Word: pianists
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Cuba-based artists, who are considered ambassadors of Castro's revolution, are frequent targets of exile wrath. When jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba performed in downtown Miami in April 1996, a crowd of 200 demonstrators spat on concertgoers as they tried to enter the theater. Three months later, a few days before singer Rosita Fornes, 74, was scheduled to perform at a popular night spot, someone threw a Molotov cocktail through the window. The concerts were canceled, and the restaurant, Centro Vasco, a Miami institution, was shut down. "They feel like they are in a situation of war," says Miguel Gonzalez...
...have. In my childhood, there were the Big Three, Charlie's, Harry's and Murray's, and only Murray's survives. It is the sort of grand old joint you find in any big city, restaurants with pink drapes and a 70-year-old coat-check girl and a pianist who plays Deep Purple and the waitresses have names like Agnes and Gladys and the menu harks back to the Age of Steak; a place where a fiftyish couple can enjoy a Manhattan and tuck into a chunk of cow and au gratin potato. Murray's serves the Silver Butter...
...nestled between the two Ballades and the muscular Op. 39 Scherzo, was a pearl--though he glided so rapidly through the right-hand runs that it didn't end up sounding all that much like a cradle song. Like the rest of the program, this piece benefited from the pianist's indescribably intense dynamic control...
...attitude proved infectious. Several times he paused between songs to banter and joke with the audience, at one point asking the thronging masses to give all their names at once. As soon as the din died down, he responded: "Well, I think I got most of them." Stalwart, silent pianist Mike Garson was introduced as being "134 years...
...next tune, "Chasin' the Trane," is a contrast in several ways: first, it is played in a trio format with just horn, bass and drums. The song's standard 12-bar blues form also contrasts with the exotic eastern style of "India." Without a written melody or a pianist to play chords, "Chasin'" has a uniquely spare sound, and the second version is perhaps the most prominent and audacious of the tracks on the collection. Whether this performance comes off as one of the finest examples of spontaneous musical invention ever or as 15 minutes of earsplitting squeaks, is heavily...