Hiromi
Jazz Showcase
Chicago, IL
March 7, 2010
by Dan Locke
Hiromi didn’t just walk onto the Jazz Showcase stage — she hit it like a power surge. One second the room was murmuring over cocktails, the next it felt like someone had plugged the entire South Loop into a live wire. The piano wasn’t an instrument tonight. It was a detonation device, and Hiromi had her finger on the trigger.
From the first downbeat, she played with the kind of velocity that makes you wonder if she’s trying to outrun her own ideas. Her hands blurred. Her hair snapped. Her whole body became a kinetic warning sign. This wasn’t jazz for the polite crowd. This was jazz for people who like their music with scorch marks.
Hiromi attacked the keys like a guitarist raised on stadium rock but trapped inside a Steinway. She built riffs like skyscrapers — fast, reckless, and thrillingly unstable — then tore them down with a single chromatic landslide. Her left hand hammered out bass lines with the authority of a steelworker on overtime, while her right hand flickered like neon refusing to burn out.
Her set moved like a freight train switching tracks at full speed. One moment she was spinning out delicate, crystalline lines; the next she was dropping thunderclaps that rattled the glasses behind the bar. Her trio clung to her like a municipal crew trying to keep up with a runaway power grid.
Even the ballads felt dangerous — like someone whispering secrets next to a live transformer.
Hiromi’s March 7 performance wasn’t a show. It was a controlled explosion. A neon riot. A piano turned weapon. A night where jazz remembered it has teeth.
She left the Jazz Showcase smoking, buzzing, and a little stunned — the way a club should feel after someone rewires the room with nothing but ten fingers and a refusal to behave.
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