Japanese Pianist Hiromi to Play London's Cadogan Hall, 13-15 April

Apollo Digital Entertainment will present Hiromi: The Trio Project at Cadogan Hall in London from 13 to 15 April 2014. These will be the only dates Hiromi will be performing in the UK in 2014.

34 year-old Japanese multi award-winning pianist and composer Hiromi Uehara's passionate and incendiary keyboard work has been a shining light on the jazz landscape since her 2003 debut, Another Mind. Her creative energy defies the conventional parameters of jazz and pushes musicianship and composition to unprecedented levels of complexity and sophistication. "I don't want to put a name on my music," she says. "Other people can put a name on what I do. It's just the union of what I've been listening to and what I've been learning. It has some elements of classical music, it has some rock, it has some jazz, but I don't want to give it a name."

Although a mesmerizing instrumentalist in her own right, for The Trio Project, Hiromi has enlisted the aid of two equally formidable players, bassist Anthony Jackson, who has previously worked with Paul Simon, The O'Jays, Steely Dan and Chick Corea, and drummer Simon Phillips, who has worked with Toto, The Who, Judas Priest, David Gilmour and Jack Bruce. Hiromi's last two albums, Voice and Move, both featured Jackson and Phillips.

Born in Shizuoka, Japan, Hiromi took her first piano lessons at age six. She learned from her earliest piano teacher to tap into the intuitive as well as the technical aspects of music. "Her energy was always so high, and she was so emotional," she says of that first teacher. "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."

Hiromi moved to the United States in 1999 to study in Boston, an environment that pushed the limits of her artistic sensibilities even further. "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 everyone is great. I really don't have barriers to any type of music. I could listen to everything from metal to classical music to anything else."

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