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By
Nate Chinen
Photography by Candace diCarlo
On
almost any night
of the year, a quiet figure leans over the dichromatic grid of a piano
keyboard and plays. His instrument could be a gleaming nine-foot B–sendorfer,
or a Steinway, or some funky relic with several busted keys. He might
be onstage alone, or joined by bass and drums; he could also be up there
with a violinist, a couple of horn players, a DJ and a choir. He might
be dramatically spotlighted on the stage of a German concert hall; perched
atop a temporary platform in an outdoor plaza; or wedged into a corner
of a poorly ventilated Lower East Side dive. His audience could be quite
large, very small or any size in between. What never changes is the act
itself: sitting and playing, hands on the keys. That act is a theme on
which there are countless, ceaseless variations.
Lately it seems
as if Uri Caine C81 is never home. Hes off in Munich, or Perugia or
Taipei. So its nice to catch him here, a stones throw from Central Park,
on the Upper West Side. In his apartment building, Caine converses good-naturedly
with a silver-haired woman at the reception desk. He stops to talk briefly
with a young musician in the lobby. In the kosher restaurant next door,
he greets one of the waitresses by name. The manager stops by his table
with a handshake and an invitation to stay as long as you want.
But as usual,
he wont be staying long. This past summer, Caine spent nearly the entire
month of July and the first part of August on the European summer festival
circuit. Home for a few days, he was leaving for China at the end of the
week. His bold appropriations of European classical musicwork by Mahler,
Wagner, Schumann, and now J.S. Bachhave met with surprisingly widespread
enthusiasm, along with the anticipated consternation. Encompassing an
encyclopedic range of styles and traditions, his still-developing oeuvre
holds much promise and poses many questions.
Such big issuesexpectation,
promisemay lurk in the periphery during a conversation with Uri Caine,
but they seldom come into focus. The pianist is not only laid-back but
also wholly unpretentious. His basso voice rolls along in a measured
cadence. His facean owl-like, elliptical shapewears an alert but studiously
vague expression. He talks about his success in a tone thats disarmingly
matter-of-fact, as if its happening to somebody else.
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