SPOTLIGHT : JAZZ : * * 1/2, GONZALO RUBALCABA, “Imagine: Live in America”, Blue Note

Pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s musical odyssey--in which his status as a Cuban citizen made it impossible for him to perform in the United States, despite a flourishing international reputation--came to an end in May 1993, when he finally made his debut at New York City’s Lincoln Center. Much of that program (with the exception of “Imagine,” which was recorded in Capitol Records’ Hollywood studio in 1994) is present in this belatedly released recording.

Rubalcaba’s strengths and weaknesses are on full display. That he is a technical virtuoso, capable of playing precisely and accurately at finger-blurring speeds, is obvious in his solos on pieces such as “Woody’n You” and “Circuito II.”

Fast, however, is not always better. Like a number of other international pianists who moved into the jazz scene after having received the rigorous, classical training characteristic of communist bloc music conservatories, Rubalcaba has occasionally pushed articulateness to an extreme. Keith Jarrett has pointed out that a pianist’s “touch,” or the attack and velocity with which a note is sounded, is very different between jazz and classical music. And Rubalcaba’s least-thoughtful, least-provocative work generally emerges when his “touch” is energized by a classical approach.

Less apparent on this outing, but far more intriguing, are the remarkably colorful timbres and articulations that his classical training occasionally makes available to him. On “Imagine,” “First Song” and “Mima,” for example, Rubalcaba’s mastery of tone, sound and touch produces solos tinged with moments of emotional contrast and harmonic inspiration--until they are shunted aside by rapid-fire explosions of notes.

Despite its importance as a dream fulfilled, “Imagine: Live in America” does not represent Rubalcaba’s finest work. If anything, it is best viewed as a measure of how much he has grown in the two years since the Lincoln Center event. More recently, his soloing--typified by a superb Hollywood Bowl performance last summer--now suggests a creative maturity well beyond what is heard here, a maturity that permits the locution of ideas via implication and allusion rather than the aggressive demands of his technical firepower.