Abrahams does all this, with sound alone.
His 60-minute improvisation was finely structured; it opened with a sense of testing the musical terrain; there was a vaguely Indian air to it.
Towards the end, the same mood returned but now, to my ears, it was the Middle East being evoked.
Chris Abrahams deals in an art of infinitely varied voicings. Sometimes complex textures release new ideas and motifs; elsewhere, a persistent single note might slowly emerge from a dense rumble.
There were fierce outbursts, so much so that one looked out for a surreptitious drum kit, but these dealt out their own bewitchment.
This master of musical illusion seems to cast his very sculptural chords to float around the auditorium, free from the shackles of the keyboard that spawned them.
Even at his most tonally dark, Abrahams offers relief in his black-on-black textures and patterns, through taut articulation.
At times, there was a certain asceticism afoot. Abrahams eschews the easy effect; when flamboyant glissando eventually erupted, it was the logical development of preceding and meticulous scales.
Mid-concert, there came a coup, signalled by the appearance of a lone, high-pitched note. Abrahams treated this to almost manic repetition, with the tenacity of a Terry Riley; sustained pedal was avoided so that clarity was all.
When pedal was added, cautiously, it was an act of liberation, freeing the sonorities to hover above like the swirling harmonic clouds of a glass harmonica.
Concert review
What: Chris Abrahams
Where: Te Uru Waitakere
When: Saturday.
