I was reunited with three old friends last Thursday evening. While I will never meet Frederic Chopin or Franz Josef Haydn, I was able to carefully shake the magical hand of Dr. Ron Williams after his virtuoso presentation of their work.

He brought the old masters to life for a near-capacity audience of well over 100 who packed the showroom of the Reno Steinway Piano Gallery on Moana Lane. Ages ranged from roughly seven to senior maximus. On several selections, the lovely white-haired lady sitting next to me played air piano on her lap in perfect sync with Dr. Williams. I wondered what stories she could have told about her musical journeys.

I first heard Ron Williams back in the 1970s when we both had darker hair and more of it. I think he’s gotten much better with age. Perhaps it was because I was much further away from him during those concerts, while the Steinway Gallery is like a large living room.

No matter. Any music student in the audience got a textbook lesson in shading and dynamics. I don’t have the best hearing in the world, but I had no trouble picking up and appreciating the master’s deft nuances. Like several of my fellow attendees, I often closed my eyes for short excursions to other times and places.

Dr. Williams also turned the event into a bit of a music appreciation class, delivering short lectures about the selections and their composers. He even noted that the Steinway grand upon which he performed was likewise an old friend with which he had first made music in 1960.

Those who attended got in for the price of a phone reservation. If you want to see the very worthwhile reprise at 1 p.m. at the Nevada Museum of Art on July 19, it will cost a modest amount — $10 for adults, $8 for museum members.

“The program features Haydn’s last piano sonata and the Variations in F-minor paired with select preludes, nocturnes and etudes by Chopin. Dr. Williams has appeared extensively in recitals and (with) various orchestras throughout the Great Basin and Bay Area,” the museum Web site notes.

Dr. Williams is an emeritus professor of music at UNR. I’m more than 40 years removed from the world class Fresno State music department and am certainly no qualified critic, but I think you will appreciate what Dr. Williams termed Chopin’s “finger busters.”

You will also be treated to many of Haydn’s surprises, musical tricks which violate the expectations the sly old musical fox has carefully built.

Williams noted that Haydn’s Sonata in C Major, No. 60, was his last smaller composition before he moved on to more grandiose work all the way up to full symphonies. But he never lost his sense of humor.

I recall that in his famous “Surprise Symphony,” Haydn described one passage chuckling “this should make the women jump.”

We jumped many times last Thursday night, jumping up at the end to give Dr. Williams (and his lovely wife, who turned his pages) several standing ovations.

Go see him.

Daytime dissonance

Truth comes out of the closet on Monday at Sparks City Hall. At least I hope so.

Item 6.3 is “consideration, discussion and possible ratification of the purchasing manager’s rejection of all bids for the federally funded Spanish Springs Sewer Phase 3 Project.”

Sparks labor leader Richard “Skip” Daly has filed legal action on the issue, noting that city purchasing manager Dan Marran had no authority to make any bid decision over $25,000. The Spanish Springs construction project is now in the $8 million range. New bid specs have just been published and are not substantially different than the one at issue, validating the suspicion that Daly caught city hall in flagrante delicto.

City Attorney Chester Adams has changed his description of what Mr. Marran did several times. Were bids rejected or withdrawn? (A major legal distinction.) Was the low bidder awarded a contract despite operating illegally in Nevada? Can said low bidder now sue the city?

It’s hard to tell who is using the fire extinguisher to cool whose smoking tail feathers. Is the council hiding behind Chester the Harasser’s fluffy pink boa in this political version of La Cage aux Folles?

Or is the council covering for an administration hiding under frilly skirts fluted with pages and pages of extraneous legal dicta?

Washoe District Judge Janet Berry has been no help. Despite an obligation under court rules to act promptly on a filing for a writ of mandamus, Berry has sat shiva. Mr. Adams’ filing in opposition to Daly was 18 pages of non-responsiveness, never refuting the central point that Mr. Marran had no legal authority to do what he did.

The very wording of Monday’s agenda item concedes Daly’s point: Only the council can decide on large contracts. Federal tax money, which should already be flowing into the community pipeline for this pipeline job, has been hung up thanks to bureaucratic ineptitude and defensiveness.

You gotta love Nevada — from classical gas in Reno to political tap dancing in Sparks, we get world-class entertainment for free.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew Barbano is a 39-year Nevadan, member of Sparks-based Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO, political action chair and webmaster of NAACP Reno-Sparks Branch 1112, producer of the César Chávez celebration and editor of NevadaLabor.com. As always, his comments are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.