New Satoko Fujii Album Recorded a Decade Ago

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications)

Tomorrow will see the release of the latest Libra Records album of a performance by Satoko Fujii. (Presumably, it will then appear on the Bandcamp Web page for her albums.) Those that have followed my articles about her probably know that I usually refer to her as a pianist (as I did this past May with the release of Under the Water, her duo album with Myra Melford, who is also a pianist). However, the full title of the new album is Satoko Fujii’s Bunker Ulmenwall Orchestra; and, according to the details on the jacket, she performs only as conductor. Bunker Ulmenwall is a bar in Bielefeld, Germany that had been built as a bunker, presumably during one of the world wars of the last century. Now it hosts a diversity of music performances, as well as poetry slams; and the performance on this album was recorded there on November 22, 2014.

I have to confess that the use of the word “orchestra” leads me to follow Mister Spock’s lead and raise an eyebrow. (Yes, that probably dates me from the last century!) The string section of the symphony orchestra is represented only by a single cello (Willem Schulz) and a single double bass (Kevin Hemkemeier). On the other hand, there is a generous abundance of saxophones of all sizes, along with three trumpets and two trombones, one of whom doubles on tuba. There are also two drummers, along with Joel Köhn who works with electronics, both synthesized and sampled.

Fujii is also the first and last composer of the compositions on the album. “Shiki” occupies the entirety of the first of two CDs, running just shy of 47 minutes in duration. “Gen Himmel,” on the other hand, is the last track on the second CD, lasting a little more than six minutes. Three different composers account for the preceding tracks on that CD. “Yamantaka” was composed by Andres Kaling, the ensemble’s only bass saxophonist. This is followed by “Jasper” by Natsuki Tamura, who leads the trumpet section. The third track is “Antischwarm,” composed by Luise Volkmann, one of the two alto saxophonists.

Beginning-to-end listening runs slightly short of 90 minutes. That said, there is definitely a “density” to the way in which this music was composed and performed. Furthermore, I have to confess that, while there are a generous number of solos performed, I was not always able to associate what I was hearing with a specific instrument! However, once I put my obsession with details aside, I found that I could just “sit still and listen” and let the sonorities lead my imagination where they may.

Those that have followed past accounts of Fujii’s work probably know that this is not my first confrontation with an orchestral performance. At the end of last year, I wrote about Ninety-Nine Years performed by the Satoko Fujii Orchestra Berlin. However, that turned out to be, as I put it, “a ‘small big band.’” There is nothing small about the Bunker Ulmenwall Orchestra, not in numbers nor in their capacity for full-force sonorities. However, now that I have listened to their album several times, I find that they are beginning to grow on me!

Satoko Fujii and Myra Melford Release New CD

Pianist Satoko Fujii has not released a duo recording with Myra Melford (also a pianist) since their 2007 debut album, Under the Water. This was back when I was a researcher for a Fuji Xerox outpost created in the outskirts of Palo Alto. I had already accumulated a rather massive collection of CD recordings, and one of the first things I did to establish my return from Singapore to the United States was to purchase subscriptions for both the San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Symphony.

Not long after my arrival, I first became aware of the Center for New Music. Unless I am mistaken, one of the first concerts I attended was a solo piano performance by Satoko Fujii when she was visiting from Japan. As a result of that encounter, I began to take an interest in her recordings; and, while I am not sure that I have acquired all of them, I know that my current collection is definitely a generous one.

A duo piano performance by Myra Melford (left) and Satoko Fujii (right) (from the press release for their new Katarahi album)

This coming Friday will see the release of Fujii’s second duo album with Melford. This time the title is Japanese, Katarahi, which. according to the advance material I received, is “a heart-to-heart conversation between intimate friends.” To be fair, I have rarely (if ever) found intimacy to be conveyed through a recording. For that matter, as can be seen in the above photograph, I am not sure that such a conveyance can be sustained across the length of a grand piano, particularly when it involves two pianos conjoined!

That said, there is an engaging diversity of sonorities, involving both the keyboards and the interiors of the respective pianos. In that context, however, I must confess that I would have preferred a video account of this performance to the audio version. The metaphor of conversation is more likely to engage the listener through a visual experience, rather than an auditory one. Nevertheless, since most of my listening is limited to perception through my ears, I sometimes enjoy the liberty of dreaming up my own visual experience. Each of the seven tracks on this new album has its own way of helping me conjure up such dreams!

Not Quite an Orchestra

Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications)

This afternoon I found myself reminded of my favorite Ernie Kovacs joke. Its the one about the Great Wall of China: It is not that great, it is not a wall, and it is not even in China; it is in New York, where it is called the Triborough Bridge. I was reminded of the joke because I used this relatively quiet afternoon to revisit one of the many Satoko Fujii albums in my collection. The one I selected was Ninety-Nine Years, described on the album cover was a performance by the Satoko Fujii Orchestra Berlin.

In the spirit of Ernie Kovacs, it turns out that the group performing the music is not an orchestra. I made this clear when I wrote my article about this album:

The name of the group is a bit prankish; but then it would probably be just as prankish to describe it as a “small big band,” which is basically what it is. It consists of tenor saxophonists Matthias Schubert and Gebhard Ullmann, baritone saxophonist Paulina Owczarek, trumpeters Richard Koch, Lina Allemano, and Natsuki Tamura, trombonist Matthias Müller, bassist Jan Roder, and drummers Michael Griener and Peter Orins.

To be fair, the content for the album was recorded at zentri fuge in Berlin on April 2, 2017. However, it was far from the “finished product” that I listened to and the wrote about for my article.

The fact is that the album was not ready for release until the content was processed twice in New York. On October 25, 2017, Peter Orins collected all the recorded material from a generous collection of microphones and took care of all the balancing and mixing to provide an “integrated” sound. Those results were then transformed into the masters used to create the CDs themselves the following November 30. Max Ross was responsible for that final stage in the production process.

In other words, this album was a reminder of the fact that the listening experience is a far cry from what one might hear at a jazz club. Rather, it is a product of several stages of meticulous engineering; and, more often than not, the musicians themselves have little to say about how those stages proceed. In other words, whatever the musicians do in the interest of performance, this listening experience is the final result of how “the sausage is made” long after the performance has concluded!

Another Satoko Fujii Quartet Album from Libra

I am happy to report that the personnel on the new Satako Fujii Quartet album, Burning Wick, is the same as it was when I last wrote about the combo in September of last year. However, while Dog Days of Summer had no trouble establishing itself on a Bandcamp Web page, the best I could manage at present was a CDJapan Web page, perhaps because Burning Wick will not be released until this coming Friday. CDJapan may have been “first out of the gate;” but the album will only be available as a “mini LP.” Presumably, more sites will be available after the “official” Libra Records release date.

Trumpeter Natsuki Tamura (possibly photographed by Ludwig Sik at the same time as the photograph from the September article on this site, courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications)

The advance material for the album describes the performers as a “powerhouse avant jazz-rock fusion quartet” performing compositions by pianist Fujii. The other members of the quartet are her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, Hayakawa Takeharu on bass, and drummer Tatsuya Yoshida. Fujii, Takeharu, and Yoshida also contribute vocal work, presumably along with playing their respective instruments. (Tamura does not have the luxury of vocalizing while playing!) As usual, all the performers have solo opportunities over the course of the album; but I can say without embarrassment that I was particularly drawn to Takeharu’s bass work!

I must admit that I am impressed with Fujii’s productivity. My last article about her was only a little more than two months ago, when she released her tenth duo album with Tamura. At that pace, I am glad that I can keep up with her in my efforts to offer descriptive material of value to potential listeners.!

Tamura and Fujii Release Tenth Duo Album

Satoko Fuji performing with Natsuki Tamura (photograph by Ludwig Sik, courtesy of Braithwaite & Katz Communications)

Those following this site for some time probably know that I do my best to keep up with writing about albums of performances by jazz pianist Satoko Fujii. She was one of the first visiting artists to perform at the Center for New Music after it opened at 55 Taylor Street in the fall of 2012. According to my archives, her most recent visit took place early in 2017, when she led a program entitled Existence: Quartet Music for Improvisers. That was one of many occasions in concert and on recordings that she performed with her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura.

The most recent of those duo albums was released a week ago and is now available for purchase through a Bandcamp Web page. The title of the album is Ki. It consists of eight tracks, the longest of which is ten minutes with the shortest eight seconds shy of five minutes. The final track (listed as “bonus”), “Dan’s Oceanside Listening Post,” was composed by Fujii. The other seven were Tamura originals. All of the tracks were recorded on July 15 in Tokyo. They were then mixed and mastered by Mike Marciano in New York later in the month.

For the most part, the performance proceeds at a leisurely pace. Readers may recall that, at the beginning of this week, I invoked the adjective “meditative” to apply to an arrangement of a Turkish folk song for solo guitar. The approach that Tamura and Fujii take to the eight tracks of Ki is even more meditative. Taken as a whole, the album amounts to a “gallery of dispositions,” each of which presents its own take on stillness. In many ways, my approach to listening reflects back on my earliest encounters of performances by John Cage, either as a soloist or with one or two of his colleagues.

Cage was always interested in how music was made on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. I was not surprised to learn from an interview that Fujii gave in July of 2019 that she was aware of his “nonstandard” approaches to making music. Since Cage died in 1992, my guess is that she never crossed his path and may not have been aware of that path during his lifetime. To be fair, no one would confuse any of the tracks on Ki with the music Cage and his colleagues made. Nevertheless, every time I listen to a new Fujii album, I always seem to reflect on how my own experiences with Cage broadened my interests.

Those interests now receive, with great pleasure, the listening experiences associated with both duo and solo performances by Tamura and Fujii.

Can’t Classify the Genre? This is It!

It has been a while since I have toyed with the opposition between the concept of jazz as chamber music by other means and that of chamber music as jazz by other means. Indeed, my last encounter took place almost half a decade ago, when I was writing about an album of recent compositions by saxophonist Quinsin Nachoff entitled Pivotal Arc, which almost seems to have been coined with that opposition in mind. However, I cannot resist speculating that, when pianist Satoko Fujii formed a trio that she called This is It!, she had that question of opposition in mind.

On the basis of the many Fujii albums that have inspired my writing, I feel it fair to say that the trio provides a “comfort zone” (of sorts) for her piano performances. My most recent article about her involved her Tokyo Trio with Ittetsu Takemura on drums and bassist Takashi Sugawa. By the same count, her husband, Natsuki Tamura, released his own trio album this past February with Fujii as his pianist and Ramón López on drums. However, I have not encountered a This Is It! album since December of 2021, when Takashi Itani provided percussion for both by Fujii and Tamura.

Cover of the album being discussed (from the Bandcamp Web page)

The title of that album was Mosaic, and today it will be succeeded by the latest This Is It! release, Message. Those following the hyperlink will see that the best source for distribution is Bandcamp, where the six tracks on the album are available for both streaming and download. As of this writing, the price is given only in Japanese yen; but those clicking on the “Buy Digital Album” hyperlink will see a dollar equivalent for that price, which is a bit less that seven dollars.

It is probably worth noting that, in this digital age, the Bandcamp distribution is practically “hot off the presses.” All six tracks were recorded in a single day in Tokyo this past October 8. However, Libra only concluded mastering the content on February 23. Where recording and distribution are concerned, that is about as close to an instantaneous release as one can expect!

One of the things I like about Fujii is that her worldview is not limited to her own country. I was reminded of this while listening to the third track on the album, “Falafel Feast.” Ironically, this Middle Eastern influence was the result of visiting a restaurant in Berlin! Then there is “Ernesto,” named after Che Guevara, a prominent thorn in the side for the United States for his major role in the Cuban Revolution to overthrow the dictatorship  of Fulgencio Batista.

Fujii embarks on one of her most elaborate riffs during “Ernesto.” This seems to have been the result of her having read of biography of Guevara. My guess is that her opinion of him was somewhat idealized; but, at least to some extent, her solo piano work captures a turbulence that may have been her effort to evoke the chaos and uncertainty of revolution. To be fair, however, my own thoughts tend to conclude that music and revolution do not mix very well. My own source of inspiration in these matters comes from Tom Lehrer:

Remember the war against Franco?

That’s the kind where each of us belongs.

Though he may have won all the battles,

We had all the good songs!

Fortunately, Fujii does not limit her versatility to evoking revolutions from the past century. There are any number of solo riffs on this album that keep me on the edge of my seat just for the delivery by each of the three trio musicians. By the same count, however, there are just as many moments evoked by the full trio with the same effect! The “message” of Message, so to speak, may not have been intended as a political one; but I think that my own listening experience found just the right balance between the evocations of improvisation and the realities of day-to-day uncertainties!

Satoko Fujii’s Tokyo Trio: First Studio Album

Pianist Satoko Fujii (right) with her trio colleagues Takashi Sugawa (left) and Ittetsu Takemura (center)

This coming Friday will see the release of the first studio album of performances by the Satoko Fujii Tokyo Trio, whose other members are Ittetsu Takemura on drums and bassist Takashi Sugawa. Some readers may recall that two albums have already been released of concert recordings: Moon on the Lake in May of 2021 and Jet Black in December of 2023. The title of the new album is Dream a Dream. It is scheduled for release this coming Friday. It can be found on a Dusty Groove Web page, where it is currently listed as “Temporarily Out Of Stock.” Presumably, the site will start processing orders on Friday!

Some readers may recall that when, this past November, I wrote about Andrew Hill’s latest album, A Beautiful Day, Revisited, I recalled joking about telling the difference between jazz as “chamber music by other means” and chamber music as “jazz by other means.” That recalled a previous joke from one month earlier about the President being like ”the King and the Prime Minister all rolled up into one,” which gave rise to the question, “One what?” Fujii’s performances tend to involve combos in jazz clubs; but, as I have previously written, she was one of the first to perform at the Center for New Music, not long after its founding in 2012. I suppose it would be fair to say that I listen to her tracks as if they were chamber music; but, in my collection, I keep her albums in my jazz section!

Dream a Dream presents a program of five extended trio improvisations. The shortest of these, “Rain Drop,” is only somewhat longer than five minutes, while the longest, which is the title track, closely approaches twenty minutes. While Fujii definitely leads from the piano, she allows generous intervals of time for both Sugawa and Takemura to explore their own inventions. It is also worth noting that, in his bass work, Sugawa is generous in his use of his bow. Indeed, were it not for the percussion riffs, most listeners would probably recognize this as adventurous chamber music, rather than jazz!

In other words, Dream of Dream comes across as a perfect embodiment of Duke Ellington’s response to those arguing about the difference between chamber music and jazz:

It’s all music.

New Tamura Album Finally Available on Amazon

Cover of the album being discussed

I first learned that Not Two Records would release a new album of a trio led by Japanese jazz trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, performing with his wife, pianist Satoko Fujii, and drummer Ramón López, at the end of this past November. Since that time, I have been frustrated by two months of Google searches, none of which could turn up a Web site from which this album, entitled Yama Kawa Umi, could be purchased. I am now happy to report that the album is available for purchase through an Amazon.com Web page, but only as a compact disc.

This is my second article about Tamura this year. Almost exactly a month ago, I wrote about What happened there?, his duo album with guitarist Keiji Haino. The last time I wrote about one of his performances with Fujii was in September of 2024, when she released her quartet album Dog Days of Summer. I follow both of them closely, because every new release turns out to be yet another journey of discovery.

The title of this new album consists of the three Japanese nouns for mountain, river, and ocean. It will probably not take much effort on the part of an attentive listener to appreciate the extent to which each of the eight tracks on this new album reflects on natural forces. Indeed, most of the titles of the tracks guide the listener along those lines, although the liner notes do not provide any guidance to why the eighth track is entitled “Bolognaise.” Perhaps the intention was to reflect a viscosity thicker than that of water! (The advance material I received says of this track only that it “modulates through contrasting grooves that form the foundation for energetic playing from all.” Any relationship to pasta is left to the imagination of the reader!)

To return to the more serious, I was particularly moved by the stillness of the fourth track on the album, entitled “One Day Later.” There is clearly a semantic infrastructure for this title, but I have no idea what it is! Nevertheless, I am content to listen for the unfolding of soft dynamics and the subtleties of López’ brush work. The release of this album may have been delayed; but, for me at least, the wait was worth the time!

Satoko Fujii’s Suite for String Ensemble

Yesterday Libra Records released two new albums, which may be called “husband and wife” recordings. The first of these, Altitude 1100 Meters, will be the first work of written music for string ensemble by Satoko Fujii. The second, What happened there?, features her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura. My original intention was to write about both of these in a single article, but the Fujii release is such a major departure from her previous albums that it deserves to be addressed strictly on its own merits. Because both of these albums are on the Libra label, the best venue for purchase is the CD Store Web page on the Web site for Libra Records.

Satoko Fujii conducting the members of her GEN ensemble (photograph by Shigeko Sekiguchi)

Altitude 1100 Meters is a suite in five movements, which Fujii wrote to celebrate her 65th birthday. It was composed for the group GEN, which is the Japanese word for string. Akira Horikoshi is the drummer, and the other performers perform on string instruments of one form or another. Fujii’s instrument is, as usual, piano; but the other four players perform with bowed instruments. These are violinists Yuriko Mukoujima and Ayaka Kato, Atsuko Hatano on viola (but doubling on electronic gear), and bassist Hiroshi Yoshino. The five movements basically account for the passing of a single day:

1. Morning Haze
2. Morning Sun
3. Early Afternoon
4. Light Rain
5. Twilight

The title of this suite was inspired by the fact that Fujii composed the work during the summer of 2023. She had moved to the highlands of Nagano with her parents to escape the city heat. She was inspired by how the air itself was different at an altitude of 1100 meters. It would be fair to say that the music itself does not specifically reflect on altitude. However, Fujii’s creativity seems to have been inspired by (in her words) “how the air made me feel.”

As might be guessed, Fujii took advantage of the violins and viola to explore glissando passages. At the other end of the spectrum, so to speak, Yoshino’s bass work often serves to provide a drone. As might be expected, Fujii brings her own intensity to her piano playing; but her equal-tempered instrument serves as a “baseline” against which she explores microtonal the intervals of the string players.

I must confess that I have not yet fathomed the logic behind her approach to microtonality, so I would like to riff a bit on my own past experiences. At the risk of sounding too simplistic, there are basically two ways in which microtones can be deployed. The simpler of these involves basically adding rhythm to glissando passages. The other is what I learned from my composition teacher, which is that an equal-tempered scale of 72 notes to the octave (dividing the semitone into six equal “subintervals”) allows a composer a more refined capacity to capture the frequencies of overtones beyond the 5:4 ratio of the major third. Since Fujii’s creativity tends to go beyond any concept of a scale, my guess is that her own work tends toward the former option!

I have come to expect that every new Fujii album will offer a journey of discovery, but Altitude 1100 Meters charts are journey more adventurous than I had anticipated!

Joe Fonda to Release New Quartet Album

Some readers may recall that I first became aware of bassist and composer Joe Fonda through my commitment to keep up with the albums released by the highly adventurous jazz pianist Satoko Fujii. Sadly, my most recent encounter dates all the way back to April of 2022, when Fujii and Fonda jointly released their Thread of Light album. However, this past September I learned that they would be releasing a new quartet album entitled Eyes on the Horizon on Long Song Records; and that album is now available for pre-ordering both the compact disc and digital download through a Bandcamp Web page. The release date will be this coming Friday, November 15.

Wadada Leo Smith, Joe Fonda, Satoko Fujii, and Tiziano Tononi (photograph by David Apuzzo, from the Bandcamp Web page for this album)

Fonda conceived this seven-track album as a tribute to trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. Smith performs on this new Eyes on the Horizon album along with drummer Tiziano Tononi joining Fonda and Fujii. Fonda serves as leader of the quartet providing composed content that allows an abundance of opportunities of improvising. Nevertheless, there is frequently (but not always) a restrained rhetoric, which allows Fonda a fair amount of flexibility in his bass work. However, Smith tends to lead the way with his trumpet phrases; and Fujii tends to support Smith’s leadership with more keyboard restraint than I usually encounter!

Where jazz is concerned, I tend to associate the adjective “cerebral” with jazz artists such as Andrew Hill and those that sail under his flag. Nevertheless, there is an intense focus among Fonda and his quartet colleagues that comes across as just as cerebral as Hill’s approaches to improvisation and invention. Furthermore, there is a haunting sense of quietude that allows the attentive listener to appreciate the abundance of angels in all of the details. This is an album that is likely to reward over the course of many listening encounters.

A New Satoko Fujii Quartet Album from Libra

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.

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!

Satoko Fujii’s New Tokyo Trio Album

Satoko Fujii, Takashi Sugawa, and Ittetsu Takemura in performance (photograph by Kazue Yokoi)

If my archives are reliable, my first encounter with the Satoko Fujii Tokyo Trio took place in May of 2021. Led by jazz pianist Satoko Fujii, the other members of her trio are Ittetsu Takemura on drums and bassist Takashi Sugawa. The title of that album was Moon on the Lake. Last month saw the release of a new album performed by that trio, this one entitled Jet Black. As in the past, finding Fujii’s albums involves departing from the “usual suspects;” but, in this case, it is not hard to find the Web page provided by the CDs Vinyl Japan Store. (Just to be clear, this album is available as a CD!)

When I wrote about Moon on the Lake, the first phrase I evoked was “highly energetic jamming.” On Jet Black the jamming is as energetic as ever. This time, however, I found myself drawn to the extended (not to mention highly imaginative) solo passages taken by each of the trio members. I would not go as far as to say that each composition has a chorus-verse structure; but the solo “verses” all involve highly inventive improvisation. As is often the case, I found myself drawn to Takemura’s work, particularly when it involved mind-bending polyrhythms.

Indeed, the name of this group suggests that it is Fujii’s trio. However, she has no interest in dominating over her two partners. Indeed, what makes listening particularly interesting is the interplay between solo and group improvisations. In many respects the album as a whole has a bit of the spirit of opera to it, in which there is an overall background of “ensemble” playing from which the individuals emerge to contribute their own “arias.”

If my memory is correct (big “if”), I first became aware of Fujii when she gave a performance during the opening season of the Center for New Music here in San Francisco. She could not have given a better “fit” to the “new music vision” of the venue! I suppose that it was because I had to get my head around the breadth of her capacity for invention, that I leapt at the opportunity to get to know her work better through her albums. Over a decade later, I am still getting to know her work!

Jazzdor to Release Debut Album of Trio San

Trio San members Taiko Saito, Satoko Fujii, and Yuko Oshima (photograph by Christina Marx)

Tomorrow Jazzdor, which is based in Strasbourg, France, will release its twentieth album. Since Jazzdor has been around for over 30 years, this may sound like a modest achievement; but it deploys a focused dedication to introducing the general public to creative approaches to jazz and improvised music. The new release marks the debut of Trio San based on a performance at the Jazzdor Festival, which took place at Kesselhaus in Berlin on June 8, 2022.

It would probably be fair to say that Trio San is a trio that emerged from a duo. That duo was called Futari, and it consisted of pianist Satoko Fujii and vibraphonist Taiko Saito. Their latest album, Underground, was released at the end of this past April. The duo became a trio with the addition of percussionist Yuko Oshima, and the title of their debut album is Hibiki. For those that cannot wait until tomorrow, Bandcamp has already created the Web page for this album, which can be pre-ordered as either a compact disc or a digital album.

It is important to note that all three of the performers shared as composers of the six tracks on the album. The opening track has the title of the album; and it is the only composition by Oshima, providing a clear and compelling account of the transition of a duo into a trio. This is followed by three tracks composed by Fujii, which involve some highly imaginative passages of interplay between piano and vibraphone. Saito then takes the lead for the last two tracks, which serve up a sharp contrast between an almost silent stillness and a raucous outburst.

Over the years I have listened to so many of Fujii’s performances (not to mention those by her colleagues) that I “know the drill.” This is a matter of repeated listening to find just the right balances between sonorities and thematic content. There is always a logic behind any of the tracks. Apprehending that logic only comes after one can relate listening-in-the-present to past recollections. Hopefully, some of my readers are listeners that are willing to follow that same drill!

Libra Releases Satoko Fujii’s Latest Solo Album

Satoko Fujii at her piano keyboard

Today Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii released her latest solo album on her “house label,” Libra Records. As of this writing, the album is available through a Bandcamp Web page but only for streaming and digital download. The title of the album is Torrent, and it consists of six improvised tracks. All six tracks were recorded on October 10 of last year. The recorded channels were mixed down to two stereophonic channels by Mitsuru Itani on November 19. The masters for release were then prepared by Mike Marciano in New York this past February 2.

This is far from my first encounter with Fujii’s improvisation work. (That may well have been when she visited the Center for New Music. Unless I am mistaken, that would have taken place not long after its founding in 2012.) Each of the six tracks has been given a title:

1. Torrent
2. Voyage
3. Light on the Sea Surface
4. Cut the Painter
5. Horizon
6. Wave Crest

It would not surprise me to learn that these titles were assigned after the tracks had been recorded, the results of retrospective reflection that took place while she was listening to the recordings.

Personally, I am less interested in assigning names than in enjoying the generous abundance of different styles and idioms that arise when listening to the album as a whole. The listening experience is not so much one of a journey as it would be a matter of following Fujii around through what amounts to a “sonic gallery,” pausing to reflect on auditory experiences as one might reflect on framed paintings mounted in the different galleries of an art museum. Those experiences are not limited to keyboard work. Over the course of her past performances, Fujii has developed a repertoire of techniques for eliciting sounds by means other than having hammers striking the strings.

Indeed, it would be fair to say that, like many works of abstract art, Fujii’s improvisations amount to allowing the attentive listener to manage his/her/their own perceptions. In that context what matters the most is the rich diversity that extends over the album’s six tracks, each establishing its own duration through which mind can peregrinate. One need only take the trouble to listen, rather than dismissing the album as a source for “background music!”

Ayler Records Releases Fujii-Yoshihide Improv

Cover of the album being discussed (from the Bandcamp Web page)

This past Thursday saw the latest release of an album featuring the Japanese pianist and composer Satoko Fujii. The title of the album is Perpetual Motion, and it documents a spontaneous duo improvisation of Fujii at the keyboard performing with guitarist Otomo Yoshihide over the course of an uninterrupted 50 minutes. It was released on Ayler Records, based in France, rather that Fujii’s Japanese “house label,” Libra Records.The album is being distributed in both physical and digital form through a Bandcamp Web page. (See the above hyperlink.) Those visiting that Web page will see that the album has four tracks, but those tracks unfold without any pause or interruption.

Those unfamiliar with Yoshihide should be informed that he is as adventurous as Fujii when it comes to spontaneous improvisation. Both of them first emerged as artists in the Nineties, but this album marks the first time that they have performed as a duo. The performance took place as part of a music marathon that was hosted by the Pit Inn in Tokyo on January 10, 2022 and was recorded by Takanori Terabe. The recording took place during the annual music marathon that Fujii and her husband, Natsuki Tamura, curate every January.

What is most important is that the inventiveness of the duo improvisation is rich enough that the attentive listener is unlikely to feel that any episode is occupying too long a duration. That said, each episode seems to arise when either one or both of the performers identify a particular sonority or phrase structure and then find themselves mutually playing with it. This reminds the attentive listener of the dual semantics of the concept of “play.”

On the one hand there is the “musical” interpretation, which basically “channels” the expressiveness of both of the improvisers. At the same time, however, there is the way in which a performer can “play with” the properties of thematic material, exploring how it can be manipulated through improvisatorial techniques. Perpetual Motion provides just the right helpings of “food for thought,” satisfying the “appetites” of both the performers and the listeners.

Satoko Fujii’s Hundredth Album as Leader

Back in 2018 my schedule was richly occupied with month-by-month releases in Satoko Fujii’s “Kanreki Cycle” conceived to honor the year of her 60th birthday. Completing that cycle near the end of the month of December left me with a refreshing sense of accomplishment. Yesterday, however, turned out to address another landmark in Fujii’s career as an adventurous jazz pianist. The release of Hyaku: One Hundred Dreams marked the 100th album in which she served as a leader.

She celebrated the making of this album in the good company of eight other musicians that contributed to this album. As expected, one of them was her husband and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura. However, a particularly outstanding member of her company for this occasion was another trumpeter, Wadada Leo Smith. I was also particularly impressed with the presence of bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck (whose name I cannot read without thinking of Sol Schoenbach, who served as Principal Bassoon for the Philadelphia Orchestra between 1937 and 1957). Schoenbeck’s improvisations explore landscapes of sonorities, which can be both lyrical and spooky, consistently making for any number of treats for the attentive listener.

The combo also includes two drummers, Tom Rainey and Chris Corsano, both of whom have highly inventive tastes in polyrhythms. Brandon Lopez fills out the rhythm section on bass, while the front line also includes saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock. The remaining member of the group is Ikue Mori. Readers may recall his imaginative work with electronics on Prickly Pear Cactus, a trio album in which he performed with both Fujii and Tamura. His presence on the new Hyaku album is as inventive in a large chamber ensemble as it is in filling out a trio.

The entire album consists of five tracks, each labeled simply from “Part One” to “Part Five.” The transitions between these parts, all of durations between ten and sixteen minutes, are smooth, most evident in shifts of instrumentation and free-wheeling solo takes. (To some extent, one can approach the “master plan” of this performance in the same way that one approaches John Coltrane’s Ascension recording.) The entire album was recorded on this past September 20 at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, which is part of the Baryshnikov Arts Center complex in Manhattan.

What I find most memorable is how, on this celebration recording of a personal achievement, Fujii allocated much of the duration to extended solos by her colleagues. The result for the listener is an experience that explores both breadth and depth in equal measure. Furthermore, since the entire recording was made on a single day, it is likely that much, if not all, of the participants served up a virtual parade of spontaneities, lengthy enough that one is likely to capture the spirit of the music in full only after several listening experiences. Indeed, that was how members of my generation learned how to get their respective heads around Ascension!

New “Pandemic” Gato Libre Album

Gato Libre is a trio I encountered for the first time in July of 2020, even though the group itself was founded in 2003. The founder was trumpeter Natsuki Tamura. He formed a trio which has gone through a variety of personnel changes. Currently the other members are Tamura’s wife, Satoko Fujii, playing accordion, and trombonist Yasuko Kaneko.

The title of the latest album is Sleeping Cat (and, as can be seen from the above image of the cover, it is in English, rather than Japanese). All five tracks are “about” that cat on the cover; but they account for different aspects of how the cat spends a typical day. Thus, the track titles, in order of appearance, are:

1. Sleeping Cat
2. Walking Cat
3. Running Cat
4. Eating Cat
5. Laughing Cat

I have to say that this is the first time I found myself laughing spontaneously (if not uncontrollably) at recordings made by either Tamura or Fujii. This has less to with the final track and more with Kaneko’s prodigious imagination in using her trombone to summon up a rich account of the many noises the cat makes while sleeping (and, presumably, dreaming). Those “sound effects” are hysterically funny, and I am pretty much certain that they were intended to be.

Ironically, due to the constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, this album was the product of mixing recordings made at different times. The initial recordings were made this past April by Tamura and Fujii at their home in Kobe City. Those tracks, as well as Tamura’s sheet music, were then sent to Kaneko, who lives in Okayama City. She realized her part on each track in May, sending those recordings to Tamura, who created the final mix of all three parts later in that month. In other words Tamura provided the cat of the title with a setting, and Kaneko realized the cat’s behavior by providing a “foreground” to Tamura’s “background” content. Since Kaneko has been a member of Gato Libre since 2012, one can appreciate her ability to engage with Tamura and Fujii even when they were all not in the same place at the same time.

As can be seen from the above hyperlink, Sleeping Cat is available through a Bandcamp Web page. In fact, as of this writing, the album is available exclusively from Bandcamp. However, at the present time, it is available only for digital distribution. Purchasing the album provides the buyer with downloads of all five of the tracks, as well as unlimited streaming through an app provided by Bandcamp at no extra charge. Sadly, there is no discount for cat lovers; but anyone that has ever owned a cat will readily recognize the five aspects of cat behavior provided by the tracks on this album with little difficulty.

Fonda Releases Album Responding to Fujii

This past January FSR released a new album of Satoko Fujii and Joe Fonda entitled Thread of Light. Note that Thread of Light was not described as a “duo album.” Rather, it was “something completely different,” which might have deserved a subtitle like Making Music in the Time of Pandemic (with apologies to Gabriel García Márquez). The fact is that this album probably would not have been created were it not for the fact that the pandemic kept Fujii isolated at her home in Kobe (in Japan) while, in the absence of opportunities for travel, Fonda was probably confined to New York.

One of Fujii’s approaches to coping involved uploading to Bandcamp a collection of nine spontaneous improvisations recorded in the piano room of her home. Those tracks were assembled on a single Bandcamp Web page for an album entitled Step on Thin Ice, which was launched this past March 5. Things got interesting after Fonda put in some time listening to those nine tracks.

Fujii then continued the story as follows:

He emailed me back saying he really enjoyed Step on Thin Ice and he actually could hear a way to create his own part to go with it. Originally I had played it as a solo, not as part of a duet, but he found the space to add to it and make it more perfect. I was amazed at how great it sounded with his part added.

So it was that Thread of Light was born. Fonda accounted for all nine tracks of Step on Thin Ice. One of those tracks, “Winter Sunshine” was left as the piano solo that Fujii had uploaded. Following the principle that one good solo deserves another, Fonda allowed himself a bass solo track entitled, appropriately enough, “My Song.”

The press release for this album included a track-by-track account of how Fonda responded to the “call” of each Fujii improvisation. That paragraph deserves to be reproduced for those interested in the “mechanics” behind this unique approach to making music. Here are the backstories for each of the tracks on Thread of Light:

On “Kochi,” Fujii searches up and down the keyboard in scatterings of notes, looking for but never finding a resting spot. Fonda answers Fujii’s restlessness with bass lines that are a tower of strength, with deeply inflected tones that radiate empathy. “Fallen Leaves Dance” is appropriately wind tossed, with Fonda pouring out a torrent of notes to match Fujii’s. The music crackles with energy and urgency, but their signature clarity of line and purpose is also evident. Both players are masters of color, texture, and extended technique, which helps Fonda match Fujii note for note and timbre for timbre on “Reflection” and “Haru.” “Anticipating” features some of Fujii’s most focused improvising, opening with a wonderfully unified series of melodic elaborations. Fonda generates contrapuntal lines of his own, but sometimes his playing flares up and away from Fujii’s steady stream of phrases, adding a contrasting element to the music. “Wind Sound” is a moody sound poem in which Fonda’s lyrical flute contrasts with Fujii’s prepared piano abstraction. And to top off an album of firsts for both artists, Fonda makes his recorded debut on cello on “Between Blue Sky and Cold Water.”

Once the pandemic has passed, it will be interesting to see if others engage similar techniques as a method for making new music.

Natsuki Tamura’s Multi-Tracked Solo Album

At the end of last week, Libra Records released Summer Tree, the latest solo album recorded by Japanese trumpeter Natsuki Tamura. This is only his fifth such album, the fourth, Koki Solo, having been released under pandemic conditions this past July. Tamura’s discography is modest, particularly when compared with the extensive number of releases by his wife, pianist Satoko Fujii. Tamura’s previous album had him playing not only trumpet but also piano and wok, along with vocal work. On Summer Tree he confines himself to trumpet, piano, and wok; but Fujii joins him with vocals on one of the tracks.

Taken as a whole, Summer Tree can be approached as a four-movement suite on the topic of summer. The title track is the first of four. It is followed by “Summer Color,” “Summer Wind,” and “Summer Dream.” “Summer Wind” is the track on which Fujii performs with Tamura.

Actually, one needs to be careful about that “perform” verb. The entire album is a sophisticated product of overdubbing techniques. While, on Koki Solo, Tamura explored a rich diversity of sonorities, I am inclined to believe that each of the tracks was a “live” performance, particularly when he is exploring the different ways in which a variety of objects can strike the body of his wok. Summer Tree, on the other hand, consists of four moderately long pieces, each of which is based on a foundation track against which subsequent tracks are performed and overlaid. The foundations for “Summer Tree” and “Summer Dream” were composed, whereas all of the overlaid tracks for “Summer Color” and “Summer Wind” were improvised.

Fujii’s contribution amounts to the “voice” of that summer wind. Her performance is entirely non-verbal, blending  a deep exploration of phonemic diversity with shrieks, trills, and occasional barks. Those of my generation are likely to detect more than a little “family resemblance” to the early solo vocal performances by Meredith Monk. However, while Monk tended to create for theatrical settings, Fujii and Tamura confine their attention to that “middle ground” where chamber music and jazz overlap.

Nevertheless, there is some sense of the theatrical in the techniques through which these four compositions reflect on the concept of summer. In spite of the idyllic photograph on the album cover shown above, there is a sense of tension that prevails across the entire album. Thus, while the sonorities encountered on the Koki Solo album were exploratory, the overlaid tracks on Summer Tree may leave many listeners wondering if (with apologies to James Joyce) the experience is one of a nightmare from which they are trying to awaken. Given that both Koki Solo and Summer Tree were created under pandemic conditions, that experience is likely to resonate with a discomforting reality.

Most readers probably know by now that Amazon.com is not particularly “on the ball” when it comes to releases by Libra Records; so, as usual, the best source for this new album is the CD Store Web page on the Libra Records Web site.