Silver Lining Suite - Hiromi (2021)

Lots of artists have a “pandemic recording” that they made as a document of or reaction to the upheaval we all felt in 2020. Hiromi does everything at a high level, and her pandemic recording is no exception. She kept her hyper-inventive jazz composition style, but channelled it into a classical quintet. That is, the arrangement is for a string quartet and a piano, a common setup for European classical composers. It doesn’t really sound like classical music, though.

I don’t really know what the process behind this was, but I would assume it’s very hard for a string quartet to do much improvisation. There are parts where the cello acts as a jazz bass, working with Hiromi on some extended piano workouts. The other strings will add some color here or there. Then they’ll go into a section that seems clearly charted out, with the strings playing some complex accompaniment to Hiromi’s ever-complex piano lines that seem playful, if not completely spontaneous.

I wrote Hiromi up once before, and I don’t mean to repeat myself, but her playing, especially the left hand bass parts, seem so fast and tightly executed that it’s hard to believe a human can even think fast enough to do that, let alone get her hands to cooperate.

The strings stay bright and light throughout, and the music is uplifting even when it has a little ominous edge to it. The group adds a romantic flavor with some swelling violin parts (that is, romantic in a classical sense, letting the melody soar over the structure. See the Mendelssohn violin concerto for what I’m talking about)