The George Winston Concert:
An Insider’s Review

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By Daren Wang

Concert promotion is a strange gig. You worry about everything except what the concertgoers care about.

I’ve worked on concerts before, but this was the first show with Eddie & Agnes, the new partnership with Agnes Scott College, Eddie’s Attic, and Verb productions. Leading up to the concert, I was concerned with ticket sales, underwriting spots, newspaper coverage, giveaways, and tuning riders, giving very little thought to actually seeing George Winston play.

Eddie and I helped him load in. I expected him to be professorial and taciturn, in fact he turned out to be quite loquacious, with a good sense of humor.

At about 6:30, half an hour before doors, he sat down to do a final tuning check on the revamped Steinway. He started playing around—casually, just checking out the instrument. I thought that was a great chance to check out the sound around the house—back under the balcony, left side, right side, balcony.

I wandered up to the back of the balcony, sitting in the seat furthest from the stage to get a sense of how an unamplified show was going to sound in this old 850-seat house.

The short answer was “better than my wildest dreams.”

Concert riders are considered proprietary, and details are generally not disclosed to the public. But saying that George Winston cares about his piano tuning isn’t giving anything away. So we paid to have a good serious tuning done to the Steinway, and it was worth it.

I sat in the worst seat in the house, and listened to this master play around with a beautiful piano in its prime for about 20 minutes, and suddenly remembered why we started this concert series. Sound filled the room, warming the big empty space.

Winston is an unusual piano player. He walks out on stage, stocking footed and casually dressed, somewhat disheveled, and he limits his comments between songs. But his playing is singular, nearly perfect, and transporting. Whether it’s a seminal track from his breakthrough album December, or his take on Professor Longhair or even The Doors, he brings a warmth and friendliness to the instrument. It’s no wonder that he has focused on Vince Guaraldi’s work of late—they both share a joy in their instrument that you see more often in guitar players.

Winston occasionally pulled out his unusual 7 string guitar or his harmonicas, but it will always be his piano work that captivates.

Talking with him afterward, he expressed how much he liked Decatur and the hall. He even asked if he could play the following night down in Madison in another venue Eddie’s working with. I can’t help but think he walked into a Piano lounge somewhere between here and his next gig in Richmond and started playing just for the fun of it.

—Filed under Press Releases by Daren Wang