Beyond Standard, the latest release on Telarc from Hiromi's Sonicbloom, was already completed when Hiromi Uehara and her band played the Arts Festival this year, but I don't recall much of the music on it featuring in the concert.
Time Control was then the current release, and the tunes accordingly came mostly from that, but anybody who was present will have no difficulty recognising either the sound or the spirit of the performances on this varied and energetic set.
I always find it disconcerting when a CD turns up with a sort of instruction manual on how best to play it, and this is a hybrid SACD with different layers accessible to different machines.
There is a straightforward stereo version of the album, which anything capable of playing a CD should be automatically able to recognise, an audiophile stereo version on the SACD mix, and a multi-channel surround mix also on the SACD. For either of the sonically superior SACD versions you have to programme your player, if you have a compatible one, which I do, but it still took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to get into the right menu.
Still, nothing in life is simple, and somewhat to my surprise it was worth it. I have very few SACDs, and for the most part the 5.1 remixes of old jazz albums I've heard to date have been something of a disappointment.
Beyond Standard opens with an audio reference to a much earlier era, with what sounds like an old gramophone needle being dropped into the scratchy run-in groove of a 78 featuring a solo pianist playing Softly As In A Morning Sunrise. Then Martin Valihora's drums queue Sonicbloom's very different sounding version of the same tune.
Uehara's previous recordings have focused mostly on her own compositions, but Beyond Standard takes familiar melodies as its starting point, although not exclusively jazz ones.