Touching the responsive chord.

• Author: Holston, Mark
• Position: Argentine pianist Raul Di Blasio

His dark, penetrating eyes glance upward, as if in anticipation of a nod of approval from a personal muse. Arms outstretched as though a friend's embrace were at hand, the pianist acknowledges the audience's thunderous approval of his just-concluded performance of Mexican composer Juan Gabriel's impassioned "Hasta que te conoci." His sweat-drenched billowing silk shirt is offset by angular Italo-Argentine facial features and flowing brown locks that respond animatedly to every bow.

"Did you like it?" Raul Di Blasio asks rhetorically in both English and Spanish, beaming at the applause and cheers that swell in response. Although his words are few, it is obvious that this up-and-coming international star of instrumental pop music is every bit as adept at playing the emotions of the audience as he is at interpreting the works of Andrew Lloyd-Weber, Ernesto Lecuona, Roberto Carlos, and Juan Luis Guerra.

"I want to sign all the autographs I can, because this is part of the 'music business,"' Di Blasio says with characteristic directness. "It has nothing to do with talent. The talent is on the stage for one hour and a half - if you can show it."

And show it he does. Di Blasio's reputation has begun to expand far beyond the comfortable niche in Latin American popular music that has rewarded him with album sales approaching two million - a phenomenal accomplishment for an instrumental artist - and standing-room-only crowds numbering in the tens of thousands at sold-out concerts throughout the hemisphere.

Jazziz, the world's largest circulation jazz publication, lauded his "kindly schizophrenic approach to concert pianism" in a recent review. "His shifting dynamics," wrote critic Jonathan Widran, "both in concert and on disc, seem to feed off a multitude of mood swings drawing from an incredibly eclectic background charged with classical training, native South American folkloric rhythms, Beatlesesque rock, orchestral fascination, and good old-fashioned Latin jazz romance."

Such acclaim is today commonplace, but even the thought of attracting it was little more than a distant dream when Di Blasio began his childhood exploration of music in Zapala, a small town in the remote Andean province of Neuquen in central Argentina. "The good thing about that part of Argentina was the piano - in this case, the only piano in town," he recalls.

"My father and mother were not the kind of people to say, 'Raul, you have to practice the piano because you have to be a...