Disk of 2021

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Hiromi Uehara: Jazzy Hour, 2nd of November

Hiromi Uehara believes there are two genres of music: the one that touches your heart and the one that passes you by. She writes and plays her music on this principle, without caring about classification. Returning to Tokyo after the American cities where she was supposed to play had closed and become ghost towns, she looked for new ways to maintain her musical activity and her close connection with her audiences. When you find out you can't do certain things you're used to, you can find out about other things you can do, so Hiromi looked for creative partners in Japan, away from her American colleagues. When she met Tatsuo Nishie, concert maestro of the New Japan Philharmonic, she began to form the idea of a piano quintet. Then she composed for string quartet, with four empty chairs in front, because she wanted to anyway. There was a need for musicians who could play scores inspired by the classical idiom but who could also articulate jazz vocabulary. Moreover, the writing involves a lot of intense feelings, emotions conveyed through a dynamic sound development. It is brilliantly conceived and this new formula can keep us attentive and engaged by unfolding in a bound and complex way. The violins and viola dress up the piano, which sometimes slips out of solo passages, and the cello supports the lower frequencies, obtaining real bass jazz lines through pizzicato. The idea of a silver lining, a ray of hope, returns in the title and in the suite's development on a fantastic album, different but as spectacular as anything Hiromi has offered us so far.

Berti Barbera