When pianist Hiromi Uehara moved from Japan to Boston in 1999 to study at Berklee College of Music, pianist Ahmad Jamal immediately recognized her exceptional talent. Her debut album Another Mind, released in 2003, was regarded as a welcome surprise by the jazz scene. In the years that followed, the former child prodigy constantly toured the globe and released no fewer than ten albums. In 2009, Hiromi recorded the album Duet with Chick Corea (with whom she had already played in Tokyo when she was 17 during an unplanned meeting). A year later she toured with bassist Stanley Clarke. Her new album Spark (2016) is the absolute pinnacle of her work so far. Just like on her previous three albums, Hiromi recorded the songs with American master bassist Anthony Jackson (Chick Corea, Steely Dan) and top-class English drummer Simon Phillips (Toto, The Who), both of whom are accompanying her in Rotterdam.
