When Japanese pianist Hiromi Uehara sits at the keyboard, it stops being just wood and wire. It becomes a playground, a laboratory – even a dance floor.

For more than two decades, her explosive virtuosity has thrilled audiences worldwide. This November, she brings that energy to Australia, appearing with New York’s PubliQuartet at the Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival.

Hiromi. Photo © Mari Amita

For first-time listeners, her style can be hard to pin down: cascades of notes with the precision of a classical pianist, the risk of jazz improvisation, and the charge of rock. That mix, she says, has been there since the beginning.

“I started playing the piano when I was six,” she tells Limelight. “I studied with a classical piano teacher, and at the same time I discovered jazz but at that age you don’t think about genres. Classical music was written down; jazz wasn’t. But my teacher always reminded me that composers like Mozart or Beethoven also expected performers to improvise cadenzas. So for me, the lines between the two were always blurred.”

Switching between traditions wasn’t always easy. “The rhythm was the biggest difference. Where the beat falls,...