RELATED POSTS

• Night and day owl - Al Hall of Owl Studios hopes to create a better record contract.
• Margot signs to Epic
• Owl Studios: Building a jazz community in Indy

Opera singer Angela M. Brown (Danese Kenon for The Star)

Tasha Jones has developed the "Hello Beautiful" movement to empower disadvantaged young people. She is taking the program on tour and will also release her third book of poetry. (Michelle Pemberton for The Star)

In April, the IRT will present two of James Still's works. (Photo provided by James Still)

J. Allen Hall, CEO of Owl Studios, places artist compensation at the core of his business plan. (Matt Detrich for The Star)

Vocalist-songwriter Richard Edwards is pointing to this summer for release of the second album by Margot & the Nuclear So and So's. (Danese Kenon for The Star)

Both bronze casting and painting are on artist Casey Roberts' agenda for 2008. (Frank Espich for The Star)

In addition to writing full-time, John David Anderson - whose tongue-in-cheek fantasy novel "Standard Hero Behavior" was recently released - is a stay-at-home dad to twins Nick and Ella. (Michelle Pemberton for The Star)

1 | Tasha Jones | poet, educator

Click here to see a video of Tasha Jones performing her Hello Beautiful poem

"Hello Beautiful."

Simple words, but in the hands of local poet and educator Tasha Jones, they have taken on a much larger meaning.

Jones is using the words to encourage and uplift youths -- and adults.

"'Hello Beautiful' is an empowerment movement," said Jones, a teacher at charter school Indianapolis Metropolitan High School.

The movement challenges educators to refuse negative language in the classroom, and to focus on each student's strengths while strengthening their weaknesses, Jones said. It replaces the negative "terms of endearment" that surround youths in disadvantaged communities, and it equalizes the disparities presented through media imaging, which leave children feeling "inadequate and/or abnormal," she said.

The movement began when Jones was asked to teach a class of sixth-graders at Indianapolis Public School 99 during the latter part of the 2005-06 school year. She was the 16th teacher in the class that year.

"On the first day, I listened as two boys argued for 20 minutes about who was the 'blackest,'." said Jones, who quickly made her first classroom assignment. She asked the students to write down everything they had heard about themselves (she also asked them to write down what they wanted to be called and what they wanted to be, professionally).

"Stupid," "tar baby," "slow head" were just a few of the words they had written.

That's when Jones began using "Hello Beautiful" to greet students each day, words that became fuel for a new poem. She also began addressing students by their professional aspirations: attorney, doctor, entrepreneur.

"What happened is that the relationship changed between me and the kids, and the expectation changed," said Jones, a graduate of Lawrence North High School, who performs her poetry Tuesdays through Sundays at local venues throughout the city.

In 2007, Jones took the "Hello Beautiful" movement to the Indiana History Center, where she drew more than 250 people to the venue's 300-seat theater.

She also reached out to the women's basketball team at Rutgers University after the infamous Don Imus comments by sending each member a "Hello Beautiful" T-shirt.

This year, Jones is taking "Hello Beautiful" on tour with local, regional and national dates (including performances at 10 and 11:30 a.m. Jan. 21 at the Indiana History Center).

"I perform with a live band. Students open up the show and I recite poems, all of which came from the classroom, from the experiences of the students," said Jones. "There's singing, poetry and music. We'll be traveling to Cincinnati, Cleveland and Detroit."

Jones will release her third book of poetry this year. She'll also promote other ventures. The Write Me Project is an eight-week reading and writing course, which was started for children in the juvenile justice system but has developed into a program for all kids. They produce an anthology of their works at the end of the course. PeriodDOT is an organization with a mission to ensure that "every child has every opportunity afforded to them regardless of their past."

As for "Hello Beautiful," Jones said she wants the tour to "be a natural movement. I want it to change the expectation of these kids, which will change the behavior. Keeping it as pure as possible."

For more information, visit www.iamtashajones.com.

-- Shelby Roby-Terry

2 | Ingrid Cummings | Author, teacher/trainer, radio host, columnist

Ingrid Cummings believes in the ideal of the Renaissance Man (or Woman). She certainly strives to meet it herself.

Cummings, 49, Zionsville, runs her own communications strategy company, Rubicon Communications. She speaks and does corporate training all over the country. She hosts a Friday morning show on WICR-FM (88.7) and pens the Life Lessons column in Indianapolis Monthly magazine. Oh, she just wrote her first book, too.

It's probably not a surprise that her book is about ways for people to make themselves more well-rounded. Tentatively titled "Vigorous Mind: How to Cross-Train Your Brain Using Kaizen," the six-year project is slated to come out this fall from publisher HCI.

In our society, Cummings notes, specialization is seen as the key to success in many career paths. Doctors, lawyers and managers narrow their focus to such an extent that they experience midlife burnout from putting all their energy into so limited a range. By expanding their personal interests, she argues, people can become healthier and happier.

"This book is a love song to the liberal arts -- the much-derided liberal arts," she said. "If your child said to you, 'I'm going to be a liberal-arts major in college,' you'd have a heart attack. Because what would come into your mind? Hamburgers and french fries. And I'm here to say we ought not to be turning higher ed into vocational school."

Kaizen is a Japanese term that essentially means incremental process improvements, or baby steps, which, Cummings said, are the key to tackling new challenges. For example, if you want to learn to speak French, concentrate on spending a few minutes per day to memorize two words. Over time, you'll find your vocabulary flowering on your ever-expanding base of knowledge, much like compound interest on a bank account.

"If you want to study Italian poetry, if you want to take up sculpture, if you want to learn about flower arranging, if you want to study the Civil War, don't be daunted, but take it one tiny step at a time."

-- Christopher Lloyd

3 | Margot & the Nuclear So and So's | orchestral-folk-rock band

Newly signed to Epic Records (the music company known for distributing albums by Michael Jackson and the Clash), the members of Margot & the Nuclear So and So's are experiencing the early stages of a major-label publicity push.

The February issue of Spin magazine will feature the orchestral/folk/rock band in a two-page spread.

Vocalist-songwriter Richard Edwards gave an interview to Spin last fall in New York, and the magazine recently sent a photographer to Indianapolis to capture Edwards and his seven bandmates in their native environment.

"It was embarrassing," Edwards says of the attention paid to the Margot crew.

Fans of the band know Edwards expresses emotions ranging from fragile to fickle to discouraged to hopeful within his songs. The strength of 2005 album "The Dust of Retreat" -- which was issued by independent labels Standard and Artemis -- attracted the attention of Epic executives.

Edwards says he expects a summer release for Margot's second album, which is titled "Animal" He says several new songs draw inspiration from the "Heaven's Gate" cult that wiped itself out in 1997 through mass suicide.

On the bright side, Margot ended 2007 by playing two sold-out shows at Schubas nightclub in Chicago. Edwards says he's set to spend most of 2008 and 2009 on the road.

"We're going to do our best, and tour as much as we can," he says.

-- David Lindquist

4 | James Still | playwright and director

The 2007-08 theater season will mark James Still's 10th year as the playwright-in-residence at Indiana Repertory Theatre.

Look for Still to be visible at IRT, both as a playwright and a director.

Currently, the Venice, Calif., native is directing what may shape up to be one of the IRT season's dramatic highlights -- namely John Patrick Shanley's "Doubt," concerning the conflict between a confirmed believer and someone who continues to have questions. Still's last directorial turn at the IRT was the one-woman comedy "Bad Dates."

In April, IRT will present two of Still's original works. The first, scheduled for April 1-May 3, will be a revival of "Looking Over the President's Shoulder," a one-man show about Alonzo Fields, a Hoosier who ended up working for years as a butler at the White House. Still's new piece, running April 15 to May 11, will be "Iron Kisses," a portrait of a contemporary American family.

Still, who also adapted Booth Tarkington's "Gentleman from Indiana" for a production that opened the IRT's 2006-07 season, said he is always looking "for a story that's going to excite me and move me and engage me. And as an artist, it's got to engage me for a number of years. I have to be excited about the challenges it might offer me. ..... I'm looking for something to fall in love with."

-- Whitney Smith

5 | Angela M. Brown | opera singer

Indianapolis' own dramatic soprano has been engaged for even more powerhouse opera roles with significant companies in 2008 and beyond.

Brown, who moved back to her hometown after living in New York, is booked for a return engagement at the Metropolitan Opera as Amelia in Verdi's "A Masked Ball" on April 16, 19 and 23. Brown probably is best-known in connection with the Met for her debut there in the title role in "Aida."

The vocalist also is set to sing the title role in "Tosca" in February and March with the Florida Grand Opera.

Here in the Midwest, she will portray Leonora in "La Forza del Destino" with the Cincinnati May Festival on May 16. Then during the summer of 2009, the Cincinnati Opera will feature her as Elizabeth de Valois, the French-born consort of King Philip II of Spain, in yet another Verdi opera, "Don Carlo."

Meanwhile, Brown has remarked that she hopes to keep developing her career in Europe.

"There is some interest in Berlin, and there is some interest in Vienna," she said. "I am definitely interested in a European career. You get a whole lot of frequent flier miles, and you get to see the world.

"I also would love for my United States career to continue as it is. But I guess in order to be considered an international diva, you have to go other places. I'm willing to do what I have to do."

-- Whitney Smith

6 | Casey Roberts | visual artist

The year 2007 brought a world of surprises to artist Casey Roberts -- and a new direction to his creative skills. A $20,000 Efroymson fellowship allowed Roberts -- known largely for his self-described "fantastic landscape" paintings -- to fund an excursion to India, where he spent three weeks in late fall studying bronze casting.

"The experience itself was difficult," he admits. "But I learned a lot there, about myself and about bronze casting."

While there, he visited eight cities, including stops at the foothills of the Himalayas, jungle terrain and the country's southern tip. "I tried to hit it all," he says.

The move into bronze casting is an exciting expansion for the versatile Herron School of Art and Design grad, who originally studied printmaking and then moved on to painting and drawing, with a little sculpture thrown in for good measure.

A frequent participant in art exhibitions, Roberts was spotlighted in numerous shows last year, including the solo exhibitions "Please and Thank You" in his alma mater's Basile Gallery and "Hope for the Best" at Chicago's Can Gallery. He also took part in group shows at Fountain Square's Big Car Gallery ("The Visible and the Invisible") and Chicago's Gescheidle gallery. Those shows focused on Roberts' paintings.

Still, a bronze work did make an appearance at the Can Gallery -- a sign of things to come, Roberts says. "I'm having some works cast, and I'm going to show the bronzes in Indianapolis this year." The exact dates and location, he adds, haven't yet been determined.

Still, fans of his paintings needn't fret. "I'm really doing some exciting work with that right now, too," he assures. Some of those results will be on display at Louisville's 930 gallery in a solo show called "Wilderness." The show opened Saturday and runs Fridays and Saturdays through Jan. 25. Roberts also is planning an Indianapolis exhibit for the Unusual Animals Project Space at the Harrison Center for the Arts in March and/or April.

"No matter what medium I'm using, I have fun with it, and I experiment. And I think my work calls for all of it."

-- Julie Cope Saetre

7 | Al Hall | music executive

J. Allan Hall has a vision of what things could be if Indianapolis jazz becomes more widely known.

So close is this vision to him that "What Things Could Be" was the title of one of Hall's Owl Studios' first original CD releases. In 2006, Rob Dixon, a well-known local saxophonist and Hall's A&R (artists and repertoire) man, recorded a disc by that name, blending jazz, rap and funk.

Owl Studios' releases since then have included "Beautiful Soul," a pop-oriented album by Indianapolis jazz singer Cynthia Layne. Layne recently told a radio interviewer that the CD has made her better-known in Europe than in this country.

"Carol of the Bells," a well-received Christmas program by the Buselli-Wallarab Jazz Orchestra featuring vocalist Everett Greene, has just come through its first season under the Owl Studios imprint, having been released independently in November 2006.

Steve Allee's "Colors," a piano trio CD, has received widespread radio airplay, the veteran Hoosier pianist-bandleader found out at a recent New York convention. "It will help in the cities I play in to have CDs out there," he said.

From his Circle Tower offices Downtown, Hall applies a business model emphasizing financial returns to the artist from the start, with the artist's percentage increasing as sales go up.

"I've delayed my payback and compensated them so they can make a decent living," he told The Star. Enabling them to make a decent living as Hoosier musicians is key to Hall's vision for local jazz.

-- Jay Harvey

8 | John David Anderson | author

John David Anderson actually goes by Dave. But when he published his fantasy novel in November, he thought he might follow the long genre tradition of using his initials (J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, C.S. Lewis, etc.). Of course, there's another famous writer already out there with the initials J.D., so publisher Clarion Books thought his full name would look best on the cover of "Standard Hero Behavior."

The book, Anderson's first, is a decided departure from the normal sword-and-sorcery tale. The heroes, Mason and Cowel, aren't really heroes. They couldn't do battle or cast a Patronus Charm to save their lives -- or that of their village, which is facing an invasion of monsters. So they set off to recruit real heroes in a tongue-in-cheek tale that lovingly lampoons the fantasy genre.

"I always liked the idea," he said, "that you could create a mythical world and then put real people with real problems in it and see how the new parameters change things.

"But the thing that always gets me about fantasy is that when you get into the formula, it almost seems like certain things have to happen. So I always questioned, what if they didn't. What if your hero didn't know how to swing a sword or cast any spells?"

The book is aimed at younger audiences. In the few weeks it's been out, "Standard Hero Behavior" has earned a five-star rating on Amazon.com.

Anderson, 32, was born and raised in Indianapolis, graduating from North Central High School and Indiana University. He completed his graduate degree at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where he also taught English for seven years.

He and his wife moved back to his hometown two years ago, and until recently he worked as an editor/manager for a local publishing company. Anderson now is a stay-at-home dad who looks after the couple's young twins and writes full time.

Other manuscripts are in various stages of the pipeline, including another humorous take on a familiar genre -- the super-hero sidekick. The proverbial Batman is always there to pull Robin's bacon out of the fire, but what if he weren't? Look for a future book to find out.

-- Christopher Lloyd

And two places to keep an eye on

Lucas Oil Stadium

Scheduled to open with the 2008 NFL season, Lucas Oil Stadium will be the site of football games, basketball games, monster truck rallies and marching band contests.

But what about concerts presented by A-list rock, country, pop and hip-hop stars?

Barney Levengood, executive director for the Indiana Convention Center and RCA Dome, has little to say when the question is posed.

"We have no concerts currently booked at Lucas Oil Stadium," Levengood says. "Anything beyond that is speculation."

At the very least, Levengood acknowledges seating configurations exist if a stage were placed at one end of the stadium or if a stage were placed in the middle. With the latter, capacity would exceed the 63,000 designated for football games.

No mainstream music concert has been presented at the RCA Dome since boy band 'N Sync performed there in 2001.

Country star Kenny Chesney headlined at six NFL stadiums in 2007, and he's already sold out a July 26 date at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. Locally, Chesney had no problem selling out 24,000-capacity Verizon Wireless Music Center in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. Chesney also is a longtime friend of Colts quarterback Peyton Manning.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Buffett -- who owns a longer sellout streak at Verizon than Chesney -- doesn't shy away from playing sports venues. Since 2005, Buffett has released live recordings made at Texas Stadium, Boston's Fenway Park and Chicago's Wrigley Field.

But -- as Levengood points out -- no concerts are booked at Lucas Oil Stadium.

-- David Lindquist

Indianapolis Cultural Trail

Using the parlance of shiny new subdivisions, Brian Payne says the Indianapolis Cultural Trail's "model home" is complete and on display.

Along a half mile of Alabama Street on the east side of Downtown, the trail offers lanes for bicyclists and pedestrians as well as lighting and benches.

"People are starting to get the feel that this is a transformative Downtown amenity," says Payne, president of the Central Indiana Community Foundation and architect of the 7.5-mile trail that will connect six cultural districts when completed in 2009.

Motorists soon will see colorful patterns embedded in crosswalks on Alabama Street, and landscaping will accompany warm weather in spring and summer.

Payne says the trail -- officially titled Indianapolis Cultural Trail: A Legacy of Gene and Marilyn Glick -- rivals projects in Montreal and Boulder, Colo., in providing special access to bicyclists and pedestrians.

This year, trail construction will branch west to reach the American Legion Mall, Central Library and Downtown Canal. The trail also will extend north to meet the Monon Trail at 10th Street east of Massachusetts Avenue.

-- David Lindquist