Three solo piano concerts came fast and furiously one week after the other in February to the Northampton, MA, Center for the Arts. Three distinct approaches to the piano made the series both educational and memorable, but also pointed out a characteristic which revealed clarity to the distinction among the three. Uri Caine was the first of the three soloists. Here is a pianist who goes explosively and voraciously for the piano. The marriage between Caine and the piano is noticeably mech

Trio X has impressed its name on the world of music. Questions were once raised about the meaning of the X, particularly by me. According to American history, the X correlates to the signature of a slave who had no name. For this trio, its name is associated with a definite sound signature. The X has become reflexive, for there is only one Trio X. In a Sunday afternoon gig arranged by the Arts for Art group at the Clemente Soto Velez Center, Trio X broadened the small stage on which th

Attending this first concert of 2006 was an easy choice for me to make. It was the very idea of the duo performance of David Arner on piano and Michael Bisio on string bass that took me the distance from where I write here to where I could hear them. And the music transcended the miles I traveled. Arner chooses his musical syntax from an encyclopedic knowledge of the capacity of the keyboard. Bisio rewards the listener with a soft and dedicated approach to the bass st

It is perpetual, the struggle for recognition by Black Americans and all who relate to minority status within this country. The crux of the matter is that minorities long to be heard in their original tongue. It is a means to establish their identity. How often their natural language can be found in their original music, historically the music for which they are known but through which they are not heard, perhaps only taken for granted. At the last Solos and Duos concert of the UMass/A

Mr. Billy Bang knows nothing but reverence to his violin, the music he makes with it and the inspiration behind the music. He takes nothing for granted. He is in love with his life and how it means to be alive. The inherent quality of these characteristics were expressed intensely, energetically and with determination when tiny Mr. Bang stood with his violin as a larger than life soloist on a moderately-sized stage in a moderately-sized hall, packed with dedicated listeners who travele