Uehara, Hiromi

Extract

(b Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, March 26, 1979). Japanese pianist. Hiromi began piano studies at age five with a teacher who encouraged her to improvise and introduced her to the recordings Erroll Garner, Oscar Peterson, and Art Tatum. In her teenage years, she performed with the Czech National Symphony, and in Tokyo at the personal invitation of Chick Corea, with whom she has maintained an ongoing collaboration. After briefing studying law, she relocated to Boston in 1999 and enrolled in the Berklee College of Music. Richard Evans, her composition and arranging professor, shared a recording of hers with Ahmad Jamal, who, along with Evans, produced her debut CD, Brain (Telarc, 2003). Known for her masterful virtuosity (which invites comparisons to another mentor, Oscar Peterson), genre-crossing arrangements, and imaginative, highly energetic live performances, Hiromi constantly refines her orchestration of sonic possibilities—using keyboards with individually crafted sounds and the full range of all the instruments in her ensembles, such as in ...