Hiromi's four-piece virtuoso band Sonicwonder delivers electronic-infused jazz at the Chan Centre
Japan-born jazz pianist upends tradition with synthesizer textures and effects pedals on debut album
Hiromi. Photo by Muga Miyahara
The Chan Centre for the Performing Arts presents Hiromi’s Sonicwonder on October 7 at 8 pm, in the Chan Shun Concert Hall
IT WOULD BE easy enough to hear Hiromi Uehara’s new band, Sonicwonder, as simply a collection of four skilled and attentive musicians—if “simply” can be applied to virtuosos like pianist and leader Hiromi, bassist Hadrien Feraud, drummer Gene Coye, and trumpet player Adam O’Farrill.
“Simple” doesn’t really define what they do. The four musicians share immense technical capabilities and a fondness for complex structures married to uptempo beats. On their debut recording, Sonicwonderland, Hiromi and O’Farrill further complicate matters by adding electronics to the mix, one with an array of plastic-fantastic synthesizer textures, the other with effects pedals that are more usually the province of electric guitarists.
There’s enough going on in their music that there’s little need for extra context, but Hiromi has supplied it anyway, setting it out in the vividly coloured animated video that she’s created for the record’s title track. To the accompaniment of an urgent sequenced pattern—very much like something you’d hear behind an old-school 8-bit video game—we see Hiromi’s digital avatar, identifiable by her bouncy ponytail and lemon-hued mini, climbing into a fish-shaped rocket and blasting off into the unknown. Monsters are vaporized, obstacles surmounted, and traps avoided until “Hiromi” links up with a blond, bearded “Feraud” in a green onesie, a bling-bedecked “Coye”, and an “O’Farrill” character distinguished by his Amish beard. Climbing into the ultimate hipstermobile—a vintage AMC Gremlin, if I’m not mistaken—they continue on through verdant landscapes, dive underwater to battle an enormous robotic crab, and eventually take to the sky to enjoy the freedom of flight.
A voyage from loneliness to heaven? Hiromi’s not saying, but she does allow that she sees the “Sonicwonderland” video, and the record as a whole, as a kind of game, in which the object is to trace how the band evolved from an idea to its present fully fleshed-out actuality.
“The opening track, ‘Wanted’, it was about me looking for the musicians who I wanted to play with,” she explains, noting that it’s one of the tunes the band featured as part of a recent Tiny Desk Concert for the U.S.–based National Public Radio network. “That search inspired me to write that music, actually. I first start playing, and secondly Hadrien comes in, then Gene, and at last Adam comes in. So it’s like me, bass, drums, trumpet: that’s how the music starts, and that’s how I met them in order. It kind of shows how this band got together.
“First I met Hadrien, on bass, in 2016,” she continues. “He played on a few gigs when I was playing with a trio and [bass-guitar god] Anthony Jackson couldn’t make some of them. Hadrien subbed for him, and I was just really fascinated by the musical chemistry that we had. I knew that I wanted to write music with his playing in mind—and the more music I wrote, the clearer was the sound of the drums that I wanted to have in this band. I needed somebody who plays in a more organic way, rather than like power drum playing, and someone who can really float when I improvise, and somebody who plays with a sense of humour. Then I thought about Gene. I met him when I was playing with the Stanley Clarke band and we played a couple of shows together. Also I saw him live a couple of times when he was playing with Larry Carlton, and I thought he was the perfect fit.
“Then I knew I wanted one more player for the music, and I was looking for the right instrument,” she adds. “‘Which instrument do I need to complete the sound that I have in my head?’ There is one song on the album called ‘Polaris’, and when I was writing that music I started hearing trumpet. I started looking for players who had a darker sound and who could play with effects pedals, because I wanted this band to be more electrified. I just kept searching until I found Adam O’Farrill—and then I had the whole band!”
“Polaris”, in fact, provides another clue to Hiromi’s ambitions for her new quartet—and another video-game reference, too.
“I think musicians are travellers,” she says, after referencing the computerized spin-off of the Traveller role-playing board game. “We physically travel, but at the same time we also travel through music—and because you have Polaris [the North Star], you always know where to go, and you know that there’s always a star watching over you. You can feel safe whatever risks you take and wherever you go—and that makes me want to go for more adventure.”
Hiromi’s Sonicwonder plays the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts on Saturday, October 7. For tickets and more information, visit www.chancentre.com.
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