JIMMY McKISSIC
6 p.m., Trinity United Methodist Church. Free.

Admittedly, my feet are still tender here in the hallowed halls of the Times building. But during my first week as a crack music writer — when my feet were tender as antique silk — I took afternoon coffee with Jimmy McKissic, the animated piano virtuoso whose warm, laughing banter jumps from Jesus to shoes as quickly as his music jukes from Schumann to jazz-gospel. Nine months and dozens of interviews later, I still haven’t met a more colorful, bubbling character. The famed pianist was born in Pine Bluff, was taught (and taught at) at the UC Berkeley School of Music and has played Carnegie Hall a whopping 26 times. This weekend, McKissic returns for the first time since delivering a sold-out lecture at the Mosaic Templars Center and performing to a packed house in the Clinton Presidential Center earlier this year. Given, the animated pianist is anything but predictable, but for this, a free show at the Trinity United Methodist Church, count on a potpourri of Romantic piano, ’40s jazz, Southern hymns and maybe even a reconstructed nursery rhyme or two.

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