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Thursday, 29 July 2010

Hiromi Solo and the Robert Glasper Quartet 3/20 in San Francisco

Written by Ronaldo Oregano

Friday, 19 March 2010

Hiromi © Andrea Canter

SFJazz presents an evening of great jazz piano with Hiromi Solo, and the Robert Glasper Quartet on Saturday, March 20th at 8:00 p.m. at the Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Avenue (at McAllister) in San Francisco. Hiromi and Robert Glasper are redefining jazz piano. Japan-born Hiromi Uehara has floored a number of American jazz legends. Pianist Ahmad Jamal mentored her, while 2009’s Duet is a keyboard summit with Hiromi and the great Chick Corea. She also stepped into Chick’s shoes on a recent trio record with Stanley Clarke and Lenny White called In The Garden [click here for a Jazz Police review]. Hiromi’s virtuosic solo keyboard skills are on display for her new Telarc CD, Place To Be, [click here for a Jazz Police review], and will be the highlight of this performance. 32-year-old Robert Glasper, appearing with a quartet, artfully combines post-bop with alternative hip-hop grooves. 2009 has been a banner year for Glasper, who helped take both soul singer Maxwell and rapper Mos Def to the Top 10 of the Billboard chart. His new Blue Note 2-CD set, Double Booked, has been hailed as one of the finest releases of the decade.

Hiromi © Andrea Canter

Born in Shizuoka, Japan, in 1979, Hiromi took her first piano lessons at age six. She learned from her earliest teacher to tap into the intuitive as well as the technical aspects of music. Hiromi enrolled in the Yamaha School of Music less then a year after her first piano lessons. By age 12, she was performing in public, sometimes with very high-profile orchestras. Further into her teens, her tastes expanded to include jazz as well as classical music. A chance meeting with Chick Corea when she was 17 led to a performance with the well-known jazz pianist the very next day.

After a couple years of writing advertising jingles for Nissan and a few other high-profile Japanese companies, Hiromi came to the United States in 1999 to study at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. For as open as her musical sensibilities had already been when she came to the U.S., the Berklee experience pushed her envelope even further.

Among her mentors at Berklee was veteran jazz bassist Richard Evans, who teaches arranging and orchestration. Evans co-produced Another Mind, her Telarc debut, with longtime friend and collaborator Ahmad Jamal, who has also taken a personal interest in Hiromi’s artistic development. “She is nothing short of amazing,” says Jamal. “Her music, together with her overwhelming charm and spirit, causes her to soar to unimaginable musical heights.”

At 30, Hiromi stands at the threshold of limitless possibility, constantly drawing inspiration from virtually everyone and everything around her.

Robert Glasper

Robert Glasper possesses a mesmerizing melodic sense and an awe-inspiring technique, but also has the innate sense to know exactly which is needed at a given moment. He’s absorbed all the standard influences (Tyner, Hancock, Corea, Jarrett) and yet he exhibits a sound that’s undeniably Glasper, his delicate touch and harmonic sense as recognizable as any of the aforementioned masters.

Raised in Houston, Robert Glasper attended the New School University in Manhattan. Where he hooked up with future band member Reid and vocalist Bilal, an old schoolmate. As an undergrad, Glasper gigged with Christian McBride, Russell Malone and Kenny Garrett. Professional life after the New School was even sweeter: stints with Nicholas Payton, Roy Hargrove, Terence Blanchard, Carmen Lundy, and Carly Simon.

One artist, two distinct but interwoven concepts is the logic behind Double-Booked, pianist Robert Glasper’s third album for Blue Note, following up Canvas (2005) and In My Element (2007). An artist who “unfailingly gets the feeling right” (New York Magazine), Glasper has made waves throughout the music world as leader of both the acoustic Robert Glasper Trio and the electric, hip-hop-oriented Robert Glasper Experiment. With Double-Booked the 32-year-old Houston native puts his enviable versatility front and center, emphasizing these different hemispheres of his musical brain at the same time.

Hailed by listeners and critics, Glasper has also garnered the respect of the toughest audience of all: musicians from across the jazz spectrum. In a May 2008 Blindfold Test for Down Beat magazine, a fellow pianist instantly identified Glasper and praised him as “a fantastic musician,” pinpointing characteristics of his unique style: “a harmonic maze, but also an insistent rhythm, certain turns and filigrees and ornaments, some of them sort of gospelish.” With Double-Booked, Glasper further develops all these elements and pulls them together in a new synthesis, continuing his ascent to the top ranks of modern jazz artistry.

For tickets visit www.sfjazz.org, to order by phone, call: 866-920-JAZZ (General Public) or 415-788-7353 (SFJAZZ Members).

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