eJazzNews Archive

Hiromi: Jazz Jams Inspired by Traffic

Originally published on eJazzNews · · By Steve McClure

In April 2004 eJazzNews reprinted a profile of the Japanese pianist Hiromi Uehara by Steve McClure, written for The Daily Yomiuri. Hiromi was 25 and living in Boston, where she had studied at Berklee, and her 2003 debut Another Mind had just won a jazz album of the year prize at Japan’s Gold Disc Awards. Since then she has shared a Grammy with the Stanley Clarke Band and written the score for the 2023 anime film Blue Giant, and her schedule for October and November 2026 lists a United States and European tour with a revived Trio Project.

What the 2004 profile said

McClure opened with Hiromi’s perfect pitch. She told him that city noise turned into harmony for her: “A car horn going ‘fa, fa’ sounds like F to me,” she said, adding that four cars honking could form a dominant chord. He described a dense, flurrying style and listed the idols she named: Art Tatum, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Michel Petrucciani and Rachmaninoff.

The profile reported that Another Mind had been named foreign jazz album of the year at the Gold Disc Awards on March 10, 2004, counted as foreign because she was signed to the Cleveland label Telarc, with Universal licensing it in Japan, and that it had sold more than 100,000 copies there in 2003. She recalled arriving in Boston in 1999 without English, hearing her childhood teacher’s Oscar Peterson and Erroll Garner records at eight, and being told to try improvising on Bach. Her Berklee teacher Richard Evans had sent her demo to Ahmad Jamal, who took her to dinner and introduced her to Telarc. Her next album, Brain, was due in Japan on April 21, 2004, with more electric keyboards and a track written for Jackie Chan, “Kung-Fu World Champion.” She also spoke of wanting to score films.

A few details need correcting. The awards are run by the Recording Industry Association of Japan, and the school is Berklee College of Music. The profile said she began classical piano at five; her label biography and Berklee both give six. It named Jamal as co-producer of Another Mind; the label biography adds that he shared that role with Evans.

Background

Hiromi was born on March 26, 1979, in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka. Her first teacher, Noriko Hikida, introduced her to jazz. Her early lessons were classical, as the profile noted, and Berklee records that she played with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra at 14 and joined Chick Corea on stage at 17. She signed with Telarc before graduating, and Telarc has released her studio albums since. She now appears in our overviews of jazz pianists and jazz fusion artists.

What happened next

Brain was followed by Spiral (2006) and two albums with her group Sonicbloom, featuring guitarist David Fiuczynski, bassist Tony Grey and drummer Martin Valihora. She recorded the live duo album Duet with Chick Corea in Tokyo, and in 2011 The Stanley Clarke Band, on which she played, won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. From 2011 she led The Trio Project with contrabass guitarist Anthony Jackson and drummer Simon Phillips on Voice, Move, Alive and Spark. She composed and performed the music for Blue Giant, released in Japan on February 17, 2023.

Ahmad Jamal, her early champion, died in April 2023 at 92, and Anthony Jackson died in October 2025 at 73. Hiromi’s newer band, Sonicwonder, released OUT THERE in April 2025. Her official tour schedule lists Trio Project concerts from October 4, 2026, in San Francisco through November 10 in Prague, followed by dates in Japan. Oscar Peterson, whose records first drew her to jazz, died in 2007; see the eJazzNews report on his death.

Where to start listening

  • Another Mind (Telarc, 2003): the debut discussed in the profile; it holds nine of her own compositions, including “The Tom and Jerry Show.”
  • Spark (Telarc, 2016): the last studio album by the trio with Anthony Jackson and Simon Phillips.
  • OUT THERE (Telarc, 2025): her most recent studio album with Sonicwonder.

Sources

This page is based on an article from the original eJazzNews archive (2001 to 2018), with background and sources added in 2026. The original text is not republished here. You can read the original as it appeared on eJazzNews via the Internet Archive.
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