Hiromi Makes Golden Gate Theatre Lift Off
At the Golden Gate Theatre, Hiromi Uehara and Sonicwonder turned an SFJAZZ night in a larger room into a full-body rush — a 47-minute suite, ballet-dancer reflexes, and a crowd ready for lift-off.
Hiromi Uehara. Photo: Mitsuru Nishimura
There’s a reason SFJAZZ had to find a bigger room. Sonicwonder’s four-night Miner Auditorium run in 2024 sold out, and a return solo and duo engagement with harpist Edmar Castañeda in April still left the impression that demand had outgrown the room. So when Grammy Award-winning pianist Hiromi Uehara brought Sonicwonder back last Friday, SFJAZZ moved the show one mile away to the 2,200-seat Golden Gate Theatre. The room looked nearly full, with only a scattering of empty seats, and the crowd responded with the kind of standing ovations usually reserved for rock stars and legacy acts. She’s touring behind Out There, her latest studio album for Concord/Telarc. The world is paying attention.
The stage was framed by the scalloped red velvet curtain, gold and bronze arches, and the Art Deco domes of the Golden Gate Theatre — a room designed for exactly this kind of night. The audience was as diverse as San Francisco itself: multigenerational couples, seasoned jazz listeners in tailored jackets, fans in sequins and tattoos, in ball caps or pork pie hats, Petaluma sweatshirts alongside downtown polish.
Hiromi arrived onstage in a short red silk cold-shoulder dress, black tights, and oversized fashion sneakers, her signature dark hair piled into an enormous spiked updo, barely held in place by a matching red headband. After the applause settled, she took her seat at the seven-foot Yamaha, one hand raised and coiled before she struck the opening note of “Wanted.”
What followed was velocity held under pressure. She moved among all three keyboards — sitting, standing, dancing — with the grace of a ballet dancer, her whole body in conversation with the music even when seated on the bench. When she landed on a note that needed to land, her hand snapped back as though she’d touched a hot burner. And when the keys seemed to run out of real estate, she played as though she were auditioning for The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, the delirious 1953 Dr. Seuss fever dream in which 500 boys are enslaved to an impossibly long piano. Her fingers hunted for keys that weren’t there, and the music spilled past every boundary the instrument tried to set. Hiromi played like she was having the time of her life, and that joy was contagious.
The centerpiece of the evening was the four-part, 47-minute suite from Out There. It served as a compressed travelogue: departure, drift, orientation, pursuit. It opened with “Takin’ Off,” as Hiromi and trumpeter Adam O’Farrill traded the rapid-fire melody with the ease of musicians who had long since stopped needing to think about it. “Strollin’” followed, settling into sly ’70s fusion grooves that conjured Herbie Hancock, George Duke, and Grover Washington Jr. At one point, the Hancock influence ran so deep you half-wished Hiromi would grab a keytar, turn to face the crowd, and lean into it.
“Orion” transformed the room, its bold, triumphant sweep scoring the air like the opening sequence of a great science fiction film. Hiromi conceived it as an answer to “Polaris” from Sonicwonderland. Both compositions are rooted in her belief that stars are a guide — “Look up,” she says, “and you always know where you are. Nothing to be scared of.”
The suite closed with “The Quest,” locking the chopped rhythmic drive of contemporary jazz into the analog warmth of vintage prog-rock, a finale built for liftoff. Hiromi shaped the suite as a celebration of post-pandemic freedom — the wide-open feeling of being able to go find something new. At the Golden Gate Theatre, more than 2,000 people seemed to feel exactly that.
Sonicwonder lived up to its name. Adam O’Farrill’s trumpet floated above the mix with near-weightless authority, and when he routed his horn through effects pedals, the room filled with cascading echoes that opened new chambers in the instrument itself. Hadrien Feraud anchored it all from below, his bass lines landing with precision and muscle while meeting Gene Coye’s crisp, funk-driven drumming at every turn. At times, Feraud seemed to channel the ghost of Jaco Pastorius. More than once, he abandoned the thumping altogether, strumming the four-string electric bass like a guitar and blurring the line between rhythm and melody.
Behind them, a backdrop of shifting squares, rectangles, and circles in muted colors kept the eye engaged without distraction.
For the encore, Hiromi returned alone. No band, no backdrop, just the Yamaha and the title track from Blue Giant, the 2023 Japanese animated film she scored. The film follows an 18-year-old saxophonist who leaves his hometown of Sendai for Tokyo with one goal: to become the world’s greatest jazz musician. It’s a story built on obsession and sacrifice, and Hiromi played it that way.
She began with the gentlest notes, then built to something enormous, then broke — a sudden silence that drew delighted laughter from the crowd. She returned to the lower register for a closing melody that grew spacious, the gaps between notes widening until the last vibration dissolved and the room held its breath before erupting. After 47 minutes of Sonicwonder at full force, a solo encore that exposed that much feeling was both a risk and a statement.
Sonicwonder rejoined her for the final number, “Yes! Ramen!!” — playful, fast, and bouncing, Hiromi kicking and spinning between the keyboard and the piano as the bass ran like a siren and the drums built to a hypnotic blur. When it ended, she pulled out her phone to film the standing crowd, then skipped to gather her bandmates at the foot of the stage for a final bow.
The move to a larger theater felt inevitable, giving Hiromi’s music the scale and voltage it required. One concertgoer summed it up on the way out: “I’m going to need a brain transplant — my mind was totally blown!”
Program Notes
Artist: Hiromi’s Sonicwonder
Venue: Golden Gate Theatre, San Francisco
Date: Friday, May 8, 2026
Presented by: SFJAZZ
Personnel: Hiromi Uehara, piano, keyboards, synthesizer; Adam O’Farrill, trumpet; Hadrien Feraud, bass; Gene Coye, drums
Setlist: “Wanted,” “Sonic Wonderland,” “Takin’ Off,” “Strollin’,” “Orion,” “The Quest”
Encore: “Blue Giant,” “Yes! Ramen!!”
Note: While Hiromi delivered an incredible set, the venue enforced a strict no-photography policy, with security actively discouraging phone use throughout the night.
