'Awe-Inspiring' (Village Voice) Hiromi Chronicles World Travels On First Solo Piano Recording, 'Place To Be' (Jan 26/Telarc International)

New York (Top40 Charts/ Shore Fire Media) - If all the world is indeed a stage, pianist-composer Hiromi Uehara has played on just about every corner of it. Since the beginning of the decade, she has supported her impressive body of studio work with an ambitious tour schedule that has electrified audiences throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia and elsewhere with performances that have pushed the limits of piano jazz to new frontiers of compositional and technical skill. Hiromi chronicles just a few of these places where she has experienced the almost mystical exchange between performer and audience on Place To Be, her new CD on Telarc International, a division of Concord Music Group. The album, her first solo piano recording, is set for release on January 26, 2010.

'Some places have such a special vibe,' says Hiromi. 'Sometimes a melody emerges in and around a place without me having to think about it at all. I can just walk down the street and I hear it.'

From New York City to Sicily, Bern to Boston, Vegas to Germany - several of those beautiful places are captured on Place To Be.

In addition to being a musical travelogue, Place To Be also represents a personal milestone for Hiromi, who recorded the album just days before her thirtieth birthday in March 2009. 'I wanted to record the sound of my twenties for archival purposes,' she says. 'I felt like the people whom I met on the road during my twenties really helped me develop and mature as a musician and as a person. I feel very fortunate to have spent this part of my life traveling to all these places and making people happy. This record is a thank you to them.'

Place To Be caps an unprecedented run of releases for Hiromi. In 2009 alone she released two live DVDs as a leader, accompanied her mentor Chick Corea on the live double album Duet, and joined Stanley Clarke on his latest studio effort Jazz in the Garden. In recent years Hiromi has played festivals the world over including Glastonbury, Fuji Rock, Playboy Jazz and this summer the Toronto Jazz Festival where the Globe and Mail said she 'left the audience slack-jawed in amazement.'