Borah Bergman

LP version. Upside Down Visions is the second solo piano album Borah Bergman made for Soul Note, recorded in Milan in the summer and autumn of 1984 and released the following year. Bergman came to records late: Ken Waxman, writing in Jazzword in 2013, notes that he did not record until his forties. His first two albums appeared on Chiaroscuro in the 1970s, and the Milan label took him up in 1983 with A New Frontier. All six pieces here are his own compositions, and one of them is written for the left hand alone.

The sessions took place at Barigozzi Studio on July 24 and 25 and October 2 and 3, 1984, with Giancarlo Barigozzi engineering and Giovanni Bonandrini producing. Joachim Ernst Berendt wrote the liner notes, and the cover photograph is by Hank O'Neal. Waxman traces Bergman's method to two sources: the first records of Ornette Coleman with Don Cherry, where the instruments moved contrapuntally, and John Coltrane's Chasin' the Trane, which the pianist practised along with at 45 rpm until a stream-of-consciousness way of playing freed him from technical limits. Side one opens with the title piece, almost thirteen minutes long, then Uncharted Rivers Flow Forever and the brief Spirit Song, dedicated on the sleeve to the memory of Arrigo Polillo. Side two holds Poignant Dream, nine minutes long, then Prelude To An Apex, subtitled for the left hand alone, and Ballad Of A Child Alone. Waxman writes that Bergman reached Soul Note through the editor of Musica Jazz, and he counts this album among the "well-received discs" that made his name as a solo player.

This is a copy of the original 1985 Soul Note LP, catalogue number SN 1080, on 140 gram vinyl: CAM Jazz, which now owns the label, describes it as original stock rediscovered in its vaults. Ducale lists it as 121080-1.