If anyone was going to come out fighting against the pandemic it was bound to be Hiromi Urehara. With the Silver Lining Suite, Hiromi has risen to the challenge of finding harmony amid tragedy. Covid restrictions made her seek new sources of expression. Some material grew from her ‘One Minute Portraits’, a series of lockdown YouTube performances with old Project pals like Simon Phillips; ‘Ribera Del Durero’, named after her favourite wine, is a tango-inflected romp born out of a one-minute duet with harpist Edmar Casteneda. After a series of solo concerts at the Tokyo Bluenote, Hiromi was desperate to play with others: but with no band available, she approached Tatsuo Noshie about creating a piano string quintet. He in turn invited musicians to channel both the ‘classical’ underpinning of Hiromi’s writing and the facility to complement the pianist as she modulated into jazz and improvisatory spaces. Particular credit goes to Wataru Mukai whose cello has to double as a walking bass, notably on ‘Fortitude’; the violins are also primed to swing out, and are positively rapturous on ‘Ribera Del Duero’.

The suite’s section titles reflect Hiromi’s responses to the pandemic: the opening ‘Isolation’ is full of Chick Corea inflections, counterpointed by that cello again. ‘The Unknown’ and ‘Drifters’ likewise evoke the darker sides of lockdown, with the quartet sometimes in intimate chamber mode, at others in a more strident Bernard Hermann-style attack. The discipline of the string writing tempers some of Hiromi’s showboating flamboyance. Spectacular flights of fancy remain, but tempos are less frenetic than on earlier works, the mood more thoughtful as befits the subject matter. 

Silver Lining Suite is Hiromi’s most vulnerable recording yet, and is all the stronger for it.

Jazzwise spoke to Hiromi about her new album:

Separated from your regular bandmates by Covid, you chose to write for strings. How come?

I performed with New Japan Philharmonic in 2015, and I met the concertmaster Tatsuo Nishie. I remember his amazing sound and his broad musical view. When I was thinking about what I could do, I thought of him and started writing for piano quintet format.

What were the challenges and joys of writing for strings?

Strings are such beautiful instruments, and it was so much fun to write for them. The piano quintet format is very traditional format from an older time, and it just blends so well. I also enjoyed writing melodies for string instruments, the nature of the sound of the piano; the second you play the note, that note starts to fade, but it sustains and stays for strings, and it was so much fun to write the melody for them.

The suite’s section titles, like 'Isolation' and 'Fortitude', reflect your journey through the pandemic. How do you find the resilience and strength to find a ‘silver lining’ in such challenging times?

Silver Lining Suite has four different movements, ‘Isolation’, ‘The Unknown’, ‘Drifters’, ‘Fortitude’. It reflects my emotional journey since March 2020 when my tour got cancelled, and I had to stay home for many months. Since I lost the place to release my energy (that is, performing), the only way for me to release the energy was writing music. I always loved writing music but this time I really felt that writing music was helping me to stay healthy psychologically.