Not having any relatives west of the Mississippi, my family often traveled up to Portland to spend Thanksgiving with old friends. We'd usually pick up a couple books on tape from the Contra Costa library before heading out on road trips like these, but pianist George Winston's albums Autumn and December always traveled with us.

Because of these albums' bonding themes – holidays, family, journeys – the music grew into an important memory from childhood. In some ways, it ceased being art for me, in that I couldn't evaluate it with a critical eye as I developed musically. This isn't to say that I think George Winston is a bad composer or pianist. In the same way I occasionally eat at a childhood restaurant or put in an old movie regardless of its merits, Winston's music provides a service to me that eclipses anything that it could offer artistically.

So when I found out that he'd be playing the Crest Theatre in Sacramento Thursday night, I purchased tickets for the concert and convinced some family members to drive up from the Bay Area to join me in the realization of this shared tradition. I left work early, showed everyone the fading holiday cheer of Midtown and stuffed them full of pizza. After finishing a glass or two of wine and poking around the historical displays, we made our way inside the beautifully ornate (if half-filled) Crest.

It's always a crapshoot to hear an artist live for the first time, especially after years of familiarity with the ins and outs of his recordings. You can't help but anticipate the exact melody, tone, and tempo you know by heart. This put me at a disadvantage. It's like hearing the same stories about an old family member over and over throughout your life. When you finally meet that person, how could you not expect him to be the one-dimensional person from those stories?

I've been to enough reunion concerts to know that this discovery process is usually irreversible. Depending on the strength of the recordings and their attachment to me, a disappointing performance could end up spoiling all future listenings. This time, however, I felt confident. The specific role of his music in my life distances the art from the artist himself.

Several minutes past the advertised start time, Winston entered the room and took a seat beside the Steinway. He was dressed modestly in a collared shirt, blue jeans and in his traditional stocking feet. Although his beard, glasses and male pattern baldness might have imparted a professorial impression, his soft-spoken nature and light-hearted candor showed the depth of a person with respect for his audience and a passion for the music he plays.

There was a quietness that extended beyond his speaking and into his performance. None of the instruments he played were amplified, but beyond that, Winston's care for resonance and tone required the listener to focus completely on the stage. The piano managed to fill the room adequately, but the softness of his "slack key" guitar renditions demanded a particularly deft ear. Normally, when an artist removes accepted tools in a performance or on a recording, it ends up being more of a parlor trick than a benefit to the overall sound. In this case though, the music was better for it, even if I had to cock my head during several pieces to hear them clearly.

The Winter Show was peppered with pieces familiar to me: "Carol of the Bells" from December, "Moon" from Autumn, and a handful of compositions from these and other solo piano albums he's released over the four decades that span his career. When a familiar tune from those canonical recordings came up, my initial reaction was to jerk and react to the differences in melody in his improvisations, and it was hard not to notice when he was a note or two off when exploring an idea or working up to a new one. But it was fun listening to him add inspiration to his piece; the uniqueness made up for the occasional misstep or half-explored diversion.

He also drew selections from a handful of artists that have influenced him over the years, from early Doors songs to Vince Guaraldi’s Peanuts classics. These choices enhanced the concert and made it a personal experience. He has a passion for stride piano, a jazz style from the 1920s and '30s, and blended his own personal touch into these standards well. The pieces were a good fit for Winston's approach to the piano; he keeps his own compositions anchored with a rhythmic approach for his left hand while doing the melody and the improv with his right, a hallmark of the stride style. He also played several slack key guitar tunes, including a haunting piece that closed out his concert.

In the end, I appreciated learning of his influences and hearing the tunes and styles that were personal to him, rather than attending a note-for-note run-through of his most famous albums. I left with a more accurate impression of him and his music than when I walked in, but the nostalgia for those classic albums wasn't lessened by seeing the bigger picture. If anything, seeing this humble, unassuming man play the soundtrack of my formative years was like finally meeting the distant relative for the first time and leaving with a greater appreciation of the stories of the past.