Trevor Percario’s music is an oasis in the desert that is Southside Virginia jazz.
Only a few months are left to catch the 22-year-old pianist’s music before he heads for the big time in New Orleans.
On Sundays from 11:30 to 1:30 p.m., Percario plays at Crema & Vine in Danville, spinning out standards such as “Take the A Train,” “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Tea for Two” on his electric keyboard. Besides the familiar melodies, listeners can hear some cool jazz improvisation. You won’t hear anything avant-garde. “I am trying not to stray too much from the atmosphere of the venue,” he says, entertaining a mix of listeners and people who want to socialize.
“For my last time in the Danville area, I just wanted to play music that I would enjoy doing,” he says.
Why would he leave his Chatham home and Southside for the big city? “I have to be surrounded by musicians who are better than me in that genre,” he says. “Music is all I care about right now.” He also can play bass guitar and can sing as well.
Percario, whose father is a noted guitarist, has had a one-track mind for music since he was 5 years old. When his father taught his brother to play a song on the piano, Trevor picked up the tune right away by ear and then took piano lessons.
He played for the University of Lynchburg jazz ensemble, then the Liberty University jazz combo and the combo Flat Five in Lynchburg before moving on to the University of Augusta in Georgia. It was there that he played in a jazz ensemble led by the fabled trombonist Wycliffe Gordon. Other groups include the Danville Jazz Sextet, Define Jazz and his current group, On the Margins, appearing at Crema & Vine on Oct. 14.
At Crema and Vine, on Main Street near the Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History, he has been arranging music bookings and doing promotional work as well.
As a jazz fan and part-time pianist myself, I was thrilled to see this music form alive and well in someone so young.
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At the other end of the age spectrum, I recently met an astonishingly accomplished jazz musician, Bill Joor, who has lived in Alton for the past eight years.
Bill, now 88, has played trumpet and harmonica and sung in a 48-year career in Las Vegas, Nashville and elsewhere with an amazing list of performers. Just a few: Judy Garland, Ella Fitzgerald, Tom Jones, Carlos Santana and Jimmy Durante. He has recorded with Kenny Rogers, Roy Orbison and Frank Sinatra.
Oh, I left out South Boston, where he played in “Chicago” with the Halifax County Little Theatre in 2017.
Besides musicals, his favorite music is jazz. I have never been a fan of harmonicas, but when I listened to a recording of his, I told him, “I didn’t know a harmonica could do that!”
Maybe Southside isn’t a jazz desert after all!
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Maybe not a classical desert either. Svetlana’s Smolina’s concert at The Prizery last Friday was a brilliant triumph. When her left hand switched to play the melody, and the right hand the accompaniment, it sounded like two different instruments.
As a pianist with sore hands, I marveled at how she could hit the keys so hard and make such magnificent runs for almost two hours.
Her choices of Tchaikovsky, Liszt and Chopin pieces were familiar enough to capture a non-classical audience yet varied enough to thrill aficionados.
After intermission, she said, “This is the best piano I have ever played.” Wow! Congrats to the volunteers who tirelessly raised money for the Steinway years ago.
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