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Stephen Grew — Fire
(Discus Music 192CD, 2025, CD)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2025-04-25

Fire Cover art

What can be said about a near-hour long solo piano piece that is purely improvised on the spot and mostly eschews all genre boundaries? It could be split into three shorter tracks “Fire 1,” “Fire 2,” and “Fire 3,” which is exactly what was done here, though it doesn’t really change Grew’s piece over the long haul, which seems to drift in and out of conscious meandering and dreamy shadows as it twists and turns from one idea to the next. Grew is a master at this, although he’d done a lot more than solo improvisations over his thirty-plus year career, having played in various formations with Trevor Watts, Graham Clark, Keith Tippett, Richard Scott, Evan Parker, and many others, in duos, trios, quartets. The full-length piece of 55-plus minutes has some pauses in it, or breathers — which is where the shorter pieces are cut, but make no mistake, this is all one performance recorded live on a Steinway D grand piano at Lancaster Baptist Church, same as Grew’s previous CD, Now We Are Here, reviewed in these pages in September of last year. The ideas come fast, swelling and retreating and falling away with little regard for structural limitations, although one can simply kick back with headphones on and it all tends to make sense as it progresses along its guided path, Grew’s mastery of this instrument is holding everything together, where his notes coalesce and commingle like perfect colors and scatter like stars in the night sky.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Stephen Grew

More info
http://discusmusic.bandcamp.com/album/fire-192cd-2025

 

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