This new CD by pianist
Borah Bergman and violinist Stefano Pastor was recorded on July 1st, 2007 at
the Jazz Fuori Tema Festival in Tortona, Italy. The five pieces on this recording
three compositions by Bergman and two improvisations by the duo highlight
Bergman¹s ambi-ideation: his amazing ability to have each hand go its own
way. Instead of accompaniment and melody, what one hears are often two completely
different melodic lines being played simultaneously.
Stefano Pastor¹s
style of playing the violin is strongly based on an imaginative reworking of
bop wind instruments¹ language. A great deal of experimentation led him
to re-consider the set-up of his instrument. Pastor has re-strung his violin
with extremely rigid electric guitar strings to obtain a heavy sound, allowing
his violin and the way he plays it to speak like a wind instrument with
breath and power.
The resulting music is
sometimes rasping, sometimes lyrical, a not rarely prodigious dialogue between
the piano and the violin, with Bergman¹s hands running about on the keyboard
producing cascades of notes, each with an exact, determined precision with its
own very limpid specific weight. Pastor plays the game wonderfully, intervening
with his violin with its sanded, gravelly, very earthy sound. |