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SOLD OUT - Hiromi’s Sonicwonder (Late)
Tue, 23 Apr, 9:30 PM CDT
Doors open
9:00 PM CDT
SPACE
1245 Chicago Avenue, Evanston, IL 60202
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Description
Since Hiromi’s debut album Another Mind (2003), the world-renowned pianist’s sound has evolved with every release, erasing the lines between jazz and classical, composition and improvisation. Now she changes tack again with her heaviest, funkiest album yet: Sonicwonderland.
Hiromi describes the hard-hitting nine-song set as “a new journey of adventure,” one that began in her imagination. As motifs, phrases, and timbres blossomed in her mind, she began thinking about players who could help her realize this specific sound. “Making a record is like making a movie, and I’m the director looking for the perfect actor for each role.” For her new quartet, Hiromi’s Sonicwonder, she cast bassist Hadrien Feraud, drummer Gene Coye, and trumpet player Adam O’Ferrill.
The genesis of Sonicwonder begins in 2016, when Feraud subbed for bassist Anthony Jackson at some gigs with Hiromi’s then-current trio. “When I was playing with Hadrien in that setting, I started to feel like I wanted to write some music just for him,” she recalls. “That was the first thing that made me want to go in this direction, and what made me want it to form this band.”
Born in Hamamatsu, Japan, Hiromi began studying piano when she was six years old. When she was 17, Chick Corea invited her to play with him at a Tokyo concert. She attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where she was mentored by jazz legend Ahmad Jamal. A prolific artist, Sonicwonderland is Hiromi’s twelfth studio full-length and second album of 2023; earlier this year she recorded the soundtrack to Blue Giant, an animated feature film based on the popular manga.
Hiromi is a perennial favorite on DownBeat’s Annual Critics and Readers Poll, and has performed at the world’s finest jazz festivals, including Montreux, Umbria, North Sea, Newport, and Monterey. Her work has been celebrated by media including the New York Times, NPR and NPR Music, and the Washington Post, and she was a featured performer at the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony in 2021.
Event Information
Age Limit
All Ages
World
Hiromi
Hiromi
World
I don’t want to put a name on my music. Other people can put a name on what I do. It’s just the union of what I’ve been listening to and what I’ve been learning. It has some elements of classical music, it has some rock, it has some jazz, but I don’t want to give it a name.”
– Hiromi
Japan has produced an impressive assemblage of jazz pianists; from Toshiko Akiyoshi and Makoto Ozone to Junko Onishi. And now, well into the change of the 21st century, the pianist/composer Hiromi Uehara is the latest in that line of amazing musicians. Ever since the 2003 release of her debut Telarc CD Another Mind, Hiromi has electrified audiences and critics east and west, with a creative energy that encompasses and eclipses the boundaries of jazz, classical and pop parameters; taking improvisation and composition to new heights of complexity and sophistication. Her new CD, Alive, her ninth as a leader, features her critically-acclaimed Trio Project, consisting of contrabass guitarist Anthony Jackson (Steely Dan, Paul Simon, Michel Camilo, The O’Jay’s, and Chick Corea) and drummer Simon Phillips (Toto, The Who, Judas Priest, David Gilmour, and Jack Bruce).
“Hiromi is one of the most remarkable pianists of the past half century.”
— All Music
Born in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan on March 26, 1979, Hiromi’s piano lesson’s started when she was six, and she performed her first recital at that age. Her first teacher, Noriko Hikida, encouraged her to access both the intuitive and technical aspects of music. “Her energy was always so high, and she was so emotional,” Hiromi says of Hikida. “When she wanted me to play with a certain kind of dynamics, she wouldn’t say it with technical terms. If the piece was something passionate, she would say, ‘Play red.’ Or if it was something mellow, she would say, ‘Play blue.’ I could really play from my heart that way, and not just from my ears.”
Hikida also exposed Hiromi to jazz and introduced her to the great pianist Errol Garner and Oscar Peterson. She enrolled in the Yamaha School of Music at age six, and started to write music at same time.