Jay Gottlieb, SF Chronicle
Intense pianist offers 9 powerful new pieces
by Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic
My favorite offering was Oscar Strasnoy’s “Exercices de Latinité,” a group of three zippy dances glimpsed under a strobe light. In each movement, there’s a rhythmically direct invention lurking beneath the surface — a cha-cha-cha, a tango, a tarantella — but Strasnoy affords us only jangly, bright-hued fragments of the music, leaving it up to the performer and listener to sketch in the implied links. The result is witty, knowing and improbably beautiful.
