Last night, the Montreal Jazz Festival hosted the Japanese piano phenom Hiromi Uehara. She took to the stage with her band, Sonicwonder – an apt name given the electric energy and sense of exploration with which they played. Trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, bassist Hadrien Féraud, and drummer Gene Coye joined Hiromi in an evening of music that left no path unexplored.
After two opening pieces, Hiromi gave the audience a chance to catch their breath and introduced her band, announcing that they would be playing her four-part suite “Out There” straight through without stopping. You could have been forgiven for losing track of the number of movements, though, as each one underwent several changes in tempo, time signature, or groove, to feel like a whole suite in and of itself. The effect was that the reprise of each movement’s theme felt like coming home from a long journey to a home that feels different upon return.
There can be no doubting the musical abilities of Hiromi and the Sonicwonder members. Hiromi’s piano sound is ripe with influence, and her ability to offer a glimpse of her bebop or stride foundation in the midst of a jazz/rock fusion epic is something to behold. Each band member shone with solos that blended tasteful melodic content with complex rhythmic and harmonic ideas. As a unit, they played with great understanding, navigating maximalist grooves and jarring transitions with apparent ease.
If there is one way the show suffered, it would be from the sheer volume of ideas on display. Each musical moment in the show was worthwhile and together these moments took the audience on an exhilarating journey, but perhaps the set could have found moments for levity, a calm between storms. While the maximalist nature of the set could be overwhelming at times, it is also a pleasure to hear a band that truly keeps the listener guessing throughout the performance. The Sonicwonder journey is certainly one worth taking.
Photos by Benoit Rousseau
