By Robert Spencer

In an age when Cecil Taylor still bestrides the world of jazz (or avant-garde, if you prefer) piano like a colossus, pushing seventy but still creating mammoth, tumultuous energy pieces . . . in an age when Marilyn Crispell and Irene Schweizer astound with the pure force of their pianistics . . . in an age populated by other overlooked keyboard giants including Bobby Few, Michael Jefry Stevens, Matthew Shipp, and David Rosenboom . . . only Borah Bergman's discs come with the note that he "is heard on this record in unaccompanied piano solos. No use is made of multitracking, overdubbing or tape speeding on any selections."

The note is needed because Bergman's left hand is so well-developed - and he deploys it so independently of his right - that his music is often astounding for its parallel intricacy. Yet he is by no means a mere stunt performer. The piano is, in his words, a "miniature orchestra" whereon the two hands engage in a dialogue. "This dialogue can lead, when desired, to polyphony, each hand seeming to have a life of its own. Two things are happening at the same time, related and unrelated, harmonious and conflicting, the degree of synthesis depending on the choices made. Developing the left hand to be the equal of the right enabled me to restructure the piano and employ interplay with its dialogue and polyphony. I've never considered it as an end in itself, but just my own way of making new music for the piano."

He is an "energy player" like Taylor and Crispell, with the ability to work in miniature as well, and to create the tiny and delicate melodic webs. "I found," Bergman explains, "that practicing rhythms such as 13:8, 11:8, 7:5, 8:5, 7:4, 5:4, 15:8, 9:5 have aided my ballad playing, getting a floating feeling and a sense of suspension." He is a surpassingly imaginative improviser, yet according to Musica Jazz's Arrigo Polillo, "his music is improvised only up to a point, because the improvisation fits into a plan that is clear in the mind of the pianist/composer before his extraordinarily agile fingers touch the keyboard."

Yet this musical maelstrom, this whirlwind of melodic shards and driving power, springs from the unlikeliest of sources. Bergman says, "Probably the two most significant influences were Bud Powell and Lennie Tristano." Also, "my first introduction was Louis Armstrong. Then Billie Holiday and Lester Young. I could play blues before I learned harmony. However my most important background in jazz is bebop. I can't forget seeing and hearing Charlie Parker and Bud Powell. As a teenager I played the clarinet. I still remember the clarinet solos on different versions of Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo." In a way my left hand relates to my clarinet feel - and to my horn concept in general."

And finally: "I feel I am myself. I have a right to be myself."