Williams Works Magic On Keys, Crowd

Roger Williams and The Spokane Symphony SuperPops, Saturday, Feb. 6, Spokane Opera House

Saturday night’s SuperPops concert was fun all the way through - any concert with two different versions of “Flight of the Bumblebee” can’t exactly be described as solemn. Yet by far the most enjoyable segment came at the end, when piano wizard Roger Williams took requests shouted out from the audience.

These requests ran the gamut from “Moon River” to “Rhapsody in Blue” to “The White Cliffs of Dover” to “anything by Rachmaninoff” to “Mairsy Doats.”

“Mairsy Doats?” Williams asked the crowd in mock outrage.

But then he sat down at his grand piano, and leaning back like the coolest of jazz cats, proceeded to play a medley of nearly every one of those 20-plus songs. Williams is one of those extraordinary people who can translate almost any musical idea directly from his brain to his fingertips without any delay in between. He somehow managed to segue “Moon River” into Gershwin into the theme from “Exodus” into “Lara’s Theme” into something by Debussy into “Stardust” into “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini” and make it all sound as if it had been carefully written down and planned out by a squad of composers.

And then, just when he was about to hit a Rachmaninoff-ian crescendo, came the unmistakable strains of “Mairsy Doats.” In fact, Williams, with a showmanship instinctive after all of these years, took the two simplest melodies “Mairsy Doats” and “White Cliffs of Dover,” and wove them into practically every piece that he played in this 20-minute medley. Through all of this, the audience laughed and sighed and broke into spontaneous applause.

Some might say this is all just a parlor trick, but all I can say is wouldn’t you love to possess the gift of being able to communicate so effortlessly and so directly with a piano?

Williams, the best-selling solo piano artist of all time, was impressive in other ways, too. He proved to have a fluid ability with classical pieces, including more Rachmaninoff and a bit of Debussy. Even more surprising was a stunning talent for jazz, and I don’t just mean “Take the A-Train” and some of the other jazz standards he played, but even for the hyper-drive of Dizzy Gillespie’s thousand-note-a-minute bebop.

And, of course, he also is the master and practically the inventor of what some people call elevator music. With exceptional melodies like “Autumn Leaves” he proved that the other name for the genre, beautiful music, is more apt. He also proved to be a personable showman and storyteller. His only misstep came in an extended monologue about lost love that bordered on self pity.

The Spokane Symphony, under the baton of Fabio Mechetti, was in fine form, too, both accompanying Williams and in their own segment in the first half. Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Flight of the Bumblebee” was thrilling, and so was Glinka’s Overture to “Russlan and Ludmilla.”

But the biggest thrill came in Rossini’s Overture to “William Tell.” Everyone, once in their lives, should feel the visceral kick of a live orchestra blasting into the horn fanfare that introduces the main theme. Hi-ho, Silver, indeed.