San Francisco Performances presents Uri Caine
2015-02-07
Miner Auditorium
SFJAZZ Center, 205 Franklin St, San Francisco, CA
7:30 PM, Saturday, February 7, 2015

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2015 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2015 event list! ☸ On to the next event!

[7:29 PM lights down, Uri walks out without any announcements, sits at the piano bench, and begins to play]

1. [7:29 PM] Mozart improv: ? Alla Turka
2. [7:33 PM] Mahler improv: ?
   [Back-announce and Comments from Uri]
3. [7:44 PM] It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)
4. [7:49 PM] 'Round Midnight
5. [7:54 PM] Carlo Gesualdo I: ?
6. [7:57 PM] Carlo Gesualdo II: ?
7. [7:59 PM] Honeysuckle Rose
8. [8:06 PM] Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Schmerzen (1857), from 5 Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme, WWV 91
9. [8:12 PM] Wagner II: ?
10. [8:18 PM] Wagner III: ?
11. [8:24 PM] ?
12. [8:30 PM] ?
13. [8:34 PM] ?
14. [8:39 PM] ?
15. [8:45 PM] ?
16. [8:48 PM] ?
17. [8:51 PM] ?
18. [8:55 PM] ?
    [set ends 9:03 PM]
     
    Encore
19. [9:03 PM] Maple Leaf Rag
    [show ends 9:07 PM]

• Uri Caine: piano.

Easy drive in tonight – plenty of traffic, but no stress because we made an early start. Turned onto Fell towards the end of our journey and spotted a guy climbing into his car – score! Parked and then snoozed for a good 20 minutes. Nothing like a power nap to get you ready to face the rest of a busy day!

Last show of the tour, according to Uri's Facebook page – not that he made any comments about it, as far as I recall. Strange too that while last week he performed an all Bach program in Pisa, I didn't hear any Bach in the unannounced portions of tonight's setlist. Must not have been in the mood (or maybe I was just snoozin!). Speaking of the setlist, their is very little correspondence between the titles and the times. Which is to say that I added a lot of indices to my timer as the show unfurled, but no doubt, some of them corresponded to movements within the larger improvisations rather than new improvisations themselves. Or to put things another way, I did a crappy job taking notes tonight!

Uri made a few comments about Gesualdo before performing two of his pieces. Curious, I later found a very long New Yorker article by Alex Ross about the composer. Fascinating reading if you have the patience!

Closing the show with Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag was very cool. Rather than take the work at a maniacal tempo (as many sore odds are wont to do), or at a more sedate, but mechanically strict tempo (learned as an emulation of piano roll transcriptions?), Caine played the tune with a healthy bit of ebb and flow, speeding through some sections, clattering through others and pausing ever so much on a few of the sweeter bits, as if to linger there before reaching on towards the finish. Nicely done sir!

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2015 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2015 event list! ☸ On to the next event!