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!”