GRAMMYⓇ-winning pianist/composer Hiromi brings her trademark hair-raising energy and virtuosic technique back to Los Angeles. One of today’s most popular jazz musicians, Hiromi performs compositions from her latest album, Silver Lining Suite and is joined by PUBLIQuartet, an extraordinary string quartet. Together they form The Piano Quintet, “a vessel that propels Hiromi’s piano heroics into the stratosphere” (WBGO.org). Ever since the 2003 release of her debut, Another Mind, Hiromi has electrified audiences with a creative energy that encompasses and eclipses the boundaries of jazz, classical, and pop, taking improvisation and composition to new heights of complexity and sophistication. On her new album, Silver Lining Suite, Hiromi further exemplifies her virtuosic hybridity and emotional range, finding strength and hope amidst the turmoil of the pandemic. Born in Hamamatsu, Japan in 1979, Hiromi’s first piano teacher, Noriko Hikida, exposed Hiromi to jazz and introduced her to the great pianists Erroll Garner and Oscar Peterson. She enrolled in the Yamaha School of Music and started writing music. Hiromi moved to the United States in 1999 and studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Among her mentors was jazz bassist/arranger Richard Evans, who took Hiromi’s demo to his friend, the leg- endary pianist Ahmad Jamal. Evans co-produced Another Mind with Jamal.
Another Mind was a critical success in North America and Japan, where the album shipped gold and received the Recording Industry Association of Japan’s Jazz Album of the Year Award. Hiromi’s astonishing debut was but a forecast of the shape of jazz to come.
Applauded by The Washington Post as “a perfect encapsulation of today’s trends in chamber music,” and by The New Yorker as “independent-minded,” the GRAMMY®-nominated PUBLIQuartet’s modern interpretation of chamber music makes them one of the most dynamic artists of their generation. Dedicated to presenting new works for string quartet, PUBLIQuartet rose on the music scene as winner of the 2013 Concert Artists Guild’s New Music/New Places award, and in 2019 garnered Chamber Music America’s prestigious Visionary Award for outstanding and innovative approaches to contemporary classical, jazz, and world chamber music. PQ’s genre-bending programs range from 20th century masterworks to newly commissioned pieces, alongside re-imaginations of classical works fea- turing open-form improvisations that expand the tech- niques and aesthetic of the traditional string quartet.
Hiromi will be joined by PUBLIQuartet to form The Piano Quintet for one evening presented by BroadStage at The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage at the Santa Monica Performing Arts Center on Saturday, September 17 at 7:30pm.
Tickets starting at $60 are available at https://broadstage.org/ or by calling 310.434.3200, or visiting the box office at 1310 11th St.Santa MonicaCA90401, opening two hours prior to performance. The Jazz & Blues Sponsors are Richard and Lisa Kendall.