Hiromi Uehara is known as a flamboyant whirlwind on the jazz piano. But her ambitions reach far beyond that.
The classically trained Japanese pianist is a huge fan of progressive rock and fusion music. “The most attractive thing about progressive rock is that it works like classical music,” she says.
Hiromi’s current fusion band – after Sonicbloom (with David Fiuczynski) and The Trio Project (with Simon Phillips) – is called Sonicwonder (the band’s debut was released in 2023). The lineup is world-class, featuring electric bass prodigy Hadrien Feraud, fusion drumming ace Gene Coye, and the brilliant trumpeter Adam O’Farrill (from a famous Latin jazz dynasty). Hiromi has crafted the wildly imaginative arrangements on Out There specifically for these musicians.
The tracks “XYZ” (a Hiromi classic), “Yes! Ramen!!” (with a Japanese twist), and “Balloon Pop” (the closer) are wild, candy-colored uptempo orgies – boozy and over-the-top, bursting with rapid-fire rhythm changes, virtuosic improvisations, and bizarre synth colors. Some individual ideas may seem trivial on their own, but that’s not the point – this is about the whole picture, about excess, about unbridled eclecticism teetering on the edge of parody.
Then there’s “Out There,” a half-hour prog-rock-fusion suite that shamelessly juggles funk-jazz and art-rock clichés. The album’s gentle counterpoint comes with Hiromi’s beautiful, purely acoustic ballad “Pendulum” – performed without the band, but in two versions.
Hiromi – Out There
Label: Telarc
Format: CD, LP, digital