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Tuesday, 28 June 2011 14:13 |
TelArc 32819-02 | Hiromi (p), Anthony Jackson (b) and Simon Phillips (d). Rec. 9-11 November 2010
From those opening, sparse Chopin- like chords, there’s a new finesse about this most satisfying yet of Hiromi releases. While the thumping left hand and velocity of the title track will be familiar to Hiromi’s growing clans of fans, there’s a more soulful bounce to songs like ‘Now Or Never’ that she has not revealed before. Even more striking is the Glasper-tinged ‘Temptation’, a coolly melancholic ballad in which the pianist allows herself to rest soulfully in a chord and pick out a solo with air and space around it. To this end, the wunderkind is helped by having Simon Phillips aboard: Hiromi doesn’t feel obliged to fill every available space because no-one can build a thunderous wall of sound better than the Brit with all his rock and fusion background: check out his epic drive on ‘Flashback’. So an album with a glimmer of groove, a shade more shabazz, yet still iron-clad in a phenomenal classical technique, as reflected in the climactic take on Beethoven’s ‘Sonata No. 8’. Eat your heart out, Jacques Loussier.
– Andy Robson
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