has given his quirks and splendid imaginings prismatic emphasis through his choice of sidemen. The disc displays pianist Gary Versace, bassist Drew Gress, and drummer Tom Rainey as vital participants in the leader's self-portrait as a composer; it also gives everyone brief cameos tucked in between the eight major statements in the form of six  showcases titled "Pickled Ginger." That's j...

Cleopatra in a moment of tender devotion to Antony Trimming Shakespeare, a customary practice, works toward producing a playable reduction of the original, sensitive to modern attention spans and the wish to privilege dramatic flow above all. Casting may force the combination of some minor roles, the elimination of others.  It's also a way of putting a director's vision  of the play in the foreground. Ryan T. Shelton, who directed the Improbable Fiction Theater Company's production of "Antony and Cleopatra" for the 2021 I ndy Bard Fest, says in a program note that "the idea of romance" took precedence. Several performances remain in the schedule at the Cat Theatre in Carmel. It's hard to imagine a version of this unique tragedy that didn't privilege the romance between the title characters, but what becomes of secondary interest in this show is the political matter of Roman imperial security after the assassination of Julius Caesar. The triumvir...

The Harlem Quartet, with an assertive mission of expanding string-quartet repertoire and audiences, gave a bright, energetic sample of its work Wednesday night in a program divided between a romantic masterpiece and a group of new works by a guest pianist, brother of its first violinist. Aldo Lopez-Gavilan writes music of florid surfaces and emotional depths. The five pieces that he and his string-quartet colleagues played after intermission at the Ensemble Music Society concert fill wide canvases with color and rhythm. Often they elaborate on repeated figures, resembling jazz improvisation over a hypnotic riff. The pulsating energy of dance music is never far from the surface. Harlem Quartet with pianist Aldo Lopez-Gavilan (second from left) Lopez-Gavilan's music often makes pictorial points, suggesting scoring for movies running only in the composer's mind. Such was the impression given by the first of the set that the ensemble offered a near-capacity audience at the Glick In...