Weekend Review : Pop and Music : Winston’s Precise ‘Summer Show’

The musical universe George Winston brought to Royce Hall on Friday was like a miniature terrarium--carefully controlled, rudimentarily structured and completely self-contained.

Winston was one of the first New Age pianists, and his music has changed little in the decade he has been recording. Friday’s program (he appeared Saturday as well) was the current installment of an annual event, usually presenting many of the same works, that he describes as the “Summer Show.” The compositions included such appropriately titled pieces--some by him, some by Philip Aaberg, Art Lande and Pete Seeger--as “Rain,” “Woods,” “Living in the Country” and “Blossom in the Meadow.”

Winston is a precise pianist; he played his musically uncomplicated, melodically oriented program with a control that allowed little room for emotional coloration. Strongly energized by his left-hand rhythms, he often blurred his right-hand melodies with excessive sustain pedaling and a too-light touch. Only rarely--the middle section of “Woods” was a good example--did he seem capable of expanding and coloring his tiny musical microcosm with much-needed traces of dissonance.

Winston’s alternative interests are Hawaiian slack key guitar, stride piano and blues harmonica. He briefly touched upon each, playing convincing guitar on a gentle Hawaiian number, romping stride piano on “Cat and Mouse” and particularly effective harmonica on a Cajun blues.