Blas Rivera

Blas Rivera has been in the business for a few years. How many? Nobody knows. Some of us think that he is a supernatural being, a delusion, a genius. It certainly is. It’s just that there are some who don’t feel like being aware of it, it will be because they haven’t listened to him; otherwise, it is not understood.

Blas is a saxophonist and a tango player, a pianist and a jazz player, Piazzolla and Jobim, Córdoba, Argentina, and all that remains around him: the world, that is. Blas gathers everything to reach himself, which is the final destination of his music. With this, that Rivera is him and no one else. Emotion, passion and a lost smile along the way.

Blas comes on stage and tells us about when, as a child, he played “Caminito” for visitors, only he hated “Caminito”, and the visitors. And, just like that, he tells us about his parents who came from overseas to Argentina to never return, and about his stay as a music student in the United States, and, later, in Madrid, now as a qualified teacher, and from Rio de Janeiro, where he resides. There, up on the stage, he looks at us with that cross-sectional way of looking so characteristic of him, and he talks to us about his things, and about many others, because Blas has a lot of life to tell and to play, and that’s where everything comes from. And it is like this, that his music is transited by how much he has lived, his human and personal geography, or musical, his everything.

Let’s be clear: Blas Rivera is equivalent, only, to himself. Reject imitations.
Chema García Martínez (“El País, Spain)