Jazz Articles

Francesca Han: Illusion

by Ian Patterson
January 18, 2013

Pianist Francesca Han's music contains a certain duality. She's a classical and improvising jazz pianist with one foot in the jazz tradition and the other wedged firmly in the door of contemporary jazz. An established jazz musician in South Korea, Han acquired new vocabulary studying and playing in New York, where she also collaborated with composer Jeff Fairbank's experiment in fusing Korean traditional music with jazz. Though jazz clearly dominates Han's playing, a ghostly classical vein is felt, as is ...

Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York: Undulation

by Jim Santella
October 17, 2006

Satoko Fujii's New York big band carries a big stick, blowing away any and all obstacles as the musicians interpret this program of her soul-stirring compositions. Everyone solos on this creative journey into the avant-garde, and Fujii's cohesive orchestra provides a stable foundation. Undulation, the band's sixth album, is tight. These players have been together long enough that one band member reads the next fluently and with an intuitive disposition.

Fujii's compositions lay the groundwork for creative impressions ...

Satoko Fujii Orchestra NY: Undulation

by Dan McClenaghan
September 15, 2006

Turbulence is a defining characteristic of Satoko Fujii's big band projects, where sections of collaborative sonic turmoil roar into moments of no-holds-barred soloing, with the segments of quirky tranquility sneaking in the back door.Undulation, one of four simultaneously released Fujii big band efforts by the ever-prolific pianist/composer/bandleader, features her longest-standing large ensemble, the Satoko Fujii Orchestra NY, a fifteen-piece ensemble that includes some of the Big Apple's most adventurous jazz musicians: reedmen Tony Malaby, Ellery Eskelin and Andy ...

Satoko Fujii Orchestra: Blueprint

by Jim Santella
February 1, 2005

With her sixteen-piece New York “West" orchestra, Satoko Fujii explodes with a free spirit and unleashed emotions. Her all-star unit of improvising artists operates cohesively in interpreting adventures for which she determines the mood. The result is a program that ranges from intense and dramatic imagery to contemporary celebrations and placid landscapes.

Fujii leads from the piano, offering key phrases that provide obvious direction. In turn, her partners jump in with responses that may be agitated, languorous, or ...

Satoko Fujii Orchestra: Blueprint

by Jerry D'Souza
January 22, 2005

Ideas flow by the brimful for Satoko Fujii. If her spate of recordings is not enough evidence, then take a look at the bands she heads. There's the Orchestra East and the Orchestra West (divided between Japan and the USA), the trio with Jim Black and Mark Dresser, her Quartet, and her solo work. You get the picture. Her new venture is with the New York big band, which comes full circle in a dazzling display of composition and improvisation.

Satoko Fujii Orchestra: Blueprint

by Dan McClenaghan
January 15, 2005

Japanese-born pianist Satoko Fujii's Blueprint, featuring her New York Orchestra, opens with the title cut, a hard-driving, dark-toned, stop-time tune full of gathering momentum and menace, giving the impression of a world plummeting in the direction of chaos--though it never quite goes there. It's the same feeling one gets in listening to Dumas' “The Sorcerer's Apprentice," done most famously for the Disney film Fantasia --the sentient brooms relentlessly bringing buckets upon buckets of water, out of control but for their ...

Satoko Fujii Trio: Illusion Suite

by Jim Santella
November 3, 2004

Jazz's modern mainstream continues to grow with the help of creative artists such as those featured on this lively session. Pianist Satoko Fujii leads with a powerful force that captivates. Accessible for traditional bebop as well as avant-garde listeners, her music stirs the imagination. Scenes of various emotional themes cast a long shadow over the trio's work. Containing ample space between changes in mood, her interpretations have plenty of room to breathe.

Bassist Mark Dresser expresses with myriad ...

Natsuki Tamura Quartet: Exit

by Jim Santella
November 2, 2004

With his new electric quartet, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura explores a wider range of possibilities in the name of free jazz. Synthesized electronic moods and spiritual trumpet echoes recall the hubbub over the way Miles Davis ushered in the 1970s with fusion.

Now, in a new century of improvised music, Tamura turns loose the ties that hold jazz to specific timbres. With her synthesizers, Satoko Fujii is able to create a new kind of fusion. While electric guitar and ...

Satoko Fujii Trio: Illusion Suite

by Dan McClenaghan
September 11, 2004

Nobody does the piano trio thing like Satoko Fujii. Almost every other effort out there in this category can be related to Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner... to name just a few. With Fujii, the sound is a category of its own. Free, to be sure, with classical tinges, an the occasional influence of rock--though this is more apparent in her quartet work.I'll flip-flop here (to use a currently popular verb): though my first experience ...

Natsuki Tamura Quartet: Exit

by Dan McClenaghan
September 9, 2004

Making music with a commercial appeal has probably never entered trumpeter Natsuki Tamura's mind. He follows his muse, and she takes him to uncharted territories.Last year's Hada Hada may be the most intense set of jazz sounds--Electric, with that capital “E"--you'll likely enounter, a plugged-in fifty thousand watt hurricane of a CD; while this year's Ko Ko Ko Ke , a solo set, just trumpet and voice, soothed the listener with a calm accoustic chants and incantations. Opposite ...