Hiromi:
The Trio Project Hiromi ,
Anthony Jackson, and Steve Smith (subbing for
Simon Phillips)
Since 2011, Steve Smith has been
performing select dates with Hiromi: The Trio
Project. Hiromi invited Steve into the band to
cover dates for the band's regular drummer,
Simon Phillips.
Pianist
and composer Hiromi Uehara, whose passionate and
incendiary keyboard work has been a shining
light on the jazz landscape since her 2003
debut, believes that the voice that never speaks
can sometimes be the most powerful of all.
Her newest release, a nine-song trio
recording simply titled Voice, expresses a range
of human emotions without the aid of a single
lyric. Voice is set for a June 7, 2011, release
on Telarc, a division of Concord Music Group.
"When I play music, I realize that it really
filters emotions," says Hiromi. "I called this
album Voice because I believe that people's real
voices are expressed in their emotions. It's not
something that you really say. It's more
something that you have in your heart. Maybe
it's something you haven't said yet. Maybe
you're never going to say it. But it's your true
voice. Instrumental music is very similar. We
don't have any words or any lyrics to go with
it. It's the true voice that we don't really put
into words, but we feel it when it's real."
Although a mesmerizing instrumentalist in
her own right, Hiromi enlists the aid of two
equally formidable players for this project ?
bassist Anthony Jackson (Paul Simon, The O'Jays,
Steely Dan, Chick Corea) and drummer Simon
Phillips (Toto, The Who, Judas Priest, David
Gilmour, Jack Bruce). Jackson had previously
played on a couple tracks from each of Hiromi's
first two albums ? Another Mind in 2003 and
Brain in 2004 ? but they had never recorded an
entire album together. "I've always been a huge
fan of his bass playing," she says. "I've always
liked playing with him, and I was very happy
that we finally had the chance to make an entire
album together."
She hadn't crossed paths
with Phillips prior to this project, but he came
highly recommended by not only Jackson but also
Stanley Clarke, the legendary jazz fusion
bassist who gave her a prime spot on his two
most recent projects, Jazz in the Garden in 2009
and The Stanley Clarke Band in 2010. "The more
music I wrote for this album, the more clearly I
heard the sound of Simon on drums," says Hiromi.
"When I told Anthony and Stanley that I was
thinking of Simon to play drums for this
project, they both encouraged me to ask him, so
I did, and I'm so happy with how it turned out.
From the first note of the first rehearsal, I
was very excited about where we could go with
this recording."
The set opens with
the deceptive title track, a piece that starts
with a slow and somber solo piano intro but
quickly segues into an energized groove that's
pushed forward by Jackson's deft bass
counterpoint and Phillips' tight, syncopated
drum work. "The song is about the focus that you
need when you're trying to hear someone's inner
voice," Hiromi explains. "Hearing that voice is
the beginning of understanding who they are and
where they're coming from."
The followup
track, "Flashback," dances around the extreme
high and low ends of the piano keyboard before
moving to the middle, where Jackson and Phillips
move in and out of different tempos but never
fail to create a pocket for Hiromi's intriguing
fingerwork. The song conjures "fragments of
memories," she says in her liner notes, "mixed
and intertwined, deep inside of our
consciousness."
Further in, "Temptation"
is relatively understated in comparison to the
preceding tracks, but with a solid piano melody
that keeps beckoning. The song invites the
listener to ponder what happens when we finally
give in to that thing we find so seductive and
alluring. Hiromi asks: "Is the result of that
temptation sweet or bitter?"
"Haze," the
one solo piano track in the entire recording, is
just what the title suggests ? a shimmering
piece whose melodic edges are sometimes sharp
and other times undefined. The song suggests
"unclear vision, focused then blurry again,"
says Hiromi. "There was so much excitement among
all three of us when we were recording this
record. Even when I was tracking this solo
piece, Anthony and Simon were giving me a lot of
encouragement about the different takes, what
was working and what wasn't."
The closer
is a unique version of "Beethoven's Piano Sonata
No. 8, Pathetique," with plenty of bass and drum
embellishments to give it a decidedly jazzy
spin. While the song follows an unmistakably
melancholy groove, it has a cleansing quality as
well. "Music purifies every emotion and makes
them positive," says Hiromi, who likens the
track to the closing piece in a film score.
Taken as a whole, the individual tracks on
Voice do tell a story, says Hiromi, but she's
quick to note that the story is open-ended and
subject to interpretations. "I'm not talking
about a story in the sense of a novel," she
says. "People can just listen to it and decide
how it reflects their own lives. They can just
imagine whatever the music makes them imagine.
That's the beautiful thing about music without
words. It's just a matter of using your
imagination, finding your own voice within the
music, and traveling with it wherever it takes
you."
Click on
a
project,
below,
to learn
more
about
Steve's
current
and past
projects.