Hiromi & PUBLIQuartet

OzAsia Festival, Adelaide Town Hall

28 October 2025

One cannot miss the presence of Hiromi on stage. Aside from her trademark hairstyles, it is her unbridled enthusiasm and sheer joy that captures the audience, she does not just sit at the piano whilst pumping out torrents of notes, she stands, thumps her feet, sways to her music, and looks at the audience with a huge smile.

But what really stands out is the outstanding playing, formidable technique, and never-ending stream of original ideas. This, in addition to her joyful presentation captured the audience’s attention and enthusiasm.

On this occasion she was accompanied by the PUBLIQuartet, a string quartet, thus featuring her 2021 post covid album, “Silver Lining Suite”. The evening opened with the very lovely “Jumpstart” from that album and then proceeded to the main event, the four-part title track, her response to the covid lockdown, with much interplay between Hiromi and the quartet.

A large part of the credit for the success of this performance must be paid to the quartet, Jannina Norpoth and Fung Chern Hwei, violins, Nick Revel, viola and Hamilton Berry, cello. Like Hiromi, they clearly enjoyed playing with the effervescent pianist, whose charts utilised the quartet to almost perfection.

Hiromi’s solo rendition of Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” proved that she could play more delicately with a lengthy but lyrical version, simply beautiful. The formal part of the concert concluded with the quartet performing their own “Hip-Hop Quartet In C Minor”, quirky, thoroughly enjoyable and thankfully, not very hip-hop!

Often, encores are brief affairs, a few minutes slowing down the pace to wind down the concert. Not so here, Hiromi played solo for several minutes, then she was re-joined by the quartet, who each soloed with abandon, finishing some 20 minutes later!

Hiromi is without doubt, a great performer. She uses all her talents to great effect, but also adds one extra ingredient often missing in jazz, humour. It was on display  at this concert and really made it a great night.