Hiromi: The Piano Quintet ft. PUBLIQuartet

• PUBLIQuartet
• Hiromi, piano

Acclaimed jazz pianist Hiromi presents her new project, "The String Quintet", pairing her incomparable piano mastery with string quartet featuring PUBLIQuartet.

In the two decades since Hiromi released her stunning Ahmad Jamal-produced debut album Another Mind, the Japanese pianist/composer has blazed an incandescent trail across the jazz scene. Her fecund imagination and boundless creatively seem to ripple out of her hands as effortlessly as her virtuosic pianism. Equally formidable in acoustic or electric settings, she delves into a different kind of fusion on her latest project.

Recorded in pandemic isolation and released in fall 2021, her Telarc album Silver Lining Suite marks a major creative leap for Hiromi, who composed the titular four-movement work for piano and string quartet. Drawing on European classical forms, the music is highly melodic, intricately arranged, emotionally intense, and unmistakably born from the mind of an intrepid improviser. Interacting with the strings, she attacks the piano with all the dynamism and unbridled energy that’s marked her music from the beginning. The suite evokes the whipsawed pandemic experience, from the initial shock and despair as the world shut down to the relief and welcome connection provided by the technology-facilitated silver lining of livestream performance. 

Doors open at 7pm. Show begins at 8pm.

Please review the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts' current COVID-19 health and safety guidelines before attending this event: https://thereser.org/visit/covid-19/

About PDX Jazz

https://pdxjazz.org/

About PUBLIQuartet

Applauded by The Washington Post as "a perfect encapsulation of today’s trends in chamber music," and by The New Yorker as "independent-minded," the Grammy-nominated PUBLIQuartet's modern interpretation of chamber music makes them one of the most dynamic artists of their generation. Dedicated to presenting new works for string quartet, PUBLIQuartet rose on the music scene as winner of the 2013 Concert Artists Guild's New Music/New Places award, and in 2019 garnered Chamber Music America’s prestigious Visionary Award for outstanding and innovative approaches to contemporary classical, jazz, and world chamber music. PQ's genre-bending programs range from 20th-century masterworks to newly commissioned pieces, alongside re-imaginations of classical works featuring open-form improvisations that expand the techniques and aesthetic of the traditional string quartet.

PUBLIQuartet has served as artist-in-residence at top institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Sawdust and has appeared at a wide variety of venues and festivals, from Carnegie Hall and the Newport Jazz Festival to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Their latest album, the GRAMMY-nominated Freedom and Faith, debuted atop the Billboard Classical Charts in May 2019. The 2019-2020 season brings a diverse array of programs to venues across the United States and abroad, including an appearance at the String Quartet Biennale in Amsterdam.PUBLIQuartet's commitment to supporting emerging composers inspired their innovative program, PUBLIQ Access, which promotes emerging composers and presents a wide variety of under-represented music for string quartet–from classical, jazz and electronic, to non-notated, world and improvised music. Other unique projects include MIND|THE|GAP, a series of group-composed works developed by PQ to generate interest in new music while also engaging traditional classical music audiences. These unique creations range from Bird in Paris (Claude Debussy meets Charlie Parker) to more recent extended works including What Is American? (an exploration of Dvorak's beloved "American" String Quartet) and Sancta Femina (based on themes by three medieval and baroque female composers).

Founded in 2010, PUBLIQuartet is currently based in New York City.

About Hiromi, piano

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

On her new album, Silver Lining Suite, Hiromi further exemplifies her virtuosic hybridity and emotional range, finding strength and hope amidst the turmoil of the pandemic.

Born in Hamamatsu, Japan in 1979, Hiromi’s first piano teacher, Noriko Hikida, exposed Hiromi to jazz and introduced her to the great pianists Erroll Garner and Oscar Peterson. She enrolled in the Yamaha School of Music and started writing music.

Hiromi moved to the United States in 1999 and studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Among her mentors was jazz bassist/arranger Richard Evans, who took Hiromi’s demo to his friend, the legendary pianist Ahmad Jamal. Evans co-produced Another Mind with Jamal.

Another Mind was a critical success in North America and Japan, where the album shipped gold and received the Recording Industry Association of Japan’s Jazz Album of the Year Award. Hiromi’s astonishing debut was but a forecast of the shape of jazz to come.

In 2009, she recorded with pianist Chick Corea on Duet,a live recording of their concert in Tokyo. She also appeared on bassist Stanley Clarke’s Grammy-winning release, Jazz in the Garden.

In the summer of 2021, Hiromi performed at the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympics.