While trying to use up a gift certficate that my son gave me for Christmas,
I ran across a used CD in the otherwise bleak CM surroundings of The
Wherehouse.  (They were unable to get a Thalberg CD which seems to be
readily available on the internet)

The disk I got is called "The Puccini Album" and consists of
"improvisations and transcriptions" of arias from several Puccini operas.
I have only listened to it once for the full 78 minutes.  Hearing it all at
once seems a bit too much, but many of the tracks are quite interesting.
Liszt, Bayless ain't, but interesting.  The piano (Steinway) sound is
excellent and the label is Angel.

I see that he had another CD called Bayless Meets Bernstein.  Are others
familiar with this music? The notes are not very clear as to whether he is
actually improvising for the CD.  I would tend to doubt it since everything
seems quite well thought out.

I'm not quite ready to solidify my opinion about this effort.  Any
comments?????

Joel Hill
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Tallahassee, FL