Pop Music : Winston’s Rippling Streams

George Winston’s popularity appears to have survived unscathed even as the New Age movement--once touted as a wave of the future--has faded.

The pianist sold out two nights at UCLA’s Royce Hall over the weekend, even though his last album was released in 1982. After his performance Saturday, he also sold out the late-night, semi-annual “Stride Piano Jam” at Santa Monica’s At My Place nightclub--where he was jokingly introduced as “the Obi-Wan Kenobi of New Age piano.”

The decidedly uncharismatic Winston is an unlikely candidate for that kind of devoted following. At Royce, he was very much the earnest student intent on doing the right things--a worthy cause (the Westside Food Bank) in the lobby, brief explanations of his styles and influences on stage, a list of his favorite albums in the program.

But the two-hour concert largely fit the New Age image of rippling streams, pastoral landscapes and seasonal themes. Winston’s left hand rarely ventured below middle C as he locked into a seamless series of repetitive motifs while his right hand added embellishments.

Winston only occasionally employed counter-melodies, and provided plenty of pregnant pauses to let the harmonics ring. One nice, out-of-character touch: At the end of the opening selection, he reached inside the piano to dampen the hammers, creating a surprising tonal variation that recalled industrial synthesizer.

Winston lists stride and the vibrant New Orleans R&B; piano tradition as influences, but his own playing lacks the easy grace of Professor Longhair or the idiosyncratic flair of James Booker.

His stiff, formal improvisation on “When the Saints Go Marching In” (a tellingly conservative choice) led into the evening’s most successful performance, a piece inspired by Angelo Badalamenti’s “Audrey’s Place” from “Twin Peaks.” With the audience accompanying on finger snaps and Winston’s left hand for once locked in a rhythmically propulsive groove, the lower register melodies gave the music the body and color the other selections lacked.

Maybe it was the dark side associated with “Twin Peaks” that brought those qualities out, since Winston’s music largely seeks to gloss over the stresses and strains of life. It still didn’t get the biggest rise out of the audience--a piece where Winston traded off between two harmonicas received a far bigger ovation than it merited.

The “Stride Piano Jam” was a misnomer--neither a jam nor a stride piano fest, but individual sets by Winston, Billy Childs and Brad Kay. Childs offered expansive right-hand melodies but few nods to jazz’s rhythmic pulse, while Kay focused on stride in an overbearing, enervating way that transformed the early jazz style into cutesy nostalgia.

Winston salvaged the flagging momentum with an extended gospel blues that turned into an improvised variation on Longhair’s “Tipitina”--a welcome injection of rhythmic vitality. But the reticent Winston didn’t loosen up notably in the club atmosphere, and devoted the bulk of his set to a series of similar-sounding numbers played on Hawaiian slack-key guitar.