Hiromi Uehara - Piano Jazz (2004)

Pianist and composer Hiromi Uehara was born in Shizuoka, Japan, in 1979. She began studying classical piano at age 5 at the Yamaha School of Music, where her teacher was a jazz fan, and she shared her love of the music with Hiromi, encouraging improvisation even on the classical pieces of Mozart, Hayden, and exercises from the Hannon Book. She achieved a high level of playing at an early age, performing publicly before reaching her teenage years, and at age 14 she travelled to Czechoslovakia for a performance with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition to her continued classical studies and performances, Hiromi became increasingly interested in jazz, and even had the opportunity to sit in with Chick Corea during one of his concerts in Tokyo. After high school, she worked performing jingles for television commercials, and this piqued her interest in orchestration and arranging. In order to learn more about this, she attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she was immediately immersed in the jazz community there, performing in clubs around Boston and meeting artists such as Ahmad Jamal, who immediately took an interest in the young player. Before she graduated, she signed with the Telarc record label, which released her first CD 'Another Mind' in 2003. On each of her successive releases — 'Brain' (2004), 'Spiral' (2005), and 'Time Control' (2007) — her talents as pianist and composer have continued to evolve, impressing fans and critics around the world. In 2004 she was interviewed by renowned pianist Marian McPartland for her jazz radio show, and in between talking about her life she played a variety of jazz pieces on the piano. This broadcast is now quite hard to find, so as the majority of the pieces are covers of jazz classics this is a good introduction to Hiromi's work if you are unfamiliar with her. Jazz fans should already be aware of this precocious talent, and her discography now numbers over a dozen albums, both with her jazz trio, and her jazz-fusion band Hiromi's Sonicbloom. I probably have more live bootlegs from her than any other artist, as she is definitely at her best in a live setting, and some of her best concerts can be found on Youtube, so if you are a fan of jazz then you do need to include her music in your life.   

Track listing

01 The Tom And Jerry Show (H. Uehara) 
02 Blue and Green (Evans, Davis)
03 Softly as In A Morning Sunrise (Hammerstein, Romberg)
04 With You In Mind (McPartland)
05 Lullaby Of Birdland (G. Gershwin)
06 I Got Rhythm (G. Gershwin, I. Gershwin)
07 There Will Never Be Another You (Gordon, Warren) 
08 Caravan (Tizol, Gillespie)
09 Portrait Of Hiromi (McPartland) 
10 Straight No Chaser (Monk)