Zuill Bailey

Heavenly music briefly held an audience in rapt attention Tuesday night at the Holland Performing Arts Center.

Inspired by the clarity of sound in the Kiewit Concert Hall during the first half of their program, cellist Zuill Bailey and pianist Awadagin Pratt changed their second half performance choice. They picked the emotional "Spiegel im Spiegel" ("Mirror in the Mirror") by contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

Shostakovich Centenary

For many years in the 1900s, we knew little of music in the Soviet Union. One of the country's greatest composers, Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), lived his 69 years through the reign of Stalin and two world wars. His relationship with Soviet authorities was complex and shifting: At times, his music was denounced; other times, he received praise from the government.

Anyone with doubts about the future of classical music didn’t see Zuill Bailey play Thursday night with the Waco Symphony Orchestra.

The handsome young cellist pulled a Waco Hall audience into the jagged rhythms and grazing dissonances of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 through the sheer force of his passion for the music.

To the eye, they were as different as A and Z: Fairfax native Zuill Bailey, cellist, with the shoulder-length hair of a 19th-century poet, dressed entirely in black; and Awadagin Pratt, dreadlocked pianist from Pittsburgh via Sierra Leonean ancestry, in a bright yellow patterned shirt.