Sakoto Fujii: Moon on the Lake

Vanguard pianist/thinker Sakoto Fujii must work long hours to create so much music with so much attention to detail. The minutiae can be heroic swaths of vivid color or rumbling infidelities. Stumbling blocks or apex. You just never know. You can start right here at Moon On the Lake and get the whole thrilling story.

Created live at Tokyo's famous Pit Inn and working with her first trio since 2013's Spring Storm (Libra), the music heard on Moon On the Lake may sound like it bides by paradigm but listen again. You'll have to if you seek to catch the mad shapes having their way on "Aspiration," an eighteen minute, all-hands-on-deck tumble through the atmosphere. Brooding. Musing. Moving like molecules. First recorded with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and bassist Takashi Sugawa (on the 2017 Libra album Aspiration) it could be the centerpiece of these five wildly unhinged yet cohesive workings if not for the skittish, crackling whiplash of drummer Ittetsu Takemura lighting the spark and setting fire to "Keep Running."

Or it could be the cubist fireworks juggled by the trio on the alien movie soundtrack "Wait for the Moon to Rise." Compelling while repelling from every angle, the music's classical construct gives grace to each player's vital repartee. Same could be said (but not repeated) for the jump crazy "Hansho" and how Sugawa manages to double the energy with a bold, snapping solo. If you are, until now, unfamiliar with Fujji's scheme of things then Moon On the Lake is the place to start. Then keep on going.

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