Ferociously talented

Japanese pianist Hiromi hit the ground running in her opening set Wednesday at Catalina Bar & Grill. Playing a small keyboard synthesizer placed on top of the venue’s Yamaha grand piano, she instantly kicked off a fiery rhythmic groove, as she swayed in sync with an energized flow of electronic bleeps, burps, grunts and moans.

The 26-year-old musician was answered almost immediately by bassist Tony Grey and drummer Martin Valihora, her longtime rhythm section associates, whose powerful, rock-tinged accompaniment propelled her even deeper into a dense thicket of improvised sound. Despite its jagged intensity and its seemingly wild spontaneity, however, the composition -- “Return of Kung-Fu World Champion” -- contained many carefully structured passages, an intriguing example of contained musical chaos. And, minus the electronic palette, it served as an appropriate introductory lead-in to the rest of Hiromi’s performance.

Preferring, she says, to “not put a name to my music,” she in fact produces music that can be called many things -- from jazz to New Age, from classical to postmodern rock. And in the set’s most important work, “Spiral,” the four-movement title suite from her latest album, she touched on all those elements.

The opening section, “Open Door/Tuning/Prologue,” began with a hovering, Satie-like melody, one of the set’s rare calming passages. High-level intensity soon returned, abated only rarely for the rest of the evening. With the exception of a brief solo excursion, she continually leaped from one emotional peak to another, using virtuosic technique to sustain the ferocity of her playing.

What was missing amid all these multihued note flurries, mesmerizing repetitions and turbulent rhythms was a feeling of musical balance, of the satisfying sense of resolution produced by emotional charge and release. Like many young players, Hiromi failed to communicate an awareness that music is both sound and silences, that a single note, carefully placed, can be magical, and that melody will always be more memorable than groove.