Catching the melodies: Pianist Keiko Matsui still charges up her fans

As the world around her hardens, Keiko Matsui still flows like lava, busting up the crust wherever she goes.

“My melodies keep coming to me,” the Tokyo-born smooth jazz pianist said in a phone interview. “I never stop. I really believe this is my mission — to catch the melodies and travel with my music.”

Matsui, coming to Wharton Center for Performing Arts Friday, Oct. 25, is a bright spirit, an idealist and a humanitarian with a devoted following around the world. She works in a space all her own, unconcerned with coolness or hipness.

After 27 albums and over 30 years of music making, her energy and sincerity still packs halls and stadiums all over the world.

She sold out the Wharton Center last time she appeared there, in 2008, and her 28th and newest album, “Echo,” debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz charts.

Her fans aren’t out to catch the latest trend or celebrate the past. They want Keiko Matsui, the way your phone can only accept one charger.

“I really believe we have a special bond,” she said. “Each person has memories associated with a particular song.”

The “Echo” album and current U.S. tour is her way of completing the circuit.

“We can put our minds together and experience emotions together with music,” she said. “I wanted to capture all of that, including my gratitude for my fans.”

Growing up in Tokyo, Matsui started writing “tiny songs,” which she compared to a journal, and composed music for a movie soundtrack while in high school.

She describes her composing process as “receiving melodies.”

“I just sit at the piano and wait to hear something coming to me,” she said. “That kind of process is very mystical.”

She’s classically trained, and loves Rachmaninoff and Chopin. She’s also a fan of Ella Fitzgerald, Stevie Wonder and Chick Corea, but Matsui’s compositions come strictly from the Keiko zone.

Many of her motifs are inspired by nature. Matsui’s first album, in 1987, was “Drop of Water.”

“I love the moon and I love the sea shore,” she said. She lives in South Bay, near Los Angeles. “Just looking at the ocean and listening to the waves heals me a lot.”

But almost anything can inspire her. One day, while looking at a doll, she found herself imagining the very first doll a human being ever created. The result was “Doll,” a minor-key, low-rolling stampede with a primal lope.

“Was the doll an animal, a deity, a baby?” Matsui asked the audience at the 1999 Newport Jazz Festival. “We make strange things which look unnecessary, but we need them, and music is much like that.”

Another tune, “Kappa,” is a melancholy jig (if there can be such a thing) inspired by a forest elf of Japan. “When Kappa died, the forest died,” Matsui explained. The tune ends in a florid, prog-rock-style climax.

For “Echo,” Matsui went all the way back to her “Drop of Water” source and invited a group of musicians who played on her first and second albums and have remained her friends ever since.

The album is a who’s who of the smooth jazz scene, with Marcus Miller on saxophone, Vinny Colaiuta on drums, Robben Ford and Paul Jackson, Jr. on guitar and a couple of new friends, saxophonist Kirk Whalum and bassist Kyle Eastwood (Clint Eastwood’s son).

“I wanted to do it as organically as possible, like in the beginning of my career,” Matsui said. When the band assembled at United Record Studio in Hollywood, it felt like a warm reunion.

“We did it old school, we just got together. It was like a miracle, really hand made, and it captured everyone’s soul and heart.”

Also on the CD, and coming with Matsui to the Wharton Center, is Matsui’s globe-spanning core band and “family on the road” comprising Cuban drummer Jimmy Branly, bassist Rico Belled, from Holland and J.P. Mourão, from Brazil, on guitar.

Over time, Matsui’s approach to composition hasn’t changed, but she feels as if she’s been “receiving some new dimensions” lately.

“I’m growing. It’s not only creating music,” she said. “It’s like asking myself: How do I want to live?”

Keiko Matsui

Friday, Oct. 25, 8 p.m.

Wharton Center Pasant Theatre

$52 and up: general admission, $19: 18 and under

(517) 432-2000  or 1-800-Wharton