Satoko Fujii: Altitude 1100 Meters

Even after over one hundred leadership dates, Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii still finds new avenues down which to take her invigorating music. For the first time she has composed for a string ensemble, though the inclusion of her own piano, as well as the drums of regular collaborator Akira Horikoshi, swiftly usher this set out of the chamber and into a more utilitarian space. The suite of five pieces was written during a sojourn in the highlands at the titular 1100 meters, when Fujii and her husband Natsuki Tamura accompanied her parents to escape the summer heat.

While in some ways the selections can be heard as programmatic, spanning as they do a mountain day from dawn through to dusk, the improvisations that they spawn seem to take that inspiration only as a starting point, if at all. So yes we do get some impressionistic shimmering bow work in "Morning Haze" for example, but we also get drums in mercurial duet with first one of the violins (either Yuriko Mukoujima or Ayako Kato) and then later in urgent tandem with Atsuko Hatano's viola and effects. Fujii herself doe not appear on the first track, though her influence can be intuited from how the piece shifts between both scripted and liberated elements.

But she is certainly present thereafter, suggesting an implicit threat with her thunderous piano on "Morning Sun," which reaches a crescendo together with Hatano's sawing reverberations, before a portentous ascending theme. She is there too on the episodic "Early Afternoon" where her tolling chords ground the changeable weather. It is easy to imagine scudding clouds evoked through the intermittent stop-start bass and drum pulse and hovering strings.

Although "Light Rain" begins with plip plopping pizzicato strings which might be taken as a literal interpretation of the title, this is where the group stretches out the most as the near 20-minute cut proceeds in a succession of overlapping solos which attest to Fujii's faith in her partners. She delves under the lid for koto-like percussive clanking, whether in dialogue or juxtaposition to the abraded then sorrowful violin. Later Hiroshi Yoshino offers an excursion of spare skipping bass ripples, before being joined by viola smears from Hatano, which presage an outing heavy on echo and looping which calls to mind a whole chorus. Finally the number ends with turbulent clattering drums, before a pulsating ensemble finale.

The closing "Twilight" opens with unaccompanied drum flourishes, before contrasting hushed tones with brief unisons, but ending in a tumultuous climax, irrespective of the calm implied by the title. While the strings lend the session a slightly more cerebral air than much of Fujii's output, it remains full of her distinctive upending of expectation and opportunities for individual liberty.