Hiromi Photo by Muga Muyahara, courtesy of Telarc
Every few years, a young pianist comes along with great technique. Most of these musicians will show you everything they know in the first five minutes of their performance and quickly fall into repetitive patterns. Quite a lot of these young pianists wind up quoting all the licks and phrases that they learned from their studies and do not move beyond that. If they are taken under the wing of a master player, their technique can be channeled into something original and a long career. If they are exposed too soon by a publicity machine that is always looking for the next young “thing,” they end up with big egos and, in some cases, no careers beyond the original flash in the pan.
Race and gender have a lot to do with their future success. If they are African-American, Asian or female, very few people hear of them unless they get a showcase with a major artist. Dorothy Donegan and Hazel Scott are two examples of great pianists with fantastic technique who are known only to jazz fans. If they are young, white and male, critics seem to fall all over them. They suddenly get choice gigs at major jazz clubs like the Blue Note in New York. Most of these are empty shells.
Several years ago, a friend of mine who is a record promoter sent me a disc of a young pianist with great technique who he was promoting as the greatest thing “since sliced bread” with critics’ comments about this young pianist that made it seem he was the second coming of Art Tatum. I have the curse of having a brain that memorizes music when I hear it. When I heard the disc, the “style” of this young artist consisted of direct quotes of Oscar Peterson, Gene Harris, Wynton Kelly, Phineas Newborn, Jr. and others. After telling my friend that I would not play this disc on my show, he persisted in his belief until I sent him an analysis of one tune, showing him the recordings from where this young pianist had copied each phrase and chorus. Fast (and often incoherent) playing dazzles many listeners and critics. The test of a musician's artistry is if they can play a ballad slowly and not falter or drop the tempo.
I was at a jazz festival several years ago where a very well known and popular African-American bandleader had a young pianist that he called “the professor.” He was one of these young wizards who had never had his knuckles rapped over extensively quoting other pianists. Not only did he quote his forebears’ phases, he played others' solos as his own. In this performance, during a performance of “Cherokee,” this young man played Bud Powell’s 1949 solo on the tune in its entirety. This young pianist also played a Lalo Schiffrin solo from a Dizzy Gillespie 1960 recording of “The Mooche” in its entirety. Both times, the crowd went wild. I have not heard much from this young man since.
This brings us to a relatively young (31) female pianist from Japan, Hiromi Uehara. My fiancée and I went to the Jazz at the Bistro performance of duo of bassist Stanley Clarke and Hiromi a couple of weeks ago. What a refreshing difference from what I have been hearing over the years with the young pianists discussed above. The performance was of unbelievable technique combined with consummate artistry. There were standing ovations after each tune. The duo opened with a spellbinding version of Chick Corea’s “No Mystery,” which showcased Hiromi’s talents with tempo changes and wide contrasts in dynamics. These are the hallmarks of Hiromi’s style. Other highlights of the set included a duo version of Thelonious Monk’s “I Mean You,” Stanley Clarke’s bass solo on one of his “Bass Folk Songs” and Hiromi’s piano solo on a medley of tunes that included “I Got Rhythm.”
The version of “I Mean You” was done in a refreshingly abstract manner that never lost the sense of Monk’s composition. Many pianists trying to improvise on Monk’s tunes soon lose the sense of them once the soloing begins, but this version never lost that sense even though there appeared to be extensive re-harmonization. Clarke’s “Bass Folksong” solo was a demonstration of how he has combined technique from both acoustic upright and electric basses into an utterly idiosyncratic style in which he played his upright bass with the speed and dynamics of a guitar.
Hiromi’s solo medley showcased her style of great tempo and dynamic changes. It was played with such absolute joy that it just swept the audience along with it. While not a condensed history of jazz piano, it did have a section of “I Got Rhythm” that was played in a “stride piano” style that was entirely modern in its approach and only referred fleetingly to the older stride style of James P. Johnson, Fats Waller and Art Tatum. It was also played at a tempo that only Art Tatum could play coherently at (about 400 beats per minute). Hiromi cleanly articulated every note at this tempo. Her lines were coherent. Hiromi’s last three recordings are Beyond Standard (2009), Place to Be (2010) and Voice (2011), all on the Telarc label.
Jazz has always been a music in which people from all races have contributed and has now become a world music. There are now many jazz musicians who come from all over the world who are great original players. Another musician from Japan who has turned my head is the composer-arranger Chie Imaizumi, who was based in Denver and now is in Los Angeles. She has released three highly praised CDs for Capri Records, A Change for the Better (2005), Unfailing Kindness (2007), and A Time of New Beginnings (2010).
To me, it seems jazz in this country is in a pretty pitiful state; besieged by indifference on the part of celebrity-driven media that pays more attention to how performers look than to what they play and by marketing gurus who marginalize everything but the preferred 19-35 year age group. When you dumb your art down to the level of 14 year-olds, art is in trouble. When jazz bassist Esparanza Spalding won the Grammy for Best New Artist, jazz composer, arranger and keyboardist Gil Goldstein remarked that "it was good to see someone who could read and write music win this honor." Jazz needs artists like Hiromi and others from other countries to resurrect it. Most of our home-grown artists are too conservative.
Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio (KWMU-FM) continuously since April 1983. Catch "Jazz Unlimited," every Sunday night from 9 p.m. to midnight.
