Jazz Articles about Natsuki Tamura

About Natsuki Tamura

Album Review

Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York: Entity

Read "Entity" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
February 4, 2020

Pianist / composer Satoko Fujii has staked out her ground as one of the most original voices in jazz—or in any artform, for that matter. She has released more than eighty albums, beginning with her 1995 debut, Something About Water (Libra Records), a piano duet set with Paul Bley. She tours relentlessly. She records in every ensemble format imaginable: solos, duos, trios, quartets and big bands. Lots of big bands, based in Berlin, Tokyo, Kobe, Nagoya, New York.

Album Review

Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York: Entity

Read "Entity" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
January 26, 2020

As she did in 2019, pianist/composer Satoko Fujii—an artist at home in many formations—opens the new decade with an orchestra recording. Entity, from Fujii's Orchestra New York, is the eleventh release from the ensemble that has remained largely intact for almost twenty-three years. It is an all-star collective that includes saxophonists Oscar Noriega, Ellery Eskelin and Tony Malaby, trumpeters Natsuki Tamura and Herb Robertson, guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Ches Smith. Entity has its moments of tranquility but ...

Album Review

Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York: Fukushima

Read "Fukushima" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
December 1, 2017

Satoko Fujii's Orchestra New York has been together since their 1997 debut South Wind (Leo Lab/Libra). A “super group" by any standards, it has remained largely intact over the course of twenty years, bringing the ensemble to its latest release, Fukushima, a memorial suite. The Fukushima nuclear accident was caused by a major earthquake and a subsequent tsunami and was the worst such incident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Fujii was in Tokyo at the time, in 2011. There were ...

Album Review

Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York: Fukushima

Read "Fukushima" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
November 22, 2017

In 2011 an earthquake set into motion the events that would create a partial meltdown of fuel rods in the reactors in the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. Radiation was released. The effects are still felt, and will be for decades (at least)--an especially troubling situation for the only country to have experienced the initially catastrophic and ultimately corrosive and malignant aftermath of a nuclear attack. Satoko Fujii, the Japanese pianist/composer/band leader, has something to say about ...

Album Review

Gato Libre: Neko

by Dan McClenaghan
May 25, 2017

Trumpeter Natsuki Tamura's Gato Libre could now be called Gato Diferente. The group's lineup changed five albums into its journey, after the release of Forever (Libra Records, 2011), with the death of bassist Norikatsu Koreyasu. And changed again with the addition--after Norikatsu's passing--of trombonist Yasuko Kaneko. Then, in 2015, the group's guitarist, Kazuhiko Tsumura passed, leaving Tamura and Satoko Fujii--who plays accordion in the group, rather than her more customary piano--and the leader, Tamura, as the sole original members of ...

Album Review

Natsuki Tamura, Alexander Frangenheim: Nax

by Alberto Bazzurro
March 12, 2015

Quello che non avreste mai voluto sapere dell'improvvisazione radicale e vi arriva invece fra capo e collo: ecco cosa ci offre questo CD, inciso a Berlino del gennaio 2013 in duo fra il bassista, appunto berlinese, Alexander Frangenheim e il trombettista nipponico Natsuki Tamura (altrove ben altrimenti convincente: vedi il quartetto Gato Libre e i lavori con Satoko Fujii), il primo a evocare--per lo più sgomitando di archetto--suoni ascrivibili più alla bottega di un ebanista che a una sala da ...

Album Review

Gato Libre: DuDu

by Hrayr Attarian
October 21, 2014

Trumpeter Natsuki Tamura's quartet Gato Libre has always recorded stimulating, progressive music heavily laced with a Spanish lyricism. DuDu is no exception. “Mouse" is the prime example of this. On it the musicians push far the harmonic boundaries of their respective instruments creating delightfully jarring cacophony intertwined with intensely melodic explorations.Despite the personnel change after bassist Norikatsu Koreyasu's untimely death, the group remains remarkable cohesive. The new recruit, trombonist Yasuko Kaneko brings a warm fluidity to the bottom ...