Hiroe Sekine, piano – A-Mé – SekaiMusic.com, 1.1 hours *****:
(Hiroe Sekine, piano; Peter Erskine, drums; John Daversa, trumpet; Bob McChesney, trombone; Russell Ferrante, synth & producer; Bob Sheppard, flute; Tony Dumas, bass; others)
Looking at the photo of Hiroe on the back of the jewel box it is difficult to accept that she has been writing and performing for nearly 20 years in both Japan and the U.S., although this is her debut CD. She started playing at age four and studied classical piano but she didn’t want to just play what other people wrote for her and began improvising. She still is, and her mentor Russell Ferrante produced this fine CD of where she is at musically now.
Four of the ten tracks are her own compositions, and others come from Kern, Loesser, Isham Jones, Cole Porter, and Gigi Gryce among others. Some have her backed with a sextet of performers while one is entirely solo piano by Hiroe (Every Time We Say Goodbye). A-Mé translates to Rain, and that also provide the cover art for the CD. It’s one of the most interesting of jazz interpretations of rain I’ve heard. Bob Sheppard takes the soprano sax lead on Hiroe’s Little Monster, and it’s nice that her tunes haven’t fallen into the Dorian modal bag that afflicts so much modern jazz. Nacimento’s Vera Cruz is given a highly original and exciting interpretation that stands apart from most Brazilian tune arrangements. And the closer, her own Sand-Smog, is an active uptempo vehicle with a great solo by John Daversa on trumpet.
TrackList: Minority, If I Were a Bell, Euclidian Moon, All the Things You Are, Little Monster, There is No Great Love, A-Mé, Vera Cruz, Every Time We Say Goodbye, Sand-Smog
– John Henry
