[Harp-L] Waco Symphony Review

[Robert Bonfiglio <bon@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Harmonica player blows away WSO audience

By Carl Hoover | Wednesday, April 8, 2009, 08:46 AM

Always leave them wanting more, goes the show biz maxim and harmonica  
player Robert Bonfiglio certainly did that at the Waco Symphony  
Orchestra’s season-ending concert Tuesday night, even after four  
encore pieces.

The encores, two before the intermission and another two at concert’s  
close, demonstrated Bonfiglio’s considerable musicianship was matched  
by crowd-pleasing showmanship.

The WSO’s marvelously balanced performance of Richard Strauss’ “Don  
Juan” may have been the night’s musical highpoint, but it was  
Bonfiglio who walked off with the lion’s share of applause.

The tall Bonfiglio, his long hair falling past his shoulders, cut a  
commanding figure on the Waco Hall stage. That presence grounded his  
stage dynamism - large hands fluttering here, cupping there, his  
lithe body crouching and twisting as he played a concert harmonica  
about the size of a giant chocolate bar

His signature piece, Heitor Villa-Lobos’ lyric, melodic Concerto for  
Harmonica and Orchestra, seemed to draw its musical inspiration from  
folk song and bird song, the orchestra providing a textured, rhythmic  
foundation for solo harmonica lines whose feathery top notes often  
melted into the air.

After a warm ovation, Bonfiglio pulled a smaller harmonica from his  
tuxedo jacket and rattled into wailing, honking, foot-stomping  
tributes to legendary bluesmen Sonny Boy Williamson and Junior Wells,  
swapping the melodic lines of the Villa-Lobos for thick harmonic  
chords of the blues.

The musician closed the concert program with a Stephen Foster medley  
that highlighted the harmonica’s folksy, yet soulful side and  
American heritage, his instrument singing its way through Foster  
classics such as “I Dream of Jeannie With The Light Brown Hair,”  
“Camptown Races,” “Beautiful Dreamer,” “Swanee River” and “Oh Susanna.”

Again, Bonfiglio tugged a smaller harmonica from his pocket and  
played an exquisitely simple encore of the hymn “Amazing Grace,”  
whose final note hung suspended above a rapt Waco Hall audience. Next  
came a quick, stomping blues number, in which he enlisted the cello  
section in plucking a backbeat, and the evening finally came to an end.