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A solo appearance at the Festival's Noon Series, at the Civic Auditorium, playing improvisational pieces. A excerpt from a review: Perhaps his more casual style and approach — once seated, he removed his shoes and placed a water bottle inside one of them — had something to do with it. Most certainly, it was his oftentimes dreamy ruminations on key themes that left one to reflect, wonder and to simply enjoy. Beginning with a kind of fantasia on Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies” and ending seasonal with Clifford Brown’s “Joy Spring,” the template for the show was established: theme and variations, medleys and whatever else he happened to come up with. And so his “Blues Skies,” played in an almost classical style, involved lots of time spent in minor keys, with an alternating two-chord sequence that gave the song a rained-out, haunted feel, full of rolling arpeggios suggesting storms becoming light rain with his more delicate single notes, Carrothers substituting drenched chords all over the place. Carrothers did mix it up along the way. With hints of Cole Porter’s “All Of You,” he offered some jaunty stride a la Erroll Garner in another waltz, featuring a busy right hand that led to a windup and pitch of the novelty “Take Me Out To The Ball Game.” Boisterous, choppy chords, laced with some blues on another playful rumination provided a similar ‘up’ contrast on what appeared to be Porter’s “Everything I Love,” the pianist amply displaying his more active, improvisational versatility. But it was Carrothers’ more serene, almost melancholic side that pervaded, the pianist invoking spirituals en route to more blue moods, a blue note, blue skies (Kalamazoo Gazette, 4/28/10).

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