One Pianist, Two Concerts

Upon graduation from the Manhattan School of Music, classically trained pianist Alexander Wu had a predestined path: studying and playing the works of Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Debussy and the like.

But as a man who has never been able to let go of his deep-seated curiosity and childlike wonder, that fate—or any fate at all—didn’t sit well with him.

“I think the arts does that to you,” Mr. Wu mused during a telephone interview last Thursday. “You have to always explore and think about new things. It’s part of the territory. You have to have that innocence and the feeling and the emotions and the creativity. It pushes you, keeps you young.”

And so, nearly 25 years ago, the now 47-year-old pianist veered away from the hallowed classics and sought out a typically untraveled road.

It didn’t take long to find. Just coming out of a conservatory as a classical musician, Mr. Wu said he never thought his destiny would be playing music from bluesy jazz to spicy Latin rhythms, even tangos and American folk.

“I was thinking, ‘There’s really good music out there. Why am I killing myself over playing everyone else?’” Mr. Wu explained. “The Beethoven and Bach route. Not that I wouldn’t play them, but I wanted to extend my options and repertoire. When you find new music, it’s like a white canvas. You can interpret it the way you want and delve into the music itself.”

Mr. Wu said he expects audiences to do the same with the diverse, unorthodox “Rhythm Road Across the Americas” program he’s bringing to Montauk Library on Saturday, March 10, a concert that marks his fourth visit there.

“Alexander Wu is a superb musician,” library program director Carolyn Balducci wrote in an email last week. “His selections are thrilling and the program will be vibrant and memorable. I hope, particularly, that young piano students will attend so that they can hear contemporary classical works written for piano and performed by a gentleman who makes it look easy.”

To appeal to a more traditional classical music fan base, the pianist will play a second concert of the big names—Beethoven, Bach and such—on Sunday, March 11, at Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton. Usually, the pianist performs on the East End as a member of ZigZag Quartet, but next weekend, he’ll be a one-man act, he said.

In Montauk, Mr. Wu is playing off the CD he released last year, “Rhythm Road Across the Americas,” which is a spin on piano solo repertoire that examines the evolution of music in North and South America, he said, with pieces by the classical pop stars of their day—American composers George Gershwin and Dave Brubeck, Canadian Oscar Peterson, Argentinian Ástor Piazzolla, and Brazilian Antônio Carlos Jobim, to name a few.

“When you say ‘classical music,’ some people already get turned off,” Mr. Wu said. “But if you find a good piece of music, no matter what genre or category, it’s a good piece of music. It stands the test of time. The Beatles are a perfect example, right?”

Since he was a boy, Mr. Wu said he has stayed away from categorizing music into genres. That’s the key to his recent album, he said. But the Montauk audience will get an element of the listening experience that they can’t find on Mr. Wu’s CD. The pianist will give short narrations on either the upcoming piece or composer between sets, he reported, which often changes how people listen.

Take Mr. Brubeck, an American jazz musician and composer from the 1950s East Coast-style of music—laid back and cool-sounding, Mr. Wu said. Toward the end of that decade, the U.S. Department of State sent the biggest names in jazz—including Mr. Brubeck and, eventually, musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and Miles Davis—abroad as goodwill representatives, a program launched at the tensest point during the Cold War in an effort to bring the best of American culture to the rest of the world.

It was during Mr. Brubeck’s Middle Eastern tour that the jazz artist had a breakthrough.

“He was on his way to a radio interview in Istanbul and on his way there, he heard some local Turkish musicians playing a very interesting rhythm, the basic belly dancing foundation rhythm,” Mr. Wu explained, adding that he will demonstrate it during his story. “It was very innate to them, the way blues is to jazz musicians. So he combined blues and this Turkish rhythm, and called it ‘Blue Rondo a la Turk.’”

Mr. Wu chuckled. That song will be the finale during Saturday’s Montauk concert, he said.

But the pianist hasn’t abandoned the classics. The next afternoon, he’ll be returning to his roots at the Rogers Memorial Library for “Bach to Classics,” where he’ll play a concert of the greats—including Johann Sebastian Bach, Claude Debussy, Frédéric Chopin, Sergei Rachmaninoff and, Mr. Wu’s greatest artistic challenge, Ludwig van Beethoven.

“Beethoven goes beyond the music itself,” Mr. Wu said. “What he represents is based on his story. Everybody knows he went deaf in his 30s. Gradually, he begins to lose his hearing, but you begin to realize he can hear on the inside. He heard things beyond what was happening at the time.”

Beethoven’s “Piano Sonata no. 30 in E major, Op. 109,” which Mr. Wu will be performing, was one of Beethoven’s last works—completed just seven years before the composer’s death. He was completely deaf and very fearful of life, Mr. Wu explained. Death was knocking at his door, he said.

“He was just cranking out a lot of music, pouring out emotionally, struggling,” Mr. Wu said. “The music shows that. It really isn’t pianistic in a lot of ways. It’s more the intimacy that you feel in his music. He went beyond what you would expect from a piano.”

Pianist Alexander Wu will give two contrasting concerts on the East End next weekend. On Saturday, March 10, Mr. Wu will play “Rhythm Road Across the Americas” at 7:30 p.m. at the Montauk Library. Admission is free. For more information, call 668-3377. The next day, Sunday, March 11, he will perform “Bach to Classics” at 3 p.m. at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton. Admission is free. For more information, call 283-0774.