A nearly full Lied Center waited quietly for a quarter of an hour for George Winston to appear Saturday evening. Wearing jeans and a long-sleeved top, he spoke a few words, sat at the piano in his stocking feet and rocked the house with a New Orleans rhythm-and-blues number that gave the Lied’s Steinway a workout. The whole piano shook as he piled on thundering chord progressions, with occasional forays into the upper keys for trills and runs.

Winston says, “The majority of songs I play are in this style,” but in Saturday’s concert more time was devoted to his alternate mode, which some call “new age” but Winston insists is “folk piano.” By either name, its quiet, thoughtful, often melancholy melodies are a country mile from R&B or its earlier kin, stride piano — which Winston also plays superbly, as he did in an overwhelming, unbelievably fast and complex rendition of “Chase.”

The “folk” label seemed especially apt for numbers like his “Moon,” where the piano sounded at times like a dulcimer, at times a mandolin in a frenzy of alternate picking. Winston’s style is often percussive, as when he pounded out a succession of thirds in this song. But he is also capable of great gentleness, shown equally well in “Moon” and in the moody “Colors” and “Tamarack Pines” from his “Montana” CD.

Throughout his playing, the listener will find several distinctive hallmarks. First, he is so absorbed that he seems not to notice there are almost 2,000 people listening. Second, he makes continuous use of the damper pedal, so that a pleasant harmonic blur accompanies the melody. He often continues to hold the pedal at a song’s conclusion, making the audience aware of all the notes that have just been played.

Third, his music often engages in the hypnotic repetition of a figure, reminiscent of East Indian music (or of American jazz). Fourth, he uses the whole piano, with deliberate excursions to the highest C and lowest A and their environs.

Winston is nothing if not inventive: When neither soft nor loud nor sustained suited his genius, he improvised other sounds. He ended “Moon” by hammering on the keys with one hand while damping the strings with the other a technique repeated in a series of damped chords at the end of a three-part “Valentine’s Day Medley.”

He returned to New Orleans R&B with the rollicking “Pixie,” so full of sound that two hands hardly seemed enough to produce it. With its walking bass line and right-hand syncopation, the number generated enough energy to light up the city of Lawrence. No doubt many in the audience came to hear Winston’s more introspective tunes, but there were also those who wondered, “If he can play stride and R&B like that, why would he ever play anything else?”

But George Winston’s musicianship is not confined to piano, as he showed by playing a soft and mellow Hawaiian slack key guitar, and the harmonica, producing a remarkably bagpipe-like drone to accompany the melody. The evening ended with another guitar solo as the audience called him back for an encore.