Hiromi Duet to Feature Edmar Castaneda at The Broad Stage

The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage presents the piano phenomenon, Hiromi who will join forces with harpist Edmar Castañeda for an electrifying collaboration on Monday, November 13 at 7:30pm.

When Hiromi met Edmar Castañeda at The Montreal Jazz Festival this year, she found him so amazing musically that she knew at some point they should collaborate together. "The first time I heard Edmar I simply said 'WOW!' in awe of his artistry. And when we started playing together, it was magical and the chemistry was amazing." Castañeda added, "I think this is just the beginning of a relationship between harp and piano, Japan and Colombia."

Their debut performance in 2016 at The Blue Note in New York City was unexpected and impulsive, a truly exciting coupling. What they created together musically was simply mesmerizing. The audience was spellbound and the music was magic. Because of this connection musically, these two great talents decided to join forces as a duet for a 2017 world tour and in September of this year, they released an album: Live in Montreal.

Ever since the 2003 release of her debut Telarc CD, Another Mind, Hiromi has electrified audiences and critics east and west, with a creative energy that encompasses and eclipses the boundaries of jazz, classical and pop parameters, taking improvisation and composition to new heights of complexity and sophistication.

Since arriving in the United States in 1994, Colombian-born harp virtuoso Edmar Castañeda has forged his own distinctive path in music. He brings not only an unfamiliar instrument but a wholly original voice to jazz, branching out into a world of different styles and genres. His wide-ranging career has been remarkable for discovering a brilliant role for the harp in jazz, then continuing to innovate and spark creativity from a wealth of formidable collaborations.

He's also shared stages with iconic artists including Sting, Ricki Lee Jones, The Yellowjackets and Paco De Lucia. In addition to his innovative approach to the jazz tradition, he's written symphonic works for the Orquestra Clássica de Espinho and the São Paulo Jazz Symphony Orchestra, and chamber pieces for the Israel Camerata Jerusalem and the Orquestra Sinfónica Nacional de Colombia. The New York Timescalled Castañeda "almost a world unto himself."

Jazz & Blues at The Broad Stage made possible by a generous gift from Richard and Lisa Kendall.

About Hiromi
Born in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan on March 26, 1979, Hiromi's piano lessons started when she was six. Her first teacher, Noriko Hikida, encouraged her to access both the intuitive and technical aspects of music. "Her energy was always so high, and she was so emotional," Hiromi says of Hikida. "When she wanted me to play with a certain kind of dynamics, she wouldn't say it with technical terms. If the piece was something passionate, she would say, 'Play red.' Or if it was something mellow, she would say, 'Play blue.' I could really play from my heart that way, and not just from my ears."

Hikida also exposed Hiromi to jazz and introduced her to the great pianists Erroll Garner and Oscar Peterson. She enrolled in the Yamaha School of Music at age six and started to write music at that time.

Hiromi moved to the United States in 1999, and she matriculated at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, which extended her artistic sensibilities. "It expanded so much the way I see music," she says. "Some people dig jazz, some people dig classical music, some people dig rock. Everyone is so concerned about who they like. They always say, 'This guy is the best,' 'No, this guy is the best.' But I think there are so many great ones. I really don't have barriers to any type of music. I could listen to everything from metal to classical music to anything else."

Among her mentors at Berklee was the veteran jazz bassist/arranger Richard Evans, who teaches arranging and orchestration. It was Evans who took Hiromi's demo tape to his friend and collaborator: the legendary pianist/bandleader Ahmad Jamal. "[Professor Evans] really liked how I played," Hiromi fondly recalled. "And Ahmad loved the demo - I couldn't believe it! He's been very encouraging and supportive. He's an amazing human being."

Evans co-produced her debut CD, Another Mind, with Jamal, who has also taken a personal interest in Hiromi's artistic development. "She is nothing short of amazing," says Jamal. "Her music, together with her overwhelming charm and spirit, causes her to soar to unimaginable musical heights." Another Mind was a critical success in North America and in her native Japan, where the album shipped gold (100,000 units) and received the Recording Industry Association of Japan's (RIAJ) Jazz Album of the Year Award. Hiromi's astonishing debut was but a forecast of the shape of jazz to come.

Her second release, Brain, won the Horizon Award at the 2004 Surround Music Awards, Swing Journal's New Star Award, Jazz Life's Gold Album, HMV Japan's Best Japanese Jazz Album and the Japan Music Pen Club's Japanese Artist Award (the JMPC is a classical/jazz journalists club). Brain was also named Album of the Year in Swing Journal's 2005 Readers Poll. In 2006, Hiromi won Best Jazz Act at the Boston Music Awards and the Guinness Jazz Festival's Rising Star Award. She also claimed Jazzman of the Year, Pianist of the Year and Album of the Year in Swing Journal's Readers Poll for her 2006 release,Spiral. Hiromi's winning streak continued with the release of Time Control in 2007 and Beyond Standard in 2008. Both releases featured Sonicbloom: her hand-picked group that included guitarist Dave "Fuze" Fiuczynski, bassist Tony Grey and drummer Martin Valihora.

Hiromi achieved a number of milestones in 2009. She recorded with pianist Chick Corea - who she met in Japan when she was seventeen on Duet, a two-disc live recording of their transcendent, transgenerational and transcultural duo concert in Tokyo. She also appeared on bassist Stanley Clarke's Heads Up International release, Jazz in the Garden, which also featured former Chick Corea bandmate, drummer Lenny White.

In June of that same year, Hiromi simultaneously released two concert DVDs, both recorded in Tokyo:Hiromi Live in Concert (recorded in December 2005) and Hiromi's Sonicbloom Live in Concert (recorded in December 2007). The former features the rhythm section of Grey and Valihora, while the latter includes Fiuczynski's incendiary fretwork.

In 2010, Hiromi released Place to Be, an impressive and intimate solo piano CD; her evocative aural travelogue of the many places and spaces she visited around the world. "I wanted to record the sound of my twenties for archival purposes," she says. "I felt like the people whom I met on the road during my twenties really helped me develop and mature as a musician and as a person. So in addition to making a record that represented all of these places that have inspired my music, I also wanted it to be a thank-you to those people."

She followed up Place to Be with a DVD, Hiromi Solo Live at Blue Note New York. Recorded on August 20 and 21, 2010, at the Blue Note in New York City, the video includes 11 originals and a special bonus feature with interview clips and performance footage from some of Hiromi's favorite cities around the world.

On her 2011 album, Voice, Hiromi's goal was to capture people's "inner voices" to create what she called a "three-dimensional sound." On that album, she assembled a trio that included herself and two veteran players: contrabass guitarist Anthony Jackson and drummer Simon Phillips. While Hiromi had played with Jackson prior to recording Voice, she had never recorded an entire album with either him or Phillips, the latter who had been recommended to her by legendary bassist Stanley Clarke, a mutual acquaintance.

Also in 2011, The Stanley Clarke Band CD, featuring Hiromi, won the GRAMMY® Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album.

While on the road, Hiromi started writing music for the follow-up CD, Move, released in 2013. "Because I had been playing with Anthony and Simon for quite a bit, I just started to understand their characteristics, and I could find a hidden gem in their playing," she explains. "There's so much more to their playing. As a composer, I really wanted to write the songs especially for them, and I wanted to extract the unique beauty of their playing." Move, like Voice, had an overriding theme, which Hiromi describes as "time in one day." "You wake up and go to work and then hang out," she says. "The album is like a soundtrack for a day." That same year, she had several impressive placements in DownBeat magazine's 61st Annual International Critics Poll, in the Jazz Artist, Piano, Keyboard and Rising Star: Piano categories. In 2013, she performed at George Wein's Newport Jazz Festival and also performed there for the festival's sixtieth anniversary in 2014.

Alive, released in 2014, heralded the return of The Trio Project, featuring Phillips' powerful, yet poetic percussion and Jackson's flowing, glow-in-the-dark basslines beautifully buoying and supporting Hiromi's ingenious and impassioned improvisations. Her evocative and expansive compositions evoke the myriad moods and mysteries of life and reveal the soulful, syncopated simpatico of her thrilling threesome. Her tenth CD, Spark, also featured the trio, this time igniting her most narratively sweeping and emotionally overflowing set of music to date. No wonder DownBeat magazine proclaimed the terrific triad as "one of the most exciting groups working in any genre today."

Live in Montreal is the latest chapter in Hiromi's ever-evolving musical life. "I'm hungry to learn," she toldDownBeat magazine, "so I'll always keep my big ears open fully, ready to learn every single minute that I play."

About Edmar Castañeda
Born in 1978 in the city of Bogotá, Colombia, Castaneda took up the harp as a teenager to play the folkloric music of his homeland. He discovered jazz shortly after moving to New York City to join his father in 1994 and was immediately drawn to the freedom and sophistication of the music. With no real precedent for the harp in the jazz world, Castaneda studied trumpet by day while trying out his newfound knowledge on the harp at a restaurant gig by night.

He was ushered into the jazz community by Paquito D'Rivera, who recognized Castaneda's passion and took the young harpist under his wing. D'Rivera has called him "an enormous talent... [Edmar] has the versatility and the enchanting charisma of a musician who has taken his harp out of the shadow to become one of the most original musicians from the Big Apple."

Since then, Castaneda has taken New York and the world stage by storm with the sheer force of his virtuosic command of the harp, revolutionizing the way audiences and critics alike consider an instrument commonly relegated to the "unusual category". He's been acclaimed as a master at realizing beautiful complexities of time, while skillfully drawing out lush colors and dynamic spirit and crafting almost unbelievable feats of cross-rhythms, layered with chordal nuances rivaling the most celebrated flamenco guitarist's efforts.

Castaneda made his debut as a leader in 2007 with Cuartos de Colores, which features the harpist in a variety of settings, including guest appearances by D'Rivera and the explosive percussionist Pedrito Martinez. He followed that with 2009's Entre Cuerdas, a trio date with trombonist Marshall Gilkes and drummer Dave Silliman that also featured turns by Scofield, vibraphonist Joe Locke, percussionist Samuel Torres and Colombian vocalist Andrea Tierra.

Double Portion (2012) was divided into solo and duo pieces, with Castaneda engaging in scintillating musical conversations with Rubalcaba, de Holanda and saxophonist Miguel Zénon. Live at the Jazz Standard (2015) showcased Castaneda's World Ensemble, uniting musicians from a variety of global traditions. The stellar band brought back Gilkes, Silliman and Tierra alongside Swiss harmonica master Grégroire Maret; flautist Itai Kriss and saxophonist Shlomi Cohen (both from Israel); Chilean pianist Pablo Vergara; Castaneda's countryman, Colombian drummer Rodrigo Villalon; Turkish kanun player Tamer Pinarbasi; and Brazilian Sergio Krakowski on pandeiro.

?"The Colombian plays the harp like hardly anyone else on earth. His hands, seemingly powered by two different people, produce a totally unique, symphonic fullness of sound, a rapid-fire of chords, balance of melodic figures and drive, served with euphoric Latin American rhythms, and the improvisatory freedom of a trained jazz musician...captivating virtuosity, but in no way only virtuosity for its own sake." - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

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