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Satoko Fujii Quartet: Burning Wick
by Dan McClenaghan
Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii is prolific. She has released well over 100 albums in a 30-year career, including a notable stretch in 2018 when she released an album a month. Solo piano outings, duo sets--including several with her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura--trios, quartets, and larger ensembles of every size and shape. A general rule with Fujii: the larger the ensemble, the louder and more brazen the sounds. Her big bands are often particularly riotous. But her small ensembles ...
Continue ReadingNatsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii: Ki
by Dan McClenaghan
The sound of Ki is deeply steeped in deliberation, dignity and old-world stateliness. This, coming from the long-term team of trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and pianist Satoko Fujii, might surprise those who have followed the duo's trajectory over its quarter-century-plus existence. Fujii and Tamura stir up musical pots and pans in a startling array of styles. Most of the dishes they cook up are avant-garde--Fujii's boisterous big band stews, Tamura's truculent treks spiced with electricity and/or extended trumpet technique tom foolery ...
Continue ReadingSatoko Fujii: Dream a Dream
by John Sharpe
Japanese pianist and composer Satoko Fujii has long demonstrated her ability to marshal ensembles of varying size--from intimate duos to sprawling orchestras--with an ear attuned to both spontaneity and design. On Dream A Dream, the second release from her Tokyo Trio, she reaffirms that a small group can still conjure orchestral breadth when agency and imagination run free. With bassist Takashi Sugawa and drummer Ittetsu Takemura, Fujii leads a unit whose cohesion now feels even more instinctive than on their ...
Continue ReadingSatoko Fujii: Altitude 1100 Meters
by John Sharpe
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 ...
Continue ReadingSatoko Fujii Tokyo Trio: Dream a Dream
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Satoko Fujii's artistic vision has held a sharp focus since her recording debut in the late '90s. She has maintained that focus in almost every jazz ensemble configuration imaginable. That unwavering focus, combined with a superhuman creative momentum, has resulted--as of 2025--in a discography of more than a hundred albums. She has been especially effective in her work with the piano trio format, opening up that door via her Satoko Fujii Trio with Mark Dresser and Jim Black, on ...
Continue ReadingSatoko Fujii GEN: Altitude 1100 Meters
by Dan McClenaghan
With over a hundred album releases in her discography, featuring solo outings and big band bashes and everything in between, pianist-composer Satoko Fujii could be thought to have “done it all." But there was a missing link. Strings. Though she had recorded in duet outings with violinists Mark Feldman and Carla Kihlstedt, she had never written for or worked with a string ensemble. Always (always, always always) up for a challenge, she convened a group she called GEN, Japanese for ...
Continue ReadingKeiji Haino / Natsuki Tamura: What Happened There?
by Mark Corroto
Unexpected one-off collaborations in creative music have often thrilled and captivated listeners, yielding results as unpredictable as they are unforgettable. Consider Embraced (Pablo Live, 1978) by Cecil Taylor and Mary Lou Williams, the genre-spanning brilliance of Duke Ellington & John Coltrane (Impulse!, 1963), or the boundary-pushing sonic landscapes of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne. The avant-garde met turntablism in Guitar, Drums 'n' Bass (Avant, 1996), an experimental collision between Derek Bailey and ...
Continue ReadingSatoko Fujii: Dog Days Of Summer
by John Sharpe
With its aggressively pushy opener, full of attitude, the reunion of Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii's Quartet, last heard on Bacchus (MZCO, 2007), seems to be asking: “well, did you miss us?" Certainly there is no missing the foursome on Dog Days Of Summer, completed by regular partner Natsuki Tamura on trumpet, along with the snarling electric bass of Hayakawa Takeharu and the bombastic drums of Tatsuya Yoshida of progressive rock duo Ruins fame. Although the PR material ...
Continue ReadingNatsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii: Aloft
by John Sharpe
By the time of its ninth release a band might be struggling to produce something new. Not so the Japanese wife-and-husband duo of pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura. They reap the benefits of a long association while sidestepping potential downsides to keep things fresh and unpredictable. While previous albums have often featured the compositions of one or both, on Aloft they dispense with charts altogether and trust in their instincts. That trust is amply repaid. It ...
Continue ReadingSatoko Fujii Quartet: Dog Days Of Summer
by Dan McClenaghan
Satoko Fujii Quartet's Dog Days Of Summer has been a long time coming. It is the re-emergence of one of her most exciting bands, the Satoko Fujii Quartet. They had a great run from 2002's Vulcan (Libra Records) until 2008's Baccus (Muzak Records). Then the group went into a dormancy. In the meantime, Fujii has released over a hundred albums--including twelve in 2018 alone--in every imaginable format, from solo piano to big bands and almost everything in between.
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