Pianist Hiromi Uehara, who appears at Youth Square Y-Theatre in Chai Wan this week, has an impressive fan base among the elder statesmen of jazz piano.
Chick Corea and Ahmad Jamal are admirers, and have also been mentors. Corea first heard her in Tokyo when she was 17 and invited her to join him onstage the next night. Jamal tutored her at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and praised her latest album, Alive, which was released in June.
"Hiromi has discovered her own genre, and continues to pursue it with great sensitivity, energy and dazzling virtuosity. Enjoy her latest with Anthony Jackson and Simon Phillips. Great chemistry," he says.
Jamal is right on all points, but what, exactly, is that genre? I first heard the album's title track in the company of guitarist Eugene Pao, who nodded approvingly and said: "It sounds like Emerson, Lake & Palmer." It does rather - and at this distance from the theatrical excesses of prog rock, in a good way.
Uehara was last here in 2008 for a Hong Kong Arts Festival concert with her Sonicbloom band, who are heavily influenced by early 1970s jazz-rock fusion, and feature a lot of often jarring electric guitar.
With The Trio Project, as the ensemble playing on Thursday are called, there is also a fair amount of rock'n'roll energy that goes with the jazz elements of the playing, but less electricity is involved. The group feature Uehara, Anthony Jackson on bass and Simon Phillips on drums.
Jackson and Phillips are sought-after session players. Jackson, originally a guitarist, plays a six-string contrabass guitar. Corea, Billy Cobham, Steely Dan, Simon and Garfunkel, Pat Metheny and Dizzy Gillespie are just a few of the artists who have worked with him.