Pianist Gabriela Montero is queen of improvisation

NEW YORK — "'Hey Jude,'" someone in the audience yells out.

Gabriela Montero sits at the piano, taps out the bare melody line, pauses and stares at the ceiling through her flowing blond hair and then plays the tune, complete with harmony.

But it's sad, in the minor mode. Soon, she shifts to major, then back and forth — sad, happy, sad, happy — in the best tradition of Schubert, with a hint of Debussy's "Claire de Lune."

Later, she crosses a musical bridge and breaks into a tango — it's the Beatles meets "The Addams Family." Call it "Hey Gomez"? Finally, she brings it to a rousing honky-tonk ending.

Her 5 1/2-minute version of Lennon-McCartney song was produced spontaneously during a recent appearance at Joe's Pub.

"You see, each theme has a little of its own world," she explains at one point. "It wants to go to one place; it doesn't want to go to others. Can't control it."

At 37, Montero is the queen of improvisation. Classically trained, Montero was born with a gift that the classical establishment has largely shunned since the days of Franz Liszt — creating music in front of an audience.

Improvisation fell out of favor because the 19th-century piano literature became so difficult to master, according to David Dubal, a piano faculty member at the Juilliard School.

"You can't waste your time screwing around on the piano and having fun," he said. "The two things that you need is discipline and concentration. It can take 15 years to play one piece well, and then it will crumble."

But Montero, who made her New York Philharmonic debut last year, has been able to master both realms.

"The wonderful part of her gift is not, for me, the improvisation but the interpretive artist," Dubal said. "She has beautiful sound and fine technique."

She even improvises in the recording studio. Her new CD, "Baroque," released last month, has her extemporaneous take on a dozen favorites from the 17th and 18th centuries, including Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and Handel's "Messiah." Her "Hallelujah Chorus," for example, begins with a "Habenera" bass rhythm made famous in Bizet's "Carmen," then arrives at a joyous variation of Handel's melody but in a Latin style.

How does she do it?