Allan Kozinn on Joel Fan

"The pianist Joel Fan took over Le Poisson Rouge on Monday evening to celebrate the release of 'West of the Sun,' his new collection of music of the Americas for Reference Recordings. It was a chatty performance, as concerts at Le Poisson Rouge tend to be. … [H]is playing was the picture of textural clarity in Ernesto Nazareth’s 'Vem Cá, Branquinha,' which he played with the sparkle and rhythmic suppleness of a jazz improviser. He brought similar qualities to two works that quote folk themes, Villa-Lobos’s Chôro No. 5 ('Alma Brasileira'), with its gauzy bass and gracefully singing melody, and Margaret Bonds’s 'Troubled Water,' a set of bravura variations on the spiritual 'Wade in the Water.' … The program’s highlight was the New York premiere of William Bolcom’s 'Nine New Bagatelles,' a set of aphoristic, vividly drawn character pieces, including painterly evocations of playing children and chirping birds. Mr. Fan gave it an agile reading, with delicacy and heft carefully balanced. And he closed the concert (except for a light Piazzolla encore) with a muscular, rich-hued and at times uncommonly lyrical account of Alberto Ginastera’s Sonata No. 1" ("Music Review," New York Times, 4/15/09).