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Borah Bergman has died


clifford_thornton

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I haven't heard any performances by Mr. Bergman in decades, nor have I given a second listen to his first album, but here is what I had to say about that in Stereo Review 36 years ago:

BORAH BERGMAN: Discovery. BorahBergman (piano). Perpetual Springs; HorseOpera; The Third Hand. CHIAROSCURO CR 125 $6.98.

Performance: Stumbling down the Jarretttrail

Recording: Very good

Chiaroscuro, a New York-basedindependent label, has up to now concentrated on Dixieland and mainstream jazzrevivals, but this album represents a radical departure. According to annotatorNat Hentoff, Discovery heralds a new policy of alsopresenting the avant-garde.

New York pianist Borah Bergman,who here makes his recording debut, plays in a free-form style that otherpianists have explored before him, but "Perpetual Spring"--which takes up allof side one--is quite unorthodox, introducing a recording technique which Ibelieve to be original but which I hope will not catch on. Taping separatetracks for the right and left channels is normal procedure these days, butBergman has recorded the second channel without simultaneously listening to thefirst, and that is another matter. Does it work? Yes, to a certain extent, butthere is predictably a randomness about the end result, and the effect,although it has a somewhat prepossessing hypnotic quality, is still that ofhearing two recordings at one time. Bergman does suggest that one also listento each channel separately, but the music simply isn't worth theeffort.

"Horse Opera," which opens side two, is largely more ofthe same, without the added track, and "The Third Hand"—an improvisation forthe left hand only, ends the album on further random notes. I have heard thiskind of improvisational piano from non-jazz quarters for over twenty-fiveyears, so I fail to understand the sense of discovery that Mr. Hentoff haswoven through his liner notes. This is not an awful album, but Borah Bergmanis, so far, a Peter Nero to Keith Jarrett's Tatum. —Chris Albertson

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Wow, frankly I didn't know he was so old. But he was a unique voice and left around a lot of challenging music to unlock, which is saying something.

He was so old, than he hides how really old he was. You can put it ten years more to be close to the truth. I've know him very well in the end of the seventies, when he spend time in Brussels and I was happy to see him again a quater of century later, again in Brussels for a concert who was brillant. A great pianist but the man was quite nevrotic and full of contradiction - he wanted to be a writer and has always feel guilty to not be one. When he was in Brussels (2008, I think) for the concert he gave at the Theâtre Marni, I present him to Noah Rosen, another nevrotic pianist full of contradictions. They was looking at each other, all the evening that follow the Borah 's performance, like cat and mouse...

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  • 3 weeks later...

When I was trying to decide whether to make the solo drive to see Peter Brotzmann and Jason Adasiewicz, I downloaded Exhilaration, a Brotzmann/Bergman/Cyrille Soul Note date. Impressed with the album, I attended the concert, which sparked my love affair with Brotzmann's music. For that, I will fondly remember Bergman. RIP.

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