Moving forward has always been one of the biggest dilemmas for many music artists, especially in recent years That slight uncertainty and reticence on trying and doing different things, not because of lack of inner talent, but maybe just for the fear of losing fans, when trying to move towards different sonic tangents.
Thankfully, there are also many artists out there that love to challenge themselves, expanding their artform to new musical alleyways, unafraid of bringing their music and their vision to alternative sonic routes, where their core expression is clearly still there, but pushed now to new limits, by amalgamating it with different music genres.
When it comes to step into different layers of sound and creating new and exciting musical crossovers, there are very few artists capable to do that as well as the Japanese Piano Virtuoso Hiromi Uehara, somebody that, since her debut 20 years ago, has never stopped to bring her enormous talent as a pianist and composer into new levels of excellence, looking at different ways of marrying her Jazz roots to Classical, Funk, New Age, Electronica and Fusion in an innovative and always contemporary style.
Through Hiromi's brand new album released as Hiromi's Sonicwonder, due to be released on October 6 and called Sonicwonderland, the Japanese Piano and Keyboard Maestro has most certainly pushed her artistry to a new high, through a record that unveils so many different angles to Hiromi's music and reinstating, at the same time, her majestic musicianship and unique ability to keep the listener hypnotized by the multifaceted aspects of each individual piece included in Sonicwonderland.
Recorded with a new quartet aptly called Hiromi's Sonicwonder, which includes Hadrien Feraud (bass), Gene Coye (drums) and Adam O'Farrill (trumpet), Sonicwonderland is a pyrotechnic and mesmerising journey into the Japanese artist's way to see and to feel the music in 2023, with a sonic melting pot enclosed into 9 tracks echoeing uptempo layers of Jazz, Funk, Fusion, Electronica and even Dixieland, as shown in the album's closing piece called Bonus Stage.
The interplay between Hiromi and her Sonicwonder quartet is absolutely spotless, throughout the whole of Sonicwonderland. At every point of the record, especially when Hiromi seems to lead towards drastic changes of tempo and music styles, the quartet is always able to provide the correct and most organic sound carpet to allow Hiromi to express all her talent and improvisational skills.
Hiromi herself, then, delights and surprises the listener on each of Sonicwonderland's tracks. Go Go and Trial And Error are limitless demonstrations of Hiromi's extraordinary talent as a pianist, with some passages of breathtaking elegance and class, while other pieces, like the album's opening Wanted or Up, for example, showcase at its finest Hiromi's effortless capacity to create, in her pieces, grooving structures with strong foundations and solid soundscapes every given time.
If you have being a long time admirer of Hiromi's music or even if you are approaching the Japanese Piano Virtuoso's music for the first time, you will be amazed by the remarkable amount of talent, quality and musicianship expressed in Hiromi's Sonicwonder's Sonicwonderland, a record that confirmed Hiromi as one of the most forward-thinking, original and creative artists in the current music industry.
Sonicwonderland is due to be released on October 6 and can be ordered via Apple Music
