Hiromi: July Musician of the Month

Our July Musician of the Month is Hiromi, a pianist whose concerts feel less like recitals and more like fireworks shows.

Nothing makes a young pianist’s eyes light up faster than thirty seconds of Hiromi playing live. She grins, she bounces off the bench, she attacks the keyboard like it owes her money. Underneath the showmanship is technique so complete that jazz, classical, funk, and progressive rock all come out of it whenever she wants. Nobody watches Hiromi and asks why anyone would practice piano. They ask how soon they can start.

Early Life and Inspirations

Hiromi Uehara was born in 1979 in Hamamatsu, Japan, the city where Yamaha builds its pianos. She started lessons at six, and at eight her teacher introduced her to something not on the syllabus: jazz. Both loves stuck. She trained classically while learning to improvise, and the combination showed early. At fourteen she performed with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.

Then came the night that changed everything. At seventeen, through a chance meeting in Tokyo, she played for the great jazz pianist Chick Corea. He liked what he heard so much that he invited her to perform at his concert… the next day. She said yes. That pretty much tells you who Hiromi is.

From Jingles to the World Stage

Before the world knew her name, Hiromi paid her dues writing advertising jingles for Japanese companies. In 1999 she left for Berklee College of Music in Boston, where the legendary pianist Ahmad Jamal took her under his wing and co-produced her debut album, Another Mind, released in 2003 while the ink on her diploma was barely dry. In Japan it sold more than a hundred thousand copies, remarkable numbers for a jazz record.

The career since has been one long crescendo. She won a Grammy Award in 2011 with the Stanley Clarke Band. Her Trio Project, with bass legend Anthony Jackson and drum virtuoso Simon Phillips, sent the album Spark to number one on the U.S. Billboard jazz chart. In 2021 she performed at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, playing for a global audience of hundreds of millions. And in 2023 she composed and performed the piano for Blue Giant, the acclaimed anime film about a young jazz musician, introducing a whole new generation of kids to her sound. She tours today with her band Sonicwonder, and a Trio Project reunion tour is planned for this fall.

A Style With No Fences

Ask Hiromi what kind of music she plays and the honest answer is: hers. A single set might swing through a jazz standard, detonate into progressive-rock odd meters, quote Beethoven, and land on something tender and completely improvised. Critics have spent twenty years trying to file her under one genre. She keeps not fitting.

What makes it work is the foundation. All that borderless freedom rests on rigorous classical technique built from age six — the scales, the études, the discipline. That’s the part every music student should hear: the training isn’t the opposite of freedom. It’s what freedom is made of.

What Students Can Learn from Hiromi

Hiromi’s lesson for students is simple: joy belongs on stage. She is one of the most technically formidable pianists alive, and she plays with the open delight of a kid who just discovered the instrument yesterday. Somewhere between the metronome and the recital, students sometimes forget that music is supposed to feel like that. Hiromi never did.

Start Listening

• “Place to Be” — solo piano, tender and personal. Proof the fireworks come with a soul.
• “Spark” (The Trio Project) — the title track of her Billboard chart-topper. Buckle up.
• “The Tom and Jerry Show” — her cartoon-chase showpiece. Find a live video; kids replay it endlessly.
• Blue Giant soundtrack — her film score about a young musician chasing a dream. Perfect family listening.

If Hiromi’s videos leave your child eager to try the piano, our piano lessons at CCM are a great place to start.

Sign up for a FREE introductory lesson at The California Conservatory of Music today!