Review: George Winston lets it flow at Cruces' Rio Grande Theater

LAS CRUCES — The audience that filled the Rio Grande Theater giggled a little bit when George Winston announced that he'd be doing his "Summer Concert" on Tuesday night. Obviously, many in the crowd of 400 didn't understand that the 59-year-old pianist lumps his concerts into one of two seasonal themes, the other being his "Winter Concert."

Why do a summer in winter? Easy, he played the winter concert last time he played a piano concert around here (his performance last year at the Harmony House in Cruces was a guitar concert).

The reason for such themes is simple. For more than 20 years, Winston's solo piano concerts draw from a repertoire of evocative originals and interpretations that invoke the seasons of the year. He's also a devotee of the Doors and "Peanuts" composer Vince Guarald, stride and New Orleans pianists Teddy Wilson, James Booker and Henry Butler, Hawaiian slack-key guitar and, more recently, he's added harmonica to his repertoire.

All of this comes to vivid yet subdued life at a George Winston concert, magnified by such a small (400-seats), intimate, lovely little theater like the Rio Grande. I've always seen Winston work his keyboard magic in much larger venues, usually about 2,000 seats. So the opportunity to sit up close (second row) and study his intense, expressionless face, watch his disembodied hands, reflected in the raised top of the Kawai keyboard he used, hammer, caress, tap and finesse the 88s. You could hear how the constant, hard tapping of his shoeless left foot (the better to mute it) added to the rhythm, and see how the piano rocked just a little bit as he pounded out one of his New Orleans-style numbers.

He comes out in jeans, a blue button-down, long sleeve shirt and socks, his bald head, glasses and beard suggesting a college professor or some other scholar. He sits fairly rigidly, his gaze fixed on the keyboard, his eyebrows rising and falling occasionally with a melodic line.

He opened with his own "New Orleans Will Rise Again," from 2006's "Gulf Coast Blues & Impressions — A Hurricane Relief Benefit," a Crescent City boogie tune that served as a warmup for his hands and a tough first assignment. Much as Winston reveres the work of the New Orleans piano legends — he credits them for inspiring his career — it's clear that he likes the challenge of trying to create the same kind of soulful sound they did. With this particular piece, he struggled to get there, never quite achieving the kind of fluidity that seems to come more naturally on the pretty "folk piano" pieces that made him the new face of instrumental music two decades ago.

Case in point was "Rain," the concert's second selection. It's a three-part piece he has said was inspired by the rains rolling across the plains in Montana where he grew up, with a mid-section inspired by minimalism pioneer Steve Reich. It's a pretty, cinematic piece. You can hear the storm rolling in, sticking around and slowly moving on, which Winston illustrates with slower, contemplative segments, a storm of bunched notes and random splashes, culminating with a series of percussive flurries muted by pressing his left hand on the strings.

It's beautiful and evocative, the kind of music for which Winston is best known, and, after playing and revising it over the years, something he makes look effortless compared to the New Orleans jazz and blues that have been lifelong inspirations. He followed it with a new Guaraldi medley, presumably from the second volume of Guaraldi music he plan to release this year, which stitched the lightheartedly romantic "There's Time for Love, Charlie Brown" and "Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown" with "Love Will Come" (the title of Winston's next tribute CD to the late jazz pianist).

Those first three tunes set the tone for the rest of his two-hour performance, which included his "Variations on the Kanon by Johann Pachelbel," an obvious crowd favorite, some fleet and fluid fingerwork on the stride piano classic "Cat and Mouse," and a jaunty harmonica version of an old, Civil War-sounding fiddle tune called "Lincoln."

He's got a ways to go before his guitar or harmonica playing catch up with his keyboard work, but considering how deeply he studies the music he loves so much, you get the impression it's only a matter of time before Winston's instrumental skills even out. The Rio Grande was a perfect place to watch his artistry at work — and Winston said after the show that the comfy theater was a "perfect" place to play — a work in progress that obviously impressed a sold-out crowd Tuesday night.