Jazz Articles about Satoko Fujii

About Satoko Fujii

Album Review

Pianist Satoko Fujii found another perfect musical partner in 2017, in the Berlin-based mallet maven Taiko Saito, resulting, eventually, in their duo outing Beyond (Libra Records, 2021). The pair dubbed themselves “Futari" ('two people' in Japanese). Underground surfaces as their second 2021 release ("prolific" is a word usually included in a description of Fujii's output). Fujii's piano (often prepared) and Saito's vibraphone and marimba push Fujii's “music you've never heard before" approach deeper into the unknown. Taking nothing ...

Album Review

Ikue Mori, Satoko Fujii, Natsuki Tamura: Prickly Pear Cactus

Read "Prickly Pear Cactus" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
October 13, 2021

Questo disco è un esempio dei molti lavori prodotti nel periodo della pandemia, pensati e realizzati a distanza, registrando le parti ciascuno nella propria casa e poi “montandole" con l'uso di software e computer. I tre protagonisti erano appena rientrati in Giappone da un tour statunitense e da una registrazione a New York con il gruppo Kaze, quando l'esplosione del Covid-19 li costrinse ad annullare tutti i concerti in programma e a rinchiudersi nelle loro case. Una cosa ...

Album Review

Satoko Fujii: Piano Music

Read "Piano Music" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
October 4, 2021

The solo piano works of Satoko Fujii often summon an ethereal ensemble of sounds. Prepared, or in its natural state, her piano speaks as a proxy for the always searching composer/improviser. Fujii's recordings are an ongoing stream of themes based on the here and now for an artist who does not fit neatly into any category. The loss of close band members, her kanreki (sixtieth birthday celebration), the pandemic, and her personal emergence, are all refrains that inform her creative ...

Album Review

Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii: Keshin

Read "Keshin" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
April 4, 2021

The Covid-19 virus tightened its grip on the world in 2020, bringing the old “one door closes, another one opens" trope to mind. The door into touring, to presenting music in live venues, slammed shut. But the extra time afforded by the lack of live music opportunities let the recording studio doors swing wide open--especially in a time when the technology has made home studios a viable and relatively affordable option. Pianist Satoko Fujii's studio is located in ...

Album Review

Satoko Fujii / Taiko Saito: Beyond

by John Sharpe
March 28, 2021

Right from the off, the confluence of grainy flicker and humming drone signals that Beyond won't be like other vibraphone/piano hook ups. Under the moniker Futari, Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii and her Berlin-based countrywoman vibraphonist Taiko Saito don't so much take the road less traveled as revel in the thickets, brambles and unexpected clearings discovered when they veer off map. Across nine cuts captured in a studio session during a tour of their homeland, they commune in a texture-based syntax ...

Album Review

Satoko Fujii: Hazuki

Read "Hazuki" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 13, 2021

Going back to the early 1960s, consider Brian Wilson, of Beach Boys fame. And consider his song “In My Room" (with lyrics co-written with Gary Usher), issued as a single and included in the 1963 album Surfer Girl (Capitol Records). It is a sound of loneliness, a poem to a sanctuary, a place that makes it possible to “Lock out all my worries and my fears." It was a breakthrough of sorts for the Beach Boys, a step away from ...

Album Review

Futari (Satoko Fujii / Taiko Saito): Beyond

by Mark Corroto
February 24, 2021

Futari is the duo of pianist Satoko Fujii and vibraphonist Taiko Saito. It is a Japanese word translated into English as 'two persons.' Both persons are world travelers, adept at navigating beyond their own Japanese culture. Fujii has been at it for years, studying in Boston in the 1980s and her releasing her first recording with mentor Paul Bley, Something About Water (Libra Records) in 1996. With time spent in the US and Europe, Fujii's discography is immense, recording solo, ...