Brilliant Technique, Brilliant Pianist...jazz...

Hi, I don't know if I'm posting correctly here about this, but I just wanted to have your advices about one pianist Hiromi Uehara. Just one example, but you will find many on Youtube : I have heard her on Youtube through a friend recommendation. What do you think about her (nice) posture and hands position ? Really very nice to me. Moreover she enjoys music and plays really properly. It is not classical music, but classical is not only in music...music is music, and universal. Any advice is welcome. Regards. Jacky

She is an amazing pianist but her hand position is awful! Look at her left hand octaves - you cannot imagine her arch being more collapsed. I have never seen such facility married to such an anomalous hand position. Perhaps that in part explains why, as I told my daughter, she can play like the wind but the voice of her piano doesn't touch my soul... Thanks for a very interesting post! AFF

Thanks for the quick reply Alan. Would you mean both her hands are not aligned, or just the left hand ? What about her right hand ? I observed indeed at 1:21' her collapsing at the left hand. But as this is a jump shape, how would anyone other with a good position play it ? Maybe as a comparison, I found this not bad at all (no collapsing in the left hand at least) : What do you think further on ? Regards. Jacky

Exactly - Serge actually does collapse his arch slightly - I have worked with pianists this amazing and got them to play even better and more comfortably by improving arch function - but he is nowhere near the hyper-dropped arch of that lady... I don't know what you mean by "jump shape," but if you think you need to assume that shape to leap, I think I would have to disagree! AFF

Hi Alan, sorry I was not clear about my statement "jump shape"...I mean, what we name sometimes in jazz "the pump", is the alternance of one octave in the left hand folowed by a chord. In CHopin's Etude in A minor op.10, there is some kiond of "pump". Not easy. So, I wonder what is the best position for this kind of movement. Maybe there's out some vid on the net I could see, to have an idea. Jack

I would actually look for Op 25 #4 on YouTube: find as many as you can and compare wrist height. My suspicion is that the lowest wrist will sound the best. Her wrist height isn't helping her leaps at all, she puts it up there because her fingers aren't strong enough to play an octave on their own - a serious shortcoming! AFF

Thanks Alan. I've looked at some of them. Here I found one which looks me very nice. Left hand is really very nice : If we look at right hand, it sometimes collapses, isn't it ? Wrist high at certain passages. For example at 0:33' we see a high wrist but in the right hand... If we see Horowitz (I know a very discussed topic), in the contrary, we see flat fingers sometimes. So the questions is : is it because the hand has a specific "uncommon" position that the music is not beautiful ? Hiromi has this specific positions, but to my advice, she sounds really nice. There are a lot of other vids on Youtube with her records. Apparently, she is beyond the physical instrument, I mean, she even needs to look at the keybaord. I'm pretty sure that if we look at known pianists, we will find always find some of them with "uncommon" hand positions and movements. But that 's not especially a reason that their interpretation is not good and doesn't touch our souls. But this is another topic. The same performer can touch one person's soul, and not another...so all this is so relative. Maybe the best way to have an objective advice is to just listen a performance, without looking at the performer. I'm very sure that advices would be very dissimilar then...the same as if were looking at the performer, finally. Do you think, Alan, that any kind of music needs the same hands positions and architecture ? (classical, jazz, pop, etc). Regards.

Interesting examples. But still Hiromi's sound is better to me. I think that momentarily she uses her thumb as a supportive "pillar" if you look carefully whilst Serge hardly plays at all with his thumbs ,that's why she gets away with her crazy handposition. So a fine arch combined with an unefficient/unintelligent use of the thumb doesn't necessarily take you that far? Maybe you could call it a "generic" arch?