Pianist Satoko Fujii and her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, appear to be on a roll this summer. A little over a month ago, their ninth duo album, Aloft, was released; and it was followed at the beginning of this month by the latest Satoko Fujii Quartet album, Dog Days of Summer. Those that have followed this site, not to mention my past writing for Examiner.com, know that I have been following Fujii’s work for well over a decade; and many of the releases have been quartet albums. However, to the best of my knowledge, the name “Satoko Fujii Quartet” only applies when all four of the performers are Japanese (with the exception of Wadada Leo Smith, who plays trumpet on the Aspiration album).
The four musicians performing on Dog Days of Summer
On this new album Fujii and Tamura are joined by Hayakawa Takeharu on bass and drummer Tatsuya Yoshida. I previously wrote about Yoshida when Baikamo, his duo album with Fujii, was released in December of 2019. Dog Days of Summer provides my first encounter with Takeharu’s work.
In that context it is worth noting that Fujii and Tamura have no trouble yielding to extended solos by both Takeharu and Yoshida. Since I am a sucker for polyrhythms, I confess to being particularly drawn to Yoshida’s drum work! However, by the same account, I tend to subscribe to the precept that there is no such thing as a bass solo that goes on too long!
The new album consists of seven tracks over a duration slightly less than an hour. The longest track, “Circle Dance,” is about twenty seconds longer than eleven minutes. The two shortest tracks, “Not Together” and “A Parcel for You” are a quarter of a minute shy of six minutes. Unless I am mistaken, “Metropolitan Expressway” refers to an elevated highway I could see from my hotel room when I was on a business trip to Tokyo. (This was long before I had the foggiest idea of who Fujii was!)
Readers probably know by now that I usually set aside my “musicology hat” where jazz is involved, even when the jazz tends to spill over into the repertoire I am likely to encounter from the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. On Dog Days of Summer I am particularly drawn to the many eccentric rhythm patterns, the sort that keep the attentive listener guessing about what will happen next and when. I continue to treasure the size and diversity of my Fujii collection and take as many opportunities as I can for “paired listening” to present and past releases.
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