Ninth Album of Fujii and Tamura Released

According to the Bandcamp Web page, Aloft, the ninth duo album of trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and his wife pianist Satoko Fujii was released this past Friday, three weeks after the initially-announced release date. Both of them have been composing and performing together for about 30 years, which dates back to much longer than I have been writing about them. Nevertheless, those that have followed my work for some time probably know that after my “first contact” with a Fujii album, I have done my best to keep abreast of their creative activities.

As might be guessed, the “theme” of the album is avian. This is reflected in the titles of the six tracks:

1. Migration
2. Wintering
3. Traveling Bird
4. Lifting
5. On the Flyway
6. Waiting for Dawn

None of these titles are intended to depict. Rather, each serves as a point of departure for improvisation, which involves both dialog and exchanges between the two performers. I do, however, wish to take issue with the advance material I received, which suggests that “On the Flyway” “grows darker and even absurd.” My own impression was that this track came closest to evoking the natural sounds of a goose, finally allowing the concrete to emerge from the abstract.

The path to that flyway, so to speak, is definitely diverse. Indeed, over the course of the entire album, Tamura occasionally sets aside his trumpet in favor of percussion, and he also has some imaginative ways of vocalizing through his trumpet. (Some of his alternations across these techniques are actually rather rapid.)

Natsuki Tamura and Satoko Fujii (photograph © Hideo Arimoto)

However,  there was one of thing that struck me the most in the advance material I received when this album was released. In the above photograph both performers are smiling. This suggests that both of them enjoyed the interplay behind each of the tracks that they recorded; and, at the conclusion of the recordings sessions, they could look back on their achievements with visible satisfaction.

From a personal point of view, I came away from listening to the album’s six tracks with my own smiling sense of satisfaction!