Opening the blue garden
The artist behind Potomelli
Drummer, singer, composer, arranger, producer and educator. Born in Tokyo, formed in New York, and now writing songs under the name Potomelli — this is the long way round to the front of the stage.
Hironori Momoi was born in Tokyo. His father played music at home constantly, so Hironori grew up inside it rather than being introduced to it — music was simply part of the furniture of the house.
He picked up the guitar at thirteen, then added drums and piano at fifteen. Rock and pop were where he lived: loud, physical, immediate music played with other people in small rooms.
While studying at Sophia University he encountered jazz, and it rearranged everything. What had been a way of playing became a question worth chasing: how does this music actually work?
From that point jazz took over. Rock did not leave him — it never has — but it stopped being the centre. He decided that understanding this music properly meant going to where it was spoken as a first language, and after graduating he moved to New York.
He relocated to New York in August 2007 and entered the jazz performance programme at The City College of New York, studying jazz and classical theory, ensemble playing, composition and arranging with musicians including John Patitucci and Mike Holober.
While there he received The Ervin Drake Scholarship and The Edward Rensin Memorial Award, and completed his BFA in 2010, graduating summa cum laude.
He moved almost immediately into graduate study at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College, from 2010 to 2012, working on ensemble, theory, composition and arranging with David Berkman, Antonio Hart and Michael Mossman, and studying drums with Billy Hart and Vince Cherico.
Alongside the two institutions he studied privately with Kendrick Scott for four years, and also with Johnathan Blake, Greg Hutchinson and John Riley.
Six and a half years of asking the same question in a city that answers it every night.
His composition “Showers” was featured on WBGO, and in 2011 he performed at Lincoln Center for the Champions of Jazz Benefit.
In September 2013 he released his first album as a leader, Liquid Knots, with Chad Lefkowitz-Brown on tenor saxophone, Nir Felder on guitar, Julian Shore on piano and Sam Minaie on bass.
He played across New York — Lincoln Center, ShapeShifter Lab, Canal Room, Bar Next Door, Bitter End, Rockwood Music Hall — and in February 2014 toured Europe with the Kari Antila New York Trio, returning that July to play the Pori Jazz Festival in Finland.
In 2014, after roughly six and a half years of working in New York, he moved his main base back to Japan. What followed was not a narrowing but a widening.
He performs frequently with jazz musicians including Chihiro Yamanaka. In the rock and pop world he came from, his singing, song-shaped drumming has made him a regular support player for vocalists including Akina Nakamori, Junichi Inagaki, Gotch (Asian Kung-Fu Generation) and Tokiko Kato.
In recent years he has also worked often in classical settings, appearing with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Gunma Symphony Orchestra and with Masato Suzuki, principal conductor of Bach Collegium Japan.
He has appeared at Rising Sun Rock Festival, Blue Note, Billboard Live and Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, and on television including NHK’s “Asaichi” and TV Asahi’s “Untitled Concert”.
He continues to perform internationally; to date he has played in the United States, Russia, Belgium, Finland, Singapore and China.
He also works as an arranger. As musical director of “Tap The Best Show”, the tap musical produced by HIDEBOH — the tap dancer known from Takeshi Kitano’s film “Zatoichi” — he saw the production through successful runs at Hakuhinkan Theatre and Nippon Seinenkan.
Today he is based in Tokyo, working as drummer, composer and arranger, and continuing to play with artists around the world.
For years Hironori shaped music from behind the kit — listening, supporting, arranging, and carrying the room forward. It is generous work, and it is largely invisible work.
Potomelli is a fluid project led by Hironori Momoi. Here he writes all of the music and the lyrics himself, and puts his own voice at the centre. He began it after his six and a half years in New York, separately from his work as a drummer, around a simple idea: songs only he could write, and songs whose meaning comes from him being the one singing them.
Potomelli is not a rejection of the jazz history behind it. All of that rhythmic, harmonic and ensemble experience did not get left at the drum stool — it became a voice. This is simply where the whole history finally becomes visible.
One musician. Two ways of speaking.
Compiled from Hironori Momoi’s official biography.
