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.