Cherokee
ed
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and is equally awesome on the piano, imho!
ed
my apologies for being so remiss. it was a busy and tiring week. we old chicks tire easily.
hiromi feb 28 at jazz alley in seattle
i was blown away by her energy and virtuosity.
she performed with her current recording/touring trio which includes tony grey (from u.k.) on 5-string electric bass guitar, and martin valihora on drums. her hairdo was not quite as wild as the ones in the pictures. also, she was much more smiling and pleasant than her album cover pictures would lead one to believe. her english is limited, but she has a great sense of humor. on to the music...
i was sitting about 15 feet or so from the stage and had a good view of the keyboard and all the players.
the set consisted of mostly (if not all) her own compositions and improvisations. she started off with "xyz", from her second most recent album. it was full of driving energy, and i could hear a lot of bartok in it. amazing how she brings classical influences together with jazz and progressive rock, and creates something completely different from any of them. she has the technique of a classical virtuosa (and that's her background), and the hands you see on many great players -- muscular, curved fingers but with that break in the last joint so the fingertips flatten out -- exactly what we are trained not to do, but liszt had those hands and so does martha argerich and many other virtuosi. hiromi can play with blinding speed, every note played, every note clear, no cheating. and the most wonderful rhythmic energy. on the other end of the spectrum, she can play melodic, introspective stuff beautifully, with beautiful balance, phrasing, voicing.
throughout the program, i heard influences of bartok, prokofiev, chopin, chick corea (a la "return to forever"), pat metheny -- all kinds of things. yet it was all brought together into something uniquely her own.
part two follows...
[ attach file ]
cynbad -- 03/06/2006, 19:55:00 -- #24948
what they played...
-xyz
-spiral (from the current cd spiral)
-old castle by the river in the forest (i could hear chopin and metheny in this one, or maybe it was the tequila)
-music for 3-piece orchestra - this consists of 3 or 4 tunes/movements. forgive my crappy memory; i was sipping some mighty fine tequila. this piece ran the gamut of styles and emotions and at one point built up the most incredible energy. hiromi was playing a rhythmic ostinato pattern that started in the middle of the keyboard and worked its way out to the far ends, building in energy all the way. at the ends of the piano, she and the drummer were playing against each other -- not trading 4's or anything, but playing rhymically against each other, looking at each other, smiling like, "oh yeah? take that" they had the most incredible energy going and it put the biggest smile on my face.
- a ballad whose name i don't know. hiromi played this solo. this was lovely, very sensitive and poetic playing, with some great improvisation as well.
- ...i'm going to introduce this one like hiromi did... "this is dedicated to my superheroes bruce lee and jackie chan -- it's called return of the kung fu world champion" this tune is so much fun there are no words to describe it. but i'll try anyway. hiromi has a small synthesizer sitting on top of the piano. being a dummy about synths, i can't tell you what it was. but it makes the same sounds as chick corea's makes on the leprechaun. she plays both the synth and the piano for this one. this tune is so fun and unique and crazy. check it out -- it's on brain, and also maybe on spiral as a bonus track.
as an encore, she came out and played solo again -- an improvisation that included some ragtime at warp speed in the middle. by the end of the night, i was wondering if those little hands ever got tired. i guess not. it was like she took great pleasure in the sheer physicality of playing. the virtuosity was not work, it felt good.
hiromi and her trio reminded me how much fun it can be, and should be, to play music. ;-d
it's amazing what you can find on youtube. for example, here is a video of chick and hiromi:
or
2 -
so ?
you can expect both
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