Time Difference (Live)

Hiromi’s Sonicbloom: Hiromi Uehara (piano, synthesizer), David Fiuczynski (electric guitar), Tony Grey (electric bass) and Martin Valihora (drums) playing in Japan (2007). From the album Time Control (2007).

Hiromi Uehara is a Japanese keyboardist and composer, a star that shines with her own light and displays virtuosity, passion and a powerful and joyful energy. With her talent and charisma she astonishes critics and jazz fans in East and West, and elevates composition and improvisation to new dimensions of complexity and sophistication. With her music she renews jazz by combining post-bop with old stride, progressive rock, jazz fusion and classical music in a clear postmodern trend. Her technique is excellent thanks to her classical training, which has allowed her to transfer her ideas to the world of jazz creating a wide, articulate, daring and experimental language.

She has played alone, in duets, trios and quartets, in acoustic and electric bands, and in her concerts she is contagious both to the members of her own group and to the audience, encouraging many of the best musicians to collaborate with her. She uses a Yamaha CFIII-S grand piano, the Clavia Nord Electro 2 73 electric keyboard and the Korg microKORG and Nord Lead 2 synthesizers. Born in the city of Hamamatsu, she began studying classical piano at the age of six and one year later enrolled at the Yamaha School of Music, where she developed her technical, compositional and performing skills, and one of her teachers introduced her to jazz.

At fourteen she performed in the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and in one of his appearances in Tokyo, acclaimed pianist Chick Corea invited her to play with him. She also wrote jingles for Japanese companies during several years. A jingle is a short song used for advertising purposes. In 1999 she moved to the United States and joined the Berklee School of Music in Boston, where she received a full scholarship and increased her artistic sensibility from J.S. Bach up to Sly & the Family Stone or Iron Maiden. In addition, her arrangements and orchestration teacher gave his friend the renowned pianist Ahmad Jamal a tape with Hiromi’s music, they met and became her student. She also learned from the legendary Oscar Peterson how to develop her own way of improvising.