NUVO: Indy's Alternative Voice - March 21, 2012 by NUVO

THIS WEEK MARCH 21 - 28, 2012

VOL. 23 ISSUE 11 ISSUE #1048

cover

KRZYSZTOF URBANSKI: A MIGHTY MAESTRO Behind the scenes with the 29-yearold ISO music director, the youngest person to hold such a position with a major American orchestra. B Y SCO TT SHOGER C OV ER I LLUSTR ATION B Y R YAN A LV IS, RYANALVIS.C OM

news

HITTING THE ROAD FOR HOUSING

As a local law student prepares to embark on her second summer of Bike & Build, she describes how the program stokes her passion for the affordable housing cause. BY KRISTINA PROFFITT

news

Q&A WITH JULIE FIDLER ON HIV/AIDS HOUSING

Big changes are underway in the way people living with HIV/AIDS will receive the services necessary for them to live well in Indy. BY REBECCA TOWNSEND

arts

DIVAFEST 2012

Comprehensive reviews of IndyFringe’s showcase for new plays by woman playwrights, heading into its second and final weekend. BY KATELYN COYNE AND RITA KOHN

food

in this issue 14 A&E 37 CLASSIFIEDS 10 COVER STORY 23 FOOD 39 FREE WILL ASTROLOGY 05 HAMMER 06 HOPPE 04 LETTERS 25 MUSIC 08 NEWS 36 WEIRD NEWS

247 S. Meridian St.

(2nd ﬂoor, next to Crackers Comedy Club)

638-TAPS

SOBRO CAFE: A CHAI-INFUSED OASIS

Suitably distant from the madding crowd that is Broad Ripple, but not so far away as to be inconvenient, SoBro is a relaxing spot to cool the jets and enjoy some made-to-order sustenance at almost any time of the day. BY NEIL CHARLES

music

JACE’S RULES

Videographer Jace’s profile is rising rapidly: from his start as a young emcee in the city looking to spread his music to a skilled videographer working with some of the best and brightest in Midwest hip-hop, he’s got cred and is ready to show it. BY DANIELLE LOOK

nuvo.net /PHOTO

/ARTICLES

Spud Puppies at Locals Only by Stacy Kagiwada

Girl, in Transit: Trip to the BMV by Ashley Kimmel

St. Patrick’s Day Parade by Brandon Knapp Steph Mahan & Cari Ray

Bicycle Diaries of a Big Girl by Katelyn Coyne

/ARTICLES Occupy Midwest riled in St. Louis by NUVO editors EDITORIAL POLICY: N UVO N ewsweekly covers news, public issues, arts and entertainment. We publish views from across the political and social spectra. They do not necessarily represent the views of the publisher. MANUSCRIPTS: NUVO welcomes manuscripts. We assume no responsibility for returning manuscripts not accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. DISTRIBUTION: The current issue of NUVO is free. Past issues are at the NUVO office for $3 if you come in, $4.50 mailed. N UVO is available every Wednesday at over 1,000 locations in the metropolitan area. Limit one copy per customer.

SUBSCRIPTIONS: N UVO N ewsweekly is published weekly by NUVO Inc., 3951 N. Meridian St., suite 200, Indianapolis, IN 46208. Subscriptions are available at $99.99/year and may be obtained by contacting Kathy Flahavin at kflahavin@ nuvo.net.

Interview: Tiny-house guru Jay Shafer by Tristan Schmid Lots of SXSW coverage by Katherine Coplen and Duncan Kissinger

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LETTERS That’s “Hoosier” not “hillbilly,” thank you

Great column, Steve (“Stop the presses, literally,” Steve Hammer, March 14-21) and as you correctly point out, CPS incompetence is something that needs to be kept in the public consciousness no matter what the cost. I only wish you would refrain from the use of the term hillbilly. Words that disparage an entire class of people do justice to no one, especially the author.

- John Simmons

One man’s sin, another man’s safety (and pleasure)

dislike... (“Catholics yank funding over condoms,” Rebecca Townsend, March 14-21) What a shame... The CCHD wants to “develop” people that only adhere to their beliefs. They shouldn’t have been involved in the first place then. What joke... Religion IS intolerance.

- Grant McClintock

NUVO: Your sane news source

My Lord, a sane person in Indianapolis! David, I see these things exactly as you do (“Republicans AWOL,” David Hoppe, March 7-14). But I couldn’t have written it nearly as succinctly as you have. Thanks for being my voice.

- aardvarkius

Reviewing the reviewer

This is most likely the single-worst article ever written (“Coal Pizza Company,” Neil Charles, March 7-14). Coal Pizza is a fantastic restaurant. Do your research next time Neil.

-Neil Manning

Devastation documented

Amazing pictures of real destruction (“Slideshow: Tornado - One Week Later,” Mike Allee, posted March 10 to NUVO.net). That there were so few deaths is surprising when you see the level of destruction. Thanks for the update.

- Sarah Cochran

Recycling Reaction

I loved seeing the Recycle Force article this week (Cover, “RecycleForce,” Rebecca Townsend, March 14-21). I plan to find a paper copy I can share at work (Global Gifts in Nora). We use Recycle Force to dispose of an incredible range of recyclables, including all our paper, plastic and cardboard from shipments. Their weekly pick-ups improve our mood (really, really friendly staff) and clear out all the junk from our storeroom. I realize the point of your article was to describe the influence of the organization on the lives of the employees, but I’d also love for the public to see the effect it has on the businesses who use their services. Everybody wins, and in a big way. As a Fair Trade store, we love using

economic forces to create stable systems to improve the lives of marginalized people, and Recycle Force is a spectacular home-grown example. Thanks for your article.

- Robin Jones

Ride on, Big Girl

Great article (“The Bicycle Diaries of a Big Girl,” March 16, NUVO.net) posted by Katelyn Coyne! I just got my bike out last week and I’ve been riding pretty regularly since! We’ve had such amazing weather lately it’s been hard to refuse the urge to bike everywhere! Can’t wait to hear more tales from the trails!

- John Cartwright

Bike mentors

Welcome to the wonderful world of cycling (“The Bicycle Diaries of a Big Girl”)! I know from personal experience it can be a bit intimidating to go out and ride on your own when you’re first starting out, especially if you happen to find yourself amongst a pack of hardcore racing-types! The Monon can get pretty busy with runners, walkers, and other cyclists, so the Fall Creek trail or Central Canal Towpath are a great less-congested (but car-free) alternatives. There is also a regularly scheduled ride Thursday evenings at 6 p.m. at Nebo Ridge Bicycles (106th & Michigan) where they have multiple groups from the fast “A-group” down to the “Fun & Fitness group” where no person is left behind. Also, check out the CIBA website for weekend ride options. Tell the ride leader you are a new rider and would like to ride with a mentor.

- Dee O’Neil Annis

Get up, stand up for your rock

It was embarrassing how disaffected and disinterested the crowd was for this show (“Review: The Black Keys, Arctic Monkeys,” Tristan Schmid, posted March 18 to NUVO. net). Especially during the Arctic Monkeys set. I had a seat in the lower level not far from the stage, and I was the only one standing in my section during AM’s set. People who couldn’t even muster enough energy to get up complained to me to sit down so they could see, which I declined to do on the basis that I’ve never sat for a rock show. No wonder both bands ripped through their sets briskly in a workman-like fashion. It’s turnouts like this why Indy rarely has visits from any bands worth a damn, and usually only has generic, safe, mainstream artists put on shows. It’s hard to believe, though, after their recent success The Black Keys are falling into that category by default. At least we are fortunate enough to have the quality shows promoted by My Old Kentucky Blog. If not for them, I’d hate to see the state of Indy’s live music scene.

- Jason Wagoner

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HAMMER Our city’s hidden crime problem Time for solutions instead of alibis BY S T E V E H A M M E R S H A M M E R@N U V O . N E T The shooting that wounded five teenagers Saturday night near the canal once again destroyed the illusion that downtown Indianapolis is a peaceful and safe place with no significant crime problem. Leaders have long spun the myth that downtown visitors never fear being mugged, assaulted or murdered. The massive federal and local police presence during the Super Bowl at times verged on being a military occupation, which is apparently what it takes to maintain law and order in our city’s center. The football fans and visitors literally dodged a bullet in that there were no major crime sprees in the week leading up to the game. Every so often, such as last weekend, there’s something to remind us just how big the crime problem is downtown and how decades of efforts to reverse it have mostly failed. It’s easy to blame the city police for allowing this to happen and, in fact, they are not completely blameless in stamping out this problem. There’s more than enough blame to go around. The mayor owns a piece of this too, although he shouldn’t get all of the blame either. As anyone who spends any significant time downtown on a daily basis can tell you, Indianapolis is not the shiny, clean, safe place our city’s boosters portray it to be. It has the same problems that plague all of our major cities: violence, homelessness and far too many teenagers walking around bored out of their minds and looking for trouble in any form they can find. The difference between us and other cities is that we try to downplay those negatives for business purposes. Corporations and nonprofit organizations don’t want to bring their conventions to downtown Indianapolis if they fear their members being robbed or worse while they’re here. The biggest problem with keeping the peace downtown, as I see it, is parents of teenagers treating the city center as a place where they can drop off their kids every Friday and Saturday night. All it takes is a few drunken words being exchanged and then bullets start flying. Only occasionally is it a significant

enough event to merit media coverage. It’s not as if this is any big revelation to anyone with knowledge of the situation, but more attention needs to be paid to this. As Metro Police Chief Paul Ciesielski told the AP, “Parents just need to be more responsible and not use the downtown as a baby sitter. “Two of the victims were 14 years old. Why were they there at 10 p.m. without parental supervision? Who are they hanging with while downtown?” The chief and his men and women in uniform are doing their best but resources are scarce, the department is understaffed and it’s impossible to be everywhere at once. Security has been beefed up downtown since the shootings in 2010 during Indiana Black Expo and it’s still not enough. Spend an hour or two any day at the bus stops at Ohio and Pennsylvania and Ohio and Meridian and you’ll see just how bad the problem truly is. Drug deals, small-time assaults and plenty of verbal sexual harassment go on non-stop in front of the Birch E. Bayh Federal Courthouse and the cops are too busy elsewhere to care, barring a major incident. Maybe the police could do more. But ultimately the problem is going to have to be solved, as Ciesielski says, at the family and societal level. Community leaders in Indianapolis have been talking about this for years and years but we only pay attention after a major violent incident. Even commentator Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, with whom I seldom agree, gets it. In an article on IndyPolitics.org, he speaks quite well for many of us. “The people who hand out the crime prevention grant money really need to do a second look at what organizations they are giving funds to, because if last night was any indication, it’s not working.” His article carries a provocative headline: “Negroes, Please!” That’s part of the Shabazz shtick, being all controversial and whatnot, but his admonitions — on this occasion at least — make sense. And he’s about the only media figure in the city who could get away with writing the following paragraph: “It’s time to be the bad guy, again, and say what needs to be said because a lot of people won’t man up and say it. ‘Black people, please start getting some of your unruly children under control or do the rest of us with home training a favor and stop having them.’” Of course this parenting rule is not race specific. The point is that leaders have spent years trying to sweep our violence problem under the rug instead directly addressing it and that our city suffers from too many gangs, drugs and teenagers with nothing to do. That’s been the recipe for urban riots for half a century in America now. It’s way past the time for our leadership to start taking drastic measures before the problem grows even more out of control.

Maybe the police could do more. But ultimately the problem is going to have to be solved … at the family and societal level.

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HOPPE Public safety shortfall Paying the piper

BY DAVID HOPPE DHOPPE@NUVO.NET

he city’s Super Bowl success created quite a sizzle. It seems hardly a week passes when there isn’t some gathering of bright folks to talk about how we should capitalize on the Big Game’s momentum. Like the visions of sugar plums dancing in the heads of excitable children on the night before Christmas, ideas are bubbling up around town to revitalize the corridor along 38th Street, make the most of our waterways and, as always, do something about public transportation. I happen to love all these ideas. Any one of them would raise the city’s game. But something always seems to trip me up on my way to Indianapolis, the Super City. The city itself keeps getting in the way. Last week news came down the shoot like a load of wet laundry that the Indianapolis Department of Public Safety is short $15 million. That’s not all. The Marion County Sheriff’s Department is running almost $17 million in the red. Taken together, city services intended to protect us are behind the 8-ball by some $32 million — and the year is young. Public Safety Director Frank Straub says he could be forced to close some police district outposts in June. Surely, you say, the city’s general fund has some wiggle room for a contingency like this. Not so much. There’s just a $2.7 million reserve. That’s not even enough to cover losses already incurred by the Fire Department, let alone the cops. The IMPD is in the hole due, among other things, to costs associated with its aging fleet of patrol cars, about half of which have logged 100,000 miles. Then there’s the issue of aging police officers. Indianapolis currently employs the bare minimum of police officers as mandated for a city its size by the federal government. To qualify for a 3-year, $11 million grant from the Justice Department, we are supposed to employ 1,643 cops. Last year, Mayor Greg Ballard got to this number (1,644, actually) by declaring that 18 park rangers were part of the force. Whew! But this numbers game doesn’t begin to describe the real need Indianapolis has for a strengthened police department. Mayor Ballard based his first mayoral campaign on the idea that the city needed 750 new officers. He promised to add that many during his term

in office. Didn’t happen. Since 2008, IMPD has been able to hire about 50 new cops a year. If it weren’t for that Justice Department grant which, by the way, expires at the end of 2012, new hires would have been even lower than that. Cuts to income and property tax revenues have reduced the city’s budget for public safety to where it was in 2008. Meanwhile, cops continue to retire or resign. This creates added pressure for cops to work overtime. As a recent report by WISH-TV showed, public safety budgeted $8.7 million for overtime in 2008, $9.9 million in 2009 and $9.7 million in 2010. You have to wonder what an event like the Super Bowl did to those numbers. Whatever they might be, these figures only begin to indicate the larger issues facing the city’s public safety shortfall. The hard fact is that this is just the tip of our fiscal iceberg. A city is a complex and expensive place. Everything, from an urban greenway to the cops who keep it safe, has a price tag. The money has to come from somewhere. Indianapolis takes great pride in its volunteer spirit. We like to boast about our citizens’ willingness to pitch in, with sweat equity and cash, in order to make things happen. But volunteerism and philanthropy can only go so far. They exist to enhance a place that is able to get — and keep — its house in order. No amount of volunteers can make up for a shortage of cops. I haven’t seen any sponsorship logos on IMPD uniforms. Not yet. We like to promote our low cost of living, as if this was a strategy we’ve concocted to give us an edge over other cities. The awkward secret behind this seemingly good news is that Indianapolis is capitol of a cash-poor state. Our cost of living is down because our average incomes are below the national average. This, in turn, depresses what we can expect to raise in taxes. Greg Ballard, you will recall, defeated the previous mayor, Bart Peterson, because Peterson had the temerity to call for an increase to the local income tax. Peterson wanted the revenue to hire more cops. But this tax increase, on top of our already sky-rocketing property taxes, pushed voters over the edge. Ballard won his upset. Well, property taxes have been capped since then. Income tax revenues are down. Oh, and the federal dollars that have been paying for new cops are going away. You want a Super City? If you think the investment we made in getting the Super Bowl here was hefty, hold on. Making Indianapolis livable 365 days a year is going to be expensive. We need to dream a little less and talk more about what this really takes.

I haven’t seen any sponsorship logos on IMPD uniforms. Not yet.

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GADFLY

by Wayne Bertsch

HAIKU NEWS by Jim Poyser

Mitt’s remark he’d get rid of Planned Parenthood put many in a fit HBO cancels ‘Luck’ cause horses in the show didn’t have any new numbers show more at risk from sea level rise — even deniers Santorum would like to ban hard core porn for, um, obvious reasons Romney’s big blind trust holdings could surely be the bane of his campaign Kony video director just can’t handle the viral spiral Rutgers student found guilty in webcam case will eye lots of male sex ‘This American Life’ retracts podcast; they too live in a glass house new study says young people not so green — except with envy for stuff IU basketball’s return to sweet sixteen is nothing short of sweet

GOT ME ALL TWITTERED!

Follow @jimpoyser on Twitter for more Haiku News.

THUMBSUP THUMBSDOWN FIXING FELINES

An amplified effort to reduce cat overpopulation in the city is underway at IndyFeral and the FACE Low Cost Spay/Neuter Clinic. Thanks to a two-year, $100,000 PetSmart Charities grant, the clinic will offer free spay/ neuters of pets or strays from the zip codes 46201, 46203, 46227, 46221 and 46241 — the areas in the city identified as contributing the most cats to Animal Care and Control. IndyFeral’s Lisa Tudor estimates that 8 percent of cats in animal shelters are born to stray cats. Visit IndyFeral.org for details on the grant or on helping to care for feral cats in your neighborhood.

BLOWN AWAY BOOKS

Do-gooders can brush up on local history while helping to rebuild the libraries of Henryville’s schools. On March 24, people bringing books to donate to the libraries are welcomed to free admission at the Indiana Historical Society. IHS will collect books for Henryville through April 4.

OLD SHOES, CLEAN WATER

In the spirit of the United Nations’ World Water Day on March 24, Indy’s Edge Outreach will host a used shoe drive through the end of the month to support its global water purification efforts. Shoes of all types and condition are accepted — they are exported to support micro-economic enterprises in targeted outreach countries. Some will be reused as footwear, others recycled into other products. Local businesses, including Calvin Fletcher’s Coffee Company, Little Green Bean Boutique, Pogue’s Run Grocer, are helping with collection efforts. Additional collection sites are welcome. Contact CoraLyn Turentine, EDGE Indy’s director of Outreach, at 317-354-6491 or CJTurentine@gmail.com.

SUSPICIOUS FLIGHT PATTERN

The abrupt departure of Indianapolis Airport Authority Chief Executive John Clark follows questions about his spending habits — his second such flight under a cloud in as many jobs. Folio Weekly of Jacksonville, Fl., sent warning flares in 2008 about lavish spending habits as head of that city’s airport. The new IAA board president, Mike Wells, told the Indianapolis Business Journal that Clark’s resignation happened after a meeting Monday afternoon “to discuss how we were going to go forward and whether we were going to go forward.” The IBJ reported that “Clark and two key officers spent more than $67,000 last year on travel that included extended trips to Brazil, Denmark, Greece, Morocco and Switzerland.” Bon voyage!

THOUGHT BITE By Andy Jacobs Jr.

Santorum says that for Puerto Rico to become a state, the official language must be English. Will Gingrich require the same for his lunar colony? 100% RECYCLED PAPER // NUVO // 03.21.12-03.28.12 // news

news Hitting the road for housing Bike & Build stokes local law student’s passion

B Y K RI S T I N A PRO F F IT T ED I T O RS @N U V O . N E T

ike & Build participants spend their summers trekking across the U.S. building houses along the way. For Brittany Simmerman, a first-year law student at Indiana University Law-Indianapolis, the program offered invigorating summers that instilled in her a deep devotion to the affordable housing cause. And now she is calling on Indy to support the non-profit organization made up of young adults who bike cross-country and build homes in some of America’s poorest areas. The ages of Bike & Build participants range from 18 to 25. The program wants young adults who just finished high school or undergraduate work because “the housing issue is something our generation is going to have to deal with. Bike & Build is educating leaders and since we’re young, we’re still impressionable and open to helping,” Simmerman said. Last summer, her first in Bike & Build, was enough to hook her for life. The program is “like a drug, you crave Bike & Build,” she said. Still, she cautions, it is not for everyone and as it requires “a certain brand of crazy.” Why bike instead of driving across the country to pursue building projects? Biking, although more strenuous, allows Bike & Builders to raise awareness of housing issues throughout the country. Every place the Bike & Build groups stop, they tell locals about their mission and the enormity of the housing crisis. “This exponentially grows the cause, rather than staying local,” Simmerman said. Since Bike & Build requires its volunteers to bike across the country from Virginia to Oregon, the physical aspects of the program

onnuvo.net 8

may appear to be the most challenging. But, Simmerman said, the mental stress affected her the most. “There comes a point at around week seven when you’re just mentally exhausted,” she said. “You’re doing so much and thinking so much that your mind just kind of poops out on you. We call this the Bike & Build plateau and at that point you just have to remind yourself why I’m doing this and why I’m here.” This mission empowered Simmerman to continue the strenuous task of providing the most in-need Americans with housing. Simmerman’s first awareness of housing issues developed during a church service trip to New Orleans, La., following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. “It really opened my eyes to see that not everyone lives like me,” she said. “Not everyone is able to have a roof over their heads that’s adequate. That kind

Affordable housing isn’t just building houses, it’s knowing how many people are affected by this crisis. of got the wheels turning.” After returning from New Orleans, the housing crisis hit home. In her native Terre Haute, Ind., floods wrecked extensive havoc in June 2008, which strengthened her resolve to help provide affordable housing in areas of need across the country. Soon after, she joined Bike & Build. One of the most moving moments she experienced on her Bike & Build tour last summer happened in the small town of Marlton, W. Va., where no more than 100 people lived in small shacks and poverty. When Bike & Build arrived, Marlton threw a potluck dinner and took up a collection for the program. “It was the most amazing meal of my life; better than any fancy restaurant, better than anything,” Simmerman said.

/NEWS

Indiana makes poor marks in public integrity By Megan Banta

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“It was all of Over the past 9 seasons Bike & Build these mountain has donated more than $3.3 millpeople coming lion, built for more than 100,000 together, we had hours, pedaled over 5 million miles mashed potatoes and engaged more than 1,500 young and they made adults in spreading the word about the pizza and everyaffordable housing crisis in America. thing in the whole world that they could throw together and every single person from that town was there and it was the most touching thing because the people who have the least to give, give the most. That’s one of the things you see on Bike & Build. When you’re in little towns, those people will give you everything they have and more just to make you feel like you’re one of them.” Simmerman is now preparing to embark on her second summer of Bike & Build and her main challenge now is finding sponsors who will provide funding to Bike & Build. “Not many people are aware of this cause, so the biggest hurdle is getting people to listen initially,” Simmerman said. “Every organization that I’ve talked to and has actually listened to my spiel has been unbelievable as far as fundraising. So it’s really just getting people to listen for fifteen minutes.” One of the most successful fundraising events Simmerman hosted was a Bingo Night with St. Mary-of-the-Woods nuns in which she raised $400 for Bike & Build. To host these events, Simmerman must send out letters to family, friends, and local businesses asking for their support. Currently, Simmerman estimates that she has sent over 200 letters in hopes of finding more sponsors. The Indiana Ice aided Simmerman’s fundraising efforts by welcoming her to bike at a PHOTO BY MARK LEE game to raise awareness. CMH First-year IUPUI law student Brittany Simmerman found an outlet for her passion for Builders have also responded to Simmerman’s cause by offering to affordable housing issues in the Bike & Build program. double her fundraising total. In addition, Simmerman hopes to simply raise awareness about Brittany Simmerman will be heading up an action table at: affordable housing and she is focusing her law studies on a track that will allow her to work on housing issues when she graduates. She urges participation in local volunteer efforts, such as Habitat for Humanity and Rebuilding When: Thursday, March 22, 7 p.m.; $5 ($3 for IMA members) Together, an organization that Where: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 4000 N. Michigan Road refurbishes homes for those in need, particularly for elderly people. “Just be aware, affordable housThis event features a documentary about bicycles, followed by a panel ing isn’t just building houses, it’s discussion, followed by a series of action tables where participants can knowing how many people are discuss a variety issues regarding Indy’s dynamic and growing bicycle affected by this crisis,” she said. community. “Just go to homeless shelters and listen to people’s stories. That’s the biggest thing people want is for someone to just listen.”

We Are City: With My Own Two Wheels

Abdul recaps General Assembly 2012 By Abdul-Hakim Shabazz

Occupy Midwest riled in St. Louis By NUVO Editors

Girl, in Transit: Trip to the BMV By Ashley Kimmel

Q&A with Julie Fidler on HIV/ AIDS Housing Cooperative effort aimed at better resource utilization BY RE BE CCA T O WN S E N D R T O W N S E N D @N U V O . N E T Big changes are underway in the way people living with HIV/AIDS will receive the services necessary for them to live well in Indy. More than a dozen local non-profit HIV/ AIDS outreach providers are now cooperating amongst each other to best catalog, collect and distribute available resources to support HIV-positive people in need of services such as housing and health care in Central Indiana. Indy’s multi-faceted community of service providers works with a diverse range of demographics and individual needs. The group relies on various streams of government and private grant money to fund the outreach projects necessary to test, treat and prevent the spread of the brutal virus. To reduce duplicated efforts and wasted funding opportunities, the groups last fall started a cooperative working group to enable greater efficiency and service. Before the group, a person with HIV/ AIDS would have to approach each group separately and complete each group’s application process. Now the groups can determine which one of their number is best poised to serve a client based on needs and the varied outreach specialties of each provider. Representatives from U.S. Rep. André Carson’s office and local service providers gathered Friday to formally announce the collaboration between 14 providers in Central Indiana to more effectively utilize the Housing Opportunities for Persons with HIV/AIDS (HOPWA) funds the City of Indianapolis receives from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The announcement opened a forum focused on “Housing as a Platform to Health and Self Sufficiency for Persons with HIV/AIDS and their families.” Nancy Bernstine of the National Aids Housing Coalition keynoted, followed by a round table of local service providers. Julie A. Fidler, human services grant manager for the Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development, stopped by NUVO to provide an overview. That conversation is recast below as a summarized Q &A: NUVO: How did this get started? JULIE A. FIDLER: In August of last year, we saw a need to get all these groups together who are working with people with HIV and AIDS and their families … to really sit and talk and see if we could find some common ground … Could we find ways to be partners? Could we find other funding through these partnerships? Because HOPWA is not a huge amount of money compared to other grants. Last year, it was $845,000 approximately. This year, because of fed-

eral budget negotiations, it’s flat, which is effectively a 2 percent cut — that translates to about $830,000. NUVO: What was going on before the round table? JF: Each group had its own grant writers, some had translation services, some had access to transgender services or domestic violence services. So we asked, “What do you bring to the table? How can we maximize those resources? What can we give to each other?” This enabled an expansion in the number of groups HOPWA served from three last year to five agencies this year. NUVO: What did you notice when you put your heads together? JF: We noticed there were some gaps in services, such as short-term rental assistance and emergency funds. For people with compromised immune systems… they have to have access to clean good houses, refrigeration, good diets. We formed a workgroup to look at the possibility of being short on emergency funds. NUVO: Didn’t you come up with something revolutionary? JF: It’s so amazing! They looked at what’s the best way to get access for not only their clients but all other nine agencies, as well — the ones that don’t get our (HOPWA) funds. They came up with a common application. They don’t have this in other areas. It will allow access to those five (HOPWAfunded) agencies, but others as well that may not have capacity to apply for our funding by themselves. It allows for them all to reduce duplications in service where they’re filling out multiple applications, for multiple agencies for review by multiple funding boards … Is it perfect? Probably not. But it’s pretty darn good. It’s a good start. We sent it to all agencies and said, “This is how you apply for funding.” It’s caused people to stop and think is HOPWA is the best use of funding for this client’s situation. If clients are better matched with appropriate assistance and funding to start with, the potential for greater care and self-sufficiency increases. There will be people for whom self-sufficiency will have less barriers. Others will need help with rent, others, because of mental health or other things, may need longer-term assistance. The common application preserves each pot of funding for the people who need it the most. NUVO: What else has come out of the roundtable? JF: Partnerships – lots and lots of partnership. Like the Housing Hot List, which develops connections between managers of remodeled, guaranteed affordable housing and the roundtable participants. We housed 17 clients last year, some without subsidy. They just needed to find an affordable place to live. At least another five people have been housed since January. NUVO: What does this mean for the city?

Cathy Morgan of the Indiana State Health Department (left) stands with the Indiana Minority AIDS Coalition’s 2011 Trailblazer Award winner Julie Fidler, a human services grant manager for the Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development.

JF: We are taking people out of vulnerable situations. One client lived with people who would steal his food stamps, people who used him. Through the partnership he’s attached to services to access available health care and housing with a partial rent subsidy. Each one of the numbers we have represents a persons’ story. They’re people. They need help. They are in vulnerable situations. We have a responsibility as a society to help them. But I have responsibility to do that in the most fiscally responsible way. This group has been amazing. They’ve done and looked at everything I’ve asked them to. They educated me. And they really are successful. They haven’t changed their target audiences, their missions or their values. But they are working together, which is a huge thing. To get 15 groups to sit together in one room and work together is a big deal. And I’m proud of them for that. NUVO: What does this mean for the bottom line? JF: Last year, HOPWA provided 121 people helped with tenant-based rental assistance at an average cost of $4,899 per year. HUD capped payments at $535 for a one bedroom, which costs $620. So there’s almost a $2,000 shortage. We’re short every one of those 121 people on paying the full amount of their rent. Short-term assistance averaged $479 per person over a year for basic needs outside of housing. I don’t know what your gas or electric bills are, but $479 for a year doesn’t go too far.

The $326 case management average is human services staff. For each of the people we served last year, we could only pay someone to help them link to these other services — food, medical, basic survival — we could only pay $326 of that person’s salary over 14 agencies worth of people. We assisted 276 people with short-term rent, utilities and mortgage assistance and 242 with supportive services. The funded agencies took the $845,000 in HOPWA funds and leveraged $1.2 million of other funding to make up for those gaps. We’re going to do even more of that this year.

HOPWA BY THE NUMBERS Estimated number of households with unmet housing assistance need – 234 Of that 234, how many household’s needs are identified as short term – 168 Number of chronically homeless served by HOPWA – 34 Of the 352 beneficiaries of HOPWA: 202 are men 141 are women 9 are transgender 131 are considered “extremely low” income or 0-30 percent of poverty level Source: Indy’s HOPWA Consolidated Annual Performance Evaluation Report

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FOUR CHANCES C TO SEE URBANSKI March 21 as part of Butler University’s Urbanski speaks p Leadership Through the Arts Forum Leader 7:30 p.m. at the Atherton Union Uni Reilly Room, Butler University

March 29-31 Urbanski conducts the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra Indian in music by Smetana, Elgar and Kilar

March 29, 11 a.m.; March 30, 8 p.m.; March 31, 5:30 5:3 p.m. at Hilbert Circle Theatre

Strings, punching out that martial brass fanfare from Holst’s “Mars, the Bringer of War.” Pull back to see how he crouches, urging every restraint upon the orchestra, at a pensive, delicate moment. See how the quietude is only that of the beast preparing his attack. His face snarls as he squeezes a high-altitude phrase from the violins, the sheep transformed into werewolf. This beast has been elusive thus far this season: After beginning his four-year term as music director this September with two weekends of concerts and a society page’s worth of public appearances, Urbanski again headed overseas to honor prior commitments. But this March, Urbanski has returned for two weekends: last week’s program headlined by Holst’s The Planets (a five-star affair, according to our classical critic Tom Aldridge; see pg. 22), and a March 29-31 program consisting of music by Smetana, Elgar and Wojciech Kilar. And from here on out, Urbanski will be a much more familiar face in town; not only are he and his wife currently considering several local residences, but he will gradually conduct a greater number of concerts with each future season.

September song

BY S CO T T S H O G E R S S H O G E R@N U V O . N E T

he author is dead; we killed him a long time ago, knocked him down with a paving stone in Paris or Chicago. We took out the film director too; it became about the genius of the system that produces films, rather than that of the auteur himself. The same rules should apply to the conductor of an orchestra, right? How much can he — and it’s still usually a “he” — really communicate with a dramatic swipe of the hand, an eccentric tempo, an unusual programming maneuver? So many factors play into the way that the great lumbering beast known as the symphony orchestra operates — from, in the case of Indy’s symphony orchestra, an endowment that must sustain it through a double-dip recession; to a CEO who may or may not quit without much public warning;

to a cast of players who might be on oneyear contracts or nearing retirement age. And yet — and here’s the thing of it, the reason why we still sneak a look at author photos on the inside flap, why a Tarantino still has a cult — we still want to associate a person with a work of art. In the case of the conductor, we’re magnetically drawn, to the magician who can draw music from the ether, to the performer who is at once mime and ballet dancer and traffic conductor, to the brilliant mind that can hold great swathes of eighth-notes and accent marks, crescendi and fermata, in his mind, often without a score. This profile will discuss, in due time, all the things that Krzysztof Urbanski — the 29-year-old music director of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the youngest person to hold such a position with a major American orchestra — has done and will do behind the scenes. We’ll get to the volcanic eruption that forced him to spend a little extra time in Indy — and was essentially the catalyst that eventually led to his being hired last yeay by the ISO. To the conductor’s prodigious mem-

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ory, which would seem to be photographic, though we wouldn’t attempt such a diagnosis. To his no-nonsense rehearsal style, which threatens to leave the slothful in the dust. But for now, let’s take a look at the man himself. Maybe he’s at a rehearsal, clad in his uniform of tight black shirt and tight blue jeans (with stylish flare at the ankle), his tousled, moussed hair cutting his way through the world like a spiked helmet, striding before his new battalion with a brusque, no-nonsense hello, followed roughly two seconds later by “let’s play” and the cue for the first notes. Or maybe we see him in performance, with an elegantly cut tuxedo bringing out the striking looks we expect from, say, concert pianists or violinists — but not music directors, who more often than not have long since passed the half-century mark, as well as the point of caring a lick for their looks. Let’s watch his hands: The right one keeps time, naturally, sometimes holding a baton, sometimes not. Ah, but that left, ever so softly caressing a line from Barber’s Adagio for

It’s September 2011; Urbanski has only been on the job a week or two. He’s probably too busy to do a lot of the extracurricular things associated with being the new music director, but the job demands a certain accessibility. There’s the fundraising mixer at what was formerly known as the Hilbert Mansion, or Le Chateau Renaissance, now the property of Lucas Oil baron Forrest Lucas. Urbanski and his wife Joanna, whose head of tight platinum blonde curls is just as impressive as her husband’s spiky thatch, stand beside former ISO music director Raymond Leppard, greeting donors on a patio made from the finest stones in all the land, presumably carted to this authentic French country estate by authentic French peasants. Leppard’s presence is significant: He’s been an Indianapolis resident since he was appointed in 1987 and has remained here in his retirement as conductor laureate. He might be contrasted with Urbanski’s immediate predecessor, Mario Venzago, who was less involved with the life of the city, retaining a home in Switzerland and who was dismissed from his position in 2009 under contentious circumstances. A few days after the fundraiser, between meetings and a few hours before the night’s concert, Urbanski’s schedule allows a halfhour or so for an interview. As he rushes down the hall to his office, his wife grabs him for a milli-second, pointing excitedly to their picture on The Star’s society page. Krzysztof isn’t visibly impressed; now’s not the time, perhaps. His office looks like that of a new employee; shelves are empty but for a few knickknacks, notably a racing helmet inscribed with Urbanski’s name; one assumes he inherited from his predecessor the generic, classical-themed posters on the wall. On the coffee table are the score to Orff’s Carmina Burana, which he’ll conduct tonight, as well as an ISO photo directory; less than two weeks into his tenure, Urbanski is working to commit both notes and names to memory. Urbanski has a kind of sparkle about him, a restlessness and energy that’s catching; one wouldn’t guess he’s working on two hours of sleep today, a victim of jet lag and an ill-timed 5:30 a.m. call from overseas. His English is quite good, but for some grammatical inaccuracies; one gets the sense his mind is rac-

ing ahead of his words, and his hands and face wind up being his most expressive tools of communication. He conducts his words, grabbing and pulling them from the air, as he does phrases from an orchestra, an ingratiating smile and twinkling eyes accenting the performance. A grand piano sits open across the room, waiting to punctuate an idea. With the ISO running a marketing promotion this fall that prices all tickets at $28 to celebrate the approach of Urbanski’s 29th birthday, questions about Urbanski’s age are sort of unavoidable. How, then, does his relative youth factor into the equation? It simply doesn’t, Urbanski contends: “What matters is your approach to the music, the way you work; when you’re a professional, age doesn’t matter. For me, I’ve just become used to being the youngest person on the stage. Frankly, I started my professional conducting a few years ago, and I remember thinking then: They’re so much older than myself. How am I going to tell them that their intonation is bad? But right now, nothing can stop me; I’m not feeling limited in any ways by being 28 years old.” To be exact, Urbanski started his professional career in 2007, when he simultaneously graduated from the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw and was appointed assistant conductor for the Warsaw Philharmonic, whom he conducted for the first time as part of the graduation ceremony. His career path wasn’t exactly pre-destined; without musicians in his family, he still dreamt of football stardom when a friend taught him to play a few notes on a keyboard during grade school. Hooked, he followed the friend to music school, taking an entrance exam at age 12. “But I didn’t pass the exam because they said I had no talent at all; possibly, they were right,” Urbanski says, delivering the aside with a smile. “But I was very stubborn, and my mother realized that I was desperate and had to go to music school, and she managed to put me there.” Urbanski initially wanted to become a composer. At 15, he put together a group to play some of his music; his first conducting gig came about out of necessity, when the band told him it would be easier to play his work if someone could set the tempo. “Obviously, I had to lead the rehearsals, and I decided to lead in the concert,” Urbanski says. “This was my first time holding a baton — though it wasn’t a baton, it was a chopstick, because it was the only thing I had! “It was then that I realized, luckily or not, that I have completely no talent for being a composer. So, standing there holding this chopstick, I realized this

was what was left, that I would be a conductor in the future.”

A prodigious memory At the same time, Urbanski was falling in love with the classical canon: Mozart first, then Beethoven and Richard Strauss. His makeshift band expanded, playing some of his own work — it may have taken some time to quit the composing racket — as well as the classics; eventually, it became a full symphony orchestra. But Urbanski became more and more aware of what he didn’t know as a conductor, and he left the ensemble to embark on a more conventional course of study. It’s about a three-hour drive from Urbanski’s hometown of Pabiance, a onceindustrial city of nearly 70,000, to the capital of Warsaw, where Urbanski enrolled at Chopin University of Music. He had been accepted there as a student of Antoni Wit, whom Urbanski says opened his eyes to what “real, professional conducting looks like.” In the effort to impress Wit, who is known for his memory skills, Urbanski resolved that during his five-year course of studies, he would never open the score during conducting classes. “Sometimes,” Urbanski recalls, “he was so demanding that he wanted me to learn a new symphony within three days. But I managed to do it!” That skill serves him to this day: While it’s not unusual for a conductor to work without score, it is extraordinary for someone to rehearse without one, as Urbanski often does with the ISO. His ability to remember the rehearsal numbers and other elements integral to the rehearsal process may be attributed to a photographic memory, though he doesn’t necessarily define it as such. “I don’t know how to describe my memory, but if I close my eyes, I see the pages. So when I’m conducting, sometimes I’m turning the pages in my head. The problem is if someone gives me another score, a different edition, with a different layout, I can’t remember! It’s happened when I’ve forgotten the score and the orchestra has provided a different score. They’re the same notes, but the bar numbers were in different places, and I couldn’t read it.”

It takes him about a week to memorize an entire score, but that only marks the beginning of the interpretative process for Urbanski. “I learn the scores by playing them on the piano, and then once I have the notes in my head, I try to listen — how would it sound if I have a little more snare drum here? No, no; that’s too much. How would it sound if I ask the trombones to play softer, and the oboes and flutes play louder?” Sometimes further research is needed, as with the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony, which Urbanski conducted at his first concert of the season. “Before I opened the score, I wanted to know what was going on in Soviet Russia during 1935 and ‘36. What Shostakovich did in the symphony was create a picture of his times, making a statement and an answer to his critics, because he was very much criticized after [his opera] Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk. Sure, every piece of art is a picture of its time, an image of its time. But in Shostakovich, in particular — and in this symphony, in particular — the first movement shows all the hopelessness of living at that time in Soviet Russia.” Urbanski jumps over to the piano to express his point, playing a mournful, elegiac theme from the first movement. He turns towards me — — Urbanski “I imagine Shostakovich looking outside his window — sometimes I visualize things like that — with everything in black and white, like in an old movie” — then back towards the keys, plunking out something even more doleful. “Then it becomes much more serious, with very low horns — the black car arrives, and the NKVD step out. Someone should do a cartoon or movie of this, trying to show what he saw when he opened the window.” Back on the couch, Urbanski explains his theory of conducting, which is shaped by his ability to quickly and comprehensively devour a score. “The most important task of a conductor is to have a complete and certain vision about everything; you have to know how to play this note and that note,” he explains. “Creating a good interpretation is an endless process; I may spend a week on a piece, and then it’s done, but after some years you might change something, and it’s

So, standing there holding this chopstick, I realized this was what was left, that I would be a conductor…

amazing that you can still go deeper and deeper and get more from a piece. “But it’s so important that you have a completely clear idea, because when you are working with a good orchestra, they know how to play it and you have to direct them.” Richard Graef, ISO assistant principal horn, attests that Urbanski lives up to his self-imposed standards: “When he learns a work, he knows every insight and every nuance. He works extremely quickly, and there’s a learning curve with our orchestra to get used to that kind of pace of rehearsing.” ISO concertmaster Zach De Pue, who, like Urbanski, was hired at age 28 to a leadership position with the ISO, echoes Graef’s take on the maestro’s speed: “Part of what’s exciting about Kris [short for Krzysztof] is that that energy and that speed are what we’ve been needing; it’s great to get into rehearsal and it focuses the band, because you don’t want to miss anything. He’s on the A train, moving fast.” That train may occasionally pick up a bit too much steam, according to De Pue: “One thing he’ll learn, because he’s on high octane, is when to allow a little breathing room. I was the same way: My stand partner, Phil Palermo, will still to this day turn to me and say, ‘You know, you can’t press the car faster than it can go.’ “In our youth,” De Pue continues, “we’re all about speed, but there’s more to the experience in our business. I’ve learned to sit back a little bit, and I think that over time, Kris will learn to become one with his colleagues on stage.”

A volcano insinuates itself To look at Urbanski’s concert history: 2007 was the year when he began to chalk up guest conducting jobs with Poland’s major orchestras, while beginning his work as assistant conductor for the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra; 2008 saw him establishing international relationships in China, Sweden and Germany; and 2009 was when the wheels came off, and he made his first appearances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, while continuing to work with top outfits in his homeland. Urbanski’s first concert in the United States was with the ISO in April 2010, which also happened to be the month that many Europeans found themselves doubly frustrated — first that their flights were canceled, and then that they couldn’t say the name of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, that was to blame for the giant clouds of ash spreading over the continent.

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Marooned in Indianapolis following the concert, with no hope of heading back until international air travel resumed, Urbanski got a chance to spend a little more time with the orchestra and the city. This extended visit gave Urbanski the chance to impress the orchestra — and, perhaps just as importantly, the orchestra the chance to impress Urbanski. “The volcano erupted, I was stuck here, and I decided I’d stay a little bit longer!” Urbanski jokes. “We were just talking at that time; they were telling me their vision. Of course, I knew they were on a music director search, and I said, ‘What could I do here?’ And I figured that these are perfect people to work with. The orchestra itself is very ambitious and talented, but I have to say that the management of the orchestra is also very ambitious.” Another appearance with the ISO followed in June 2010, after which time Urbanski headed to Houston and then Chicago, where he led a high-profile performance at The Grant Park Music Festival in July, conducting two 20th-century Polish works: Kilar’s Krzesany and Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra. Former Chicago Tribune classical critic Lawrence A. Johnson said of the Lutoslawski that “Urbanski displayed real musical leadership here, bringing a sense of the long line and overall structure, his clarity, dexterous balancing and wide dynamic range consistently ensuring that Lutoslawski’s kaleidoscopic scoring came across.” He also noted that Urbanski managed to soldier through the distraction of a Chicago police helicopter repeatedly flying overhead. It’s notable that Urbanski made his Chicago debut with a program of Polish music, but it doesn’t indicate a bias, necessarily. “I’m not trying to focus on Poland or any particular country,” Urbanski answers. “But I can say —

as music director, making him the youngand maybe this is a patriotic thing — when I est director of a year-round symphony came here, I wanted to see what pieces had orchestra, of which there are 17 in the been presented [by the ISO] over the past sevcountry. That appointment put an end eral years, and I noticed that some wonderto a selection process that had begun in ful Polish pieces like Lutoslawski’s Concerto August 2009. for Orchestra was last De Pue, who was on a performed here in 1987, selection committee along which is some time ago! with Graef and the ISO “In Europe, in England board and management, at least, it might be more sums up the decision. “It’s even more popular than undeniable when you have Bartok’s Concerto for a talent, and part of the Orchestra. So these are Indianapolis Symphony’s pieces that I’m very proud move was to get a talent of, being a Pole, and that — Zach De Pue in its infancy and to help I’d like to present.” ISO CONCERTMASTER nurture it and grow with it. Wojciech Kilar, a livTo have that potential for ing Polish composer who growth — from a foundation of incredmay be most widely known to American ible talent — is exciting for everyone audiences for his scores to Polanski’s The involved, from the players to the commuNinth Gate and The Pianist, has been nity, the board to the management; it’s commissioned to write a piece for the a different kind of energy that walks into ISO; Urbanski will again conduct Kilar’s the building.” Krzesany next weekend. In the fall of 2010, Urbanski began an engagement as chief conductor for the Trondheim Symfoniorkester, a symphony orchestra located in Norway’s third largUrbanski’s energy is helping to revitalize est city. He retains the relationship today; an orchestra that was waiting for a leader, in fact, the majority of concert engageto hear De Pue tell it: “The orchestra had ments on Urbanski’s calendar into 2014 a very unified approach under Raymond are either with the ISO or Trondheim, Leppard; it had a very unified approach with high-profile stops with the Berlin under Mario. We floated around for two Philharmonic, the National Symphony years, and really the focus right now for Orchestra in Washington, D.C., and the these first two visits is to instill a culture Los Angeles Philharmonic in between. that he envisions an orchestra to have. Urbanski notes that, although Trondheim “Where we go with that? The sky’s the limit. has only approximately 175,000 residents, If we’re all on the same page, I think we’d like its concert hall is nearly as large as Hilbert to get out of town and win some road games; I Circle Theatre — and is almost always full. think that only brings cultural pride to the city, In October 2010, the ISO announced it and we are the one and singular cultural instihad signed Urbanski to a four-year term tution that is moveable in town. Not much

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He’s on the A train, moving fast.

ISO in transition

else can impact outside of the city culturally the way that the orchestra can.” But the ISO has a little more floating to do before it reaches solid ground. Both CEO Simon Crookall and Martin Sher, the vice president of artistic planning who worked side-by-side with Urbanski in programming the 2011-12 season, departed earlier this year. Crookall left under somewhat mysterious circumstances, submitting his resignation with a statement announcing he was “ready to move on to my next challenge,” without disclosing what that challenge would be. Graef sums up the musicians’ perspective on the departures: “It gets a little disconcerting when we have a lot of openings like we do now, with an artistic head and marketing and development changing courses. We like when we have qualified experts doing things well for us. We don’t want to run very long without a CEO and without a director of development; you need them filled.” Meanwhile, the ISO is in the heart of a capital campaign, meant to shore up an endowment which has been hit in recent years by both economic downturns and budget deficits. And management and the musician’s union are set to negotiate another three-year contract this year, the last of which called for a 12 percent reduction in musician salaries (with increases of 2.7 percent and 7.8 percent in the second and third year), as well as a reduction in operating expenses that included staff salary cuts. But at least some of this activity could be construed as an opportunity for Urbanski, according to Graef: “Not to put a negative or positive slant on Simon’s departure, but Krzysztof will also get to be in the loop for the choosing of the next CEO. We’re also having auditions for principal oboe, principal cello and principal trumpet, and with

those three positions alone, he’ll be able to really put an imprint on the orchestra.” Graef also notes that, between open chairs throughout the orchestra, as well as the fact that many musicians will reach retirement age within the next 10 years, if Urbanski remains here for a decade, he could end up hiring over 40 percent of the orchestra’s membership. “That’s crucial, and that’s what you see with the sort of icons who have built an orchestra, like Solti in Chicago,” Graef says.

An uncanny stagecraft “He didn’t do this last night!” the superfan behind me exclaims, apropos of Urbanski’s decision to say a few words ahead of Saturday night’s performance of Holst’s The Planets. It was a last-minute decision, and it shows the ordinarily fearless Urbanski in a slightly less than confident territory, employing a mock bashfulness that only makes him more appealing. “May I take two or three minutes?” he asks, before going into an brief explication of the piece, noting the impressive forces amassed for the piece, picking out a musical joke from “Mercury” (a Morse-code like line in the violins and celesta), pointing to the way Holst translates the letters of his name into a four-note phrase in “Uranus.” There are hints of Urbanski’s highoctane nature even during this brief teaching moment — he almost snickers when the violins pick up their instruments in anticipation of being asked to play a section, playfully saying something to the effect of “When I need you to play, I’ll ask you.” With his rapid-fire calling out of rehearsal numbers, one can see why the orchestra is

trying to anticipate his next moves, and the trend carries into the performance itself, with Urbanski charging through an intense “Mars” at an unvaried, swift tempo. But to be clear, it’s not all loud and fast. In the closing section — the mysterious, opaque “Neptune” — Urbanski becomes the conductor as magician, leading an offstage, female chorus whose wordless vocals resonate throughout the room. Sure, there are technical explanations for how Urbanski is conducting this invisible chorus. But as the batonless conductor slowly moves the suite towards its end, each phrase softer than the next, the vocals coming from nowhere and everywhere at once, it’s hard not to be struck by the uncanny stagecraft. Sure, a lot of this is in the score, and one expects a top conductor to bring out new resonances in a familiar piece. But at the risk of sounding a bit too much like a cheerleader, he’s our director, our phenom, our talent. Here’s de Pue, another talent whom we’re fortunate to have in the city: “Kris is taking up residence here and will probably be here over half of our season, but the one thing that’s imperative is that his career continues to grow outside of Indianapolis. We want to ride those shirttails; his success with other — Urbanski orchestras is only our success, and to be his home orchestra only means that we have to sound just as good, if not better, than those places he’s going, so he’s bringing that perspective back to us.” And Graef is willing to make a bold prediction: “When we first saw him, he was just being discovered by American orchestras. His future is bright, and I hope he takes the ISO along with him. You could see him as a music director with one of the top five orchestras some day. He’s that kind of talent.”

When you’re a professional, age doesn’t matter.

Urbanski concert by concert Thus far, my own appraisal of Urbanski’s conducting prowess has been mixed. In his first appearance as the April 2010 guest conductor, I gave that program three stars (out of five), stating that “The Dvorak continued Urbanski’s penchant for too steady a tempo — more revealing of a lack of ensemble precision as premature entrances and ragged phase endings tended to sprinkle throughout the four movements.” I was more impressed with Urbanski’s “designate” program of May 2011, but with some caveats: “His ‘vision’ was there — in spades; his players’ execution of it often was not.” And: “He brought out the woodwinds as few previous conductors have, allowing them to sound in perfect balance with the strings throughout. He made the ‘louds’ really loud, the ‘softs’ really soft and the ‘inbetweens’ rendered in delicate shades of gray.” But then: “Finally, Urbanski took the two outer movements of the “Italian” Symphony as fast as I’ve ever heard them — too fast for the orchestra to hold onto the reins — especially the final ‘Saltarello’ movement.” In his Sept. 16, 2011 music director debut, I began with: “For the first time

[Urbanski] showed his potential as a podium master, a consummate artist, a music director to be envied.” My assessment of his Shostakovich Fifth: “. . . and proceeded to follow its every nuance, unaffected by tradition — and made it work. In particular, he made the hollow triumph of the last movement as “hollow” as I’ve heard it, emphasizing its discords for their intentions: to satirize the alleged victory paean Shostakovich wrote to satisfy Stalin.” A week later Urbanski topped himself with Carmina Burana: “So, how was Urbanski’s reading? It was great! This 28-year-old threaded all his behemothic forces through this rhythmic, vocal challenge as though he’d been doing it for years. The orchestra wove its way through its pulsating rhythms and its accelerandos with the sure-footedness of a rock-climbing mountain goat.” It was the first time in my life that Orff’s cantata had really moved me. Were this season’s first two Urbanski concert programs enough for me as a reviewer to fully appraise him? No, but I believe last weekend’s concert was. See pg. 22 for my review. Editors note: Tom Aldridge has been NUVO’s classical music reviewer for 20 years. 100% RECYCLED PAPER // NUVO // 03.21.12-03.28.12 // cover story

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For comprehensive event listings, go to nuvo.net/calendar

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A page from Schrag’s comic “Night Visitor.”

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Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep.

THURSDAY

Ariel Schrag

FREE

@ Butler

The inaugural series of visiting writers and speakers at Butler’s newlyopened Efroymson Center for Creative Writing rolls along this week with a master class on graphic novels led by Ariel Schrag. Best known for a series of four autobiographical graphic novels chronicling her time at Berkeley High School — each devoted to a single school year — Schrag has also written for TV (The L Word, How To Make It In America ), and often gives live performances of her comics using projected slides, narration and a musical soundtrack. No stranger to the academy, she again offered a graphic novel workshop at New York City’s New School this spring. Her visit to the Efroymson Center is free and open to the public. March 22, 7 p.m. @ 530 W. Hampton Dr.; free; butler.edu

FRIDAY

Harold and Maude

FRIDAY

Steve Inskeep @ UIndy

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Stites has the whole world in his hand. FREE

March 24 @ 401 E. Michigan St.; 7:30 p.m.; $15 or $10 with military ID; operationcomedy.com

FRIDAY

Pirates Live with the ISO @ Clowes Memorial Hall

The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra heads to its old stomping ground this week to, yar, fiddle like a pirate, performing live to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl . The sound effects and dialogue will remain, but all of the score, written by Klaus Badelt, who you may know from other big honkin’ films like Pearl Harbor and Gladiator, will be performed live by the ISO. Indy native Erik E. Ochsner will helm the ship. Shiver me timbers. And yar. SUBMITTED PHOTO

Yar.

Interview with tiny house builder Jay Shafer by Tristan Schmid Harold and Maude review by Katelyn Coyne

go&do // 03.21.12-03.28.12 // NUVO // 100% RECYCLED PAPER

@ Athenaeum Theatre

March 23, 24, 30 and 31 at 8 p.m; March 25 and April 1 at 2:30 p.m. @ 11150 Southeastern Ave.; $15 adults, $13 students and seniors; buckcreekplayers.com

Operation Comedy

March 23, 7 p.m. @ Uindy Hall A, Schwitzer Student Center, University of Indianapolis; free; uindy.edu

One of the most sensitively-rendered portraits of a GMILF (GrandMother, and you know the rest) in the history of cinema, Harold and Maude arrives in its stage adaptation this week at Buck Creek Playhouse . Harold (played in the film by Bud Cort, to whom age has been no friend) is a suicidal teenager with hearsefull of hangups; Maude is the septuagenerian whose personal philosophy is informed by humanism and an appreciation of sensual and artistic pleasures. Colin Higgins’s 1980 stage adaptation closed on Broadway after four performances (and 21 previews); it’s since found more success in regional productions.

/ BLOG

SATURDAY

“Reintegrate” and “appreciate” are the watchwords for Operation Comedy, a comedy tour that travels the Midwest donating tickets to veterans and raising cash (over $8,000) for veterans charities. Four standups are on the bill — Stites, B.T. Bowers and Todd McComas — along a little southern rock from Sour Mash 7 . Hoosier Park Racing and Casino gets props from event organizers for sponsoring the show and making possible the donation of 200 tickets to veterans and their families.

@ Buck Creek Playhouse

onnuvo.net

If I were Steve Inskeep — how many times have I started sentences that way — I would open all my speaking engagements with the theme song to Morning Edition , the NPR morning news program he’s long hosted. And not just a short bumper, but the looped, extended version played when there’s some manner of technical snafu. But this is why I am NUVO and not Steve Inskeep. The Carmel High School grad is headed to the University of Indianapolis to discuss his recently-published Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi , which uses the Pakistani metropolis as a case study to examine problems faced by other rapidlygrowing cities throughout the world. The talk is free and open to the public.

Extended ‘The Planets’ review by Tom Aldridge The Bicycle Diaries of a Big Girl by Katelyn Coyne

March 23 and 24, 8 p.m. @ 4602 Sunset Ave.; $40-60 (plus applicable fees); indianapolissymphony.org

/ PHOTO

Midwest Fashion Week by Paul Pogue, Mark Lee, Phillip Hill Spring Equinox at 100 Acres by Paul Pogue

WEDNESDAY

IndyTalks Neighborhoods on the Edge @ Arthur M. Glick JCC

Linda Gregg @ Butler FREE

Next Wednesday’s installment of

IndyTalks, which goes by the full title of Our City Under the Radar: Neighborhoods on the Edge , will

address two central questions: “How do the 10,000 abandoned homes in Indianapolis affect you and our neighborhoods? What are the possibilities and potentials?” Star columnist Erika Smith will moderate a panel discussion featuring Indy Land Bank Chairman Frank Hagaman , Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Michael Huber, architectural historian Connie Zeigler and two representatives of Ball State University, Professor of Architecture Wes Janz and Associate Professor of Architecture Olon Dotson. Moderated table discussions will follow the panel.

TUESDAY

PHOTO BY REBECCA TOWNSEND

An near Southeast side house is demolished as part of the city’s Abandoned Structures initiative.

March 28, 7-9 p.m. @ 6701 Hoover Road; free; jccindy.org

SATURDAY

If These Walls Could Tell @ Indiana Landmarks Center

This weekend brings the second installment of If These Walls Could Tell Series, which tells the stories of vintage buildings from throughout the state via monologues commissioned by Indiana Landmarks and Storytelling Arts. Sally Perkins kicked off the series last year with the story of the former Central Avenue Methodist Church,

FREE

The Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series again has another star on hand: That of Linda Gregg, who has published consistently since her 1981 debut collection, Too Bright Too See, picking up a Guggenheim Fellowship, Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and William Carlos Williams along the way, the latter two for her 2008 selected poems collection, All of It Singing. Here’s an excerpt from one poem from that collection, “Lies and Longing,” written about a visit to a New York City shelter for homeless women. (...)An old woman singing an Italian song in English and says she wants her name in lights: Faye Runaway. Tells about her grown children. One asks for any kind of medicine. One says she has a rock that means honor and a piece of fur. One womans’s feet are wrapped in rags. One keeps talking about how fat she is so nobody will know she’s pregnant. They lie about getting letters. One lies about a beautiful dead man. One lies about Denver. Outside it’s Thirtieth Street and hot and no sun. March 27, 7:30 p.m. @ Clowes Memorial Hall Krannert Room, Butler University; free; butler.edu now Indiana Landmarks Center. Angola, Ind.’s Lou Ann Homan follows on this year with “Window Over Wabash: A View of the Charley Creek Inn in Wabash, Ind.” Homan has been researching the piece over the past year, interviewing former employees, neighbors and historians. There will be a runaway elephant (conjured up by the power of words, mind you), as well as a small army of bellhops, bartenders and the like. Saturday marks the Indianapolis premiere, and the piece will later travel to the Charley Creek Inn itself for a July 1 performance during the Charley Creek Festival. March 24, 7:30 p.m. performance, 8:30 p.m. reception @ 1201 Central Ave.; $10 advance (576-9848 or storytellingarts.org), $12 door

MOVIES

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Mirriam from With My Own Two Wheels

With My Own Two Wheels e With My Own Two Wheels is a rewarding, short (44 minute) documentary that deals with people around the world trying to better themselves and their communities, and various groups that provide them with bicycle-related support. Filmmakers Jacob Seigel-Boettner and Isaac SeigelBoettner have crafted a movie that gives a glimpse of what community looks like on a global scale. Painful truths are presented, but the general tone is upbeat because the featured individuals simply won’t stop moving forward. In Chapola, Zambia, Fred is a farmer and a volunteer caregiver tending to HIV/AIDS patients in rural areas. A bicycle provided by World Bicycle Relief allows him to do his job much more efficiently and deal with more patients. Mirriam is a young physically disabled woman in Ghana, where people with physical challenges are treated poorly

by many. After training provided by Bikes Not Bombs, she becomes a bicycle mechanic and a hell of a role model. A segment in India featuring a young woman named Bharti contains some hard-to-hear facts. Daughters are routinely treated as undesirable beings, receiving less schooling than males because they are likely to marry young and leave their families. “Why water a plant that’s going to grow in a neighbor’s garden?” is a well-known quote in the country. Bharti’s determination prevails, aided by a bike to go to high school provided by Ashta No Kia, a women’s empowerment group. The film also showcases efforts in Guatemala to improve the horrible air pollution by making bike-powered machines to do various labor-intensive tasks, increasing productivity for farmers and reducing the use of machines that add to the pollution. The devices are ingenious and the project inspiring. Finally, we visit Santa Barbara, California, where former gang member Sharkey volunteers in a community run bike shop that caters to the needs of cyclists, particularly those who use bikes by necessity. With My Own Two Wheels is well-edited, beautifully shot and features a winning musical score. I wanted to learn more about both the individuals and the programs, but the production stays on point, delivering its message of hope again and again. This is the kind of film that triggers discussions and, ideally, new projects. Following the screening, local individuals involved in bicycle-related projects will appear, including Matthew Jose of Big City Farms, Haiti advocate Amy King and Doug Friedenson of Freewheelin’ Bikes. Interested parties may then move to the Nourish Cafe to network and visit other bike groups. — Ed Johnson-Ott

Tyrannosaur t Joseph (Peter Mullan) is a mess. He’s a scary man who kicks his own dog to death in the early minutes of the film, written and directed by respected actor Paddy Considine (In America). The Yorkshire-set tale doesn’t dismiss Joseph, though I suspect a few readers may have after the sentence about the dog. The story focuses on the unlikely relationship that builds between hot-tempered Joseph and Hannah (Olivia Colman), the soft-spoken proprietor of a consignment shop. When Joseph takes refuge at her store, she offers to pray for the intruder. Joseph responds foully, but returns to the shop the next time he is in trouble, and eventually he begins to temper his temper in her presence. Alas, life is not as simple as it seems for Hannah. She lives in fear of her abusive husband, played by the great Eddie Marsan (the angry driving instructor in Happy-Go-Lucky). The acting is outstanding, especially by the leads, and the characters are rich and interesting. The dialogue, however, ranges from insightful to trite. Considine is a promising writer and director, but the film is clearly the work of a man growing into his new roles. He knows how to make you care for his characters, but he struggles with what to do with them other than come up with different ways to make their lives awful. — Ed Johnson-Ott March 22, 7 p.m. @ Earth House; tickets $10; part of Indy Film Fest’s Spring Film Series.

March 22, 7 p.m. @ The Toby at the Indianapolis Museum of Art; tickets $5 public, $3 members; part of the We Are City film series; co-presented by INDYCOG.

100% RECYCLED PAPER // NUVO // 03.21.12-03.28.12 // go&do

It’s

! w e All N

JOIN INDIANA LIVING GREEN AS WE

START IT UP BY

TURNING

IT OFF

Celebrate our Launch Party and Earth Hour Lights out from 8:30-9:30

SATURDAY MARCH 31, 2012

CITY MARKET WEST WING. 7PM-3AM Live Music Performances • All Ages Welcome Beer Garden • DJs • Catacombs tours International Earth Hour Fashion Show

FREE “Everybody dances or

we can’t save the planet!” –Editor Jim Poyser

Saving the grain elevator Carmel photographer wants to preserve functional architecture D A N G RO S S M A N E D I T O RS @N U V O . N E T

on Kern first heard of Mayor Jim Brainard’s plan to demolish the Carmel grain elevator and replace it with a water tower this January, on the same night that he opened a show of his Ron Kern photography. One of his works on display that evening just so happened to be a photograph of said abandoned grain elevator, rising two hundred feet or so over the Monon Trail, on the outskirts of Carmel’s Arts & Design District. Kern perceived a certain irony in the timing of this news. Brainard, under the auspices of the Carmel Redevelopment Commission, has transformed Carmel over the past five years to conform to his vision. The walkable Arts & Design District, packed with art galleries and restaurants, has a decidedly European feel in terms of architecture. This is most striking in the neoclassical design of the Palladium — the main venue of the Center for the Performing Arts — that borrows heavily from Italian architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580). Kern isn’t necessarily against this new development, but he believes there’s still room for existing structures like the Carmel grain elevator. And so, he’s fighting for its preservation. “These things were designed with function in mind,” says Kern. “There was no specific architectural design. They were designed and built to do one thing, which was to lift the grain from the storage into the awaiting railroad car. And yet they had this incredible form because they were all designed around function… The functionality of grain elevators influenced many Modernist architects, including Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. That influence, however, extends way beyond architecture; witness one Charles Demuth, whose 1927 painting, “My Egypt,” pictures a grain elevator lit by triangular sunbeams. “Demuth considered those grain elevators to be like the pyramids in Egypt,” says Kern. Kern started seriously researching the influence of grain elevators on modern art and architecture — as well as on photographers — when he first began the fight to save the Carmel grain elevator. He began this fight by writing on his blog; soon enough others joined him. (The City of Carmel did not respond to a request for comment before NUVO went to press.) There may be some self-interest involved in Kern’s drive to save the grain elevator; it is, after all, one of his favorite photographic subjects. It’s easy to see why.

PHOTO BY RON KERN

Ron Kern’s photo “Carmel Grain Elevator 5”

His recent photos, using a Polaroid camera, are mind-blowing in their stark black and white beauty. In his process, Kern incorporates the imperfections in the medium with the same kind of glee with which, say, Jimi Hendrix incorporated feedback into his guitar solos. “When you pull your film through, the part you usually throw away I keep,” says Kern about his process. “And then I preserve that and then there’s a bleaching process I go through to get a negative out of it. And so I take that and then I scan that negative. And then I turn that negative into a monochrome image.” But the fight to save the Carmel grain elevator isn’t just about photography or aesthetics or architecture for Kern, who’s lived in Carmel since 1962 (the year before he entered kindergarten in Carmel Public Schools) and lives there today with his wife, Julie. He’s fighting for his community, which he not only wants to preserve, but transform into a better place. Kern sees a future in which the grain elevator could serve as a centerpiece for a performance venue and artists’ studios. An art-centric community shouldn’t be tearing down such an incredible resource that we have without studying it,” says Kern. “The irony is that the City Council has passed an historic preservation code and the mayor signed the resolution to demolish the grain elevator seven days before the historic preservation code was signed into law. 100% RECYCLED PAPER // NUVO // 03.21.12-03.28.12 // go&do

A&E FEATURE Travels in poetry, photography Across decades, John Sherman combines both B Y D A N G RO S SM A N E DI T O RS @N U V O . N E T

orn in 1944, John Sherman grew up on a farm 50 miles south of Fort Wayne, a city that was, believe it or not, a cultural Mecca for him during his youth. During a tour of his show at the Indiana Interchurch Center Art Gallery, the first thing Sherman showed me was his poem “Fort Wayne,” printed on his photograph of the Roman Coliseum. Making reference both to Fort Wayne’s municipal coliseum and the slightly more renowned relic of the Roman Empire, the poem reads: Coney Dogs were the bread of our circuses we were always happy without even contemplating being safe from the growling lions in Fort Wayne whose ancestors ate ours in Rome. Such juxtapositions are par for the course in this exhibit that combines Sherman’s passions for poetry and photography. Both are informed by his rural upbringing, as well as his experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer and aid worker during the time of the Biafra conflict in Nigeria. As a returned Peace Corps volunteer myself — I served in Niger, West Africa from ‘92-’94 — I am particularly interested in how Returned Peace Corps volunteers incorporate their experiences into their writing. It’s not always easy to write about a culture that is not your own without churning out dense, anthropological prose. On the other hand, if you focus too narrowly on your own, your prose isn’t going to be any more readable. Sherman has avoided both pitfalls in his highly accessible poetry. In his work, the poem and the particular photograph that accompanies it are separated by time periods longer than forty years. But the poems don’t feel tacked on, as it were, to the large slabs of gator board onto which the photographs are printed. Instead, these works seem greater than the sum of their parts, allowing for the poetic text to merge with the photographic images in your mind. A fine example of this approach is Sherman’s “On Soon Returning to

Nigeria,” which pictures a Nigerian nightclub where, as a younger man, he danced the night away with his fellow Peace Corps volunteers. He took the photograph in 1966, but wrote the poem that would accompany it forty-two years later, when returning to Abuja, Nigeria, for a conference in 2009. An excerpt of that poem reads: I joined the crowded floor of the lido all of us pleasantly drunk inhaling just a pack free for one night from the approaching history. Abuja, a small backwater town in the mid ‘60s, is now a large metro area of 1.5 million people, having become the nation’s capital since Sherman last lived in Nigeria. Sherman met his wife, Lois, during Peace Corps training in 1966; she, like him, was trained as a Peace Corps English teacher. They were both evacuated from Nigeria when the breakaway Biafra region, in which they were posted, declared independence.

A millennia of birds Until Sherman, who is white, met Lois — an African-American woman who grew up in Memphis — he didn’t realize just how much the dehumanizing Jim Crow laws permeated every aspect of Southern society. “You couldn’t try on clothes if you bought them in a department store,” he told me. “If you bought them, you couldn’t return them.” A number of his works deal with the

African-American experience in the New World. Such is the case with “Middle Passage,” a poem printed on — and inspired by — a photograph he took at the Castillo San Felipe del Moro, a 16thcentury citadel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In this photograph, you see through an opening the Atlantic Ocean that the slave ships made into a superhighway. Sherman’s travels also brought him to Amsterdam, Holland, where Anne Frank wrote her diary. The visit prompted a poem entitled “Anne Frank 1974,” where he imagines the young author — who died in the Holocaust — as a 45-year old, with kids. The photograph he chose to accompany the poem in this exhibit, however, was taken in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, in September 2011. “What I wanted was a very quiet peaceful scene that reflects on the poem,” he says. The topical nature of much of Sherman’s work never ceases to engage, but for me the most thought-provoking piece is the one least tied to history. The backdrop to the poem “Millennia of Birds” is the interior of the Pantheon in Rome. Through the huge opening in the roof, you can see three birds — a breed of creatures equally indifferent to Caligula and Berlusconi — against the blue. Against this stunning background he writes: perhaps they’ve always thought this temple was dedicated to them we see birds but they see their fellow gods flying in the sunlight and the space of millennia.

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John Sherman

“THREE JOURNEYS THAT REDEFINED LIVES: JOHN SHERMAN” IS ON DISPLAY AT THE INDIANA INTERCHURCH CENTER ART GALLERY, 1100 W. 42ND ST., 8 A.M. TO 5 P.M., Monday through Friday, through March 30. Copies of two of Sherman’s books — War Stories, a memoir of his experience as an aid work er in Nigeria during the Biafra War, and Marjorie Main — are av ailable at the show.

100% RECYCLED PAPER // NUVO // 03.21.12-03.28.12 // a&e feature

PHOTO BY MARK LEE

PHOTO BY PHILLIP HILL

PHOTO BY PAUL POGUE

PHOTO BY HILL

NUVO photographers were on the scene for three of Midwest Fashion Week’s key events: the Student Fashion Show, held March 13 at the Madame Walker Theatre Center; The Art of Fashion, held March 15 at iMOCA; and the March 17 DSI Design for Change Gala at the downtown Sheraton. Head to nuvo.net for slideshows and other Midwest Fashion Week coverage. From left: Karrington Tru wears Lorry Plasterer at the DSI Design for Change Gala; (top) a design by Plasterer at the Student F ashion Show; (bottom) India Settles wears Rebecca Issacs at The Art of Fashion; Alyssa Lucchetti and Amanda Horton in dresses by Liz Alig at the Design for Change Gala; TaSheeka Graham wears a dress by Roqstar Hous e Boutique at the Design for Change Gala.

A&E REVIEWS DivaFest 2012 Katelyn Coyne and Rita Kohn reviewed the entirety of this year’s slate at DivaFest, IndyFringe’s annual workshop and showcase for new plays by female playwrights. The Fest runs through this weekend; remaining performances are listed after each play, and tickets run $10 each. Head to indyfringe.org for further info. STRIP FOR CHANGE BY JULIE MAURO e In Strip for Change, idealistic college students plan a charity strip show to raise funds and awareness for oppressed women in East Timor. But big ideas and naivety get the best of the controversial group when their campaign to “strip for change” begins to get national attention. The concept cleverly deconstructs the difference between good intentions and selfish philanthropy, with Mauro’s quirky characters existing perfectly in the ensemble dynamic. Mellie Sokolski, John Michael Goodson and Ben Thomas inject an already delightful comedy with vivacity, giving lively, over-the-top performances that avoid the temptation toward hamminess. In sum, this quirky comedy delivers solid laughs with a message. March 23, 7:30 p.m.; March 24, 9 p.m. — KATELYN COYNE VOICE OF AN ANGEL BY TIFFANIE BRIDGES r The title of this DivaFest play doesn’t lie; Bridges does indeed have the “voice of an angel.” This biographical short explores

the life and voice of Mahalia Jackson, dubbed the “Queen of Gospel” at the height of her career, as she waits outside the pearly gates of heaven. Bridges doesn’t let herself get bogged down with story or exposition, giving us just enough about Jackson to jump meaningfully into her first song. Her character simply exists on stage, her voice at the forefront of the piece. Many in the audience, familiar with her repertoire of old spirituals and gospel hymns, clapped and sang softly in response. Her soulful interpretations of the music reaches down into parts of your being you didn’t know could shiver with delight. March 24, 7:30 p.m.; March 25, 6 p.m. — KATELYN COYNE SWEATPANTS AND HIGH HEELS BY DIJA HENRY AND DENISE MICHELLE WARNSBY t Henry and Warnsby bring a slice of life to a new parenting class being taught by a substitute teacher. The twelve scenes weave humor and pathos through the trajectory of a nervous breakdown. Theresa has lost herself in the maze of being a wife and mother, her personal ambitions on standby. Henry brings a range of emotions and expressive physicality to this one-woman script aptly directed by Warnsby. How and why she descended into despair is part of our culture; how the situation can be avoided can be the strength of the play. It has a potential audience with teens whose future lives can be made happier with this kind of foreknowledge. Georgeanna D. Smith provides intriguing choreography; Pat McCarney is on the mark with lighting and sound. March 23, 9 p.m.; March 25, 7:30 p.m. — RITA KOHN (ED NOTE: KOHN COLLABORATED WITH PAULINE MOFFAT TO DEVELOP DIVAFEST; SHE IS UNINVOLVED WITH THE DAY-TO-DAY RUNNING OF THE FESTIVAL.)

a&e reviews // 03.21.12-03.28.12 // NUVO // 100% RECYCLED PAPER

NO PLACE LIKE HOME BY CLADIA LABIN u Whether the script failed to establish certain plot points or the actors were dropping lines is unclear, but on the whole, this look at squabbling siblings battling over ownership of their family’s lake house was very difficult to follow. Many ideas were introduced only to be left unresolved. This protracted family tragedy hits high notes early in the first scene, leaving the action very little room to escalate. Add to that clunky staging and unfocused performances and No Place Like Home could have done with another couple of weeks in rehearsal. March 24, 6 p.m. — KATELYN COYNE CHAOTICA BY CHRISTEL BARTELSE t Canadian playwright Bartelse’s Chaotica re-imagines Alice’s wonderland as a mind-bending board game designed to push the limits of its player. The play takes a quirky look at the challenges and influences women face: career, relationships, marriage, babies, body image issues, etc. Bartelse demonstrated a strong stage presence and a good sense of timing as the sole actor in this one act. However, her use of voiceover to accomplish the play’s exposition made it difficult to get on her side from the onset. But once the “rules” were established, it was easy to fall into a groove with Bartelse, who brings copious amounts of energy to the stage. —KATELYN COYNE

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Harlem String Quartet

MUSIC ISO CLASSICAL SERIES PROGRAM NO. 14: THE PLANETS, SZYMANOWSKI’S VIOLIN CONCERT NO. 2 HILBERT CIRCLE THEATRE, MARCH 16-17 q Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra music director Krzysztof Urbanski returned last wekend for his third appearance of the season, impressing as never before with Gustav Holst’s The Planets for large orchestra, Op. 32 (1916). First of all, no other conductor has dramatized the extremity of contrasts pervading its seven sections, from “Mars, the Bringer of War” to “Neptune, the Mystic.” For example, our new music director conveyed strong emotion in “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age,” the suite’s longest section. Soft and sad, it leads to a climactic moment, showing our music director’s supreme management of crescendos and diminuendos, then fading into serenity and acceptance. The most moving seven minutes in the suite, “Neptune, the Mystic,” contains a wordless, offstage female chorus. Urbanski had each singer place her open hand two or three inches in front of her mouth while singing. The result was that the chorus seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Our music director began his program with Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings (1936). He slowly and carefully built up his strings from an almost soundless beginning to a climactic point, receding to a quiet ending, the string complement showing good balance throughout. ISO concertmaster Zach de Pue was soloist in Karol Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 61 (1933). Through all four connected movements, this 25-minute work had de Pue and the orchestra playing together most of the time, in a well integrated, well realized fashion. For a detailed description of all seven “Planets,” visit nuvo.net. — TOM ALDRIDGE HARLEM STRING QUARTET INDIANA HISTORY CENTER, MARCH 14 t What happens when a half an hour before their concert is scheduled to begin, the performers discover they left the music of one of their program’s three works back at their hotel on Indy’s far north side? The Ensemble Music Society president quickly had a “runner” dispatched to retrieve the Harlem String Quartet’s scores. Jazz composer Chick Corea’s string quartet, The Adventures of Hippocrates (2004), was the forgotten item. To play it safe, the program’s two halves were switched such that it became the final offering. Hippocrates falls into that unhappy no-man’s land between jazz and modernism, failing to convince in either one. This was a crossover piece which got stuck in the middle. Mozart’s Quartet No. 15

in D Minor, K. 421, preceding the Corea, is the second of the six quartets Mozart dedicated to Haydn. The Harlem players — violinists Ilmar Gavilán and Melissa White; violist Juan-Miguel Hernandez; and cellist Paul Wiancko — gave it a well polished reading with good balance among the four and a tendency toward being lean-toned. The latter performance element had a worse effect on Schubert’s great “Death and the Maiden” Quartet (No. 14 in D Minor, D. 810), played first but scheduled last. Filled with impassioned drama (rhythmically including the Beethoven Fifth’s four-note “fate” motive) inseparably linked with supreme Schubertian melody, the 40-minute work lacked a vibrant sonority in the sustained lines. The Harlem ensemble thus gave us their best playing in the two fast outer movements. I imagine they’ll never forget a score again. For a fuller review visit nuvo.net. — TOM ALDRIDGE CELESTE GOLDEN BOYER PLAYS STRAVINSKY, TELEMANN INDIANA HISTORY CENTER, MARCH 13 e When she was awarded the bronze medal in the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, her name was Celeste Golden. In the interim she has married and become Celeste Golden Boyer. She’s a top flight fiddle player by any name. In the 2006 event, I felt she was exceeded only by that year’s gold medalist, Augustin Hadelich. Her string talent has, if anything, improved since then. She played in all four works the program offered. Boyer was best highlighted in Stravinsky’s Suite Italienne for Violin and Piano, excerpted and rescored from the composer’s Pulcinella ballet music, a slightly modern take on the very-short-lived Baroque composer Giovanni Pergolesi (1710-1736). Once again we had the piano services of Chih-Yi Chen, perfectly backing up Boyer’s nicely controlled tone, technique and musicality. Ronen clarinetist David Bellman joined the above pair in Stravinsky’s ensuing L’Histoire du Soldat Suite, originally scored for small chamber orchestra. Bellman added a darker, richer color to this exercise in rhythmic punctuations. Our performers opened with the Trio Sonata in G Minor for Oboe, Violin, and Basso Continuo by Georg Phillip Telemann (1681-1767), with oboist Timothy Clinch and cellist Ingrid Fischer-Bellman added to Boyer and Chen (playing a piano instead of the usual harpsichord). Prokofiev’s Quintet for Oboe, Clarinet, Violin, Viola and Double Bass, Op. 39, employed the largest forces, violist Nancy Agres and double bassist Ju-Fang Liu appearing only herein. The composer’s spiky modernism demanded much from the five performers, but they delivered what they were given, in an altogether pleasing program from start to finish. — TOM ALDRIDGE 100% RECYCLED PAPER // NUVO // 03.21.12-03.28.12 // a&e reviews

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Freud’s Last Session at Phoenix Theatre

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THEATER FALLEN ANGELS INDIANA REPERTORY THEARE; THROUGH APRIL 15 t If you want to see where vintage sitcoms like Friends and Frasier come from, Noel Coward is your man. Coward was a Jazz Age Oscar Wilde, albeit with more sex and a blunter wit. In Fallen Angels, Coward quickly gets the situational ball rolling: an offhand remark between a young husband and wife begs the question of how falling and being in love differ. When the husband goes off on a golfing jaunt with his best friend, their two wives are united by the discovery that a man both women shared before they were married is on his way to town. What will they do? Farce plays best at a breakneck speed where circumstances take over and judgment, as well as believability, are happily out the window. Director William Brown’s production is hampered by a three-act structure, with two intermissions. The action resembles a bell curve, with a rather deliberate set-up, an antic middle, featuring a hilarious drunk scene, followed by a denouement that’s more wry than raucous. There’s too much time to think about what’s going on. As the besotted wives, Cristina Panfilio and Kelsey Brennan, seem to have just two gears, shrill and shriller. But Susan Felder’s Saunders, the household chief, cook and bottlewasher, is a delight — a woman with a treasure trove for a past, equally capable of mixing a great martini and playing flamenco guitar. — DAVID HOPPE

FREUD’S LAST SESSION PHOENIX THEATRE; THROUGH APRIL 15 t Imagining what it would be like to bring historical figures together — how they might behave in one another’s presence, what they might say — is an engaging mind game that, on the surface, seems tailor made for theater. That’s certainly the appeal of Freud’s Last Session by Mark St. Germain. Here the playwright creates a meeting between the dying Sigmund Freud, a resolute atheist, and the Christian intellectual, C.S. Lewis. The atmosphere is charged by world events; Freud compulsively turns to his radio for news of Hitler’s invasion of Poland. In the meantime, what we get is an exercise in civility for two voices. In the relatively short running time of this play, Freud and Lewis spar about the existence of God, the meaning of free will, faith versus science, sex and the right to die. Director William Fisher manages this talk with aplomb and his actors, Scot Greenwell (Lewis) and Gordon McCall (Freud) shade their characterizations sufficiently to humanize characters that might otherwise come off as articulate mileposts on the way to a Great Books seminar. Their compassionate willingness to disagree with one another, while staunchly holding to their respective codes, is perhaps this play’s greatest pleasure. It is also, arguably, its drawback. While St. Germain does an admirable job of presenting his duo’s respective philosophies, this also keeps the two men locked in place. The thrill of drama is its ability to reveal transformation. Although both men seem touched by their encounter, neither is really changed. St. Germain’s meeting concludes without an imaginative leap. — DAVID HOPPE

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Fallen Angels at Indiana Repertory Theatre

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FOOD SoBro Café

Suitably distant from the madding crowd that is Broad Ripple, but not so far away as to be inconvenient, SoBro Café offers a relaxing oasis in which to cool the jets and enjoy some made-to-order sustenance at almost any time of the day. Pleasantly devoid of attitude or pretense, this smartlyappointed eatery caters to a wide range of tastes, from vegan to carnivore, with a strong emphasis on freshness. SoBro’s menu is short but well thought out, offering a tempting array of dishes too numerous to sample in one sitting, but which certainly merit return visits. The house specialty is the pannekoeken, or Dutch pancake, which comes in a dozen or so preparations, some sweet and some savory. Thicker than a traditional French crèpe, and thinner than the American pancake, these are served rolled up with a range of ingredients ranging from spinach with cheese to bacon and chocolate with mango chutney. Opting for something in between, on a recent visit we ordered the

egg, bacon and cheddar for $5.75. Perfectly cooked and quite substantial, this could perhaps have used a touch more seasoning, but was delicious nonetheless. An appetizer of four generous corn fritters ($4) was almost too much food for a first course. Just slightly crisp on the outside and fluffy within, these possessed a zesty citrus note which provided delightful lift to the accompanying black bean purée and sweetly spicy sour cream. Separately, the components of this dish were good, but combined they became intriguingly explosive. Opting for the carnivorous end of the menu, I chose the chicken salad sandwich, served on whole wheat bread. One of only two menu items not prepared in house (the other being the potato chips), the bread was nevertheless commendably fresh and full of grainy flavor. The salad, chunky and seasoned with a touch of curry, delivered a tangy crunch, thanks to the judicious use of some pecans and cranberries, as well as a creamy dollop of gorgonzola for extra richness. This is a sandwich I will certainly steal for home use. Our other sandwich, the Venice Beach $7.50), offered a refreshing and pleasingly zippy mouthful of crisp sprouts and cucumber, dressed with hummus and avocado. Substantial but pleasingly light, this was the very essence of springtime captured between bread. No review of SoBro Café would be complete without a mention of their chai.

CULINARY PICKS

coffee, chocolate, and caramel; aging in a Jack Daniels barrel adds a smooth Tennessee whiskey flavor with notes of oak and vanilla.

MUSIC! MUSIC! MUSIC! @ CHEF JOSEPH’S AT THE CONNOISSEUR ROOM

Bier Brewery: New lineup includes Belgian Blonde, Scottish 70 Schilling, Persephone, Coffee Stout, Chinookalicious IPA.

A relaxing oasis, infused with chai BY N E I L CH AR LE S N CH A RL E S @N U V O . N E T

That’s one “Music!” for each concert this weekend at Chef Joseph’s at the Connoisseur Room, the stately restaurant serving up high-quality comfort food made by erstwhile Agio chef Joseph Heidenreich. Thursday night belongs to Brenda Williams; Friday to the Divas of Jazz, an all-female band featuring vocalists Heather Ramsey and Debra Mullins; and Saturday will feature Billy Joel cover act An Innocent Band. You may be saying to yourself, “But Chef Joseph’s doesn’t usually serve dinner; or if they do, it’s for a party or some such private affair.” And in the past you would’ve been right. But “Music! Music! Music!” deserves all those exclamation points because, beginning March 22, the restaurant will be open “every available” Thursday, Friday and Saturday, excepting those nights already booked by selfish people who simply must have the whole restaurant to themselves. No cover for March 22 and 24; the March 23 Divas show will run $20. Call 600-3577 for reservations. If you have an item for the Culinary Picks, send an e-mail at least two weeks in advance to culinary@nuvo.net.

BEER BUZZ

653 E 52nd St. | 320-8121

HOURS

TUESDAY -THURSDAY: 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.,

Dinner 5 p.m.-9 p.m.

FRIDAY: 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.;

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SATURDAY: 9 a.m.-9:30 p.m. SUNDAY: 9 a.m.-8 p.m.

FOOD: r | SERVICE: r ATMOSPHERE: t

MARCH 21

Tomlinson Tap Room, 6-8 p.m., “Tappings and Tastings.” $20. Reserve at indycm.com/tomlinsontaproom Triton Brewing Company, 6 p.m., tapping B-Java Brown Ale in honor of Benito Jaurez Day.

MARCH 22

Triton, 6 p.m., Sin Bin Belgian Pale Ale, the Official Beer of the Indiana Ice, returns as a regular.

MARCH 24

Athenaeum, German Heritage Society annual symposium, 1:15 p.m.; Bob Ostrander speaks about German breweries in Indiana’s history.

MARCH 27

NEW ON TAP:

MARCH 28

Half Moon, Kokomo: Oatmeal Stout has a smooth, creamy, rich roasted malt character with notes of

SoBro Café

Black Acre in Irvington continues to feature other Indiana brews along with a lineup of craft brews nationwide. Their own brews should be ready mid April.

Bier Brewery, 6 p.m., IN Love arts and crafts event. More at artscraftbeer.com/scheduleregister.html

NABC, New Albany: Hoosier Daddy is a German crimson and cream ale with unique character; Gravity Head weekly lineup continues.

Whenever you mention this restaurant, the chai always comes up in the conversation. And with good reason. Although it might have taken a few minutes to brew, this spicy, subtly creamy brew was absolutely worth the wait. With a complexity that hit every taste bud and kept on delivering flavor long after the last drop was swallowed, it’s easy to see why people are so taken by this drink. It’s like winter holidays in a cup. Should tea not be your thing, there’s a small selection of beers of wine and local beer as well as outstanding coffee from Indy’s own B-Java.

Rock Bottom Downtown: Fire Chief Ale has a pleasant sweetness and lightly toasted character with a crisp, satisfying finish.

BY RITA KOHN

Oaken Barrel, Greenwood: New seasonal LepreKwang Ale is an easy drinking red ale with a clean taste and dry finish.

PHOTO BY MARK LEE

SoBro Café’s mushroom pannekoeken.

Tomlinson Tap Room, Flat 12 brews featured. More at www.flat12.me BeerBracket is coming up on April 14; more information and ticket purchases through brewbracket.com If you have an item for Beer Buzz, send an email to beerbuzz@nuvo.net. Deadline for Beer Buzz is Thursday noon before the Wednesday of publication. 100% RECYCLED PAPER // NUVO // 03.21.12-03.28.12 // a&e

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music Music for the Eyes

Local videographer honors integrity of music

BY D A N I E L L E L O O K M U S I C@N U V O . N E T

passed out man comes to in a dark alley wearing a goat mask, rapping to the camera with confusion in his eyes. Moments later, he’s walking hand in hand with a masked female who leads him to a car; her mask features a sheep head. They drive to a tall building where another figure, this one disguised a bald eagle, opens the gate and directs them to a loft where there’s an entire room full of more mysterious beings disguised as animals. At this point, the party has only just begun. This is the opening sketch for a music video recently produced by local director Jeremy “Jace” Wallace, which only touches the surface of the artistic approach he takes to his work. As a director, he plays a role that’s often overlooked; yet his work performs an incredibly important part in any music scene, whether underground or mainstream, local or international. Jace dreams up concepts for music videos, brings them to life with actors, and pulls it all together through imaginative editing. In a world where anybody can upload digital footage and throw it into a video editing program, Jace’s videography sets itself apart with unique camera angles and thoughtfully developed story lines. Whether he’s directing a hip-hop video or working with an indie rock musician, Jace strives to remain true to his creative vision and holds his work to the highest of standards.

Beginnings But it hasn’t always been that way. Before he was a director, Jace was a typical 17-year-old underground rapper, trying to get noticed by anyone who would give him the attention. It seemed that just writing songs and performing them around town wasn’t enough; Jace needed imagery attached to his music in a way that could be easily understood and shared. Realizing the importance of music videos, he started kicking around ideas for some of his songs but felt a bit defeated when it came to actually making it happen. “I didn’t know any local directors. I thought, to be a director, you had to be in Hollywood or something,” Jace said, when asked about his early struggles as a performing artist. He never did find a director and never had the videos made. He eventually got bored with rapping, and soon realized that the time and money required to pursue

onnuvo.net

that dream was more than he was willing to invest at the age of 18. But he kept listening to music and the songs kept speaking to him – creating pictures in his mind, narrating events, formulating stories. “I was like, ‘Man, I got some ideas for these!’ And I just thought, ‘If I could, I would…’ and I would write all this stuff down, treatments and things. Just write down ideas,” he said. Those ideas remained nothing more than sketches in his notebooks until Jace eventually started attending more local shows and networking with Naptown’s music scene. He soon realized that others were recognizing the same need for videos to breathe life into their music and sharing his once-felt feelings of frustration. Suddenly, his catalog of ideas and concepts had an opportunity to be put to use. For his directing debut, Jace partnered with Naptown rapper R.J. to produce the video for his song, “I’m So Fly.”

Progressions After watching that first video, it becomes obvious that Jace has come a long way in a very short amount of time. When comparing recent video releases for GEOHN and G-Scott or his highly viewed past projects with Oreo Jones and alpha.live, it’s easy to notice that transitions are smoother, the lighting is more meticulous and the story lines are much more developed in his present day productions. It’s a truth of which he’s well aware; he recognizes it’s part of the natural evolution of an artist. “I paid like, $400 for a Sony consumergrade HD camera,” said Jace, of his first music video. “As art, I look at it this way: it’s not based off of what you have; it’s what you can do with it. I try to always look at it as a story. You can go back two years ago and look at the videos and be like, ‘Wow, this guy made this two years ago. Now look at what he’s doing.’” Jace admits he’s quite comfortable with his early work because, “That’s where I was then, this is where I am now. I like for myself (and others) to see the growth.” Jace’s debut video with R.J. seems to follow the traditional hip-hop video model that so many amateur directors and rappers gravitate toward: find a cool location and shoot a series of shots with the artist rapping into the camera. But when he paired with alpha.live to film for his Naptown homage “Light Up,” Jace turned to the nighttime streets of Downtown Indy to experiment with out-of-focus shots, a back-lit view of the performer in an alley and a myriad of vividly bright iconic landmarks surrounded by darkness in the heart of The Circle City. “That video is just so universal,” said Jace. “It’s not too much on one side to where you can’t show it to a country singer because she’d get offended by it or you can’t show it to a rock guy and he doesn’t appreciate it.” Other notable works include the con-

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Excision, Arctic Monkeys, Black Keys, Herbie Hancock,

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PHOTO BY MATTHEW TAYLOR MORGAN

Jace

tinuous shot video for Oreo Jones’ “Cordon Bleu” that projects the emcee’s rhymes from the mouths of 14 different characters across three separate locations (with twice as many extras onsite throughout). The Night Riders “One Day At A Time” video, shot in nostalgic Fountain Square and depicting a boy who imagines idolized rappers performing in front of him when he puts on a special pair of sunglasses, also comes to mind. More recently, GEOHN’s “Love Let Go Lose Control” attempts to freeze the passage of time and examine a specific emotionally charged moment, while G-Scott’s “HA$H” video channels Warhol-esque inspiration through a drug-induced haze of erotic confusion.

Story Lines Story lines are a cornerstone of his work. When asked about concept development and where he finds inspiration for his videos, he credits his own intuition and says he pays attention to how a song makes him feel from the very moment it starts. “I try to base everything off that first shot; it tells the story and everything else just kind of follows. It’s like, ‘How can I take this opening scene and have it carry

Heartbeat: SXSW Roundup, Hotfox SXSW blog

Beat Jab: 92.3 Collector’s Edition, The Decemberists Note for Note: Bowerbirds, Magnetic Fields

the whole video out?’” he said. “That’s when I start coming up with the various characters and concepts. I listen to the lyrics as well, and figure out how I can incorporate the song’s dialog so that it gets this character from the beginning to the middle and then carries them on to the end.” Grey Granite’s “Critical Mass,” is an example. The video opens with a motionless body sprawled out in the dirt wearing a blood-stained shirt. Granite slowly steps over the body, gun hanging in one hand, and wipes his face in distress with the other. “This song’s about all the motherfuckers that tell you/how to do your job.” Granite’s voice enters before the music kicks in with a slow, pounding beat and low-end synths. As the viewer waits to see what happens next, Granite paces circles around the body. A car with blacked-out windows pulls up and two creepily masked characters hop out to begin wrestling Granite into the trunk of the car. The chorus runs twice as the thugs struggle to stuff him into the tiny compartment at the vehicle’s rear: he sings, “Fuck you, critics! You don’t get it till it’s gotten and it’s gone. My mind moves on. Travel by the wayside if you wanna take a ride. Some call it suicide; I just call it do or die.” The video nears its conclusion with a

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Spud Puppies, Steff Mahan, Cari Ray, Chevelle, Giant Giant Robot,

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barely visible Granite riding in the pitchblack trunk he was jammed into and ends with a light at the end of the tunnel, albeit not the one he was hoping for. “I had envisioned the opening sequence within a dream I had a couple nights prior to shooting,” Jace says of the video’s concept development. “It was originally supposed to end with Grey Granite being tied to the back of the car, but while on set Nate [Karamanski, who collaborated with Jace on several projects for short-lived side project CIRCA: FOREVER] had an idea of throwing him in the trunk and getting in there with him.”

Visions Developing visual content that’s both entertaining and artistic is by no means a quick or mechanical process, and it often meets creative differences along the way – those conflicting moments when the director’s vision doesn’t align with the artist’s end goal for the video. Jace cites a specific example when he wrote a script for a melancholy song with a very serious undertone, only to have the Indianapolis band reject it and demand a humorous storyline instead. “I feel like when you come to me, you come to me for my ideas, because you like my vision and you understand where I’m going. People can disrespect their own music at times,” said Jace. “Situations like that, when you’re jeopardizing the essence of the song – I gotta walk away from stuff like that.” It’s not a matter of haughtiness that dictates these beliefs governing Jace’s work, but rather the simple need for respect. “Some people may look at it and say I’m an asshole for that. The artist thinks, ‘This is my video and my song. I just need you to shoot it.’ But I’m not a camera man. I’m a director. If I don’t feel a certain way about something, I won’t shoot it.”

video production. Whether he’s writing a script, coming home from a shoot or getting ready to release a completed project, he does it with endless amounts of excitement. If the artists he’s collaborating with can’t share and fuel that passion, they simply might not be able to keep up. Jace cites G-Scott as his current favorite collaborator. “He’s always as excited as I am,” Jace said as he describes a typical back-andfourth exchange between the two that usually starts with a small idea, then builds and snowballs until they find the perfect mix of elements and lock it in. “Just tonight, for example, I texted him on the way here to share an idea I had. I said, ‘Let’s do a short film to kind of sum up your new project.’ And he texted me right back and he’s down and he’s supposed to be sending me a track that he wants to base it off of later on tonight. That’s just what I like. I like for people to feel as passionate about it as I am.” Jace says he also really enjoys working with Tyjuan, a local 17-year old producer. “I think he’s a genius for his age. I think, as people, we get amazed by things we can’t do. That’s what makes things so amazing, because we can’t do it ourselves. And I’m looking at him like, at 17, (pauses) – I couldn’t do that. And then I look at G Scott and it’s like – I can’t rap like that. I can’t produce like that.” Things are busy these days for Jace, as his business is constantly evolving. Over the course of two months, he’s been to New York twice to film three music videos with P-IC . He’s become the art director for Dorsh’s album Neopolitan, handling —Jace the music videos, promo photos, and album artwork; the first video from that album, Je t’aime has already been released. He also released Dee Greene’s video for “FLEX” and G-Scott’s latest, “HA$H”. Jace is headed to Chicago in early March to shoot a video for Kidz In The Hall’s new single “Real Life.” Slightly longer term, he’s co-executive producing GEOHN’s album, set to release this spring under A Million Other Things x GEOHN Music. Jace compiles a newsletter for devoted fans to keep tabs on the busy director. It’s undeniable that work ethic like Jace’s is rare. In addition to high-quality end products, he produces with amazing velocity; he’s never satisfied with what’s current, but rather always looking two (or twelve) steps ahead of himself. His long term goals include working with bigger artists and major record labels, as well as to experiment with other forms of videography outside of music videos such as short films. “I want to have the first short film completed within the next year,” Jace forecasts. Immediately up-selling himself, he adds, “One per quarter. That’s not too far-fetched.” At this rate, it’s safe to say nothing is too far-fetched. Editor’s note: Danielle Look has in the past worked on a video directed by Jace.

“I’m getting bigger and bigger budgets where I can afford to go to particular spots and get out of alleys.”

Locations It’s clear that Jace’s approach to making videos is about creating art to honor the craft, rather than working a job that brings in paychecks. In order for an artist to develop a work of art, they need a canvas on which they can create. For videographers, that canvas is the video’s location. Locally, Jace sees a lot of beauty in the streets of Downtown Indianapolis, but acknowledges it’s been the backdrop for a lot of his work and he’s trying to get away from that. “I think I’m starting to grow as an artist and starting to see the projects wider and wider. I’m getting bigger and bigger budgets where I can afford to go to particular spots and get out of alleys.”

Collaborations Jace does his best work with artists who can match his enthusiasm for the craft of

GO ONLINE AT NUVO.NET to see videos by Jace, including his newest, “The Market” by G-Scott.

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JAZZ NOTES JAZZ NOTES by Chuck Workman, the producer/host of the Saturday Evening Jazz Show from 6 to 8 p.m. on 88.7 WICR FM

Chuck Loeb is four decades into an eclectic music career, including stints as a composer, arranger and producer. He has produced numerous albums for highprofile artists, composed soundtracks, television show themes and commercials. But, Loeb’s passion is playing guitar and jazz music; he fervently credits Wes Montgomery for committing him to a career as a jazz performer. Loeb is the newest member of the popular jazz group Fourplay, a jazz organ trio who will play the Jazz Kitchen, Saturday March 24. NUVO: You refer to Wes Montgomery’s Boss Guitar album as a major influence. LOEB: I think it was the absolute holy grail. Every song on that album is monumental, it’s so important. That was one of the true inspirations for me to want play jazz guitar. My latest CD, Plain n Simple , was what I was thinking about using the organ trio. NUVO: How would you define yourself as a jazz performer?

Chuck Loeb

LOEB: I really admire Herbie Hancock, Bob James and Chick Corea. They compose, produce and play; it’s not just their style of music. That’s sort of the model I like to use as somebody that can cover a lot of bases. I would hope that people can see me as somebody who contributes in a different way.

downloads and bootlegging makes it difficult to sell as many albums as we used to. For example, it reaches people in places that I never thought I could reach around the world.

SUBMITTED PHOTO

NUVO: Has technology impacted you in how you play and produce? LOEB: No question about it – my latest album is a departure from technology. I do use all of the technology I can when I produce for artists. The final product is a true production and every bit of it is technology I can get my hands makes music better. NUVO: Is there a difference in the audiences you play for today compared to those you played for three generations ago ? LOEB: I think that audiences have evolved in a sense. What I mean is, I think the Internet is an effect. People are quite knowledgeable about music now. Maybe there is an element of surprise that used to be there that may not be quite as there now. I think if the whole performance is good and the performance is going the way it should, the result is the same. People love music when it connects from the musician’s fingers of the instrument to the audience’s heart. The audience gets it and that shared experience is an inexplicable magic. It’s what makes our job as musicians the greatest. NUVO: You play both sides of the jazz street – the art of straight ahead to the commercial side of smooth jazz. Which is gaining a wider audience? LOEB: I think there are really great fantastic young musicians developing. Then you have legions of guys that have been around; the interaction between the two is quite good. There is a lot of talk and complaining about the music business. The free

MARCH JAZZ EVENTS When Loeb performs at the Jazz Kitchen Saturday March 24 rising B-3 organ star Pat Bianchi will be with him, as well as Lionel Cordew on drums. Shows are at 8 & 10:30 p.m. Celebrate Women’s History Month with a show featuring ladies in jazz. The women’s performing organization Isis of Indiana and Chef Joseph will present Divine Div as Cabaret on Friday March 23 at the Connoisseur Room at 8 p.m. Featured will be vocalists Debra Mullins and Heather Ramsey, pianist Monika Herzig, bassist Jennifer Kirk and violinist Carolyn Dutton. The Jazz, blues, soul and R&B will performed. Ralph Adams, A Great Day in Indy and WICR radio will present Five Fabulous Femmes, featuring vocalists Brenda Williams, Carol Harris, Wendy Reed, Julie Houston and Yvonne Allu performing ballads, blues and jazz tunes of yesterday and today. They’ll be backed up by John VanderGheynst, trumpet; Steven Jones, piano; Jared Thompson, tenor sax; Greg Artry, drums and Brandon Meeks, bass. The concert is March 29, at Daddy Real’s The Place. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. with dining available prior to the concert. Tickets are available online at Brown Paper Tickets or at the door the day of the concert.

Bela Fleck reunites with original Flecktones

Weekly Specials

Group to play Clowes BY T A YL O R PE T E R S M U S I C@N U V O . N E T Bela Fleck has performed in one way or the other for over 35 years. Though he began his work in a relatively traditional bluegrass context, as the years progressed, his stylistic scope widened, combining bluegrass with classical, jazz, pop, and other styles from all around the world. His recent Grammy-winning album, Rocket Science, reunites him with the original Flecktones lineup, not seen since Howard Levy’s departure in 1992. The group will perform at Clowes Memorial Hall on March 30th. NUVO: How did recording and composing go for this album? Was anything very different from your earlier work with the original Flecktones? BELA FLECK: I spent more time with Howard [Levy, keyboard and harmonica], encouraging him to have a larger composing profile than he did in the old days. This brought some fresh and interesting material into the group. Since we were not out on tour, rehearsing everyday like we used to before an album, this music had to be rehearsed and recorded in the studio. The strength is that it is really music of a time period, as opposed to music that we developed over the course of a tour. There is a spontaneity that I can hear in the final recording. NUVO: What is your writing process usually like? FLECK: Generally I write without thinking about who will play it. When I get ready to do a new project, I look through my sketches to see what I have that will suit the current project. Then, I might refine the details, rewrite, or write some new stuff to go with it. I write a little bit most days, so I have lots of un-fleshed ideas to pursue. When I wrote my concerto, that was a different process, and any time that I cowrite, that can go differently as well. There are pieces that don’t work for one group that can be a home run for another. NUVO: Since your music is so eclectic in performance, I’m wondering to what degree you find the music you listen to informing that performance; are your listening habits as wide-ranging? FLECK: I tend to listen to music that I can learn from and be inspired by, so yes — that can impact my performance. But I believe it’s even more impacted by the guys that I am playing with, and my spontaneous reacting to what they are playing, in real time. We all respond directly to each other; it’s fun and it makes every night different — you have to be on your toes! NUVO: How do you approach your collaborative recording and writing as compared to your work either solo or with the Flecktones?

$2 Draft Pints, $3 Domestic Longneck Bottles $4 Jager and Pinnacle Bombs, $5 Yoo-hoo Blasts Everyday!!

SUBMITTED PHOTO

Flecktones

Monday

Industry Night!

FLECK: Well, it’s still me in every situation that I am in. So if I am true to myself, things tend to hold together. At the same time, I do believe that in a true collaboration all parties must be changed by the others, so I welcome the new ideas and personality that my collaborators bring, and look forward to the chance to sound different by incorporating them into my language.

1/2 Price Drinks & Appetizers $3.50 Wells and Long Island Ice Teas Tuesday

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5/$10 Domestic Buckets $3 Wells, Long Islands & Pinnacle Bombs Wednesday

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NUVO: A few years ago you released the album Throw Down Your Heart alongside a documentary of the same name. What was the experience like working both in film and music? Do you foresee yourself doing anything like that again in the future? FLECK: That was a fantastic experience for me. Going to Africa and seeing where the banjo and it’s music was birthed was an amazing opportunity. Sharing it via the visual medium really was a great thing for this project, because people could see the experiences I was having in Uganda, Tanzania, Mali and the Gambia. These are hard places to get to, and we were able to pass along what we found there very directly to the the folks back home and around the world that were interested in this trip. There is a documentary that was shot about the creation of my banjo concerto, from me staring at a blank page, all the way through the premiere performances with the Nashville Symphony. That needs to be edited, so we can see what we have. The footage will tell us what the story really is, as it did with the African footage. We have to be patient for now, but I’m hoping that it turns out to be something cool. NUVO: Your music often works back and forth between so-called “serious” forms and more popular ones. Because of your eclecticism, it seems you might come across discussions of the merits or not of those types of divisions. Do you have any thoughts about that, are the lines valuable? FLECK: I understand the desire to compare something new to something that has been experienced before. Unfortunately categories can be confining, and my favorite music tends to live on the outer edge of them. Sometimes what early on seems to be outside of a category becomes the main thrust of it several years later. I’ll just keep on expressing my musical ideas, and let folks call it whatever they want, and hope that the music has a place in people’s lives. That’s what it’s really about. BELA FLECK & THE FLECKTONES Friday, March 30 Clowes Hall, 4602 Sunset Ave. 8 p.m., prices vary, all-age

Thursday

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A CULTURAL MANIFESTO WITH KYLE LONG Kyle Long’s music, which features off-the-radar rhythms from around the world, has brought an international flavor to the local dance music scene.

Thursday The Flying Toasters

Friday Cousin Roger

Saturday Gemini

PHOTO BY JOSH HUMBLE

Lester Johnson

Lester Johnson Funk Pioneer

BY KYL E LONG M USIC@ N UVO.NET “We were pioneers,” Lester Johnson said, as he reflected on his early years with the legendary Indianapolis funk group Ebony Rhythm Band (later known as Ebony Rhythm Funk Campaign.) In the late ‘60s, Johnson and Ebony Rhythm Band pushed R&B music into exciting new terrain, exploring the uncharted territory between psychedelic rock, jazz and funk. It was the same mix of styles that would propel George Clinton to fame – but the first Ebony Rhythm Band 45 predates the debut releases from Clinton’s Parliament and Funkadelic by a year. Now in his 70s, Johnson is still a musical pioneer. Recent years have seen the bass player working with outsider music icon Jandek. His next project features Johnson in a live collaboration with virtuosic hiphop producer Exile. I spoke with Lester Johnson as he prepared for the gig, and he shared his memories as a founding member of one of Indianapolis’ greatest bands. Johnson met his Ebony Rhythm bandmates after returning home to Indianapolis from a stint in the army. “They had just gotten out of high school. I was about five or six years older than those guys,” Johnson said, admitting the age difference made him nervous. “I didn’t know if it would work long term, because they were pretty inexperienced. But they had a lot of energy and they quickly got it together.” That required some serious woodshed-

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ding, Johnson recalls guitarist Robert “Master Boobie” Townsend employing a unique training technique. “He would go get a big sack of White Castle hamburgers, lock himself in the bathroom, eat White Castles and practice all day. About two months later, he could play in every key.” The group gelled quickly and immediately started landing gigs. “In the early days, we used to play at The Twenty Grand club on 34th and Illinois.” During their tenure at the club, Ebony Rhythm Band shared the stage with some of the biggest names in soul music. “We opened up for Al Green, Laura Lee, Patti Labelle, The Chi-Lites and many others,” Johnson said. The band developed a reputation for their tight sound, catching the ear of local record exec Herb Miller, who recruited the group to his Lamp Records label. “We became the house band at Lamp. All the acts they brought in to record, The Vanguards, The Pearls, we played for them, and Lamp paid us a whopping $25 per person, per session,” Johnson said, laughing sarcastically. Johnson credits drummer Matthew Watson for providing a key element of The Ebony Rhythm sound. “Matthew was a big part of what we did.” Johnson said. “He had a lot of ideas about rhythm and he could create many different drum patterns, similar to what you see now with hip-hop beatmakers. We didn’t have any drum machines to make beats, but we had Matthew.” Ebony Rhythm Band’s 1969 recording debut came about in a rather unusual fashion. “Mayor Lugar sponsored an anti-drug song contest. If you had a song with a strong anti-drug message you could win

$500 and a recording contract,” Johnson rememberd. The group provided the winning entry with their composition “Drugs Ain’t Cool.” Johnson recalls picking up the prize money at the City County Building, “As soon as we left, we went out and bought about $350 bucks worth of weed with the anti-drug money,” he said, laughing. “Drugs Ain’t Cool” features guitarist “Master Boobie” Townsend’s searing acid rock riffs, capturing the band at the height of their psychedelic sound. “We were incorporating a lot of things the other R&B bands didn’t. We used wahwah pedals and fuzz tones,” said Johnson. “We were heavily influenced by rock and we had started experimenting in a more psychedelic direction. We felt that would give us the freedom we wanted as a band. We were basically hippies.” He noted the band cultivated a distinct look to match their sound. “The other groups would wear matching suits, and do their little dance steps to every song. We thought that was corny,” said Johnson. Johnson cited the band’s nonconformist attitude as a major reason behind their decision to branch out beyond Indianapolis. “Because we were mavericks, we couldn’t get many gigs here. So, around 1969 we started traveling and playing all over the Midwest,” he said. “We were playing shows with a singing group called the King James Version. They got a gig in Los Angeles and when the club owner heard us playing, he told the King James singers he would only hire them, if we came to L.A. and played with them. So we went to Los Angeles and lived there for three and a half years,” Johnson said. While in L.A., Ebony Rhythm Funk Campaign (the group changed their name to avoid contractual obligations in Indianapolis) continued to refine their sound, playing shows with a bevy of soul music superstars including Earth, Wind and Fire and The Commodores. All this experi-

ence paid off, and in 1973 the group earned a major label release with Uni Records. Ebony Rhythm Funk Campaign’s selftitled debut LP is a classic from funk’s golden era. Produced by Crusaders’ trombonist Wayne Henderson, the album features the band’s masterpiece “Get It On,” an epic six-minute jam that ends with dazzling, jazzy solos from Watson and Johnson. Despite their West Coast success, the stars never quite aligned for the group. The band’s album was well-received, but failed to produce a breakout hit. So the group returned to Indianapolis, continuing to perform together throughout the ‘70s. The group released their second album for the Chi-Sound label in 1976, an excellent disco-boogie influenced affair titled Watchin’ You, Watchin’ Me. In the ‘80s, the band’s music was discovered by a new generation of fans. Hiphop beat-heads embraced the group’s catalog and samples of Ebony Rhythm’s music started popping in the work of artists like 3rd Bass. “I’ve learned to deal with it,” Johnson said, as he shared his thoughts on sampling. “Ultimately it’s all music, it’s just being constructed in different ways.” Interest in the band’s work continues to grow each year and their fiery, psychedelic soul sounds as fresh today as it did in the 1960s. As I spoke with Lester, I got the impression that his musical journey is far from complete. Johnson is still an active figure in the Indianapolis music scene, hosting a regular blues night at Local’s Only and contributing to the gospel music scene. Johnson’s Wednesday night collaboration with Exile at Tru Nightclub will write a new chapter in the music pioneer’s career. He urges listeners to come with an open mind, and he assured me that the “ grooves are gonna be very good,” as indeed, they always have been. Kyle Long creates a custom podcast for each column. See this week’s online at NUVO.net.

LESTER JOHNSON, EXILE Wednesday, March 21 Tru Nightclub, 6235 Guilford Ave 9 p.m., $5, 21+

SUBMITTED PHOTO

Exile

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Great Western Diner

SOUNDCHECK

LOUDEST Jukebox in Town! Huge selection of music.

BIGGEST Burgers in Town! HOME OF THE DEAD MANS HAND!!! $6.75 Pitcher of Beer $2.25 16oz. KARAOKE Saturday 7-10pm

SUBMITTED PHOTO

We Were Promised Jetpacks

Wednesday

JAZZ MONTANA SKIES

The Irving Theatre, 5505 East Washington St. 7:30, $12-15, all-ages

1002 E. 38th St. 317.897.4483

Jonathan and Jennifer Adams (guitar and cello respectively) are a husband and wife duo from Georgia who play a unique blend of folk-country, which borrows from a host of other genres including rock, classical and electronica. With the help of modern technology, the band adds many layers and textures to their sound, which they have taken with them on extensive tours across the country. The two perform original award-winning music of their own, along with covers from acts such as Pink Floyd. ROCK SAID THE WHALE

White Rabbit 1116 Prospect St. 9 p.m., $8, +21,

Fresh off last year’s win for Best New Artist at the Juno Awards, this Vancouver based group brings their brand of indie rock, which shares commonalities with The Decemberists and Death Cab For Cutie, to White Rabbit in support of their new album Little Mountain. Local band Red Light Driver will serve as the opening act. FUNK EXILE & LESTER JOHNSON

Tru Nightclub, 6235 Guilford Ave 9 p.m., $5, +21

This lecture / concert is just one of many precoursers to the Red Bull Music Academy’s residency in New York City later this fall. A traveling musical workshop, the RBMA offers music lovers a chance to learn and listen from a variety of guest speakers and performers. For Indy’s turn, California artist Exile and funk master Lester Johnson of the Ebony Rhythm Band will discuss their own musical journeys and experiences. The lecture is closed to the public, but a public performance by Exile and Johnson will follow the lecture. See our interview with Lester Johnson on page 28

Thursday

ROCK THE JOY FORMIDABLE

The Bluebird, 216 N. Walnut St. Bloomington 8 p.m., $17.50, +21

Playing Lollapalooza, SXSW and Bonnaroo would be impressive for any band, let alone one with only a single full-length release under their belt. But big time venues mesh perfectly with The Joy Formidable’s big time sound, which features sludge riffs akin to the Smashing Pumpkins and bombastic

music // 03.21.12-03.28.12 // NUVO // 100% RECYCLED PAPER

hooks similar to that of Muse. The band’s date at the Bluebird will be their second show in the Hoosier state in just as many months. Opening acts include A Place to Bury Strangers and Exitmusic who are each signed to Bloomington-based label Dead Oceans. ROCK RACHAEL YAMAGATA Radio Radio, 1119 E. Prospect St. 9 p.m., $10-$12, +21

A former member of Chicago’s Bumpus, Rachel Yamagata has spent the good part of a decade on a solo adventure, releasing three full-length albums. Her style of piano-driven indie rock is as haunting as it is meditative, and has allowed her to work with a collection of other artists such as Ray LaMontagne, Jason Mraz, Ryan Adams, Conor Oberst, and Rhett Miller. Her show at Radio Radio will be in support of her latest release Chesapeake. Madi Diaz will be the opening band.

Friday

ROCK THE ELECT

The Rathskeller 401 E Michigan St. 8 p.m., $$$, +21

One of Indy’s most reliable live bands, The Elect will take their steadfast brand of blues, jazz and rock to the Rathskeller, where they’ll weave their way through a set of southern-rock flavored jams. ROCK THE GROWLERS

The Bishop 123 S Walnut St. Midnight, $6, +18

A California group that loves reverb as much as Jim Morrison did, The Growlers are a spunky outfit that write seductive rock songs that are brisk, dusty and hypnotic. Many of their songs barely top out at 2:30 in length and sound like anything you’d hear in on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack. Opening act is the trash pop band The TRMS from Modesto, California.

Saturday

ROCK DELTA SPIRIT

Radio Radio 1119 E. Prospect St. 9:30 p.m., $15, +21

An indie-pop band with a bit of a jagged edge, Delta Spirit’s mix of clunky guitars, ragged vocals and unconventional use of unconventional instruments (such as trash cans) makes their seemingly small sound deceptively thunderous. Waters will be the opening act. This show is sold out.

SOUNDCHECK

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Tuesday

ROCK WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS The Bluebird, 216 N. Walnut St. Bloomington 9 p.m., $14.50, +21

A Scottish foursome fresh off the release of their second album, In the Pit of the Stomach , We Were Promised Jet Packs plays a seemingly old fashioned style of rock. No frills, no gimmicks, just amps, guitars, grooves and hooks. Imagine if the Artic Monkeys were on Ritalin and less confrontational. Opening acts are The Bad Veins and The New Cassettes. ROOTS DREW HOLCOMB AND THE NEIGHBORS

Earth House Collective 237 N. East St. 7 p.m., $10-14, all-ages

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The Joy Formidable

Sunday

JAZZ GEORGE BENSON, BONEY JAMES

Murat at Old National Centre, 502 North New Jersey St. 7:30 ,$19.99-73.00, all-ages

Ten-time Grammy Award winner George Benson started at as a child musical prodigy, and now, at almost 70, continues to surprise and delight listeners. Varying between jazz, pop and R&B, he’s most famous for his 1976 album Breezin’, but has continued to record and top charts. He’ll be accompanied by Boney James – a virtuoso saxophonist who has sold over three million records and played alongside Kenny G and the Isley Brothers. They’ll bring soothing jazz sounds to the Murat for a night of good vibes and good times.

Memphis singer-songwriter Drew Holcomb and the rest of his band will take to the stage at the Earth House Collective for a set of new-age folk rock with hints of shimmering guitar flourishes. The band’s music, which includes four full length albums, has been played on TV shows such as Parenthood and Deadliest Catch, and was even used by the NBA.

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Friday

JAZZ BELA FLECK AND THE FLECKTONES Clowes Memorial Hall, 4602 Sunset Ave. 8 p.m. $25-40

See our interview on page 27.

— Soundcheck by Jon LaFollette

Monday

ROCK BRIT FLOYD

Clowes Memorial Hall, 4602 Sunset Ave. 7:30, $45.90-56.15, all-ages

Brit Floyd are self-professed to be the world’ s greatest Pink Floyd cover act, and while such a title is disputable, the crowds and respect they draw certainly helps their case. The band’s date at Clowes Memorial Hall will feature a healthy dose of songs from Wish You Were Here, The Wall, and Dark Side of the Moon.

BARFLY

SUBMITTED PHOTO

Delta Spirit

by Wayne Bertsch

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Directions:465 To Exit 12 Continue West On Hwy 40 For 4.5 Miles On Right Hand Side

Mon-Sat 10am-9:30pm Sun 11am-8pm

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Avon, IN 46123

Ren Gui Hua - License Registration, City of Indianapolis All employees at same level or above.

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NEWS OF THE WEIRD

Cheer for the phallic arm

But men must fight for equality in India An annual spring fertility festival in Vietnam’s Phu Tho province is capped by a symbolic X-rated ceremony rendered G-rated by wooden stand-ins. At midnight on the 12th day of the lunar new year, a man holding a wooden phallus-like object stands in total darkness alongside a woman holding a wooden plank with a hole in it, and the act is attempted. As the tradition goes, if the man is successful at penetration, then there will be good crops. Following the ceremony, villagers are ordered to “go and be free,” which, according to a February report by Thanh Nien News Service, means uninhibited friskiness during the lights-out period.

Cultural Diversity

• In the remote state of Meghalaya, India, a matrilineal system endows the women with wealth and property rights and relegates the men to slow-moving campaigns for equality. A men’s rights advocate, interviewed by BBC News in January, lamented even the language’s favoring of women, noting that “useful” nouns seem all to be female. The system, he said, breeds generations of men “who feel useless,” falling into alcoholism and drug abuse. In maternity wards, he said, the sound of cheering greets baby girls, and if it’s a boy, the prevailing sentiment is “Whatever God gives us is quite all right.” The husband of one woman interviewed said, meekly, that he “likes” the current system -- or at least that’s what his wife’s translation said he said. • Each year, the town of Chumbivilcas, Peru, celebrates the new year with what to Americans might seem “Festivus”-inspired (from the Seinfeld TV show), but is actually drawn from Incan tradition. For “Takanakuy,” with a background of singing and dancing, all townspeople with grudges from the previous 12 months (men, women, children) settle them with sometimes-bloody fistfights so that they start the new year clean. Said one villager to a Reuters reporter, “Everything is solved here, and after(ward) we are all friends.” • In a tradition believed to have originated in the eighth century, the village of San Bartolome de Pinares, Spain, marks each Jan. 16 with the festival of Saint Anthony, commenced in style by villagers riding their horses through large fires in the streets (“Las Luminarias”). As horses jump the flames, according to belief, they become purified, demons are destroyed, and fertility and good health result. (Apparently, no horses are harmed, and an on-the-scene priest blesses each for its courage.)

Latest Religious Messages

• Prophet Warren Jeffs, of a breakaway Mormon cult, is serving life (plus 20 years) in a Texas prison for raping two underage parishioners, but insists that his power has not been diminished. He was disciplined in December for making a phone call to his congregation announcing several decrees, including barring marriages from taking place until he can return to “seal” them and prohibiting everyone from having sex. (Since Jeffs retains his “messiah” status among many church members, and since life-plus-20 is a long time to wait, and since the cult is reclusive, it is difficult for outsiders to assess the level of sexual frustration in the compound.) • Recovering alcoholic Ryan Brown recently moved his licensed tattoo parlor into The Bridge church in Flint Township, Mich., which is one more indicator of Rev. Steve Bentley’s nontraditional belief that mainstream religion had become irrelevant to most people. Tattooing is a “morally neutral” practice, Bentley said, although Brown, of course, does not ink tattoos lauding drugs, gangs or the devil. (The Bridge has also loaned out its plentiful floor space in a shopping mall to wrestling, cage fighting and auto repair facilities.) • In December, Pennsylvania judge Mark Martin dismissed harassment charges against Muslim Talaag Elbayomy, who had snatched a “Zombie Mohammad” sign from the neck of atheist Ernie Perce at last year’s Halloween parade in Mechanicsburg, Pa. (Perce was mockingly dressed as an undead person, in robes and beard.) In tossing out the charge (even though Elbayomy seemed to admit to an assault and battery), Martin ruled that Sharia law actually required Elbayomy to take the sign away from Perce. Judge Martin later explained that the technical basis for the ruling was (he-said/he-said) lack of evidence. (The December ruling did not attract press attention until February.)

Questionable Judgments

• According to a municipal street sign in front of Lakewood Elementary School in White Lake, Mich. (filmed in February by Detroit’s WJBK-TV), the speed limit drops to 25 mph on “school days only,” but just from “6:49-7:15 a.m., 7:52-8:22 a.m., 8:37-9:07 a.m., 2:03-2:33 p.m., 3:04-3:34 p.m. (and) 3:59-4:29 p.m.” • Jack Taylor, 18, of Worcester, England, was given a lenient sentence in January for an August burglary he admitted. He and another youth had tried to steal a resident’s motorcycle but damaged it in the process. Since he was remorseful, made restitution, observed a curfew and did community service, he was released by the judge when he secured full-time employment. (However, the employment, the court later learned, was as a slaughterman in Norway, where he was to take part in the culling of Alaskan baby seals.)

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TO ADVERTISE: Phone: (317) 808-4609 E-mail: acassel@nuvo.net Mail: Classifieds 3951 N. Meridian St., Suite 200 Indianapolis, Indiana 46208

PAYMENT, & ADVERTISING DEADLINE All ads are prepaid in full by Monday at 5 P.M. Nuvo gladly accepts Cash, Money Order, & All Major Credit Cards.

POLICIES: Advertiser warrants that all goods or services advertised in NUVO are permissible under applicable local, state and federal la ws. Advertisers and hired advertising agencies are liable for all content (including text, representation and illustration) of advertisements and are res ponsible, without limitation, for any and all claims made thereof against NUVO, its officers or employees. Classified ad space is limited and granted on a first come, first served basis. To qualify for an adjustment, any error must be reported within 15 days of publication date. Credit for errors is limited to first insertion.

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RENTALS NORTH Broad Ripple Area! Large 3 bedroom 2 bath with huge open living space nearly all new with very cool finishes very close to the heart of Broad Ripple Village. $995. Text indy1 to 88000 for pics and info or visit www.indyliving.info. ARES, LLC 317-713-7123 BROAD RIPPLE AREA Newly decorated apartments near Monon Trail. Spacious, quiet, secluded. Starting $475. 5300 Carrollton Ave. 257-7884. EHO CARMEL Twin Lakes Apartments All Utilities Paid Apts & Townhomes (317)-846-2538. MAPLE COURT Ask about our Move-In Winter Specials! 2BR/1BA Apartments completely renovated! In the heart of BR Village, Great Dining, Entertainment & Shopping at your doorstep. On-site laundries & free storage. Rents range from $650$695. Call 317-257-5770 PIKE TOWNSHIP *SPECIAL* 4011 Westover Dr. 2BR, 1BA. New appl. $695/mo. Upscale Neighborhood. APPL, A/C, Heat, W/D hookup. 414-1435 or 803736-7188

3951 NORTH MERIDIAN STREET Indianapolis IN 46208 Property Highlights: •1,500 SF available on 2nd ﬂoor •Creative interior ﬁnishes •Excellent location, across from Tarkington Park •Meridian Street signage available •Free covered parking

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SPACIOUS! Spacious! SPACIOUS! 3 bedroom 2 bath townhome with 2,230 S.F., full basement, private entry, and covered patio with outside storage. Close to fine dining, shopping, entertainment and the Monon Trail. Call 317-846-5908 today and ask about our Move in Rewards and our Current Special!

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SummitRealtyGroup.com

Valet

We are currently hiring for full & part time Guest Service Associates (Valet) on our 1st (7a-3p), 2nd (3p-11p), & 3rd (11p-7am) shifts. Weekend availability is preferred. Flexible schedules are available. Requirements: The ideal candidate has at least one year of customer service experience, exceptional communication skills, and is seeking an active position. We are looking for positive, updeat individuals who can deliver Aggressive Hospitality. the minimum qualifications for this position are: • Must be at least 18 years of age • Must have a valid driver’s license • Must be able to drive a stick shift • Must have a clean driving record • Must speak, read * write English • Pre-employment background and drug screening are required. To learn more, visit www.townepark.com and click on “Join our Team” to fill out the online application. All correspondence, including interview scheduling, is done via email.

EMPLOYMENT CONTINUED TO PG 39

RESTAURANT/ BAR BARTENDERS & SERVERS ALL SHIFTS Immediate openings. Apply in person, Weebles, 3725 N. Shadeland. FRONT PAGE SPORTS BAR & GRILL in Historic Mass Ave. district is currently accepting and interviewing applicants for full-time, parttime and seasonal bartenders & servers. For immediate consideration, please contact: manager@frontpagesportsbar.com

EXPERIENCED LINE COOKS, SERVER ASSISTANTS & HOST/HOSTESSES Shula’s Steak House is now hiring hospitality professionals who are enthusiastic, committed to team work & excellent customer service. Requirements: -Strong Work Ethic -At least 6 months experience in related field -Flexible schedules Apply in person: Shula’s Steak House 50 S. Capitol Ave. 2nd floor of Westin Hotel

DRIVERS DRIVERS NEEDED Moving company seeking dependable drivers for Full and Parttime positions or weekends only. Necessary requirements: Valid Chauffer’s license or higher DOT physical form Hardworking Reliable Enjoy good pay Call 317-716-5529 or email Benjamin@1mastermovers.com

GENERAL

$$$HELP WANTED$$$ Extra Income! Assembling CD cases from Home! No Experience Necessary! Call our Live Operators Now! 1-800-405-7619 EXT 2450 www.easyworkjobs.com (AAN CAN) NOW HIRING: Companies desperately need employees to assemble products at home. No selling, any hours. SALON/SPA $500 weekly potential. Info. HAIRSTYLISTS 1-985-646-1700 Dept. IN-3210 Booth Rent Only. $150-$175/wk, Help Wanted!!! Private Room. Northeast Side. Make money Mailing brochures Call Suz 317-490-7894 from home! FREE Supplies! Helping Home-Workers since ARTS & 2001! Genuine Opportunity! No experience required. Start ImENTERTAINMENT mediately! www.theworkhub.net DANCERS WANTED - CLUB VENUS (AAN CAN) “A Gentlemen’s Club” Apply in Person 3pm FULL TIME 3535 W. 16TH ST. - 638-1788 Activists/Full Time Tired of flipping burgers? *DANCE LIKE THE STARS* Rare Opportunity, Five Star Want to do something Dance Studios is now taking meaningful? Work with applications for various posi- Citizens Action Coalition tions. See how you may qualify and get paid to fight to join the largest dance organi- corporate greed! zation in the world. Rapid ad- M-F 2-10:30pm $325+/wk vancement, paid travel, all the (317) 205-3535 www.citact.org excitement you are looking for, no experience necessary, sales HEALTH CARE or dance background helpful. Apply in Person between Attendant for Person with Disability Because of work and interest in 2pm & 10pm Greenwood Location (Coun- adaptive sports I need the assistance from an attendant in my ty Line, Across from Mall) home. I require assistance with 317-881-7762 Carmel Location (116th & dressing and other personal care morning routine in order for me to Keystone, Merchants Plaza) leave home in a timely manner. 317-843-1110 Fishers Location (8510 E. Some household duties such as laundry, bed making, etc. are re96th St, Suite F) quired. I’m also looking for some317-841-9445 one to assist me with my adaptive sports. Interested in the position please contact gbedan@aol.com or 317-849-4709

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Young Healthy Women Indiana University Research Group Seeking normal subjects to serve as controls in a study to better understand Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. REQUIREMENTS: - Good healthy between ages 18 and 40 - Regular menstrual periods - No acne or excessive facial or body hair - Either normal weight or overweight - Pregnancy not suspected - No birth control pill use The study involves 2 admissions to the IU Clinical Research Unit with blood draws during a cream challenge test, a glucose tolerance test and an ovarian stimulation test, plus an ultrasound to evaluate your ovaries and a body composition assessment. Remuneration is offered for participation.

To qualify you must be between the ages of 18 and 64, be healthy with no known illnesses. Donors can earn up to $4000 per year for their time/donation. Your ďŹ rst donation is $30.00 and your second is $50.00. if you qualify all subsequent donations are $40.00 per donation. All donations are done by appointment, so there is no long wait times and the donations process should only take about an hour. We are also looking for patients with Diabetes with an A1C >5%. Earn $50$100 per blood donation.

For more information, contact:

Rose Melvin, R.N. Department of Ob/Gyn Indiana University

(317) 948-7607 | romelvin@iupui.edu

38 classifieds //

03.21.12-03.28.12 // NUVO // 100% RECYCLED PAPER

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

CONTINUED FROM PG 37

Love Your Work! Got The Look? Only guys & girls with awesome, fun personalities need apply. Looking for a career, not a career?

Hairstylists Needed

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Association of Bodywork and Massage Professionals (abmp.com)

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CERTIFIED MASSAGE THERAPISTS

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Not bad for a few weeks’ work, or play, or whatever it is you want to call this tormented, inspired outburst. Would it be too forward of me to suggest that you’ve gone a long way toward outgrowing the dark fairy tale that had been haunting your dreams for so long? And yet all this may just be a warm-up for your next metamorphosis, in which you make an audacious new commitment to becoming what you really want to be when you grow up. TAURUS (April 20-May 20): This week I’m taking a break from my usual pep talks. I think it’s for the best. If I deliver a kindhearted kick in the butt, maybe it will encourage you to make a few course corrections, thereby making it unnecessary for fate to get all tricky and funky on you. So here you go, Taurus: 1. The last thing you need is someone to support your flaws and encourage you in your delusions. True friends will offer snappy critiques and crisp advice. 2. Figure out once and for all why you keep doing a certain deed that’s beneath you, then gather the strength and get the help you need to quit it. 3. It’s your duty to stop doing your duty with such a somber demeanor and heavy tread. To keep from sabotaging the good it can accomplish, you’ve got to put more pleasure into it. GEMINI (May 21-June 20): The German word Weltratsel can be translated as “World Riddle.” Coined by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, it refers to questions like “What is the meaning of existence?” and “What is the nature of reality?” According to my reading of the astrological omens, Gemini, you’re now primed to deepen your understanding of the World Riddle. For the next few weeks, you will have an enhanced ability to pry loose useful secrets about some big mysteries. Certain passages in the Book of Life that have always seemed like gobbledygook to you will suddenly make sense. Here’s a bonus: Every time you decipher more of the World Riddle, you will solve another small piece of your Personal Riddle. CANCER (June 21-July 22): “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” So wrote George Bernard Shaw in his book Man and Superman. From the hints I have gleaned, Cancerian, you are now in an ideal phase to be the sort of unreasonable man or woman who gets life to adapt so as to better serve you and your dreams. Even if it’s true that the emphasis in the past has often been on you bending and shaping yourself to adjust to the circumstances others have wrought, the coming weeks could be different. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In his book Word Hero, Jay Heinrichs offers us advice about how to deliver pithy messages that really make an impact. Here’s one tip that would be especially useful for you in the coming days: Exaggerate precisely. Heinrichs gives an example from the work of the illustrious raconteur, American author Mark Twain. Twain did not write, “In a single day, New England’s weather changes a billion times.” Rather, he said, “In the spring I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of four-and twenty hours.” Be inspired by Twain’s approach in every way you can imagine, Leo. Make things bigger and wilder and more expansive everywhere you go, but do it with exactitude and rigor. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “Liminality” is a term that refers to the betwixt and between state. It’s dawn or dusk, when neither night nor day fully rules. It’s the mood that prevails when a transition is imminent or a threshold beckons. During a rite of passage, liminality is the phase when the initiate has left his or her old way of doing things but has not yet been fully accepted or integrated into the new way. Mystical traditions from all over the world recognize this as a shaky but potent situation -- a time and place when uncertainty and ambiguity reign even as exciting possibilities loom. In my estimate, Virgo, you’re now ensconced in liminality.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): The Argentinian writer Antonio Porchia said there were two kinds of shadows: “some hide, others reveal.” In recent weeks, you’ve been in constant contact with the shadows that hide. But beginning any moment now, you’ll be wandering away from those rather frustrating enigmas and entering into a dynamic relationship with more evocative mysteries: the shadows that reveal. Be alert for the shift so you won’t get caught assuming that the new shadows are just like the old ones. SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Every winter, hordes of ants have overrun my house. At least that was true up until recently. This winter, the pests stayed away, and that has been very good news. I didn’t have to fight them off with poison and hand-to-hand combat. The bad news? The reason they didn’t invade was because very little rain fell, as it’s supposed to during Northern California winters. The ants weren’t driven above ground by the torrents that usually soak the soil. And so now drought threatens our part of the world. Water shortages may loom. I propose that this scenario is a metaphor for a dilemma you may soon face, Scorpio -- except that you will have a choice in the matter: Would you rather deal with a lack of a fundamental resource or else an influence that’s bothersome but ultimately pretty harmless? SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): You’re entering one of the most buoyant phases of your astrological cycle. Your mandate is to be brash and bouncy, frothy and irrepressible. To prepare you, I’ve rounded up some exclamatory declarations by poet Michael McClure. Take them with you as you embark on your catalytic adventures. They’ll help you cultivate the right mood. McClure: “Everything is natural. The light on your fingertips is starlight. Life begins with coiling -- molecules and nebulae. Cruelty, selfishness, and vanity are boring. Each self is many selves. Reason is beauty. Light and darkness are arbitrary divisions. Cleanliness is as undefinable and as natural as filth. The physiological body is pure spirit. Monotony is madness. The frontier is both outside and inside. The universe is the messiah. The senses are gods and goddesses. Where the body is -- there are all things.” CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You know those tall, starched white hats that many chefs wear? Traditionally they had 100 pleats, which denoted the number of ways a real professional could cook an egg. I urge you to wear one of those hats in the coming weeks, Capricorn -- or whatever the equivalent symbol might be for your specialty. It’s high time for you to express your ingenuity in dealing with what’s simple and familiar . . . to be inventive and versatile as you show how much you can accomplish using just the basics. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): As I was driving my car in San Francisco late one night, I arrived at a traffic signal that confused me. The green light was radiant and steady, but then so was the red light. I came to a complete stop and waited until finally, after about two minutes, the red faded. I suspect you may soon be facing a similar jumble of mixed signals, Aquarius. If that happens, I suggest you do what I did. Don’t keep moving forward; pause and sit still until the message gets crisp and clear. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): A woman named Joan Ginther has won the Texas Lottery four times, collecting over $20 million. Is she freakishly lucky? Maybe not, according to Nathaniel Rich’s article in the August 2011 issue of Harper’s. He notes that Ginther has a PhD in math from Stanford, and wonders if she has used her substantial understanding of statistics to game the system. (More here: tinyurl.com/LuckAmuck.) Be inspired by her example, Pisces. You now have exceptional power to increase your good fortune through hard work and practical ingenuity.

Homework: Leave a comment on my Facebook page here: http://bit.ly/BrezFB. Here’s my Twitter: http://twitter.com/FreeWillAstro.

100% RECYCLED PAPER // NUVO // 03.21.12-03.28.12 classifieds 39

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GENTLEMEN’S KLUB Female DANCERS needed. Located Kentucky & Raymond. No House Fees 241-2211

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Junk & Runnable Autos Pay $300-$500 $$$ 317-306-5026 $$$

MuscleForMuscle.com Therapeutic, Sports, Deep Tissue & Swedish Massage, 750-5668.

GUITAR LESSON GIFT CERT. Buy/Sell/Trade + Live Music for Events

Rob Swaynie-Jazz/Blues/Rock www.indyguitar.com 291-9495

HERBAL INCENSE BEST QUALITY LOWEST PRICE GUARANTEED

DISCOUNT TOBACCO

EVERYTHING FOR EVERY TYPE OF SMOKER

www.IndySmokeShop.com • Open Monday through Sunday | 9am - Midnight SOUTH SIDE 6918 Madison Ave 317-405-9502

EAST SIDE 4783 North Post Road 317-222-5281

WEST SIDE 5629 Georgetown Road 317-292-9697

3561 Shelby Street 317-426-3048

3535 S. Emerson Ave. 317-222-6418

3121 Kentucky Avenue 317-292-9479

BLOOMINGTON (NOW OPEN) 3295 West 3rd Street Bloomington, IN 47403

7016 Shore Terrace (Next to Main Event Bar) 317-591-9795

Martinsville Coming Soon!