John Blum: Nine Rivers

Pianist John Blum's solo Nine Rivers is not so much a hit as it is a HIIT. His music is and has consistently been, to borrow a term from sports, a HIIT workout. HIIT or High Intensity Interval Training is a series of repeated all-out efforts with a brief recover time in between each effort. This recording from the 2013 Crosscurrent Festival in Pescara, Italy confirms Blum's approach as an anaerobic endeavor. His intensity only recovers in the spaces between each of the nine tracks, or "Nine Rivers" as he titled this outing.

Blum, a regular on the New York avant-garde music scene, is a woefully under-recorded talent. He studied with Bill Dixon, Milford Graves, Cecil Taylor, and Borah Bergman, and has performed with the likes of Jackson Krall, William Parker, Cooper-Moore, and Sunny Murray. From his limited discography, there are two solo outings Who Begat Eye (Konnex, 2009) and Naked Mirror (Drimala, 2002), both studio recordings. This, his first solo live recording, benefits from the high ceilings of a wood paneled room and, somehow, from the fact this concert was recorded with the lights off.

Blum's "Rivers" skip the trickle for the torrent and omit the calm for the cascade. He does not so much attack the piano as the piano transmogrifies into the pianist. His "First River" is born of thunder, with clenched fists pounding on keys before the right hand chases the left back and forth across the keyboard. By "Fifth River" one may imagine hearing French horns, harps, trombones, and a percussion section, but Blum has conjured an orchestral sound from this single instrument. "Sixth River" opens with rain-like sounds falling on Blum's tributary until the stream becomes a torrent. Each track is an athletic event without pause, except for the interstitial pause between each new "River." Blum has digested the history of the piano from classical to bebop and boogie- woogie and each of those styles is in a constant battle to take center stage in Blum's playing.

Each "River" has the flavor of the classic Steppenwolf lyric, "Take the world in a love embrace/Fire all of your guns at once/And explode into space." Blum is a true nature's child and Nine Rivers is proof he was born, born to be wild.