Jul-20-2010 — See the trailer for "Louis," a silent film with live music performed by Wynton Marsalis, Cecille Licad, and a 10 piece all star jazz ensemble.

"Licad plays Chopin with extraordinary musicianship. She voiced complex arabesques with clarity, and often in perfect rhythm, without indulging in endless beat-stretching. This made the places where she used rubato very effective. She and Preu worked well together and projected a sense of confidence and security in this work that is much more difficult to perform live than it sounds.

"She also played with an elegant sense of lyricism. The second movement came to life with the care she gave to voicing and the lovely whispered sound she drew from the piano."

Cecile Licad may have been groomed under Rudolf Serkin's exacting tutelage, but her visceral, exuberant Gottschalk playing evokes Vladimir Horowitz's diabolical art. It's not just speed and accuracy that Licad brings to the impossible repeated notes in Le banjo or Tremolo, but also impulsive dynamic surges and fustian drama. Her nimble, skywritten runs in La jota aragonesa simply take your breath away, as do her exquisitely shaped soft chords. For all of Licad's affetuoso teasing in The Dying...