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News > Finally A Good Break
Finally A Good Break 
March 3, 2006 Fourteen months ago, James Winn's life changed in an instant. On Pearl Harbor Day 2004, he was taking out the trash when he slipped on a patch of ice. The trash container crashed down on his right arm. Pinned against the driveway, the limb broke just above the wrist. Although the injury didn't present much of a medical problem, Winn had no idea what it would mean for his career as a performer and music professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. "The whole thing to me was so incredibly traumatic," he said. "The orthopedist who X-rayed the bones and the doctor who set them said, 'Well, there's no reason it shouldn't heal just fine.' That's sort of a statement like, 'OK, let's see how many chinks in that statement can Murphy's Law find.'"‰" In spite of Murphy's Law, Winn's arm healed. He was playing two-handed piano again in fewer than four months. Sunday and Tuesday, he'll take the spotlight with the Reno Philharmonic as soloist on Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2, a piece he was to play in 2005 before the fall. After a year of steady playing, Winn said the injured arm isn't causing artistic problems, but he does have constant reminders of the fall. "I still have some issues in the tendons," he said. "They still have not all quite stretched back. Even though it healed very well, it's subtly not quite the same shape."‰"» My standard answer, which is quite true, is that my hand now does everything it used to do. It just costs me a little more." The Liszt concerto should be especially expensive. The composer is known for flashy, technically difficult works. But Winn said Liszt wasn't just a show off. "I think that in some circles, especially more sophisticated circles, Liszt gets kind of a bum rap," he said. "I think it's very fine music, but because it does have this display element, and also because it's so very hard, a lot of people who play Liszt think their job is done if they can manage to get the notes. So you hear a lot of very flashy, very shallow Liszt. People think of him as being bombastic and sort of cheap, and he can certainly be done that way. But a lot of the stuff he was using was the same stuff Wagner was using. As a matter of fact, Wagner stole it from him. So his music is not without structure and without mentality, even though it always has that element of playing to wow the crowd." Winn is the regular pianist with the Reno Philharmonic, and he said he's excited about taking a solo role with the group. "It will be the first time to do a solo concerto with them since (conductor) Barry (Jekowsky) took over, and it's a very different orchestra now after several years of him," Winn said. "The group has really grown in the past few years in terms of what they can do." Jekowsky will not, however, be wielding the baton this weekend. Instead, guest conductor Joseph Silverstein will lead the orchestra. Jekowsky will be in the audience. Silverstein is an accomplished conductor and violinist who has appeared with hundreds of orchestras, and Winn admits that he's approaching the shows with some butterflies. "I'm a little afraid of Joe Silverstein," he said. "The last time I had anything to do with him, he was the lordly violin professor and concertmaster of the Boston Symphony, and I was just a poor little student at the (New England) Conservatory. So it's a little bit like playing for faculty, kind of frightening. "» I have to give myself kind of a talking to, to approach him as a colleague." People familiar with Winn's work might say he's being modest. One of Reno's best known musicians, he plays regularly with the Argenta Trio, Reno Chamber Orchestra and the Reno Philharmonic. He's also a composer and touring performer. He grew up in Denver and made his professional debut with the Denver Symphony at age 13. After high school, Winn earned bachelor's and master's degrees in music performance from the New England Conservatory and a doctorate in performance from the University of Michigan. Before settling in Nevada, he was a solo pianist with the New York City Ballet and a member of the New York Music Ensemble. Winn decided to play piano, he said, when he was just 4. "A friend of the family gave (us a piano) with the idea that it was about time that my older brother would start some music lessons," Winn said. "Of course, since he was supposed to do it, they couldn't get him near it with a rope. But I didn't have an agenda, so I would sit there. It was kind of pretty. It was not a particularly good piano, but it was new and shiny and it had some carving on it and it made noises. What more does a 4-year-old look for?" |
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