Hiromi Jazz jams inspired by traffic
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Posted by: editoron Thursday, April 08, 2004 - 07:29 AM |
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Steve McClure Special to The Daily Yomiuri
Being stuck in a traffic jam as irate motorists honk their horns is not an experience most of us would consider aesthetically stimulating. But for jazz pianist Hiromi Uehara, there's music in a cacophony of klaxons.
Blessed with perfect pitch, Uehara hears musical patterns and motifs in the everyday sounds of the world around us.
"A car horn going 'fa, fa' sounds like F to me," Uehara says. "Sometimes I hear dominant chords when four cars are honking their horns, and I feel so blessed. And then it's a diminished chord, I feel sad. There are so many chords in the city."
Not to mention in her music. Uehara has an instantly recognizable, highly original style that with a dense flurry of notes and chords that recalls Art Tatum, who, not surprisingly, is one of her idols, along with Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Michel Petrucciani and Rachmaninoff.
Uehara's 2003 debut album, Another Mind, was named foreign jazz album of the year at the Recording Industry of Japan Association's annual Gold Disc Award show on March 10. The album sold more than 100,000 copies in Japan last year, more than any other foreign jazz album. Another Mind was considered a foreign album because Uehara is signed to Cleveland, Ohio-based audiophile label Telarc. (The album is licensed to Universal Music here in Japan.)
"I feel really honored, and I appreciate the fact that a lot of people listened to the album," said Uehara, 25, in a recent interview.
Since 1999, Uehara has been living in Boston, where she relocated in order to attend the prestigious Berklee School of Music.
Uehara says that when she arrived in Boston she didn't speak English.
"It was terrible when I first went there," Uehara says in very fluent English. "But I always pick up languages really quickly." (Her latest linguistic enthusiasm is French.)
Uehara, a native of Shizuoka Prefecture, started studying classical piano at age 5, but soon became aware of jazz.
"My piano teacher was a big fan of jazz music, and she had so many jazz LPs, like Oscar Peterson and Errol Garner, and I would listen to them when I was 8 years old," she says. "I showed so much interest in jazz, moving my body to the music, that my teacher said, 'Why don't you try improvising on Bach?'"
Uehara wrote her first pieces for the piano at the tender age of 6. "They were really childish pieces," she says with a laugh.
Although Uehara is obviously much more musically sophisticated now, that same sense of childlike fun can be found in compositions such as the zany romp "The Tom and Jerry Show," one of the nine tunes on Another Mind, all of which are Uehara originals.
The album was coproduced by veteran jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal, who was sent Uehara's demo tape by Richard Evans, her jazz composition and orchestration teacher at Berklee.
"Ahmad called me and said 'let's meet and have dinner,' and he gave me so much encouragement and compliments, and then he hooked me up with Telarc," Uehara explains.
While Uehara plays mainly acoustic piano on Another Mind, her new album, Brain (which is being released in Japan on April 21), features more of her electric-keyboard playing, giving it more of an edgy, '70s-fusion feel.
"When I compose, I always have a really clear image of the sound," Uehara explains. "I really like the sound of the Hammond organ and the clarinet. My favorite thing about the (electric) keyboard is the bending, the pitch bender. And I really love tuning the keyboard."
Uehara's ambitions include writing film soundtracks. Quentin Tarantino is her first choice as a director she'd like to work with, given the chance.
"I wrote one song for Jackie Chan called 'Kung Fu World Champion' on my new album," Uehara says with a smile. "I want him to listen to that track!"
In fact, Uehara explains, she wrote each track on Brain as if they were to be used in films.
"Each tune has a definite story," she says. "I see pictures for all of the tunes on the album. I really want listeners to be film directors and picture whatever they imagine."
Uehara says it's tough being a jazz musician. Last year she played 22 dates in a single month during a European tour, for example.
In a recent TV documentary, she was shown hauling her electric keyboard and her bags onto an early-morning intercity bus that she took from Boston to New York to play a date in the Big Apple.
"My mom actually cried when she saw the scene where I was eating gyudon while waiting for the bus," Uehara says.
Uehara radiates a very intense personal energy when playing live, her body swaying and jumping about with the music. She's usually backed by bass and drums.
One of her most memorable recent gigs, Uehara says, was in Florida's West Palm Beach.
"Everyone was over 65 years old," she says, "and I started really slow, then I"--she giggles mischievously--"ended up with 'Kung Fu World Champion,' and this 85-year-old woman was dancing to it, and said she felt like she was in heaven. I was so happy!"
Uehara urges young piano players to think of their hands as tools to express their emotions. And listening to her passionate and imaginative playing will demonstrate Uehara has clearly learned how to do that very well indeed.
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